Soren Kierkegaard — "The individual is prior to the species."
The individual is prior to the species.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"Marriage is and remains the most important discovery of the human race."
"The highest good that any man can attain is to be himself."
"What is a poet? An unhappy being who conceals profound agonies in his heart but whose lips are so formed that when the sighs and cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music."
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."
"What is a poet? An unhappy man who in his heart harbors a profound agony, but whose lips are so fashioned that the sounds that emerge from them are like the beautiful music of an organ."
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.