Discussion board Q&As week 4

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Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

Themes, Arguments, and Ideas http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/kierkegaard/citing.h tml

THE PROBLEMS OF BOREDOM, ANXIETY, AND DESPAIR

Boredom, anxiety, and despair are the human psyche’s major problems, and Kierkegaard spends

most of his writing diagnosing these three ills. People are bored when they are not being stimulated,

either physically or mentally. Relief from boredom can only be fleeting. Passion, a good play, Bach,

or a stimulating conversation might provide momentary relief from boredom, but the relief doesn’t

last. Boredom is not merely a nuisance: a psychologically healthy human must find some way to

avert boredom. Conflicts between one’s ethical duty and one’s religious duty cause anxiety. Social

systems of ethics often lead one to make choices that are detrimental to one’s spiritual health, and

vice versa. The tension between these conflicting duties causes anxiety, and like boredom, anxiety

must be escaped for a person to be happy. Finally, despair is a result of the tension between the

finite and the infinite. Humans are frightened of dying, but they are also frightened of existing

forever. Kierkegaard believed that everyone would die but also that everyone had an immortal self,

or soul, that would go on forever. Boredom and anxiety can be alleviated in various ways, but the

only way to escape despair is to have total faith in God. Having total faith in God, however, was

more than simply attending church regularly and behaving obediently. Faith required intense

personal commitment and a dedication to unending self-analysis. Kierkegaard thought that having

total faith in God, and thus escaping despair, was extremely difficult as well as extremely important.

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THE AESTHETIC AS THE FIRST STAGE ON LIFE’S WAY

Kierkegaard proposed that the individual passed through three stages on the way to becoming a true

self: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Each of these “stages on life’s way” represents

competing views on life and as such potentially conflicts with one another. Kierkegaard takes the

unusual step of having each stage of life described and represented by a different pseudonymous

character. Thus, it becomes too difficult to ascertain which propositions Kierkegaard himself

upholds. This fits with Kierkegaard’s characteristic tendency to avoid dictating answers. He

preferred that readers reach their own conclusions.

The aesthetic is the realm of sensory experience and pleasures. The aesthetic life is defined by

pleasures, and to live the aesthetic life to the fullest one must seek to maximize those pleasures.

Increasing one’s aesthetic pleasures is one way to combat boredom, and Kierkegaard described

many methods of doing so. He proposes that the anticipation of an event often exceeds the pleasure

of the event itself, and so he suggests ways of drawing out anticipation. One suggestion is to leave all

of your mail for three days before opening it. Unplanned events can, at times, lead to pleasures as

great as anticipation, but the pleasure of planned events is almost entirely in the anticipation.

The importance of the aesthetic is acknowledged, but it is also presented as an immature stage. The

aesthete is only concerned with his or her personal enjoyment, and because aesthetic pleasure is so

fleeting, an aesthete has no solid framework from which to make coherent, consistent choices.

Eventually, the pleasures of the aesthetic wear thin, and one must begin seeking the ethical pleasures

instead. The ethical life actually offers certain pleasures the aesthetic life cannot. An aesthete can

never do something solely for the good of someone else, but we all know that doing things for

others without personal motives can actually be incredibly enjoyable.

THE ETHICAL AS THE SECOND STAGE ON LIFE’S WAY

Ethics are the social rules that govern how a person ought to act. Ethics are not always in opposition

to aesthetics, but they must take precedence when the two conflict. The aesthetic life must be

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subordinated to the ethical life, as the ethical life is based on a consistent, coherent set of rules

established for the good of society. A person can still experience pleasure while living the ethical life.

The ethical life serves the purpose of allowing diverse people to coexist in harmony and causes

individuals to act for the good of society. The ethical person considers the effect his or her actions

will have on others and gives more weight to promoting social welfare than to achieving personal

gain. The ethical life also affords pleasures that the aesthetic does not. Aesthetics steers one away

from consistency, since repetition can lead to boredom. An ethical person doesn’t simply enjoy

things because they’re novel but makes ethical choices because those choices evoke a higher set of

principles. Kierkegaard uses marriage as an example of an ethical life choice. In marriage, the

excitement of passion can quickly fade, leading to boredom and a diminishing of aesthetic pleasure.

However, by consistently acting for the good of one’s spouse, one learns that there are enjoyments

beyond excitement. Still, the ethical life does little to nurture one’s spiritual self. The ethical life

diverts one from self-exploration since it requires an individual to follow a set of socially accepted

norms and regulations. According to Kierkegaard, self-exploration is necessary for faith, the key

requirement for a properly religious life.

THE RELIGIOUS AS THIRD STAGE ON LIFE’S WAY

Kierkegaard considers the religious life to be the highest plane of existence. He also believes that

almost no one lives a truly religious life. He is concerned with how to be “a Christian in

Christendom”—in other words, how to lead an authentically religious life while surrounded by

people who are falsely religious. For Kierkegaard, the relationship with God is exclusively personal,

and he believed the large-scale religion of the church (i.e., Christendom) distracts people from that

personal relationship. Kierkegaard passionately criticized the Christian Church for what he saw as its

interference in the personal spiritual quest each true Christian must undertake.

In the aesthetic life, one is ruled by passion. In the ethical life, one is ruled by societal regulations. In

the religious life, one is ruled by total faith in God. One can never be truly free, and this causes

boredom, anxiety, and despair. True faith doesn’t lead to freedom, but it relieves the psychological

effects of human existence. Kierkegaard claims that the only way to make life worthwhile is to

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embrace faith in God, and that faith necessarily involves embracing the absurd. One has faith in

God, but one cannot believe in God. We believe in things that we can prove, but we can only have

faith in things that are beyond our understanding. For example, we believe in gravity: we feel its

effects constantly, which we recognize as proof of gravity’s existence. It makes no sense, though, to

say we have faith in gravity, since that would require the possibility that, someday, gravity would fail

to materialize. Faith requires uncertainty, and thus we can have faith in God because God is beyond

logic, beyond proof, and beyond reason. There’s no rational evidence for God, but this is exactly

what allows people to have faith in him.

THE PLEASURES OF REPETITION AND RECOLLECTION

Repetition and recollection are two contrasting ways of trying to maximize enjoyment. Repetition

serves multiple purposes for Kierkegaard. First, it has an important aesthetic function. People want

to repeat particularly enjoyable experiences, but the original pleasure is often lost in the repeating.

This is due to the expectation that things will be just the same the second time as the first time. The

pleasure of expectation clouds the fact that the original experience wasn’t undertaken with a specific

idea of the joy it would cause. Repetition can produce powerful feelings but usually only when the

experience occurs unplanned. In this case, the pleasure might even be magnified at the sudden

resurgence of happy memories—in other words, the recollection. There is pleasure in planned

repetition, but it is a comfortable pleasure, not an exciting one. While repetition offers the joy of

anticipation—joy that seldom materializes in the actual event—recollection offers the joy of

remembering a particularly happy event. Recollection can be cultivated along with the imagination to

increase one’s day-to-day aesthetic pleasure. Often, recalling a pleasant occurrence is more enjoyable

than repeating the same event: remembering the Christmases of your childhood is often more

pleasant than Christmas is in adulthood. Indeed, much of the pleasure of Christmas, for an older

person, can come from nostalgia. The pleasures of recollection, which are best enjoyed alone, are

well suited to the aesthetic life. Unplanned repetition is a truly aesthetic pleasure as well, while

planned repletion, such as that represented by marriage, affords more ethical pleasures than aesthetic

ones.

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