Kierkegaard regarded the religious-ethical
catagory of the individual as his greatest philosophic discovery. Kierkegaard's emphasis on the individual countered the
"mass" moral of his contemporary philosophy which did not see the
private conscience as a fundamental principle of ethics. The subjective
individual in philosophy was opposed to the objective truth. But for
Kierkegaard the crucial thing in faith (which it tied to truth) is the
individual relation to the absolute, to God.
In Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard opposed the individual with the universal. While the
universal is ethical,
the individual can be either aesthetic (living for himself) or religious (living for God).
