The following short passage is a
narrative from Britannica, which I am using for convenience, seeing no need
to retell the same story in my own words:
Nearly all Kierkegaard’s books were published
pseudonymously, with fictitious names suited to the particular work, a peculiarity
intended to persuade the reader that the ideas he proposed were not to be taken
as the pronouncements of authority, but represented various modes of life for
the reader’s judgments and choice. This is, in fact, the meaning of the title Either/Or,
which offers the alternatives of an aesthetic or ethical (or ethico-religious)
view of life. Kierkegaard’s belief in the necessity for each individual to make
a fully conscious responsible choice from the alternatives that life offers has
become fundamental in all Existential writing and thought.
With a remarkable wit, very
characteristic of him, Kierkegaard thus comments on our life choices: “I see it all perfectly; there are two possible
situations--- one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly
advice is this: do it or do not do it--- you will regret both.”
Either…Or is a remarkable
book, deep, witty, engrossing. It reads like first-class entertainment for
refined souls, and I strongly recommend it to the reader. I must reiterate
however that, cleverly and most unusually, Kierkegaard presents the three ways
of living: aesthetical, ethical (these two constitute the either-or),
and religious, without the expected didactical pronouncement on the
second and the third one being preferable and more moral than the first one
(the Don Juan way of life). The freedom of choice here is honest, and it
is entirely up to the individual to decide without any particular advice, or
any particular reprobation, which course is best suited to his or her
disposition. Fascinating, and probably unprecedented, in the long history of
world literature and philosophical thought!
What remains for me in this entry
now (so that it does not outgrow a more or less decent size), is to quote a few
of my most favorite aphoristic sentences from Kierkegaard, which are
subjectively the closest to my heart. Without any pretense to an even
subjective completeness, here are some of them:
By far the most striking in its
closeness to my thinking is the duet of adages on the freedom of thought, as
opposed to freedom of speech: How absurd men are! They
never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They
have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech… People demand freedom
of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought, which they seldom use. The
readers who are familiar with my pronouncements on the same subject may not be
able to tell them apart. (Need I note that my thinking on this has not been
influenced by Kierkegaard or by anybody else, and has been reached completely
independently as a result of my specific thinking on closely related subjects.)
The next pair of adages (I am
grouping them in such pairs myself) is closely interconnected, and presents
another close parallel to my formative thinking. As I was taught since
childhood to value leisure, the time when I can be by myself, reflecting on my
most recent life and experiences, or brainstorming, and drawing important
conclusions from such contemplations, I also came to realize how most people
seek the company of others just because they get bored being by themselves. So,
here is Kierkegaard, first on leisure, then on boredom: Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather
the only true good… Boredom is the root of all evil-- the despairing refusal to
be oneself… Incidentally, this ought to have been a triad all along,
as the following third adage would be best understood in conjunction with the
other two: Don’t forget to love yourself.
The last two of my selections are
both marvelous and splendidly thought-stimulating, each in its own way, but being
self-explanatory, they do not require any added comment, being best left by
themselves: Life can only be understood backwards;
but it must be lived forwards. And also this: The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and
his rule begins.
In the next entry we shall focus
on Kierkegaard’s criticism of Hegel, and on his subjective reinterpretation of
the meaning of truth.
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