“Every human existence which is not conscious of itself as spirit, or conscious of itself before God as spirit, every human existence which is not thus grounded transparently in God but obscurely reposes or terminates in some abstract universality (state, nation, etc.), or which, in obscurity about itself, takes its faculties merely as active powers, without in a deeper sense being conscious whence it has them, which regards itself as an inexplicable something which is to be understood *per se* — every such existence, whatever it accomplishes, though it be the most amazing exploit, whatever it explains, though it were the whole of existence, however intensely it enjoys life aesthetically — every such existence is after all despair. It was this the old theologians meant when they talked about the virtues of the pagans being splendid vices.”
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~Source: The Sickness Unto Death (1849)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard using the pseudonym Anti-Climacus
