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Soren Kierkegaard - Either/Or
In this episode, Roger Walburton explores Soren Kierkegaard's seminal work 'Either/Or,' which presents a complex examination of two distinct ways of life: the aesthetic and the ethical....
Soren Kierkegaard - Either/Or
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Hello, I'm Roger Walburton and this is the podcast of my book, Philosophy of the Classics.
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You can find out more about this book and others I've written at www.virtualphilosopher.org.
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Or you might like to listen to my other podcast that I've made with David Edmonds called Philosophy Bites.
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That's Bites with an i at www.philosophybites.com.
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So I'm KikaGuard, either or.
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Either or is more like a novel than a philosophical treatise, and like most novels,
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it's resistant to paraphrase. Nevertheless, its central concern is clear.
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It's the question asked by Aristotle, how should we live?
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KikaGuard's answer to this question is oblique enough to leave a trail of contradictory and
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sometimes confusing interpretations in its way. On the surface at least, it explores two
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fundamentally different ways of life, the aesthetic and the ethical. But it does this from within.
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The views aren't summarised, but rather expressed by two characters who are the
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fictional authors of the work. KikaGuard's writing has a playful quality. One aspect of this is his
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use of pseudonymous authorship. It's not just that KikaGuard writes under a series of pseudonyms,
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rather he creates fictional characters different from his own in whose voices he writes.
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The tone of either awe is set in the preface. The narrator, who is called Victor Elamita,
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tells the story of how he came by the manuscripts, which are published as either awe.
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He had bought a secondhand writing desk, an escritoire, which he had long admired in a shop window.
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One day, just as he was leaving for holiday, a draw of the desk jammed. In despair, he kicked the
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desk. A secret panel sprang open revealing a hoard of papers. These, which appeared to be written
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by two people whom he labelled A and B, he put into order and published. It emerges that B
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is a judge called Wilhelm. We never actually learned the identity of A. This story is, of course,
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a fiction and A and B are fictional characters. The story of the escritoire provides a metaphor
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for a central theme of the book. The discrepancy between appearances and reality, or as KikaGuard
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usually puts it, the inner is not the outer. The technique of using pseudonymous authors allows KikaGuard
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to distance himself from the views explored and expressed in the book and to hide his own position
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behind that of his characters. But it also allows him to get inside the various positions he evokes,
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to investigate them from the point of view of the inner life of imagined individuals,
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rather than by means of the cool abstractions which philosophers typically employ. This is an
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aspect of KikaGuard's method of indirect communication, a self-conscious attempt to convey truths
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about living human beings by showing aspects of their lives rather than describing abstract
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and impersonal concepts. Either. The first part of the book, called either, is the part that is
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usually read. Most readers find that A's writing is more interesting and diverse than the solid
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somewhat laborious section written by B. Very few of those who enjoy either bother to slog through
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every page of A, even in the abridged versions in which it usually appears. Nevertheless,
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parts of A provide a detailed, if biased, commentary on A's approach to life. The aesthetic approach,
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while defending B's own ethical approach. A's writing doesn't provide a direct description of
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his approach to life, rather it exemplifies it through its concerns and style of writing. The
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aesthetic approach to life. In simple terms, the aesthetic approach to life has at its heart
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the hedonistic pursuit of sensual pleasure. This doesn't adequately characterize KikaGuard's
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use of this term, since it suggests a brutish craving after physical satisfaction, whereas
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for KikaGuard, the aesthetic approach includes the more refined pleasure-seeking of the intellectual
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aesthetic. This easthead's pleasures may come from the contemplation of beauty and the refined
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appreciation of works of art, or they may include delight in the sadistic exercise of power,
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an attitude revealed in the section of either called the seduces diary. All these pleasures are
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sought by A. For KikaGuard, the aesthetic approach to life involves a restless seeking after new
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pleasures, since the worst that can happen to someone who adopts this way of life is that they
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become bored. Boredom, for the easthead, is the root of all evil. So A suggests a half-serious
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strategy for avoiding boredom, which he jokingly labels crop rotation. Crop rotation involves
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arbitrarily changing your attitude to life, or to whatever you happen to be involved in.
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Like the method by which farmers replenish the soil's nutrients, the arbitrary shifting of
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viewpoint should replenish the individual and help stave off boredom. A's example is of having
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to listen to a bore, as soon as A started concentrating on the drops of sweat running down the
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bore's nose, the bore sees to be boring. At this point, KikaGuard seems to sow the seeds of surrealism
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in his celebration of the arbitrary and of perverse approaches to life. He suggests, for example,
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just going to the middle of a play, or reading only the third part of a book,
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thereby getting a new and potentially stimulating angle on what could otherwise be tedious.
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The restless shifting of topics and styles in the essays that make up either reflects this
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constant search for new stimulation, characteristic of the aesthetic approach to life. This is
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most apparent in the opening section called the Epsilon Mater, Greek for Refrains, which is a
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series of fragmentary comments and effrosions. Other parts of either are presented as quasi-academic
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papers, or else most notably, in one case as a diary. The seduces diary is a novella within either.
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It's a brilliantly written account of the cynical seduction of a young woman, Cordelia,
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incorporating, as the title suggests, a diary. But also letters from the woman to her seduces.
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It stands as a work of literature in its own right, but within either it provides a case study
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of one way of living within the aesthetic approach, an attempt to live life poetically,
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rather than ethically. In the preface to either all, Victor Aermita, the fictional editor of the
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whole work, introduces the diary, which he claims to have found amongst the papers in the des.
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But there is a further level of concealment of authorship, in that the diary itself has a
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preface, allegedly written by someone who knew the protagonists. Aermita draws attention to what
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he calls this Chinese box, suggesting that the diary's editor might well be a fiction used by
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the seduces to distance himself from what it describes. Of course, as readers of either all,
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we are immediately to further level of remove from the events that were Aermita. Well aware
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that Aermita is simply another mask worn by Gehigard, and that the events that the diary describes
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are almost certainly creations of the philosopher's imagination, rather than a description of something
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that actually happened. We might also take his account of this distancing technique to apply
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equally to Gehigard's own use of pseudonyms and puzzles of authorship throughout either all.
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Aermita describes A's attitude to the seduces diary as possibly being like someone who
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scares himself as he recounts a frightening dream, suggesting that this might be why he has to hide
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behind the mask of an imagined editor. The seduces aim is to get a particular young woman to
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fall in love with him. He succeeds in this, and then withdraws all affection. His pleasure isn't a
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simple physical gratification, but a kind of psychological sadism. Seduction is the quintessential
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pastime of those who adopt the aesthetic approach to life, and it's significant that an earlier essay
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in either the immediate stages of the erotic is devoted to an examination of Mozart's Don Giovanni,
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an opera which follows the fortunes of a serial seducer. For A, Don Giovanni is the supreme
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achievement of a great composer. The underlying suggestion is that A is drawn to this opera,
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because in important ways the central character's lifestyle mirrors his own. The ethical approach
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whereas in either the reader has to work hard to extract a sense of the view that the writing
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illustrates and exemplifies. In all, views are stated explicitly and mostly directed against
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aspects of A's lifestyle. The pseudonymous author of all B or Judge Wilhelm not only sets out
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his own approach to life, but also criticises A's own. Thus, a far clearer picture of
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either's meaning emerges when you read or. In contrast to A's life spent in pursuit of pleasure,
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B advocates a life in which the individual chooses his or her actions. As B describes it,
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the life of the E-thete puts the individual at the whim of outside events and circumstances,
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since we can't simply choose the sources of our pleasure, but must rely on aspects of the world
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to stimulate us. The ethical approach, in contrast, is always motivated from within. It's not a matter
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of learning a set of rules and obeying them, but rather of transforming yourself into someone whose
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choices coincide with duty. From this point of view, the E-thete A is merely hiding behind a set of
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masks, shirking responsibility for his freedom. B believes that such an approach requires a kind of
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self-deception. The ethical approach requires self-knowledge. The point of adopting it is to transform
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yourself into what B calls the universal individual. That is, somehow to choose to become a model of humanity.
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This B claims reveals the true beauty of humanity in a way that the E-thete's purported pursuit of
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beauty never can. Readings of either or. An existentialist interpretation. According to the
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existentialist interpretation of either or, the reader is faced with a radical choice between the
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two approaches to life. There are no guidelines which indicate how to choose. We must choose one or
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the other, and thereby create ourselves through that choice. However, contrary to the views which
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dominated the Enlightenment, there is no such thing as our right answer to the question, how should I live?
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The reasons for choosing the ethical above the aesthetic only make sense if you're already committed
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to the ethical approach to life. To suggest that the aesthetic approach is evil is to imply that
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you've already accepted that there is a good evil distinction to be drawn. Similarly, the
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justifications for the aesthetic approach only appeal to the E-thete and will be ruled out as
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inconsequential by one committed to the ethical way of life. The pleasures of seduction, for example,
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would count for nothing in Judge Wilhelm's reckoning. On this reading, either or reflects the
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anguished position of all humanity. We find ourselves forced to choose, and through our choices we
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create what we are. That is the human condition. Existentialists have thus seen either or as a key
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text in the history of the existentialist movement. On this view, Kakergaard was one of the first
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philosophers to recognize the importance of radical choice in the face of a world in which no
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preordained value can be discerned. Thereby anticipating many of the themes which would occupy
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Jean-Paul Sartre a century later, it's certainly true that most 20th century existentialists have
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been influenced by Kakergaard's writing. The case for the ethical, once there is much in Kakergaard's
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text which supports an existentialist reading, some interpreters have seen the book as a thinly
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veiled advocacy of the ethical above the aesthetic. B sees through A's aestheticism and presents him
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with a solid, if stayed, alternative. Only through season control of your life and putting it
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beyond contingent events can you fulfil your nature. The ETH is more or less at the whim of what
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happens. The ethical approach ensures that the self remains intact, even if chance events thwart
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your goals and desires. One point against this interpretation by the law is that it contradicts
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his claim that there is no didacticism in the book. A further objection is that so skillful a writer
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as Kakergaard would not have presented his favoured approach to life in so dry and unpalatable
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form. It's far from obvious why he would have given the ease that A all the best lines and
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invented the stayed and pontificating Judge Wilhelm as the defender of his favoured view.
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Thinly veiled autobiography. Kakergaard met Regine Olson when she was only 14. He was 21. Not
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unlike the seducer in the seduces diary, he befriended her family and even her suitor. When Regine
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reached 17, Kakergaard asked her to marry him, and she accepted. However, Kakergaard couldn't go
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through with the marriage and broke off the engagement in 1841, just two years before either
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all was published, leaving Regine humiliated and in great distress. Some commentators have seen
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parts of either all as a response to his situation of more psychological than philosophical interest.
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On this reading, either presents the life of sensual pleasures that Kakergaard had led in his
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youth and would have to relinquish if he married, or, on the other hand, presents the case for
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marriage and the acceptance of social responsibilities that that entails. The book, either all,
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can thus be seen as a literary expression of the torment that led to the broken engagement.
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The philosophical surface is simply another screen, scarcely concealing the agonized soul in turmoil
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at the most significant choice he had to make in his life. This interpretation of either
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all may well be accurate, but it's entirely compatible with either of the two interpretations
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sketched already. It's interesting and informative to learn these biographical facts about the man
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Kakergaard, but ultimately, his writing stands or falls independently of its relation to his life,
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and the psychological motivations which gave him the energy to write. Criticisms of either all
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a false dichotomy. It's not obvious that the two ways of life exemplified by A and B cover all
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the options, there may be C, D, E, F and G to take into account. In other words, Kakergaard seems
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to suggest that if you reject the aesthetic, the only option is the ethical and vice versa.
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However, this is a simplistic reading of Kakergaard's position. Kakergaard, or at least the
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character Victor Aramita, considers the possibility that one person has written the text of both
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either and all, suggesting that perhaps the two positions need not be as incompatible as they
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initially seem. And Kakergaard need not be read as suggesting that these are the only two options
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available. Indeed, in subsequent writings he explicitly outlines a third approach, the religious
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attitude to life. Indeterminacy. It should be clear by now that either all is open to a wide
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range of interpretations, and that Kakergaard's original intentions are by no means easy to discern.
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It's a book which seems to have a profound message, yet critics aren't agreed about what that
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message is. Some say that this is because Kakergaard is unacceptably indeterminate about what he
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means. This is the consequence of the style of writing he's chosen, with fictional characters
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exploring lived philosophical positions. Since characters exemplify rather than state
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to their positions, there is some latitude for interpretation. Those who want simple views
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clearly stated in unambiguous prose are likely to be disappointed by Kakergaard's more poetic
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approach to philosophy.