Soren Kierkegaard — "The self is a relation which relates itself to itself or, what is the same thing…"
The self is a relation which relates itself to itself or, what is the same thing, is in the relation's relating itself to itself.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"I can sum up in one sentence what directly led to my break with the established order of things: it was the complete and utter lack of seriousness, and that Christianity was being turned into a game."
"My life is an inexplicable contradiction. I am one who has been made to smile by the thought of hanging myself."
"Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so…"
"The present age is an age of dissolution, an age of disintegration, an age of destruction."
"I see it all, I understand it all, but I do not know how to bring it about."
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.