Soren Kierkegaard — "The highest good that any man can attain is to be himself."
The highest good that any man can attain is to be himself.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"The human race is a race of slaves, and it deserves to be so."
"The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever."
"The infinite resignation is the last stage before faith, so that anyone who has not made this movement has no faith; for only in the infinite resignation does one become conscious of one's eternal val…"
"There is nothing more dangerous than a man who has nothing to lose."
"To be a Christian is not to be a Lutheran or a Calvinist, but to be a Christian."
About Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Danish philosopher and theologian considered the founder of existentialism; Either/Or (1843) and Fear and Trembling (1843) explored the leap of faith. Closely associated with Friedrich Nietzsche (his existentialist successor working in the opposite theological direction) and Fyodor Dostoevsky (literary parallel exploring faith-and-despair). For an intellectual contrast, see G.W.F. Hegel, German Idealist of the totalizing system — Kierkegaard called Hegel's system a 'palatial residence' that nobody could actually live in — his entire authorship is structured against Hegelian abstraction in favor of the existing individual's inwardness.
The standard scholarly entry points to Soren Kierkegaard's work: Joakim Garff (University of Copenhagen, Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre) — Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography (2000); Walter Lowrie (Princeton, his major postwar English translator) — A Short Life of Kierkegaard (1942); C. Stephen Evans (Baylor University, philosophy of religion) — Kierkegaard: An Introduction (2009). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Soren Kierkegaard.