Soren Kierkegaard — "The very concept of a 'public' makes a mockery of individuality."
The very concept of a 'public' makes a mockery of individuality.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"The present age is essentially the age of understanding, of reflection, without passion, momentarily bursting into enthusiasm, and then shrewdly relapsing into repose."
"The good is the only thing that can be done for its own sake."
"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."
"The greatest misfortune of all is that people are not willing to live in the present, but are always looking forward to the future."
"The task is to understand myself, to understand what I am to do, to see what God really wishes me to do; the point is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I can live and d…"
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.