Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is renowned for his in-depth explorations into selfhood, identity, and the essence of living authentically. His works no doubt contributed to making concepts like “despair” and “anxiety” worthy of serious philosophical investigation in the modern era.[1] Debates regarding what constitutes a “true” self still endure hundreds of years later. Some assert that the true self resides “within” and must actively defy impositions to express individuality. Others advocate for a life of responsibility, finding meaning in willed acts of sacrifice. With keen foresight, Kierkegaard pursued both ends of the spectrum to their logical conclusions, discovering the existential shortcomings of each. However, his prolific use of pseudonyms, layered irony, metaphors, and storytelling makes him prone to misunderstanding. As such, it can be easy to miss Kierkegaard’s unusual path towards authenticity: a life of repentance.
In his early masterpiece, Either/Or (1843), Kierkegaard skillfully portrays the journey of self-discovery in the form of a fragmented and self-aware narrative. This literary tour de force presents itself as an anonymously edited compilation, comprising stories, essays, and letters produced by a variety of pseudonymous characters. The non-systematic approach enables him to embody a multitude of conflicting philosophical ideals as characters studied in isolation. Altogether, the fictional authors represent two kinds of lives: the transient life of the “aesthete” and the bounded life of the “ethical.” Volume one of Either/Or muses upon the quintessential aesthetic life—an ironic portrayal of the Romantic modern man—and contains a forthright defense of expressive individualism.
Today, the word “aesthetic” often describes qualities of beauty or art (“That is an aesthetically pleasing painting!”) but those in Kierkegaard’s day classified a wider domain of human experiences under this academic subject. Aesthetics, in their usage, signified the non-practical or non-scientific matters of life. It represented actions done not out of necessity, but because of human freedom. Aesthetics describes what is independent of any utilitarian measure. For many in Kierkegaard’s day, this disposition celebrated the human experience in its essence—a celebration of imagination and freedom. Working from such a disposition, artists ferociously elevated originality as the highest of all artistic virtues. To be original signaled an authentic individual stripped of all necessity and inheritance. Author “A” of Either/Or incarnates this vision of self-actualization.
For the aesthete, the maxim of decision making is simple: seeing possibility in a world of necessity. Bluntly, this means they undertake a mode of life which avoids boredom and suffering at all costs–twin evils posing particular threats to self-expression. They stifle and restrict. Or as the typified aesthete in Either/Or soliloquizes: “Should one wish to attain the maximum momentum, even to the point of almost endangering the driving power, one need only to say to oneself: Boredom is the root of all evil.”[2]
Boredom, as described here, isn’t synonymous with monotony; instead, it stems from a sense of purposelessness inhabiting an entirely predictable world. The following passages regard boredom as an essential feature of human existence, always lurking, and always needing to be actively resisted. Boredom serves as a powerful motivator since humans find it infinitely repulsive. This explains why humans remain infinitely creative; they seek to always be amused and free.
Practically speaking, the aesthete is an “apostle of the empty enthusiasm who always makes his way through life on an interjection.”[3] Always saying “yes” to the new, the person arranges their time to distract or find solace from the world of determined qualities. Any sense of value judgments dissipates as he “cries Ah! Or Oh! Whenever the event be significant or insignificant, the difference having been lost to him in the emptiness of a blind and noisy enthusiasm.”[4] A dilemma arises when confronted with the necessities of repetition experienced in life.
To resolve inescapable predictability, the aesthete proposes the “Rotation Method” which facilitates novelty in a world of finitude. For just as a farmer carefully plants his seasonal crops to maximize the yield, so also the aesthete rotates his experiences to maintain a sense of newness. However, the unclever hedonist may confuse this strategy with the rotation of soil—always changing the environment. The sophisticated aesthete protests:
This is the vulgar and inartistic method, and needs to be supported by illusion. One tires of living in the country, and moves to the city; one tires of one’s native land, and travels abroad; one is europamüde, and goes to America, and so on; finally, one indulges in a sentimental hope of endless journeying from star to star. Or the moment is different but still extensive. One tires of porcelain dishes and eats on silver; one tires of silver and turns to gold; one burns half of Rome to get an idea of the burning of Troy. This method defeats itself; it is plain endlessness.[5]
The key is to rotate crops, not fields—the self, not the environment. It is the skill of reinterpretation through the powers of imagination. With an active imagination, amusement can be found even within the most tedious of places just as “a prisoner in solitary confinement for life becomes very inventive, and a spider may furnish him with much entertainment.”[6] The mature aesthete, the author declares, “seeks results intensively, not extensively.”[7] Rotating the imagination like crops assumes the art of a poetic existence. Afterall, any artist willingly restricts himself to the bounds of a canvas to let his imagination run unencumbered. “The Rotation Method” therefore serves as the quintessential manual for living expressive individualism to its fullest.
The poetic life does presuppose radical freedom for the individual since commitment of any sort restricts the ability to impose meaning in an arbitrary manner. The aesthete therefore must interpret life as nothing but a series of moments with no sense of continuity or direction. Consequently, this freedom “of remembering and forgetting will also insure against sticking fast in some relationships of life.”[8] The author especially warns against committed relationships: “friendship is dangerous, to say nothing of marriage.”[9] What is encouraged is the embrace of the arbitrary. The aesthete must “always have an eye open for the accidental, always be expeditus [ready], if anything should offer.”[10]
Such a method proscribed by the aesthete requires the challenging work of maintaining an environment of fantasy resilient to life’s complications. Or, as Louis Mackey discerns, “The aesthete wants enjoyment, but enjoyment cannot simply be had, it must be arranged. Life must be made an art, but the art of living requires a total detachment from everything merely given and possibly unpleasant, as well as a disinterested arbitrariness in the concoction of actual pleasures.”[11] To live such a poetic existence necessitates a sharp detachment from the world in order to preserve one’s own inner life. The aesthetic self must always resist the givenness of the world in pursuit of authenticity.
The psychological consequences of the self-expressive lifestyle begin to emerge within the latter half of Either/Or. Here, a new character confronts the reader—Judge William (or “B”)—who offers a personal and poignant evaluation. Taking the form of long epistles, the Judge attempts to convince the aesthete toward a life of consequence. For the Judge observes the enthrallment of novelty leading ultimately to a passive and turbulent life where a sense of personal fulfillment depends on ever-changing circumstances outside one’s control. Even the slightest disruption can jostle the aesthetic self. In contrast, the ethical life posits true meaning, stability, and authenticity to the person who lives in accordance with principles and morals which obligate the individual to larger realities. Such a life, in contrast to the aesthete, is not just the serialization of moments maintained in neutrality but presumes the possibility of “becoming.”
Importantly, the ethic advocated by the Judge does not necessitate rote conformity to traditions or social norms. Quite the opposite. The truly ethical represents the Kantian ideal where one’s own reason discerns the laws of consciousness and adopts a moral disposition in life. Choice—indeed, the act of choosing—is the highest expression of freedom. The ethical life insists, fundamentally, upon a moral self-will. The self must aim at something whole-heartedly. It must begin to live in categories of “good” and “bad,” not just “boring” or “exciting.” The Judge defends this mode of self-authoring:
Herewith I am through for the present. To propound a doctrine of morals was never my intention. What I wanted to do was to show how the ethical, in the regions which border on the aesthetical, is so far from depriving life of its beauty that it bestows beauty upon it. It affords peace, assurance, and security…it saves us from every vain enthusiasm which would enfeeble the soul and bestows upon it health and strength.[12]
The Judge frequently uses marriage to illustrate the benefits of self-imposed obligations. Since the aesthetic soul dwells in the realm of possibility, that self must conform to transient acts of imagination with little bearing on reality. Ideally, the aesthete would never willingly act in a repetitious manner. They could thus never act with self-sacrifice or transcendent love. The aesthete must remain confined to fleeting eroticism. The Judge, in contrast, experiences stable marital joy because the love transcends particular circumstances.[13]
Either/Or ends curiously with an appended sermon by an anonymous author which the character Judge William recommends to the young aesthete. The sermon, entitled “The Edification Implied in the Thought that as Against God We Are Always in the Wrong,” hints at an even further existential stage which extends beyond the ethical. The sermon hints that the methods prescribed by the judge still do not sufficiently yield true individuality. Since the ethical interprets all of life in a veneer of moral earnestness, the self will continually strive toward the self-posited ideal. Looming guilt always exists in the distance between the self in its current state and the ideal. By definition, the “becoming” self always positions itself below its own ideal—it is always in a state of fallenness. Insidiously, guilt grows precisely as the moral will develops. The ethical life in its totality takes on guilt and there exists no easy resolution except more determination. There is no way for guilt to be absolved.
The existential leap into the religious life, the sermon exhorts, necessarily includes a confrontation with one’s own personal guilt. To the ethical, this yields despair. But the sermon posits an act of repentance in response to this self-conscious guilt. For repentance to be intelligible, the penitent must first “[comprehend] guilt-consciousness as a totality” and relate it to their own self as an individual.[14] The individual, alone, stands before God. This terrifying reality would easily render despair if it were not for the grace of God. It is only in receiving unmerited grace that this guilt can be absolved. Paradoxically, the act of receiving forgiveness as an unearned gift from God represents the culmination and supersession of the ethical life. It is the highest possible act of individuality—the individual self is forgiven.
While the aesthete may manufacture stimulation to distract themselves from the condition of despair, the ethicists throw themselves into moral earnestness. The methods are understandable, but Kierkegaard unveils the self-despairing dialectic which lurks behind both these attempts. What lies beyond is the “religious sphere.”
To be ‘religious’ means to concentrate my whole conscious, active, concrete being on what is ultimate, absolute, essential in the definition of who I am, on what I cannot lose without losing my self; and to do this in such a way that I open every secret hidden corner of my entire life to its light, to its demand, to its judgment.[15]
The path to true authenticity, Kierkegaard envisions, is neither thrill nor duty but “in willing to be itself, the self rests transparently in the power that established it.”[16] This is absolute dependence on God’s grace. What brings about this transition is repentance.
Before God, all acts of earnestness are reduced to filthy rags, but grace simultaneously infuses temporal life with significance since it was worth redeeming in the eyes of God. A posture of repentance willfully accepts and reflects upon the undeserved gifts from God. The knowledge and imitation of Christ’s self-giving love (agape) fills every activity and relationship with near-spiritual significance—a new kind of poetic existence. God becomes the author of possibility. Furthermore, the continual self-reflection of God’s grace toward the self emanates forth an eternal joy which exists independent of physical circumstances. Indeed, all of life can finally be received with gratitude. Everything can be redeemed, even suffering and guilt.
For the repentant, the totality of life—indeed, the very self—becomes a gift to be received. Here, the ideals of the aesthete and the ethical find their true synthesis; the self is fully free. Further this theme manifests more as a disposition rather than a single compartmentalized act of the past. This adds new meaning to Luther’s familiar thesis: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent,’ he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” To become oneself, one must repent.
Daniel Goodman is pursuing graduate work in Data Science at the University of Louisville. He has B.S. in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from Boyce College and currently lives in Louisville, Kentucky.
Consider Albert Camus who decried, “There is only one really serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that.” Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 3. ↑
Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, trans. Walter Lowrie and Howard A. Johnson, vol. 2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959), 281. ↑
- Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 286 ↑
- Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 286 ↑
- Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 287-288. ↑
- Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 288. ↑
- Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 288 ↑
- Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 291 ↑
- Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 293. ↑
- Kierkegaard, Either/Or, 296. ↑
Louis Mackey, Kierkegaard a Kind of Poet (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), 14. ↑
Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, trans. Walter Lowrie and Howard A. Johnson, vol. 2 (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1959), 328. ↑
Compare this with the aesthete’s initial worry that “the curse of engagement is always on its ethical side. The ethical is just as tiresome a philosophy as in life. What a difference! Under the heavens of the aesthete, everything is light, beautiful, transitory; when the ethical comes along, then everything becomes harsh, angular, infinitely boring.” Either/Or, 363. ↑
Søren Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Walter Lowrie and Swenson F. David (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), 489. ↑
Arnold B. Come, Kierkegaard as Humanist: Discovering My Self (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1995), 289 ↑
Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, trans. and ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 131. ↑