THE INDIVIDUAL

This concept is very much relevant to Kierkegaard’s understanding of authentic existence. Kierkegaard says that individual turns to himself completely in such a way that he becomes his own creator. He alone is responsible for creating his own life, and knows himself. Thus, the knower is also the creator and responsible for everything. To accept such responsibility without excuses, as creators should do, is to be authentic individual. Kierkegaard’s idea of an authentic self is that which is responsible and is able to choose his path in life.

Since he alone is responsible for his life, he is therefore able to act and feel with a high degree of social independency, not being dictated by others. For Kierkegaard, existing individuals are actors as well as observer. They make choices which affect the whole of their lives.

In addition, the individual was Kierkegaard’s central category. It is in this category that he saw bound up importance that he is a subjective thinker. Thus, Kierkegaard considers that human self is not humanity in general. Humanity does not exist; only individual human beings exist. Existential reality resides not in the genus or in the species but in the concrete individual. Universals, like crowds are abstractions which have neither hands nor feet.

To exist means to be an individual, but to exist also means to be in the process of becoming. “An existing individual is constantly in process of becoming; the actual existing subjective thinker constantly reproduces this existential situation in his thought, and translates all his thinking into terms of process.”

Thus, the individual must be conscious in relating to the crowd. The crowd by its very nature is a destroyer of the individual: “a crowd in its very concept is the untruth, by reason of that it renders the individual completely impenitent and irresponsible.” And make him forget what it means to be a genuine self. Kierkegaard rejected the one who is capable of destroying the individual. He says, the individual must be fully aware of his individuality.

The Crowd is Untruth

Kierkegaard argues that being in the crowd cannot lead a person to live an authentic existence. It cannot lead him to the truth,

He says,
The crowd in its very concept is untruth by reason of the fact that it renders the individual completely impenitent and irresponsible or at least weakens his sense of responsibility by reducing it fraction.

Kierkegaard has greatly criticized the crowd. Thus, the crowd hinders an individual to become real and true self.
In an idea of authentic existence one must not be a spectator or passenger in life, but seize to control one’s destiny.
For Kierkegaard it is the crowd that makes man to be an inauthentic, simply because, crowd in its very concept is the untruth, by reason of the fact that it weakens man’s responsibility. Kierkegaard argues that, the existential process of attaining authentic selfhood always implies overcoming those elements in our life and characters that hinder the individual to be authentic.

The crowd can make him just merely a spectator rather an actor. In order to be an authentic individual must get away from the crowd. The real solution, for Kierkegaard, is to relate ourselves to God, rather than to a group of people.

Thus, Kierkegaard considers the crowd as an enemy for it promotes personal irresponsibility to the individual. He only acts as spectator instead of an actor for he is dictated to the crowd.
The crowd cannot lead to one’s authentic existence the individual must go away, and make decisions, and choose that which defines his life a meaningful existence. The individual is wholly responsible, and thus free to invent oneself. For him the individual must liberate himself from the crowd. To be authentic means to invent one’s own way and pattern of life.

Furthermore, Kierkegaard stresses that man has a capacity to liberate himself for the crowd and become an individual self thorough the help of the God. He believes that “God is the source of individuality

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Philosopher	Topics
Soren Kierkegaard	PHILOSOPHY: DOES THE INDIVIDUAL PERSON FINDS MEANING IN RELATION TO THE CROWD?
-	#EXISTENTIALISM PHILOSOPHY: I THINK THEREFORE I EXIST!