Søren Kierkegaard and the Dialectic of the Either/Or.

Been quite busy with guests and couchsurfers lately, also ive embarked on a Linux adventure so i have not writen a new post, instead i thought i would post one of my first year essays, not sure what stage this is in as i cannot see bibliography, anyway this got me a B1 and it is a philosophy essay. new post tomo or tus on couchsurfing :)


Søren Kierkegaard and the Dialectic of the Either/Or.

In this essay I will be discussing Søren Kierkegaard and his Existential Dialectic Either/Or and how his life and the way he lived it, is linked to the dialectic. In order to do this and cover the three parts of the dialectic a understanding of the three stages of Kierkegaard’s life is needed, from his upbringing to the final stage were he returned to religion. I will also cover briefly Hegel’s Dialectic which had a impact on Kierkegaard and which he felt he needed to correct.

Upbringing: Kierkegaard’s childhood and upbringing had a direct impact on his later life and writings, more so his relation ship with his father who raised him. Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen in 1813 to elderly parents, his father, a merchant, was 56 and his mother was 44, he was raised by his father who introduced him to religious faith and learning from a early age. This gave the young Kierkegaard a strong moral religious faith. However his father had a melancholy disposition, which his son also inherited, this made Kierkegaard unhappy in his childhood, however it was something Søren never revelled to anyone and took delight in hiding it from people. Kierkegaard’s melancholy was to worsen at the hands of his father later on when in his father’s deathbed confession he found out that his father thought that god had cursed him for sinning, and the curse was brought upon his family, five of six of Søren’s brothers and sisters had died in childbirth. This revelation from his father led Søren to work on questions of life and personal despair.

Kierkegaard attended the university of Copenhagen to study Theology, however philosophy captured his interests, Hegelian philosophy dominated the colleges of Europe at the time however Kierkegaard rebelled against Hegel and his Dialectic. Hegel believed that Thesis and Antithesis becomes Synthesis, which on a higher cycle become the nest Thesis, Hegel believed that that reality itself is governed by this dialectical process, Hegel also believed history also worked on this dialectic, suggesting that history had a hidden plot for all mankind. Hegel also used this dialectic on the issue of god, and stated that god himself is not personal but a absolute spirit and that god is the final Synthesis. With this application of Hegel’s dialectic it is viewed that all human individuality is not real and that were all part of the absolute. Søren rejected this view as a individualist and instead based on his own life presented the either/or dialectic based on three stages of human existence. The Aesthetic Stage, The Ethical Stage and the final stage The Religious Stage. Each one of these Søren links to a archetypal figure in order not to link it to his own life.

Aesthetic Stage: Søren believes that the Aesthetic stage is for people who have no continuity in their lives, they have failed to make any commitments and so lack any direction. The archetypal figure’s he uses for this stage are Don Juan and Faust, a mix of hedonistic and intellectual personalities and of people who could not quite grasp life and tended to drift, in Don Juan’s it was women, while he was a romantic he never committed to one. Faust was a abstract intellectual who tried to find the answers to life through abstract means, and finally losing sight of his goals himself, this was a slight attack on Hegel and his followers. For Kierkegaard this follows his early life in collage when he rejected the church and followed a hedonistic lifestyle for himself. Søren believed though that this choice of life would in the end lead to boredom and despair, Søren believed that the boredom came from having no goals or commitments in live and the person would re-live each night the same bringing the person to despair and forcing a choice to either remain at this stage or to move to the ethical level.

Kierkegaard notes a paradox in the aesthetic lifestyle. The aesthetic personality is actually in a type of ivory tower, in isolation from life rather than being very actively involved in it (Valone, 1947:29)

Ethical Stage: In the ethical stage a person has left the Aesthetic Stage and concentrates on ethical questions. Søren chooses Socrates as the Archetypal Figure, Socrates life was dedicated to ethics and thought. The Ethical stage has commitment and free choice which develops the person both morally and ethically, the questions of living life no longer are boring vs interesting but focuses on Good vs Bad instead, and what choice to make. And so Søren believes a more ethical life. However for the person in the ethical stage the question of “Sin” is a issue which cannot be resolved as Evil is seen as being a product of ignorance and only moral knowledge or strength of will can overcome the ignorance, in this essence the self-sufficient man fails ethically and morally, this in turn causes despair in the ethical stage and the final Either/Or choice is made, either remain at the ethical stage and deal with the despair or make a leap of faith and more onto The Religious Stage.

For Kierkegaard his Ethical stage started in 1836 after his hedonistic life brought him to despair and onto the brink of suicide, after this he returned to his studies for the priesthood and also had a engagement with Regina Olsen which he later, to his regret, ended it. At this time Søren concentrated on his studies and questioned ethics and morals, and of his own existence.

Religious Stage: Once a person has taken a leap of faith Søren believes they are in the religious stage that is symbolised by the Archetypal figure Abraham, who himself had to make a leap of faith when he was told to sacrifice his son. The religious stage for Søren is not ethical or moral but a subjective truth and asks the question of faith vs reason. Faith is important for Søren because if we could prove gods existence then it would turn the existence of a supreme being into objective truth, and so would be grasped intellectually, this for Søren changes the leap of faith and would remove the religious stage and return to the ethical stage.

Kierkegaard’s return to committed religion symbolises the religious stage for him, but for Kierkegaard it was not open Christianity, he became a recluse and concentrated on writing, however this did not stop him attacking the Lutheran church, he openly attacked them “for sacrificing Christianity for Christendom” this again was a show of his faith and how he believed he should live it.

Søren died alone in 1855 and defended being a individual until the end, he wrote his epitaph himself which simply read “that individual” however it never graced his grave because the had lost the plot he was buried in.

Søren Kierkegaard’s faith both losing it finding it again was one of the main drives behind his Existential Dialectic Either/Or, to find some sort of individuality as a Christian was to consume his life. Either/or is relevant to Søren and some parts of human nature do follow his dialectic, the Aesthetic Stage can be argued to be simply youth and the Ethical stage growing up, were as the Religious stage is far more personal to Søren himself than to the rest of us. While we all make choices, and are free to do so, a person can find content and happiness in the second stage without passing through the first stage or reaching the third, this person has not made the choice of either/or and has never felt the need to, again this is personal to the person but it still shows that each person is different, something Søren would agree with.

Another reason Either/or is personnel is its western and class bias, its firmly rooted in a Christian path, a suggestion of enjoy your life but In the end you must accept god as a subjective truth is evident, and the fact that Søren’s Ethical stage only lasted two years suggests that he himself did not spend time getting the answers, instead just getting the answers he wanted. Also as one of the intellectual elite Søren was able to go through the three stages, this cannot be said for many people though who have not shared his education and upbringing, and perhaps remain at a level of despair and not having the free will to make the choice either/or. This again suggests that either/or is personal, and more suggestive than truth.