Soren Kierkegaard — "The highest good for an existing individual is to become an individual."
The highest good for an existing individual is to become an individual.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"The true is not the system, but the individual."
"The unhappy man is one who has the future for his present."
"The greatest good is not to be born, the second is to die soon."
"The more a person is able to laugh, the more profound is his spirit."
"What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music."
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.