Either/Or

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Either/Or

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Either/Or
Title page of the original Danish edition from 1843.
Author(s)	Søren Kierkegaard
Original title	Enten-Eller
Country	Denmark
Language	Danish
Series	First authorship (Pseudonymous)
Genre(s)	Philosophy
Publisher	University bookshop Reitzel, Copenhagen
Publication date	February 20, 1843
Published in English	1944 - First Translation
Pages	800+
Followed by	Two Upbuilding Discourses, 1843

Published in two volumes in 1843, Either/Or (original Danish title: Enten ‒ Eller) is an influential book written by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, exploring the aesthetic and ethical "phases" or "stages" of existence.

Either/Or portrays two life views, one consciously hedonistic, the other based on ethical duty and responsibility. Each life view is written and represented by a fictional pseudonymous author, the prose of the work depending on the life view being discussed. For example, the aesthetic life view is written in short essay form, with poetic imagery and allusions, discussing aesthetic topics such as music, seduction, drama, and beauty. The ethical life view is written as two long letters, with a more argumentative and restrained prose, discussing moral responsibility, critical reflection, and marriage.^[1] The views of the book are not neatly summarized, but are expressed as lived experiences embodied by the pseudonymous authors. The book's central concern is the primal question asked by Aristotle, "How should we live?"^[2]

The esthetic is the personal realm of existence. Personally you have the possibility of the highest as well as the lowest. The ethical is the civic realm of existence. You can be oblivious to everything going on around you or you can get involved. An individual can go too far in these realms and lose sight of him/her self. Only religion can rescue the individual from these two realms arguing with each other all day long. The spirit has to awaken in the single individual and this book, Either and Or, is written to the single individual. Kierkegaard's challenge is for You to "discover a second face hidden behind the one you see"^[3] in yourself first, then in others.

The Middle Ages are altogether impregnated with the idea of representation, partly conscious, partly unconscious; the total is represented by the single individual, yet in such a way that it is only a single aspect which is determined as totality, and which now appears in a single individual, who is because of this, both more and less than an individual. By the side of this individual there stands another individual, who, likewise, totally represents another aspect of life’s content, such as the knight and the scholastic, the ecclesiastic and the layman. Either/Or Part I p. 86-87 Swenson

Contents

 [hide] 

• 1 Historical context
• 2 Structure
• 3 Either
  • 3.1 Diapsalmata
  • 3.2 The Immediate Stages of the Erotic, or Musical Erotic
  • 3.3 Essays read before the Symparanekromenoi
  • 3.4 The First Love
  • 3.5 Crop Rotation: An Attempt at a Theory of Social Prudence
  • 3.6 Diary of a Seducer
• 4 Or
• 5 Discourses and Sequel
• 6 Themes
• 7 Interpretation
  • 7.1 Existential interpretation
  • 7.2 Christian Interpretation
  • 7.3 Kantian interpretation
  • 7.4 Biographical interpretation
• 8 Reception
  • 8.1 Early reception
  • 8.2 Later reception
• 9 References
  • 9.1 Primary references
  • 9.2 Secondary references and notes

[edit] Historical context

Soren Kierkegaard

After writing and defending his dissertation On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (1841), Kierkegaard left Copenhagen in October 1841 to spend the winter in Berlin. The main purpose of this visit was to attend the lectures by the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, who was an eminent figure at the time. The lectures turned out to be a disappointment for many in Schelling's audience, including Mikhail Bakunin and Friedrich Engels, and Kierkegaard described it as "unbearable nonsense".^[4] During his stay, Kierkegaard worked on the manuscript for Either/Or, took daily lessons to perfect his German and attended operas and plays, particularly by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He returned to Copenhagen in March 1842 with a draft of the manuscript, which was completed near the end of 1842 and published in February 1843.

According to a journal entry from 1846, Either/Or "was written lock, stock, and barrel in eleven months",^[5][6] although a page from the "Diapsalmata" section in the 'A' volume was written before that time.

The title Either/Or is an affirmation of Aristotelian logic, particularly

• Law of identity (A = A; a thing is identical to itself)
• Law of excluded middle (either A or not-A; a thing is either something or not that thing, no third option)
• Law of noncontradiction. (not both A and not-A; a thing cannot be both true and not true in the same instant)

Hegel giving a speech

In Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's work, The Science of Logic (1812), Hegel had criticized Aristotle's laws of classical logic for being static, rather than dynamic and becoming, and had replaced it with his own dialectical logic. Hegel formulated addendums for Aristotle's laws:^{[7][8][9][10][11]}

• Law of identity is inaccurate because a thing is always more than itself
• Law of excluded middle is inaccurate because a thing can be both itself and many others
• Law of non-contradiction is inaccurate because everything in existence is both itself and not itself

Kierkegaard spoke of Hegel this way in 1844:

Thus when an author entitles the last section of the Logic “Actuality,” he thereby gains the advantage of making it appear that in logic the highest has already been achieved, or if one prefers, the lowest. In the meantime, the loss is obvious, for neither logic nor actuality is served by placing actuality in the Logic. Actuality is not served thereby, for contingency, which is an essential part of the actual, cannot be admitted within the realm of logic. Concept of Anxiety, Soren Kierkegaard, Nichol translation p. 9-10

Kierkegaard argues that Hegel's philosophy dehumanized life by denying personal freedom and choice through the neutralization of the 'either/or'. The dialectic structure of becoming renders existence far too easy, in Hegel's theory, because conflicts are eventually mediated and disappear automatically through a natural process that requires no individual choice other than a submission to the will of the Idea or Geist. Kierkegaard saw this as a denial of true selfhood and instead advocated the importance of personal responsibility and choice-making.^[10][11]

[edit] Structure

The book is the first of Kierkegaard's works written pseudonymously, a practice he employed during the first half of his career.^[12][13] In this case, four pseudonyms are used:

• "Victor Eremita" - the fictional compiler and editor of the texts, which he claims to have found in an antique escritoire.
• "A" - the moniker given to the fictional author of the first text ("Either") by Victor Eremita, whose real name he claims not to have known.
• "Judge Vilhelm" - the fictional author of the second text ("Or").
• "Johannes" - the fictional author of a section of 'Either' titled "The Diary of a Seducer".^[1]

[edit] Either

"Wine no longer makes my heart glad; a little of it makes me sad, much makes me melancholy. My soul is faint and impotent; in vain I prick the spur of pleasure into its flank, its strength is gone, it rises no more to the royal leap. I have lost my illusions. Vainly I seek to plunge myself into the boundless sea of joy; it cannot sustain me, or rather, I cannot sustain myself. Once pleasure had but to beckon me, and I mounted, light of foot, sound, and unafraid. When I rode slowly through the woods, it was as if I flew; now when the horse is covered with lather and ready to drop, it seems to me that I do not move. I am solitary as always; forsaken, not by men, which could not hurt me, but by the happy fairies of joy, who used to encircle me in countless multitudes, who met acquaintances everywhere, everywhere showed me an opportunity for pleasure. As an intoxicated man gathers a wild crowd of youths about him, so they flocked about me, the fairies of joy, and I greeted them with a smile. My soul has lost its potentiality. If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!"

A; Diapsalmata (Swenson p. 40)

The first volume, the "Either", describes the "aesthetic" phase of existence. It contains a collection of papers, found by 'Victor Eremita' and written by 'A', the "aesthete."^[4][11]

The aesthete, according to Kierkegaard's model, will eventually find himself in "despair", a psychological state (explored further in Kierkegaard's The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness Unto Death) that results from a recognition of the limits of the aesthetic approach to life. Kierkegaard's "despair" is a somewhat analogous precursor of existential angst. The natural reaction is to make an eventual "leap" to the second phase, the "ethical," which is characterized as a phase in which rational choice and commitment replace the capricious and inconsistent longings of the aesthetic mode. Ultimately, for Kierkegaard, the aesthetic and the ethical are both superseded by a final phase which he terms the "religious" mode. This is introduced later in Fear and Trembling.

[edit] Diapsalmata

The first section of Either is a collection of many tangential aphorisms, epigrams, anecdotes and musings on the aesthetic mode of life. The word 'diapsalmata' is related to 'psalms', and means "refrains". It contains some of Kierkegaard's most famous and poetic lines, such as "What is a poet?", "Freedom of Speech" vs. "Freedom of Thought", the "Unmovable chess piece", the tragic clown, and the laughter of the gods.^[14]

If one were to read these as written they would show a constant movement from the outer poetic experience to the inner experience of humor. The movement from the outer to the inner is a theme in Kierkegaard's works.

[edit] The Immediate Stages of the Erotic, or Musical Erotic

Don Juan and the Commander

An essay discussing the idea that music expresses the spirit of sensuality. 'A' eval‎uates Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni, as well as Goethe's Faust. 'A' has taken upon himself the task of proving, through the works of Mozart, that "music is a higher, or more spiritual art, than language". During this process he develops the three stages of the musical-erotic.^[15] Here he makes the distinction between a seducer like Don Juan, who falls under aesthetic categories, and Faust, who falls under ethical categories. "The musical Don Juan enjoys the satisfaction of desire; the reflective Don Juan enjoys the deception, enjoys the cunning." Don Juan is split between the esthetic and the ethical. He's lost in the multiplicity of the "1,003 women he has to seduce".^[16] Faust seduces just one woman. Kierkegaard is writing deep theology here. He's asking if God seduces 1,003 people at one time or if he seduces one single individual at a time in order to make a believer. He wrote:

Achim v. Arnim tells somewhere of a seducer of a very different style, a seducer who falls under ethical categories. About him he uses an expression‎ which in truth, boldness, and conciseness is almost equal to Mozart’s stroke of the bow. He says he could so talk with a woman that, if the devil caught him, he could wheedle himself out of it if he had a chance to talk with the devil’s grandmother. This is the real seducer; the aesthetic interest here is also different, namely: how, the method. There is evidently something very profound here, which has perhaps escaped the attention of most people, in that Faust, who reproduces Don Juan, seduces only one girl, while Don Juan seduced hundreds; but this one girl is also, in an intensive sense, seduced and crushed quite differently from all those Don Juan has deceived, simply because Faust, as reproduction, falls under the category of the intellectual. The power of such a seducer is speech, i.e., the lie.

A few days ago I heard one soldier talking to another about a third who had betrayed a girl; he did not give a long-winded description, and yet his expression‎ was very pithy: “He gets away with things like that by lies and things like that.” Such a seducer is of quite a different sort from Don Juan, is essentially different from him, as one can see from the fact that he and his activities are extremely unmusical, and from the aesthetic standpoint come within the category of the interesting. The object of his desire is accordingly, when one rightly considers him aesthetically, something more than the mere sensuous. But what is this force, then by which Don Juan seduces? It is desire, the energy of sensuous desire. He desires in every woman, the whole of womanhood, and therein lies the sensuously idealizing power with which he at once embellishes and overcomes his prey. The reaction beautifies and develops the one desired, who flushes in enhanced beauty by its reflection. As the enthusiast’s fire with seductive splendor illumines even those who stand in a casual relation to him, so Don Juan transfigures in a far deeper sense every girl, since his relation to her is an essential one. Therefore all finite differences fade away before him in comparison with the main thing: being a woman. He rejuvenates the older woman into the beautiful middle age of womanhood; he matures the child almost instantly; everything which is woman is his prey (pur che` porti la gonella, voi sapete quel che` fa).

Either/Or Part 1, Swenson, 1944, 1970 p. 98-99

[edit] Essays read before the Symparanekromenoi

Antigone and Polynices

The next three sections are essay lectures from 'A' to the 'Symparanekromenoi', a club or fellowship of the dead who practice the art of writing posthumous papers. The first essay, which discusses ancient and modern tragedy, is called the "Ancient Tragical Motif as Reflected in the Modern". Once again he is writing about the inner and the outer aspects of tragedy. Can remorse be shown on a stage? What about sorrow and pain? Which is easier to portray?^[17] He also discusses guilt, sin, fear, compassion, and responsibility in what can be considered a foreshadowing of Fear and Trembling and Repetition.^[18] He then writes a modern interpretation of Antigone which leads into The Concept of Anxiety.

Draw nearer to me, dear brothers of Symparanekromenoi; close around me as I send my tragic heroine out into the world, as I give the daughter of sorrow a dowry of pain as a wedding gift. She is my creation, but still her outline is so vague, her form so nebulous, that each one of you is free to imagine her as you will, and each one of you can lover her in your own way. She is my creation, her thoughts are my thoughts, and yet it is as if I had rested with her in a night of love, as if she had entrusted me with her deep secret, breathed it and her soul out in my embrace, and as if in the same moment she changed before me, vanished, so that her actuality could only be traced in the mood that remained, instead of the converse being true, that my mood brought her forth to a greater and greater actuality. I placed the words in her mouth, and yet it is as if I abused her confidence; to me, it is as if she stood reproachfully behind me, and yet it is the other way around, in her mystery she becomes ever more and more visible. She is my possession, my lawful possession, and yet sometimes it is as if I had slyly insinuated myself into her confidence, as if I must constantly look behind me to find her, and yet, on the contrary, she lies constantly before me, she constantly comes into existence only as I bring her forth. She is called Antigone. This name I retain from the ancient tragedy, which for the most part I will follow, although, from another point of view, everything will be modern. Either/Or Part I, Swenson p. 151

That which in the Greek sense affords the tragic interest is that Oedipus’ sorrowful destiny re-echoes in the brother’s unhappy death, in the sister’s collision with a simple human prohibition; it is, so to say, the after effects, the tragic destiny of Oedipus, ramifying in every branch of his family. This is the totality which makes the sorrow of the spectator so infinitely deep. It is not an individual who goes down, it is a small world, it is the objective sorrow, which, released, now advances in its own terrible consistency, like a force of nature, and Antigone’s unhappy fate, an echo of her fathers, is an intensified sorrow. When, therefore, Antigone in defiance of the king’s prohibition resolves to bury her brother, we do not see in this so much a free action on her part as a fateful necessity, which visits the sins of the fathers upon the children. There is indeed enough freedom of action in this to make us love Antigone for her sisterly affection, but in the necessity of fate there is also, as it were, a higher refrain which envelops not only the life of Oedipus but also his entire family. Either/Or Part I, Swenson p. 154

The second essay, called "Shadowgraphs: A Psychological Pastime", discusses modern heroines, including Mozart's Elvira and Goethe's Gretchen (Margaret). He studies how desire can come to grief in the single individual.

It is this reflective grief which I now propose to bring before you and, as far as possible, render visible by means of some pictures. I call these sketches Shadowgraphs, partly by the designation to remind you at once that they derive from the darker side of life, partly because like other shadowgraphs they are not directly visible. When I take a shadowgraph in my hand, it makes no impression upon me, and gives me no clear conception of it. Only when I hold it up opposite the wall, and now look not directly at it, but at that which appears on the wall, am I able to see it. So also with the picture which I wish to show here, an inward picture which does not become perceptible until I see it through the external. This external is perhaps quite unobtrusive but not until I look through it, do I discover that inner picture which I desire to show you, an inner picture too delicately drawn to be outwardly visible, woven as it is of the tenderest moods of the soul. If I look at a sheet of paper, there may seem to be nothing remarkable about it, but when I hold it up to the light and look through it, then I discover the delicate inner inscriptions, too ethereal, as it were, to be perceived directly. Turn your attention then, dear Symparanekromenoi, to this inner picture; do not allow yourselves to be distracted by the external appearance, or rather, do not yourselves summon the external before you, for it shall be my task constantly to draw it aside, in order to afford you a better view of the inner picture. Either/Or Part I, Swenson p. 171

Historically he's asking if one person can bring the inner life of a historical figure into view. Psychologically he's asking if psychologists can really give an accurate picture of the inner world. Religiously he's asking if one person can accurately perceive the inner world of the spirituality of another person. He conducts several thought experiments to see if he can do it.

The third essay, called "The Unhappiest One", discusses the hypothetical question: "who deserves the distinction of being unhappier than everyone else?" Kierkegaard has progressed from a search for the highest^[19] to the search for the lowest.^[20] Now he wants to find the unhappy person by looking once again to the past. Is it Niobe, or Job, or the father of the prodigal son, or is it Abraham or Christ? This is, of course, about the new science of anthropology, which digs up everyone and tells the world if the people were happy or sad.

[edit] The First Love

In this volume Kierkegaard examines the concept of 'First Love' as a pinnacle for the aestheticist, using his idiosyncratic concepts of 'closedness' (indesluttethed in Danish) and the 'demonic' (demoniske) with reference to Eugène Scribe.

[edit] Crop Rotation: An Attempt at a Theory of Social Prudence

In agriculture, one rotates the crop to keep the soil fertile and full of nutrients. Crop Rotation in Either/Or refers to the aesthete's need to keep life "interesting", to avoid both boredom and the need to face the responsibilities of an ethical life.

[edit] Diary of a Seducer

Written by 'Johannes the Seducer', this volume illustrates how the aesthete holds the "interesting" as his highest value and how, to satisfy his voyeuristic reflections, he manipulates his situation from the boring to the interesting. He will use irony, artifice, caprice, imagination and arbitrariness to engineer poetically satisfying possibilities; he is not so much interested in the act of seduction as in willfully creating its interesting possibility.

[edit] Or

"Do not interrupt the flight of your soul; do not distress what is best in you; do not enfeeble your spirit with half wishes and half thoughts. Ask yourself and keep on asking until you find the answer, for one may have known something many times, acknowledged it; one may have willed something many times, attempted it—and yet, only the deep inner motion, only the heart's indescribable emotion, only that will convince you that what you have acknowledged belongs to you, that no power can take it from you—for only the truth that builds up is truth for you."

Judge Vilhelm; Ultimatium (Hong Translation)

The second volume represents the ethical stage. Victor Eremita found a group of letters from a retired Judge Vilhelm or William, another pseudonymous author, to 'A', trying to convince 'A' of the value of the ethical stage of life by arguing that the ethical person can still enjoy aesthetic values. The difference is that the pursuit of pleasure is tempered with ethical values and responsibilities.

• "The Aesthetic Validity of Marriage": The first letter is about the aesthetic value of marriage and defends marriage as a way of life.

• "Equilibrium between the Aesthetic and the Ethical in the Development of Personality": The second letter concerns the more explicit ethical subject of choosing the good, or one's self, and of the value of making binding life-choices.

• "Ultimatium": The volume ends in a discourse on the Upbuilding in the Thought that: against God we are always in the wrong.

It's human nature to look to external forces when faced with our own inadequacies but the ethicist is against this. Comparison is an esthetic exercise and has nothing to do with ethics and religion. He says, "Let each one learn what he can; both of us can learn that a person’s unhappiness never lies in his lack of control over external conditions, since this would only make him completely unhappy."^[21] He also asks if a person "absolutely in love can know if he is more or less in love than others."^[22] He completes this thought later in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript and expands on looking inward in Practice in Christianity.

The ethical and the ethical-religious have nothing to do with the comparative. … All comparison delays, and that is why mediocrity likes it so much and, if possible, traps everyone in it by its despicable friendship among mediocrities. A person who blames others, that they have corrupted him, is talking nonsense and only informs against himself. Concluding Unscientific Postscript p. 549-550

Comparison is the most disastrous association that love can enter into; comparison is the most dangerous acquaintance love can make; comparison is the worst of all seductions. Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, (1847) Hong p. 186

Lord Jesus Christ, our foolish minds are weak; they are more than willing to be drawn-and there is so much that wants to draw us to itself. There is pleasure with its seductive power, the multiplicity with its bewildering distractions, the moment with its infatuating importance and the conceited laboriousness of busyness and the careless time-wasting of light-mindedness and the gloomy brooding of heavy-mindedness-all this will draw us away from ourselves to itself in order to deceive us. But you, who are the truth, only you, Savior and Redeemer, can truly draw a person to yourself, which you have promised to do-that you will draw all to yourself. Then may God grant that by repenting we may come to ourselves, so that you, according to your Word, can draw us to yourself-from on high, but through lowliness and abasement. Soren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 1850 p.157 Hong

Introducing the ethical stage it is moreover unclear if Kierkegaard acknowledges an ethical stage without religion. Freedom seems to denote freedom to choose the will to do the right and to denounce the wrong in a secular, almost Kantian style. However, remorse (angeren) seems to be a religious category specifically related to the Christian concept of deliverance.^[23] Moreover, Kierkegaard is constant in his point of view that each single individual can become conscious of a higher self than the externally visible human self and embrace the spiritual self in "an eternal understanding".

In a spiritual sense that by which a person gives birth is the formative striving of the will and that is within a person’s own power. What are you afraid of then? After all, you are not supposed to give birth to another human being; you are supposed to give birth only to yourself. And yet I am fully aware that there is an earnestness about this that shakes the entire soul; to become conscious in one’s eternal validity is a moment that is more significant than everything else in the world. It is as if you were captivated and entangled and could never escape either in time or in eternity; it is as if you lost yourself, as if you ceased to be; it is as if you would repent of it the next moment and yet it cannot be undone. It is an earnest and significant moment when a person links himself to an eternal power for an eternity, when he accepts himself as the one whose remembrance time will never erase, when in an eternal and unerring sense he becomes conscious of himself as the person he is. Judge Vilhelm, Either/Or II p. 206 Hong 1987

A Providence watches over each man’s wandering through life. It provides him with two guides. The one calls him forward. The other calls him back. They are, however, not in opposition to each other, these two guides, nor do they leave the wanderer standing there in doubt, confused by the double call. Rather the two are in eternal understanding with each other. For the one beckons forward to the Good, the other calls man back from evil. …. The two guides call out to a man early and late, and when he listens to their call, then he finds his way, then he can know where he is, on the way. Because these two calls designate the place and show the way. Of these two, the call of remorse is perhaps the best. For the eager traveler who travels lightly along the way does not, in this fashion, learn to know it as well as a wayfarer with a heavy burden. The one who merely strives to get on does not learn to know the way as well as the remorseful man. The eager traveler hurries forward to the new, to the novel, and, indeed, away from experience. But the remorseful one, who comes behind, laboriously gathers up experience. Soren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, from Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1846), Steere translation 1938 p. 38-53

[edit] Discourses and Sequel

Along with this work, Kierkegaard published, under his own name, Two Upbuilding Discourses^[24] on May 16, 1843 intended to complement Either/Or, "The Expectancy of Faith" and "Every Good and Every Perfect Gift is from Above".^[25] Kierkegaard also published another discourse during the printing of the second edition of Either/Or in 1849.^[26]

In addition to the discourses, one week after Either/Or was published, Kierkegaard published a newspaper article in Fædrelandet, titled "Who Is the Author Of Either/Or?", attempting to create authorial distance from the work, emphasizing the content of the work and the embodiment of a particular way of life in each of the pseudonyms. Kierkegaard, using the pseudonym 'A.F.', writes, "most people, including the author of this article, think it is not worth the trouble to be concerned about who the author is. 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."^[27]

The "Ultimatium" at the end of the second volume of Either/Or hinted at a future discussion of the religious stage. This discussion is included in Stages on Life's Way (1845). The first two sections revisit and refine the aesthetic and ethical stages elucidated in Either/Or, while the third section, Guilty/Not Guilty is about the religious stage.^[28]

[edit] Themes

See also: Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard

The various essays in Either/Or help elucidate the various forms of aestheticism and ethical existence. Both A and Judge Vilhelm attempt to focus primarily upon the best that their mode of existence has to offer.

Summary of the Stages

Aesthetic	Ethical	Religious
Defined by immediacy: the failure to reflect seriously upon the nature of one's way of living	Defined by critical reflection: able to make and take moral responsibility and accountability for his life choices
Sees the outer existence as more important: The self is entirely subject to external factors	Sees the inner existence as more important: The self shapes one's own character, values, inclinations, and personal identity; thus, the self is partially subject to internal factors
Accepts passively that one's life is based entirely upon external factors	Willing to take active control of one's life
Tends to avoid commitments, as they see it as boring	Commitments, like friendship and marriage, are cornerstones of a responsible ethical way of existence.
Exhaustion of aesthetic pleasure leads to boredom and despair	Strives to become a better human being through taking an active role in shaping oneself and one's manner of life.

Three Stages of Life. Either/Or discusses the aesthetic and ethical stages or spheres. An ethical person is still capable of aesthetic enjoyment. The size of the spheres are for illustrative purposes only.

A fundamental characteristic of the aesthete is immediacy. In Either/Or, there are several levels of immediacy explored, ranging from unrefined to refined. Unrefined immediacy is characterized by immediate cravings for desire and satisfaction through enjoyments that do not require effort or personal cultivation (e.g. alcohol, drugs, casual sex, sloth, etc.) 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.^[11]

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.^[11] Judge Vilhelm uses the example of marriage as an example of an ethical institution requiring strong commitment and responsibility. Whereas the aesthete would be bored by the repetitive nature of marriage (e.g. married to one person only), the ethicist believes in the necessity of self-denial (e.g. self-denying unmitigated pleasure) in order to uphold one's obligations.^[11]

Kierkegaard stresses the "eternal" nature of marriage and says "something new comes into existence" through the wedding ceremony.^[29] The aesthete doesn't see it that way. The aesthete makes a "half hour’s resolution"^[30] but the ethical person, and especially the religious person, makes the "good resolution".^[31] Someone devoted to pleasure finds it impossible to make this kind of resolution.^[32] The ethical and "Christian religious"^[33] person make the resolution because they have the will to have a true conception of life and of oneself."^[34] A resolution involves change but for the single individual this involves only change in oneself. It never means changing the whole world or even changing the other person.^[35]

[edit] Interpretation

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. Kierkegaard's Papers first edition VIII(2), B 81 - 89 explain this method in writing. On interpretation there is also much to be found in The Point of View of My Work as an Author.^[36]

[edit] Existential interpretation

A common interpretation of Either/Or presents the reader with a choice between two approaches to life. 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. Suggesting the aesthetic approach as evil implies one has already accepted the idea that there is a good/evil distinction to be made. 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. 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.^[2]

However, the aesthetic and the ethical ways of life are not the only ways of living. Kierkegaard continues to flesh out other stages in further works, and the Stages on Life's Way is considered a direct sequel to Either/Or.

[edit] Christian Interpretation

The whole book can be viewed as the struggle individuals go through as they attempt to find meaning in their lives. 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".^[37]

Enter-Eller 1878 Danish cover of Either/Or

"A" desires the absolute highest. 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 though the power of language. For him, tautology is the highest realm of thought.^[38] He's someone who is in complete "conflict with his environment" because he is relating himself to externals.^[39]

"B" argues with "A". He says ethics are the highest. "A" wants to remain a mystery to himself but "B" says it's the meaning of life to become open to yourself. 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. “Mary,” he cried. “Yes, little Louis,” she answered with her usual friendliness, and came to him. 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.” What about us older folk? We cry out to the whole world, and when it comes smiling to meet us, then we say: “This is not the Mary.” Either/Or I, Swenson p. 34-35

Father in heaven! 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. Amen. Either/Or Part II p.. 341

The three spheres of existence were neatly summed up in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments.

There are three existence spheres: the esthetic, the ethical, the religious. To these there is receptively corresponding border territory: irony is the border territory between the esthetic and the ethical; humor is the confinium (border territory) between the ethical and the religious. Irony emerges by continually joining the particulars of the finite with the ethical infinite requirement and allowing the contradiction to come into existence. … Irony is the unity of ethical passion, which in inwardness infinitely accentuates one’s own I in relation to the ethical requirement-and culture, which in externality infinitely abstracts from the personal I as a finitude included among all other finitudes and particulars. 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. The ethicist in Either/Or has already protested against this directly and indirectly, indirectly at the end of the essay on the balance between the esthetic and the ethical in the personality where he himself must make a concession with regard to the religious, and again at the end of the article on Marriage (in Stages), where, even on the basis of the ethics he champions, which is diametrically opposite to Hegelian ethics^[40], he certainly jacks up the price of the religious as high as possible but still makes room for it. Note p. 503) Most people live in the opposite way. 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. p.501-504

[edit] Kantian interpretation

A recent way to interpret Either/Or is to read it as an applied Kantian text. Scholars for this interpretation include Alasdair MacIntyre^[41] and Ronald M. Green.^[42] In After Virtue, MacIntyre claims Kierkegaard is continuing the Enlightenment project set forward by Hume and Kant.^[43] Green notes several points of contact with Kant in Either/Or:^[44]

Summary of Kantian Themes in Either/Or

	Immanuel Kant	Judge Vilhelm
"The ethical is the universal"	When acting on a maxim of mutual aid, one must mentally "create" a world with its own type of humanity and existence	An ethical choice requires one to convert to a "universal man" or model of "essential humanity"
"Moral judgments cannot be private or privileging"	Universalization of maxims; Distinction between hypothetical and categorical imperatives	"earthly love is ... partiality; spiritual love has no partialities"
"Ethical laws are universally known and applicable"	Derived from a priori principle of reason	Criticizes "freethinkers" who attempt to prove ethical relativity
"Rationality determines moral protection"	Must respect rational beings as "ends in themselves"	"[each person] even though he were a hired servant ... has his teleology in himself."
"Happiness as a supreme end"	Happiness as a universal maxim is unstable as a universal law	Private pursuit of happiness is unsociable

Either/Or can be seen as endorsing Kantian ethics.

However, other scholars think Kierkegaard adopts Kantian themes in order to criticize them,^[41] while yet others think that although Kierkegaard adopts some Kantian themes, their final ethical positions are substantially different. George Stack argues for this latter interpretation, writing, "Despite the occasional echoes of Kantian sentiments in Kierkegaard's writings (especially in Either/Or), the bifurcation between his ethics of self-becoming and Kant's formalistic, meta-empirical ethics is, mutatis mutandis, complete ... 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."^[45]

[edit] Biographical interpretation

Regine Olsen, a muse for Kierkegaard's writings.

From a purely literary and historical point of view, Either/Or can be seen as a thinly veiled autobiography of the events between Kierkegaard and his ex-fianceé Regine Olsen. Johannes the Seducer in The Diary of a Seducer treats the object of his affection, Cordelia, much as Kierkegaard treats Regine: befriending her family, asking her to marry him, and breaking off the engagement.^[46] Either/Or, then, could be the poetic and literary expression‎ of Kierkegaard's decision between a life of sensual pleasure, as he had experienced in his youth, or a possibility of marriage and what social responsibilities marriage might or ought to entail.^[2] Ultimately however, Either/Or stands philosophically independent of its relation to Kierkegaard's life.^[47]

[edit] Reception

[edit] Early reception

Either/Or established Kierkegaard's reputation as a respected author.^[48] Henriette Wulff, in a letter to Hans Christian Andersen, wrote, "Recently a book was published here with the title Either/Or! 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...."^[48]

Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1791-1860)

Johan Ludvig Heiberg, a prominent Hegelian, at first criticized the aesthetic section, Either, (Part I), then he had much better things to say about Or, Part II.^[49] Julie Watkin said "Kierkegaard replied to Heiberg in The Fatherland as Victor Eremita, blaming Heiberg for not reading the preface to Either/Or which would have given him the key to the work."^[50] Kierkegaard later used his book Prefaces to publicly respond to Heiberg and Hegelianism.^[51] He also published a short article, Who is the Author of Either/Or?, a week after the publication of Either/Or itself.^[52]

In 1886 Georg Brandes compared Either/Or with Frederik Paludan-Müller's Kalanus in Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century, which was translated into English at that time.

Next to Adam Homo,the most interesting work of Paludan-Muller is Kalanus. 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.^[53]

Kierkegaard later referred to his concept of choosing yourself as the single individual in The Concept of Anxiety, June 17, 1844, and then in his Four Upbuilding Discourses, August 31, 1844, and once again in Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, 1847. 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."^[54]

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. Therefore, I must point out that it is altogether different from fear and similar concepts that refer to something definite, whereas anxiety is freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility. 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. 42

Jacob wrestling with the angel

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. However much that first self shrinks from this, there is no wordsmith so ingenious or no thought-twister so wily that he can invalidate the deeper self’s eternal claim. 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, 1845, Hong translation p. 314

Just as a man changes his clothes for celebration, so a person preparing for the holy act of confession is inwardly changed. It is indeed like changing one’s clothes to divest oneself of multiplicity in order to make up one’s mind about one thing, to interrupt the pace of busy activity in order to put on the repose of contemplation in unity with oneself. And this unity with oneself is the celebration’s simple festive dress that is the condition of admittance. Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Soren Kierkegaard, 1847, Hong p. 19

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.” But if a person has no friend, he presumably goes to God if under other circumstances he has confided something to him, if in the hour of decision he called God as witness when no one understood him. 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 senses 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. It by no means follows that a person’s life becomes easy because he learns to know God in this way. 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. Soren Kierkegaard, Four Upbuilding Discourses August 31, 1844 (Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses p. 324)

August Strindberg (1849-1910)

August Strindberg was familiar with Either/Or and this book made him “forever a champion of the ethical as juxtaposed to the aesthetic life conception and he always remained faithful to the idea that art and knowledge must be subservient to life, and that life itself must be lived as we know best, chiefly because we are part of it and cannot escape from its promptings.”^[55] Strindberg was obviously attracted to Either/Or Part II where Kierkegaard developed his categorical imperative. Kierkegaard put an end to his own double-mindedness about devoting himself completely to aesthetics or developing a balance between the the aesthetic and the ethical and going on to an ethical/Christian religious existence^[56] in the first part of his authorship (1843-1846) and then described what he had learned about himself and about being a Christian beginning with Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847). He learned to choose^[57] his own Either/Or.

each man who is mindful of himself knows what no science knows, since he knows who he himself is. Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety 1844, Nichol p. 78-79

even the lowliest individual has a double existence. 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. In this world there rules an absolute Either/Or. But philosophy has nothing to do with this world. Judge Vilhelm, Either/Or II p. 174-175 Hong 1987

[edit] Later reception

Although Either/Or was Kierkegaard's first major book, it was one of his last books translated into English in 1944.^[58] Frederick DeW. Bolman, Jr., insisted that reviewers consider the book in this way: "In general, we have a right to discover, if we can, the meaning of a work as comprehensive as Either/Or, considering it upon its own merits and not reducing the meaning so as to fit into the author's later perspective. 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".^[59]

Thomas Henry Croxall was impressed by 'As thoughts on music in the essay, "The Immediate Stages of the Erotic, or Musical Erotic". 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.^[60]

The Diary of a Seducer by itself, is a provocative novella, and has been reproduced separately from Either/Or several times.^{[61][62][63][64]} John Updike said of the Diary, "In the vast literature of love, The Seducer's Diary is an intricate curiosity – a feverishly intellectual attempt to reconstruct an erotic failure as a pedagogic success, a wound masked as a boast".^[64]

In contemporary times, Either/Or received new life as a grand philosophical work with the publication of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue, where MacIntyre situates Either/Or as an attempt to capture the Enlightenment spirit set forth by David Hume and Immanuel Kant. After Virtue renewed Either/Or as an important ethical text in the Kantian vein, as mentioned previously. 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.^[41][65]

[edit] References

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Either/Or

[edit] Primary references

• Either/Or: A Fragment of Life. Translated by Alastair Hannay, Abridged Version. Penguin, 1992, ISBN 978-0-14-044577-0 (Hannay)
• Either/Or. Translated by David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson. Volume I. Prinecton, 1959, ISBN 0-691-01976-2 (Swenson)
• Kierkegaard's Writings, III, Part I: Either/Or. Part I. Translated by Howard and Edna Hong. Princeton, 1988, ISBN 978-0-691-02041-9 (Hong)
• Kierkegaard's Writings, IV, Part II: Either/Or. Part II. Translated by Howard and Edna Hong. Princeton, 1988, ISBN 978-0-691-02042-6 (Hong)

[edit] Secondary references and notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Kierkegaard, Søren. The Essential Kierkegaard, edited by Howard and Edna Hong. Princeton,
2.  ISBN 0-691-01940-1
3. ^ ^{a b c} Warburton, Nigel. Philosophy: The Classics, 2nd edition. Routledge, ISBN 0-415-23998-2
4. ^ Either/Or Part I, p 172-173 Swenson
5. ^ ^{a b} Chamberlin, Jane and Jonathan Rée. The Kierkegaard Reader. Blackwell, Oxford, 0-631-20467-9
6. ^ Søren Kierkegaard, Hong and Hong (ed.) Soren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, Volume 5: Autobiographical, §5931 (p. 340)
7. ^ Søren Kierkegaard, Hong and Hong (ed.) Either/Or Volume 1, Historical Introduction, p. vii
8. ^ "Hegel's Science of Logic". Marxists.org. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hl/hlconten.htm. Retrieved 2011-12-27. 
9. ^

   "From this it is evident that the law of identity itself, and still more the law of contradiction, is not merely of analytic but of synthetic nature. 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."

   Hegel's Remarks § 883 & 884
10. ^

    "The law of the excluded middle is also distinguished from the laws of identity and contradiction ... the latter of these asserted that there is nothing that is at once A and not-A. 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. This A is neither +A nor -A, and is equally well +A as -A. The something that was supposed to be either -A or not A is therefore related to both +A and not-A; and again, in being related to A, it is supposed not to be related to not-A, nor to A, if it is related to not-A. 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."

    Hegel's Remarks § 952 - 954
11. ^ ^{a b} Beiser, Frederick C. The Cambridge Companion to Hegel. Cambridge, ISBN 0-521-38711-6
12. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Watts, Michael. Kierkegaard. Oneworld, ISBN 1-85168-317-8
13. ^ Magill, Frank N. Masterpieces of World Philosophy. HarperCollins, ISBN 0-06-270051-0
14. ^ Gardiner, Patrick. Kierkegaard: Past Masters. Oxford, ISBN 978-0-19-287642-3
15. ^ Oden, Thomas C. Parables of Kierkegaard. Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0-691-02053-2.
16. ^ Either/Or Part I, Swenson p. 66ff
17. ^ Either/Or Part I Swenson p. 107, 190-191
18. ^ Either/Or Part I, Swenson p. 145-147
19. ^ Either/Or Part I, Swenson p. 139-145
20. ^ Either/Or Part I, Swenson p. 27 "sleeping is the highest", 32 "A good cut" of meat is the highest, 37-39 "Tautology is the highest law of thought", 46-47 "I will form a sect which not only gives Mozart first place", 59 "sensuousness is first posited in Christianity", 63 "Don Juan deserves the highest place', 68 music is higher than language, 101 "Don Juan is absolutely musical"
21. ^ 154-156 "Antigone's" "sorrow", 167-168 "grief", 177-178 "deception" which is for love an absolute paradox", 182ff the inability to decide if you've been deceived, 220-221 "unhappy consciousness"
22. ^ Either/Or II p. 188 Hong
23. ^ Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript 1846, p. 509
24. ^ Kierkegaard, Søren. Samlede Vaerker. (2), II, p. 190. 1962-1964.
25. ^ Religious works penned under his own name. Commentary on Kierkegaard, D. Anthony Storm,[1]
26. ^ Kierkegaard, Søren. Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses. Princeton, ISBN 0-691-02087-6.
27. ^ Collected by Princeton University Press in Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses
28. ^ D. Anthony on Who is the Author?
29. ^ Kierkegaard, Søren. Stages on Life's Way, trans. Howard and Edna Hong. Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0-691-02049-5
30. ^ Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, Hong p.44-47
31. ^ Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong p. 380-381
32. ^ Either/Or Part II, Hong p 102-105, 111-112 and Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, Hong p.48
33. ^ Concluding Upbuilding Discourse, Hong, p. 294
34. ^ Either/Or Part II, Hong p. 298-299
35. ^ Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, Hong p. 52, 58, 63
36. ^ Either/Or Part II, Hong p 19-23, Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, Hong p. 50 see p. 43-68 Works of Love, Hong 1995 Princeton University Press p. 7-10, 13-15, 34, 213-218
37. ^ Kierkegaard, Søren. The Point of View, translated by Howard and Edna Hong, Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0-691-05855-9
38. ^ Either/Or Part I, Swenson Preface p. 4-5
39. ^ Either/Or Part I, Swenson Preface p. 63, 70-71, 115-116, 37
40. ^ Either/Or Part I, Swenson p. 105-110, 118-119
41. ^ The Ethics of Hegel: Translated Selections from His "Rechtsphilosophie," (1893) Archive.or
42. ^ ^{a b c} Davenport, John and Anthony Rudd. Kierkegaard After MacIntyre: Essays on Freedom, Narrative, and Virtue. Open Court Publishing, 2001, ISBN 978-0-8126-9439-0
43. ^ Green, Ronald M. Kierkegaard and Kant: The Hidden Debt. SUNY Press, Albany, 1992. ISBN 0-7914-1108-7
44. ^ Kierkegaard is familiar with Hume through the works of Johann Georg Hamann. See "Hume and Kierkegaard" by Richard Popkin.
45. ^ Green, p. 95-98
46. ^ Green, p.87
47. ^ "Dr. Scott Moore's Summary of the Diary". Bearspace.baylor.edu. http://bearspace.baylor.edu/Scott_Moore/www/Seducer.html. Retrieved 2011-12-27. 
48. ^ Warburton, p.181.
49. ^ ^{a b} Garff, Joakim. Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography. Trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse. Princeton, 2005, 0-691-09165-X
50. ^ Soren Kierkegaard, Johannes Hohlenberg, translated by T.H. Croxall, Pantheon Books, Inc. 1954 p. 18-19
51. ^ Historical Dictionary of Kierkegaard’s Philosophy, By Julie Watkin, Scarecrow Press, 2001 p. 112
52. ^ Prefaces 47-49, 57-60
53. ^ http://sorenkierkegaard.org/who-is-author-either-or.html
54. ^ Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century, Georg Brandes Translated from the original [Danish] by Rasmus B. Anderson 1886 p. 344-345
55. ^ The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James Lecture 6-7 The Sick Soul
56. ^ Voices of To-morrow: Critical Studies of the New Spirit in Literature, Published 1913 by Greenwood Press, p. 21-22] Archive.org
57. ^ Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 298-299
58. ^ Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Soren Kierkegaard (1847) What Blessed Happiness is Promised in Being a Human Being p. 201ff Hong
59. ^ Rée, Jonathan and Jane Chamberlain (eds). The Kierkegaard Reader, Wiley-Blackwell, 2001, p.9.
60. ^ Reply to Mrs. Hess, Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 42, No.8, p. 219
61. ^ A Strange but Stimulating Essay on Music, The Musical Times Vol. 90, No. 1272, p.46, February 1949
62. ^ Published in 2006, with Gerd Aage Gillhoff as translator, ISBN 978-0-8264-1847-0
63. ^ Published in June 1966 by Ungar Pub Co., ISBN 978-0-8044-6357-7
64. ^ Published in March 1999, by Pushpin Press, translated by Alastair Hannay, ISBN 978-1-901285-23-9
65. ^ ^{a b} Published in August 1997 by Princeton, with an introduction by John Updike, ISBN 978-0-691-01737-2
66. ^ "After Anti-Irrationalism". Web.archive.org. 2007-11-07. http://web.archive.org/web/20071107154310/http://www.stolaf.edu/collections/kierkegaard/newsletter/issue44/
67. 44006.htm. Retrieved 2011-12-27. 

[hide] v t e Søren Kierkegaard
1841–1846	On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates Either/Or De omnibus dubitandum est: Everything Must Be Doubted Two Upbuilding Discourses, 1843 Repetition Three Upbuilding Discourses Fear and Trembling Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1843 Two Upbuilding Discourses, 1844 Three Upbuilding Discourses, 1844 Philosophical Fragments Prefaces The Concept of Anxiety Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1844 Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions Stages on Life's Way Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments Two Ages: A Literary Review
1847–1854	Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits Works of Love Christian Discourses The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air The Sickness Unto Death Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays Practice in Christianity Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays The Book on Adler For Self-Examination Attack Upon Christendom
Posthumous publications	The Point of View of My Work as an Author Judge for Yourselves! The Journals Writing Sampler
Ideas	Philosophy Theology Angst Anguish Authenticity Double-mindedness Indirect communication Infinite qualitative distinction Knight of faith Leap of faith Levelling Present age Ressentiment Rotation method
Related topics	Works about Kierkegaard Regine Olsen Peter Kierkegaard Hans Lassen Martensen Jacob Peter Mynster J.L. Heiberg Thomasine Christine Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd Adolph Peter Adler Influence and reception of Søren Kierkegaard Danish Golden Age Søren Kierkegaard Research Center Howard V. and Edna H. Hong Kierkegaard Library Prayers of Kierkegaard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Either/Or