One of the Crowd

Are you an individual? Do you stand out from the crowd?

"The crowd is untruth," Kierkegaard said.

He believed that Hegel and the other German idealists had over-intellectualized everything and thereby obscured the most important truth about people, namely, their individual existence. For Hegel a person achieves his or her greatest freedom and individuality by becoming part of the Absolute- in practical terms, the State. It is in the universal that one attains true individuality, Hegel taught.

Kierkegaard rejected this view, pointing out that it is in being caught up in a crowd or collectivity that a person loses his individuality-his conscience, his freedom, his moral responsibility. To go along with a crowd is to lose oneself, submerge oneself, give up one's will to that of the group-even if that group is the state, the race, humanity, or the church. Every individual is greater than the "race" or "mankind," for the individual is related directly to God, who is higher than the race or the crowd.

It is our actual, individual existence that is important. But we also have an essence, as Hegel realized. Our existence is what we are, our essence is what we ought to be. The distance between our existence and our essence produces anxiety and pushes us along from stage to stage of life. Meaning well, we often do the wrong thing, which only adds to our guilt and despair. Joining a crowd (or a church congregation) is no help.

Which is better: to be an individual, or to be one of the group? Or (if that's too easy): how do you become a true individual?

Bibliography

Kierkegaard, Soren, Either/Or, Doubleday & Company Inc., Garden City, N.Y., 1959, two volumes.

Kierkegaard, Soren, "That Individual," in Kaufmann, Walter Existentialism From Dostoevsky to Sartre, New York New American Library, 1975.