From JUDGE FOR YOURSELF! (1876)

On willing to be the single individual.

“What does it mean to be and to will to be the single individual? It means to have and to will to have a conscience. But why should a person of conscience become angry if someone communicates something true to him! … Say the following to yourself: Is it an affront to treat a person not only as a rational being but as a person with a conscience to whom one tells the truth of the matter? I would think it an affront to treat, in conceited cleverness, a person as a child who cannot bear to come to know the truth, or as a fool whom one can make believe anything if one only flatters him.”

Kierkegaard wrote Judge for Yourself! in 1851, as he was ratcheting up his critique of the Danish state church. Ironically, he refrained from publishing Judge for Yourself! at that time, believing that its censure of the established order was too severe. A few years later, in the midst of his so-called “attack upon Christendom,” Kierkegaard remarked on this decision: “Now I speak much more decisively, unreservedly, truly, without, however, thereby implying that what I said earlier was untrue.” Indeed, the tone of Kierkegaard’s polemics in 1854-55 was and still is considered churlish, possibly even malicious. Yet, given the passage featured today, Kierkegaard’s literary assault may not have been a sign of mean-spiritedness. Rather, it was a direct appeal to individual conscience. When so much modern discourse is meant to pander to crowds, Kierkegaard progressively realized that the more humane option is to speak the truth, come what may.