Kierkegaards Writing, III, Part I: Either/Or: Either/Or (Kierkegaards Writings)

Oh, that I had never heard those words, that with my grief I had been allowed to go my way undisturbed-and with my wish. Then he called to his soul and said: Now you are being crafty, for you say that you are wishing and pretend that it is a question of something external that one can wish, whereas you know that it is something internal that one can only will ; you are deluding yourself, for you say: Everyone else can-only I cannot.

And yet you know that that by which others are able is that by which they are altogether like you-so if it really were true that you cannot, then neither could the others. So you betray not only your own cause but, insofar as it lies with you, the cause of all people; and in your humbly shutting yourself out from their number, you are slyly destroying their power. Then he went further. After he had been slowly and for a long time brought up under the disciplinarian in this way, he perhaps would have arrived at faith.

Truth and Poetry, from My Own Life vol 1, 2 [56]. Kierkegaard, using the pseudonym 'A. They are happy not to know his identity, for then they have only the book to deal with, without being bothered or distracted by his personality. Both A and Judge Vilhelm attempt to focus primarily upon the best that their mode of existence has to offer. A fundamental characteristic of the aesthete is immediacy.

Unrefined immediacy is characterized by immediate cravings for desire and satisfaction through enjoyments that do not require effort or personal cultivation e. Refined immediacy is characterized by planning how best to enjoy life aesthetically. The "theory" of social prudence given in Crop Rotation is an example of refined immediacy. Instead of mindless hedonistic tendencies, enjoyments are contemplated and "cultivated" for maximum pleasure. However, both the refined and unrefined aesthetes still accept the fundamental given conditions of their life, and do not accept the responsibility to change it.

If things go wrong, the aesthete simply blames existence, rather than one's self, assuming some unavoidable tragic consequence of human existence and thus claims life is meaningless. Just as the ethical sphere is a passageway-which one nevertheless does not pass through once and for all-just as repentance is its expression, so repentance is the most dialectical. No wonder, then, that one fears it, for if one gives it a finger it takes the whole hand. Just as Jehovah in the Old Testament visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the latest generations, so repentance goes backward, continually presupposing the object of its investigation.

In repentance there is the impulse of the motion, and therefore everything is reversed. This impulse signifies precisely the difference between the esthetic and the religious as the difference between the external and the internal. Commitment is an important characteristic of the ethicist. Commitments are made by being an active participant in society, rather than a detached observer or outsider. The ethicist has a strong sense of responsibility, duty, honor and respect for his friendships, family, and career.

Whereas the aesthete would be bored by the repetitive nature of marriage e. Here he described the enemies the single individual faces when trying to make a commitment, probability and the outcome. There is a phantom that frequently prowls around when the making of a resolution is at stake-it is probability -a spineless fellow, as dabbler, a Jewish peddler, with whom no freeborn soul becomes involved, a good-for-nothing fellow who ought to be jailed instead of quacks, male and female, since he tricks people out of what is more valuable than money. Anyone who with regard to resolution comes no further, never comes any further than to decide on the basis of probability, is lost for ideality, whatever he may become.

If a person does not encounter God in the resolution, if he has never made a resolution in which he had a transaction with God, he might just as well have never lived. But God always does business wholesale, and probability is a security that is not registered in heaven.

Thus it is so very important that there be an element in the resolution that impresses officious probability and renders it speechless. There is a phantasm that the person making a resolution chases after the way a dog chases its shadow in the water; it is the outcome , a symbol of finiteness, a mirage of perdition-woe to the person who looks to it, he is lost. Just as the person who, if bitten by serpents, looked at the cross in the desert and became healthy, so the person who fastens his gaze on the outcome is bitten by a serpent, wounded by the secular mentality, lost both for time and for eternity.

Kierkegaard stresses the "eternal" nature of marriage and says "something new comes into existence " through the wedding ceremony. It never means changing the whole world or even changing the other person. The extremely nested pseudonymity of this work adds a problem of interpretation. A and B are the authors of the work, Eremita is the editor. Kierkegaard's role in all this appears to be that he deliberately sought to disconnect himself from the points of view expressed in his works, although the absurdity of his pseudonyms' bizarre Latin names proves that he did not hope to thoroughly conceal his identity from the reader.

In my career as an author, a point has now been reached where it is permissible to do what I feel a strong impulse to do and so regard as my duty — namely, to explain once for all, as directly and frankly as possible, what is what: The moment however unpropitious it may be in another sense is now appropriate; partly because as I have said this point has been reached, and partly because I am about to encounter for the second time in the literary field my first production.

Point of View, Lowrie translation p. Furthermore, Kierkegaard was a close reader of the aesthetic works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the ethical works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Kierkegaard's writings in this book are close to what Goethe wrote in his Autobiography. It was not long before I formed a connection with Lavater.

Passages of my Letter of a Pastor to his Colleagues' had greatly struck him, for much of it agreed perfectly with his own views. With his never-tiring activity our correspondence soon became lively. At the time it commenced he was making preparations for his larger work on Physiognomy, —the introduction to which had already been laid before the public. He called on all the world to send him drawings and outlines, and especially representations of Christ; and, although I could do as good as nothing in this way, he nevertheless insisted on my sending him a sketch of the Saviour such as I imagined him to look.

Such demands for the impossible gave occasion for jests of many kinds, for I had no other way of defending myself against his peculiarities but by bringing forward my own. The number of those who had no faith in Physiognomy, or, at least, regarded it as uncertain and deceitful, was very great; and several who had a liking for Lavater felt a desire to try him, and, if possible, to play him a trick. He had ordered of a painter in Frankfort, who was not without talent, the profiles of several well known persons.

Lavater's agent ventured upon the jest of sending Bahrdt's portrait as mine, which soon brought back a merry but thundering epistle, full of all kinds of expletives and asseverations that this was not my picture,-— together with everything that on such an occasion Lavater would naturally have to say in confirmation of the doctrine of Physiognomy. My true likeness, which was sent afterwards, he allowed to pass more readily, but even here the opposition into which he fell both with painters and with individuals showed itself at once.

The former could never work for him faithfully and sufficiently; the latter, whatever excellences they might have, came always too far short of the idea which he entertained of humanity and of men to prevent his being somewhat repelled by the special characteristics which constitute the personality of the individual. The conception of Humanity which had been formed in himself and in his own humanity, was so completely akin to the living image of Christ which he cherished within him, that it was impossible for him to understand how a man could live and breathe without at the same time being a Christian.

My own relation to the Christian religion lay merely in my sense and feeling, and I had not the slightest notion of that physical affinity to which Lavater inclined. This demand, so directly opposed to that liberal spirit of the world, to which I was more and more tending, did not have the best effect upon me.

All unsuccessful attempts at conversion leave him who has been selected for a proselyte stubborn and obdurate, and this was especially the case with me when Lavater at last came out with the hard dilemma- Either Christian or Atheist! Upon this I declared that if he would not leave me my own Christianity as I had hitherto cherished it, I could readily decide for Atheism, particularly as I saw that nobody knew precisely what either meant. There are no standards or guidelines which indicate how to choose.

The reasons for choosing an ethical way of life over the aesthetic only make sense if one is already committed to an ethical way of life. Likewise, choosing an aesthetic way of life only appeals to the aesthete, ruling Judge Vilhelm's ethics as inconsequential and preferring the pleasures of seduction.

Either/Or, Part I

Thus, existentialists see Victor Eremita as presenting a radical choice in which no pre-ordained value can be discerned. One must choose, and through one's choices, one creates what one is. Jean Jacques Rousseau had published a book in in which he discussed giving daughters the right to choose her own husband. Both German and Danish citizens were reading this book. This choosing for oneself verses having an authority choose for one is a difficult leap for some to make. Scarcely had she resumed her home duties when they perceived that her temper had changed though her conduct was unaltered, she was forgetful, impatient, sad, and dreamy; she wept in secret.

At first they thought she was in love and was ashamed to own it; they spoke to her, but she repudiated the idea. She protested she had seen no one who could touch her heart, and Sophy always spoke the truth. Far from hiding her griefs from her mother, the young girl asked nothing better than to have her as friend and comforter; but she could not speak for shame, her modesty could find no words to describe a condition so unworthy of her, as the emotion which disturbed her senses in spite of all her efforts.

At length her very shame gave her mother a clue to her difficulty, and she drew from her the humiliating confession. Far from distressing her with reproaches or unjust blame, she consoled her, pitied her, wept over her; she was too wise to make a crime of an evil which virtue alone made so cruel. But why put up with such an evil when there was no necessity to do so, when the remedy was so easy and so legitimate? Why did she not use the freedom they had granted her? Why did she not take a husband?

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Why did she not make her choice? Did she not know that she was perfectly independent in this matter, that whatever her choice, it would be approved, for it was sure to be good? They had sent her to town, but she would not stay; many suitors had offered themselves, but she would have none of them. What did she expect? What did she want? What an inexplicable contradiction? The reply was simple. If it were only a question of the partner of her youth, her choice would soon be made; but a master for life is not so easily chosen; and since the two cannot be separated, people must often wait and sacrifice their youth before they find the man with whom they could spend their life.

Amazed at these strange ideas, her mother found them so peculiar that she could not fail to suspect some mystery. Sophy was neither affected nor absurd. How could such exaggerated delicacy exist in one who had been so carefully taught from her childhood to adapt herself to those with whom she must live, and to make a virtue of necessity? This ideal of the delightful man with which she was so enchanted, who appeared so often in her conversation, made her mother suspect that there was some foundation for her caprices which was still unknown to her, and that Sophy had not told her all.

The unhappy girl, overwhelmed with her secret grief, was only too eager to confide it to another. Her mother urged her to speak; she hesitated, she yielded, and leaving the room without a word, she presently returned with a book in her hand. You would know the cause: Her mother took the book and opened it; it was The Adventures of Telemachus. At first she could make nothing of this riddle; by dint of questions and vague replies, she discovered to her great surprise that her daughter was the rival of Eucharis. I am no visionary; I desire no prince, I seek no Telemachus, I know he is only an imaginary person; I seek some one like him.

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And why should there be no such person, since there is such a person as I, I who feel that my heart is like his? No, let us not wrong humanity so greatly, let us not think that an amiable and virtuous man is a figment of the imagination. He exists, he lives, perhaps he is seeking me; he is seeking a soul which is capable of love for him. But who is he, where is he? I know not; he is not among those I have seen; and no doubt I shall never see him. If I can love nothing less, you are more to blame than I. Emile , by Jean Jacques Rousseau Foxley translation. However, the aesthetic and the ethical ways of life are not the only ways of living.

But in connection with the truth as inwardness in existence, in connection with a more incorruptible joy of life, which has nothing in common with the craving of the life-weary for diversion, the opposite holds true; the law is the same and yet changed, and still the same. That is why lovers of Tivoli are so little interested in eternity, for it is the nature of eternity always to be the same, and the sobriety of the spirit is recognizable in the knowledge that a change in externalities is mere diversion, while change in the same is inwardness.

But so curious, by and large, is the reading public, that an author who desires to get rid of it has merely to give a little hint, just a name, and it will say: Not to speak of the fact that two-thirds of it is about as different as is categorically possible. Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript , p. The whole book can be viewed as the struggle individuals go through as they attempt to find meaning in their lives.

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Victor Eremita bought a secretary desk , which was something external, and said, "a new period of your life must begin with the acquisition of the secretary". He can find no meaning in his life until he begins to study. He writes letters for the dead like the historians do. He's trying to find God by studying the past as Hegel did. Don Juan seduces him away from God and Faust robs him of his innocent faith through the power of language.

For him, tautology is the highest realm of thought. He says ethics are the highest. It's more important to know yourself than historical persons. The more you know about yourself the more you can find your eternal validity. God will bless the most ethical person. Each one knows what's best for the other but neither knows what's best for himself. Kierkegaard, speaking in the voice of the upbuilding discourse at the end, says they are both wrong. They're both trying to find God in a childish way. Whatever they relate to in an external way will never make them happy or give them meaning.

Art, science, dogma and ethics constantly change. We all want to be in the right and never in the wrong. Once we find what we desire we find that it wasn't what we imagined it to be. So Kierkegaard says to leave it all to God. How true human nature is to itself. With what native genius does not a little child often show us a living image of the greater relation.

Today I really enjoyed watching little Louis. He sat in his little chair; he looked about him with apparent pleasure. The nurse Mary went through the room. He tipped his head a little to one side, fastened his immense eyes upon her with a certain gleam of mischief in them, and thereupon said quite phlegmatically, "Not this Mary, another Mary.

We cry out to the whole world, and when it comes smiling to meet us, then we say: Teach us to pray rightly so that our hearts may open up to you in prayer and supplication and hide no furtive desire that we know is not acceptable to you, nor any secret fear that you will deny us anything that will truly be for our good, so that the labouring thoughts, the restless mind, the fearful heart may find rest in and through that alone in which and through which it can be found-by always joyfully thanking you as we gladly confess that in relation to you we are always in the wrong.

The three spheres of existence were neatly summed up in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. There are three existence spheres: To these there is receptively corresponding border territory: Irony emerges by continually joining the particulars of the finite with the ethical infinite requirement and allowing the contradiction to come into existence.

An effect of this abstraction is that no one notices the first, and this is precisely the art, and through it the true infinitizing of the first is conditioned. The desperate attempt of the miscarried Hegelian ethics to make the state into the court of last resort of ethics is a highly unethical attempt to finitize individuals, an unethical flight from the category of individuality to the category of the race. They are busy with being something when someone is watching them. If possible, they are something in their own eyes as soon as others are watching them, but inwardly, where the absolute requirement is watching them, they have no taste for accentuating the personal I.

Irony is the cultivation of the spirit and therefore follows next after immediacy; then comes the ethicist, then the humorist, then the religious person. Kant thought that man was his own legislator autonomy ; that is, subjecting himself to the law that he gives to himself. Properly understood, that is to postulate lawlessness or experimentation.

There will be as little seriousness in this as in the mighty blows Sancho Panza dealt himself on the back. It is impossible for me, in A, really to be stricter than I am in B, or wish to be that. There must be a constraint if there is to be earnest. When nothing higher than myself is binding, if it is simply that I am to bind myself, then where as A, the one who binds, am I to acquire the strictness I do not possess as B, the one to be bound, if A and B are the same self?

This is evident these days, especially in all religious realms. The conversion which is properly from immediacy to spirit, that dying away, will not be serious, will be an illusion, experimentation, if there is no factor, which is not the individual itself. That is why all eminent individualities are also compelled, they are instruments. Not only is there no law that I give myself as a maxim, it is the case that there is a law given me by a higher authority.

And not just that: If someone never acts so decisively that this educator can get hold of him; yes, then he gets to live on in comfortable illusion, fantasy, and experimentation. But this also implies he is in the very highest disfavor. A person can at least be strict enough with himself to grasp that this business of my own strictness amounts to nothing; I must have another to help, one who can be severe even if he can also be lenient. But to have dealings with this other does not mean giving assurance upon assurance, it means acting.

As soon as one acts decisively and emerges into actuality, existence can get hold of one and guidance bring one up. However, other scholars think Kierkegaard adopts Kantian themes in order to criticize them, [75] while yet others think that although Kierkegaard adopts some Kantian themes, their final ethical positions are substantially different. Since radical individuation, specificity, inwardness, and the development of subjectivity are central to Kierkegaard's existential ethics, it is clear, essentially, that the spirit and intention of his practical ethics is divorced from the formalism of Kant.

Yet, Kierkegaard was concerned about Regine because she tended to assume the life-view of characters she saw in the plays of Shakespeare at the theater. No, what she will be healed by is a life-wisdom permeated with a certain religiousness, a not exactly unbeautiful compound of something of the esthetic , of the religious , and of a life-philosophy. My view of life is a different one, and I force myself to the best of my ability to hold my life to the category and hold it firmly.

This is what I will; this is what I ask of anyone I am to admire, of anyone I am really to approve-that during the day he think only of the category of his life and dream about it at night. I judge no one; anyone busily engaged in judging others in concreto rarely remains true to the category. But every existence that wills something thereby indirectly judges, and the person who wills the category indirectly judges him who does not will.

I also know that even if a person has only one step left to take he may stumble and relinquish his category; but I do not believe that I would therefore escape from it and be rescued by nonsense; I believe that it would hold on to me and judge me, and in this judgment there would in turn be the category. It is supposed to be quite strange, the first part full of Don Juanism, skepticism, et cetera, and the second part toned down and conciliating, ending with a sermon that is said to be quite excellent.

The whole book attracted much attention. It has not yet been discussed publicly by anyone, but it surely will be. It is actually supposed to be by a Kierkegaard who has adopted a pseudonym It is the positive expression of his ideal, as Adam Homo is the negative. Nowhere is his intellectual tendency more akin to the negative bent of his great contemporary Kierkegaard than in this work.

The problem which Kalanus endeavors to solve is precisely the same as the one whose solution Kierkegaard attacked in his Either-Or Enten-Eller , namely, that of contrasting two personalities, one of whom is the direct representative of innate genius, of the pleasure-loving, extremely energetic view of life; and the other the incarnation of ethical profundity and moral grandeur, allowing them to struggle and contend, and convincing the reader of the decisive defeat of the purely natural views of life.

With Kierkegaard the two opposing modes of contemplation of life are represented by a follower of aesthetics, and a judge of the supreme court, with Paludan-Muller by celebrated names in history; no less a man than the conqueror of the world, Alexander the Great , represents in Kalanus the aesthetic view of life, and the opponent allotted to him is the philosopher Kalanus.

The ideal situation in the presentation of the intellectual wrestling-match of this sort would be that the author should succeed in equipping the contending parties with an equal degree of excellency. The actual situation, in this case, is that with Kierkegaard the representative of aesthetics is lavishly endowed with intellectual gifts, while the endowments of the representative of ethics, on the other hand, appear somewhat wooden and weak; and that with Paluden-Muller, on the contrary, the representative of ethics is no less intellectual than inspired, a man of the purest spiritual beauty, while the great Alexander is not placed upon the pinnacle of his historic fame.

This word, Virtue, little in vogue until now, became with Rousseau and his school a watchword which was in perfect harmony with their other watchword, Nature; for to Rousseau virtue was a natural condition. Following the example of society, French literature had been making merry at the expense of marriage; Rousseau, therefore, defied the spirit of the times by writing a book in its honour.

His heroine returns the passion of her lover, but marries another, to whom she remains faithful. Here, as in Werther the lover proper loses the maiden, who is wedded to a Monsieur Wolmar the Albert of Werther and the Edward of Kierkegaard's Diary of a Seducer , a man as irreproachable as he is uninteresting. The moral conviction which is vindicated and glorified in Rousseau as Virtue, is the same as that which in Chateaubriand , under the influence of the religious reaction, takes the form of a binding religious vow.

For what else has a poet done who has traversed the path from coquetry to simplicity, from the intellectual to the true, from the sportive and brilliant to the transparently clear, and from the pleasing to the great? Kierkegaard later referred to his concept of choosing yourself as the single individual in The Concept of Anxiety , June 17, , and then in his Four Upbuilding Discourses , August 31, , and once again in Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits , William James echoed Kierkegaard in his lecture on The Sick Soul where he wrote, "the man must die to an unreal life before he can be born into the real life.

You are outside yourself and therefore cannot do without the other as opposition; you believe that only a restless spirit is alive, and all who are experienced believe that only a quiet spirit is truly alive. For you a turbulent sea is a symbol of life; for me it is the quiet, deep water. Anxiety is a qualification of dreaming spirit, and as such it has its place in psychology.

Awake, the difference between myself and my other is posited; sleeping, it is suspended; dreaming , it is an intimated nothing. The actuality of the spirit constantly shows itself as a form that tempts its possibility but disappears as soon as it seeks to grasp for it, and it is a nothing that can only bring anxiety.

More it cannot do as long as it merely shows itself. The concept of anxiety is almost never treated in psychology. For this reason, anxiety is not found in the beast, precisely because by nature the beast is not qualified as spirit. The Concept of Anxiety , Nichol p. Now he discovers that the self he chooses has a boundless multiplicity within itself inasmuch as it has a history, a history in which he acknowledges identity with himself. This history is of a different kind, for in this history he stands in relation to other individuals in the race, and to the whole race, and this history contains painful things, and yet he is the person he is only through this history.

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That is why it takes courage to choose oneself, for at the same time as he seems to be isolating himself most radically he is most radically sinking himself into the root by which he is bound up with the whole. This makes him uneasy, and yet it must be so, for when the passion of freedom is aroused in him-and it is aroused in the choice just as it presupposes itself in the choice-he chooses himself and struggles for this possession as for his salvation, and it is his salvation. When a person turns and faces himself in order to understand himself, he steps, as it were, in the way of that first self, halts that which was turned outward in hankering for and seeking after the surrounding world that is its object, and summons it back from the external.

In order to prompt the first self to this withdrawal, the deeper self lets the surrounding world remain what it is-remain dubious. This is indeed the way it is; the world around us is inconstant and can be changed into the opposite at any moment, and there is not one person who can force this change by his own might or by the conjuration of his wish. The deeper self now shapes the deceitful flexibility of the surrounding world in such a way that it is no longer attractive to the first self. Then the first self either must proceed to kill the deeper self, to render it forgotten, whereby the whole matter is given up; or it must admit that the deeper self is right, because to want to predicate constancy of something that continually changes is indeed a contradiction, and as soon as one confesses that it changes, it can of course, change in that same moment.

Kierkegaard's Writing, III, Part I: Either/Or - Søren Kierkegaard - Google Книги

There is only one way out, and that is to silence the deeper self by letting the roar of inconstancy drown it out. Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses , , Hong translation, p. Just as a man changes his clothes for celebration, so a person preparing for the holy act of confession is inwardly changed. If a person whose life has been tried in some crucial difficulty has a friend and sometime later he is unable to retain the past clearly, if anxiety creates confusion, and if accusing thoughts assail him with all their might as he works his way back, then he may go to his friend and say, "My soul is sick so that nothing will become clear to me, but I confided everything to you; you remember it, so please explain the past to me again.

And the one who went to his friend perhaps was not understood at times, perhaps was filled with self-loathing, which is even more oppressive, upon discovering that the one to whom he had confided his troubles had not understood him at all, even though he had listened, had not sensed what was making him anxious, but had only an inquisitive interest in his unusual encounter with life. But this would never happen with God; who would dare to venture to think this of God, even if he is cowardly enough to prefer to forget God-until he stands face-to-face with the judge, who passes judgment on him but not on the one who truly has God as a witness, because where God is the judge, there is indeed no judge if God is the witness.

On the contrary, it can become very hard; it may become more difficult than the contemptible easiness of sensate human life, but in this difficulty life also acquires ever deeper and deeper meaning. He wrote the following in Growth of a Soul published posthumously in about Kierkegaard's Either—Or: Part II was his "Discourse on Life as a Duty, and when he reached the end of the work he found the moral philosopher in despair, and that all this teaching about duty had only produced a Philistine.

However, after reading the book he "felt sinful". Then another writer began to influence his life. But another element now entered into his life, and had a decided influence both on his views of things and his work. This was his acquaintance with two men,—an author and a remarkable personality. Unfortunately they were both abnormal and therefore had only a disturbing effect upon his development. The author was Kierkegaard, whose book, Either—Or , John had borrowed from a member of the Song Club, and read with fear and trembling. His friends had also read it as a work of genius, had admired the style, but not been specialty influenced by it,—a proof that books have little effect, when they do not find readers in sympathy with the author.

But upon John the book made the impression intended by the author. He read the first part containing "The Confessions of an Esthete. The perusal of the first part left a feeling of emptiness and despair behind it. The book agitated him. Things were not like that in real life. Moreover John was no sybarite, but on the contrary inclined to asceticism and self-torment. Such egotistic sensuality as that of the hero of Kierkegaard's work was absurd because the suffering he caused by the satisfaction of his desires necessarily involved him in suffering and, therefore, defeated his object. The second part of the work containing the philosopher's "Discourse on Life as a Duty," made a deeper impression on John.

It showed him that he himself was an "esthete" who had conceived of authorship as a form of enjoyment. Kierkegaard said that it should be regarded as a calling. The proof was wanting, and John, who did not know that Kierkegaard was a Christian, but thought the contrary, not having seen his Edifying Discourses , imbibed unaware the Christian system of ethics with its doctrine of self-sacrifice and duty.

Along with these the idea of sin returned. Enjoyment was a sin, and one had to do one's duty. Was it for the sake of society to which one was under obligations? That was simply Kant's categorical imperative. When he reached the end of the work Either—Or and found the moral philosopher also in despair, and that all this teaching about duty had only produced a Philistine, he felt broken in two. Thus he was tossed to and fro like a ball between the two, and ended in sheer despair.

August Strindberg, Growth of a Soul , Swenson, professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota, lectured on Kierkegaard's three modes of life in He, too has a history, and this is not simply a product of his own free acts. The interior deed, on the other hand, belongs to him and will belong to him forever; history or world history cannot take it from him; it follows him, either to his joy or to his despair. But philosophy has nothing to do with this world.

It occurred to me that this was a service to understanding Kierkegaard, whose esthetic and ethical insights have been much slighted by those enamored of his religion of renunciation and transcendence. Kierkegaard's brilliance seems to me to be showing that while goodness, truth, and beauty can not speculatively be derived one from another, yet these three are integrally related in the dynamics of a healthy character structure". Croxall argues that "the essay should be taken seriously by a musician, because it makes one think, and think hard enough to straighten many of one's ideas; ideas, I mean, not only on art, but on life" and goes on to discuss the psychological, existential, and musical value of the work.

Reinhold Niebuhr questioned Kierkegaard's emphasis in his pastoral epistle at the end of Or. The tendency of modern culture to see only the creative possibilities of human freedom makes the Christian estimate of the human situation seem morbid by contrast. Is not Kierkegaard morbid, even Christians are inclined to ask, when he insists that "before God man is always in the wrong"? Does such an emphasis not obscure the creative aspects of human freedom? Is it not true that men are able by increasing freedom to envisage a larger world and to assume a responsible attitude toward a wider and wider circle of claims upon their conscience?

Does the Christian faith do justice, for instance, to the fact that increasing freedom has set the commandment, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," in a larger frame of reference than ever before in history? Is it not significant that we have reached a global situation in which we may destroy ourselves and each other if we fail to organize a new global "neighborhood" into a tenable brotherhood? Moller who later wrote the articles in The Corsair detrimental to the character of Kierkegaard. Many authors were interested in separating the esthetic, the ethical and the religious but it may have been, as far as Kierkegaard was concerned, of more importance for the single individual to have a way to decide when one was becoming dominant over the other two.

Henrik Stangerup , a Danish writer, wrote three books as a way to illustrate Kierkegaard's three stages of existence, , The Road to Lagoa Santa , which was about Kierkegaard's brother-in-law Peter Wilhelm Lund the ethicist , The Seducer: Although MacIntyre accuses Victor Eremita of failing to provide a criterion for one to adopt an ethical way of life, many scholars have since replied to MacIntyre's accusation in Kierkegaard After MacIntyre. For the latter contains in its expression not merely empty, simple equality-with-self, and not merely the other of this in general, but, what is more, absolute inequality, contradiction per se.

But as has been shown, the law of identity itself contains the movement of reflection, identity as a vanishing of otherness. What emerges from this consideration is, therefore, first, that the law of identity or of contradiction which purports to express merely abstract identity in contrast to difference as a truth, is not a law of thought, but rather the opposite of it; secondly, that these laws contain more than is meant by them, to wit, this opposite, absolute difference itself.

It implies that there is nothing that is neither A nor not-A, that there is not a third that is indifferent to the opposition. But in fact the third that is indifferent to the opposition is given in the law itself, namely, A itself is present in it. The something itself, therefore, is the third which was supposed to be excluded. Since the opposite determinations in the something are just as much posited as sublated in this positing, the third which has here the form of a dead something, when taken more profoundly, is the unity of reflection into which the opposition withdraws as into ground.

Thus I have endeavoured to give a true history of the concoction and mode of writing of this mighty trifle. When I had done, I soon became sensible that I had done in a manner nothing. How many flat and insipid parts does the book contain! How terribly unequal does it appear to me! From time to time the author plainly reels to and fro like a drunken man. And, when I had done all, what had I done?

Written a book to amuse boys and girls in their vacant hours, a story to be hastily gobbled up by them, swallowed in a pusillanimous and unanimated mood, without chewing and digestion. I was in this respect greatly impressed with the confession of one of the most accomplished readers and excellent critics that any author could have fallen in with the unfortunate Joseph Gerald. He told me that he had received my book late one evening, and had read through the three volumes before he closed his eyes.

Thus, what had cost me twelve months' labour, ceaseless heartaches and industry, now sinking in despair, and now roused and sustained in unusual energy, he went over in a few hours, shut the book, laid himself on his pillow, slept, and was refreshed, and cried, "To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. A Fragment of Life. Translated by Alastair Hannay, Abridged Version. Translated by David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson.

Translated by Howard and Edna Hong. The Classics , 2nd edition. The Cambridge Companion to Hegel. Masterpieces of World Philosophy. The Emigrant Literature, by Georg Brandes". The third section of Stages on Life's Way Hong p. Commentary on Kierkegaard , D. Anthony Storm, "Archived copy". Archived from the original on Stages on Life's Way , p. Howard and Edna Hong. Translated Selections from His "Rechtsphilosophie, " ". Obviously there's an easy way out to such persons: But as Kierkegaard pointed out, that would lead to nowhere nice: Wandering thoughts are the refuge of cowardice and a sign of a weak control over one's self.

I suspect John Cassian and Germanus would smile upon these statements. Getting an ordinary life, marrying someone and put oneself to the constant exposure of an other is a good way of weighting down these "free spirits", so that they wouldn't end up with head in the clouds and body on the ground. It's a good dose of medicine -- like all good medicine, it's bitter to swallow. Once again, only a few people in the world actually need this dose.

To others, it's a poison that could rob away any dignity the could ever have: I think Kierkegaard made some unfair criticism towards the cenobium practices, but that's largely due to the degeneration of monastery discipline rather than Kierkegaard's own disagreement. Cassian wouldn't let it, I'm pretty sure. The only thing I'm not sure about Kierkegaard's advice is the inner attitude of such a person. Do they need to assume that they are, at the very core, the same as the other ordinary people?

Jung said "yes" and I could see good reason for this. Kierkegaard seemed to be suggesting otherwise. One wouldn't know unless one tried. There are three letters, two of which are long letters to A, the third of which is a brief preface from B, followed by a short sermon from a preacher friend of B's.

Oddly enough, the ethical is also grounded, in some sense, in despair here, though this seems to be grounded in a sense that all of the things that we tend to occupy ourselves with in life are in some sense empty as far as their being things to live for, because only the infinite is truly appropriate for that, though they are at the same time important as things to live through, because we can only come to the infinite through the particular and concrete as an expression of the infinite.

There are distinct Christian and Kantian themes here - especially with respect to the relationship between freedom and desire though it looks at first blush that Kierkegaard is a great deal more complex than Kant on this account. Ultimately freedom is grounded in consideration of life as a whole and choosing with respect to one's whole life, whereas desire is grounded in the immediate - choosing what one wants right now.

Seeing the connection between the two "characters" is really fascinating - subtle mentions of various parts of A's papers in B's letters cast those ideas in a whole new light. As well, Kierkegaard's style really sparkles, and is a pleasure to read. Aug 12, Abril rated it it was amazing. El amor verdadero no es aquel que se eleva en castillos sobre comarcas hermosas, o aquel que viste de seda. Apr 01, John Lucy rated it it was amazing. Not nearly as readable a volume as the volume I, but necessary to understand the full force of Kierkegaard's power.

You may want to disagree with him, but it would require sheer willpower from you because there wouldn't be much room fo Not nearly as readable a volume as the volume I, but necessary to understand the full force of Kierkegaard's power. You may want to disagree with him, but it would require sheer willpower from you because there wouldn't be much room for argument or disagreement. Again, this volume does ask you to work a bit, but it's worth it.

Jul 01, David rated it it was amazing Shelves: Occasionally very long-winded, yet always for a reason. K wields his pseudonyms well. This is a monumental and amazing work, which I've no doubt I will return to, with benefit. Nov 11, Aras rated it liked it Shelves: Apr 18, Christy Leonardo rated it it was amazing. I kept returning to the impression that I was reading the textual equivalent of a golden spiral. Never has a philosopher embraced paradox as deftly as K. Nov 23, Benjamin rated it it was amazing Shelves: The most difficult, and most rewarding book I have read to date. Jun 18, Elsa Schmidt rated it really liked it Recommends it for: Diary of a Seducer.

Ian rated it really liked it Dec 17, Shane Tanner rated it really liked it Sep 01, Chris rated it it was amazing Oct 26, Scott rated it it was amazing Jul 07, Ewen Munro rated it it was amazing Jun 16, Leer Es rated it it was amazing Jun 26, Josh Brown rated it really liked it Jan 14, Fierystallion rated it really liked it Jun 17, Scott rated it it was amazing Jan 09, Jedikalos rated it it was amazing Dec 05, Corina Stamate rated it it was amazing Jan 05, Benjermin rated it it was ok Jun 13, Theren B Morris rated it it was amazing Sep 01, There are no discussion topics on this book yet.

Kierkegaard strongly criticised both the Hegelianism of his time and what he saw as the empty formalities of the Church of Denmark. Much of his work deals with religious themes such as faith in God, the institution of the Christian Church, Christian ethics and theology, and the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices. His early work was written under various pseudonyms who present their own distinctive viewpoints in a complex dialogue. Kierkegaard left the task of discovering the meaning of his works to the reader, because "the task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted".

Scholars have interpreted Kierkegaard variously as an existentialist, neo-orthodoxist, postmodernist, humanist, and individualist. Crossing the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, and literature, he is an influential figure in contemporary thought.