Either… or

Or… or is a work of Søren Kierkegaard.

In this work, Søren Kierkegaard presents primarily the alternative between the esthetic lifestyle and the ethical life. It concerns a personal “choice” of each and everyone to decide which life it wants to carry out: “or” that of the esthète “or” that of the ethician.

According to this double structure, the work is composed of two essential parts of which first presents, by the means of several writings, of which in particular the Journal of the well-known seducer , esthetic life; the second part presents the ethical life.

The esthète, represented by the figures of the seducer, of Don Juan, which is that saw its life in the immediacy: it is what it is immediately; its life is governed by the desire. Thus, one can think that any man, in any case at the beginning of his life, was in an esthetic stage.

The ethician on the other hand made a choice: becoming aware of its validity as an individual and including/understanding his responsibility towards itself, it decided to want to carry out the general or rather to be carried out like individual in the general. It does not need, like the esthète, to be somebody of extraordinary or to be completely independent. The practical virtues that it rents are work, the marriage, the friendship.

Although with the reading the ethical stage appears preferable at the esthetic stage by its refusal to make of the man the slave of his desires, the life of the ethician, by contrast with that of the esthète, can appear tedious or repetitive and by there, a little its attraction loses.

It should not be forgotten that there exists at the bottom for Søren Kierkegaard a third “or”, namely the religious life. In this work, by not presenting the two stages of life like the true goal to realize, one can see there an indirect reference at this third stage (which would be the alternative to the precedents), but Kierkegaard, like so often, leaves the decision to the reader, being satisfied to let it guess by finishing his work by a section entitled " Ultimatum" , where the reader is made initiate by the sermon of a man of the church to the idea that with the author of human passion.

Inscription of the problems in Kierkegaardienne philosophy

In order to avoid a misconception alas running in the interpretation of the philosophy of Kierkegaard (and which is due mainly to the choice that seems, in a misleading way, to imply the esthetic/ethical duality), it is essential to integrate this work in the sum of the author from a chronological point of view.

Indeed, in spite, at the same time of the illusion of an alternative (“ Or… or ”), and concept of morals (which, naturally, would rather incline to represent the idea of a moral choice, and thus of a freedom in the decision of its mode of existence - esthetics or ethics), the philosophy of Kierkegaard is that of a determinism of the personal history, where the modes to be (esthetic, ethical, religious) are imposed stages of the advance of the heart during the life and not of the alternatives décidables.

In other words: one saw, by defect, aesthetically ab.initio , then this esthetic stage becomes exhausted as it develops. Arrived at his aporia, arrived at the moment when this mode to be does not bring any more the sufficient control to him on its existence, the individual loses his capacity definitively to carry out his existence through the feeling ( aesthesis in old Greek, from where the esthetic stage ), and enters an ethical process .

The ethical stage , as opposed to what the commonplace connotation of the word (as well as the traditional philosophical tradition) seems to indicate constitutes less one progress compared to its precedent (the esthetic stage ) that a reaction vis-a-vis the inevitable bankruptcy of this one. However there is no superiority of the one on the other, and this, not because of equivalence of both " stades" , but because of impossibility of deciding our interior provisions. It would be thus to be mistaken to see in Kierkegaard a moralist. One would speak, about it, much more precisely of a chronicler of the vicissitudes of the heart.

Without entering more in detail, it should be noticed that as of the Diapsalmata (first part of Or… or ) prevents that it feels “condemned to pass by all the experiments of the spirit”.

It goes without saying this is to be included/understood like a starting postulate of the author, determining the tonality of its philosophical company: scanning the successive methods of its heart, he testifies to his experiment. But, unlike good of other authors (including same the whole of the immoralists, Nietzsche in particular…) the philosohie of Kierkegaard is not really prescriptive : if you are an esthetic individual “ ” (a Don Juan…), will know that you will fall, that your spirit will want to take again control on your existence, will set up standards morals and you will become “moral”. If you are an ethical individual “ ”, if you are a moralizer, a person who live according to standards of life (that you fix them to you yourselves, or that you accept those of others… it does not matter: the ethical individual is, in general, that which denies that the moment is car-being worth, but lives by its attempts to achieve formalized objectives and projects which correspond to its idea of the Good), then will know that one day you will give up any “moralizing” effort, and will fatally reach the third and last stage: the religious stage . But Kierkegaard says neither to adopt a morals (neither even less which to adopt), nor to refuse morals. He does not say to live aesthetically, nor religieusement. He describes the obligatory course of his life, and in deduced, in filigree, the ternary structure of the life of any individual.

Esthetic stage, ethical Stage: test of confrontation between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

One can see, schematically, two reasons which invite to trace the features of a comparison between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche:

a meeting held on the two authors on the problematic character of the articulation between esthetic life (life of the immediacy, life of the power… that one could - a little boldly… - bring closer to the Dionysiaque at Nietzsche) and ethical life (life not inevitably austere, but always: existence lived like attempt towards a more perfect level of existence . What at the same time supposes to have an idea of the Good towards which one must tend, and at the same time to suppose that the moment present does not have to be regarded as perfect. Idea of the shape of the Good which would preexist to the action and would determine the goals of them… concept vaguely close to the Apollinien at Nietzsche).
the formulation become what you are , certainly expressly (and rightly) allotted to Nietzsche… though it already was, several tens of years earlier, employed by Kierkegaard to define the esthetic stage .

If one makes the assumption (purely didactic), if not of an assimilation, in any case of a certain equivalence between the Nietzschéenne designs and Kierkegaardienne of these two alternate and opposite poles of existence (namely: on the one hand, immediate life, without the intermediary of the ethical projects, where the direction is given by the feelings which the action gets; and in addition the médiée life, where perfectibility must always be postulated and requires representations of the idea of good), one can note a static agreement between the two authors out of the two stages (as well as also unfavourable descriptions of the lifelessness of the ethical existence); and a dynamic opposition on the stake residing in the articulation of these concepts. If Kierkegaard is seen passing by all the stages and crosses ethics like the patients cross one nevrotic period, and thus hardly sees there other stake but that of a life which is achieved according to a diagram indérogeable, Nietzsche sees a place of battle there, and undoubtedly the central stake of any existence: the practice of ethics must be rejected. “Become what you are!” is for Nietzsche an imperative command: refuse not to consider you perfect in each moment! (it is objectively bad to raise ethical questions : it is contradictory of thématiser the good like object to reach, and it is healthy to be thought always optimal…). The order is absolute at Nietzsche, because it is illogical not to be regarded as perfect (because it is impossible to be in the same moment as one is and impregnated of how-one-must-being). Kierkegaard does not have this claim to invalidate (due to inconsistancy) the ethical step. If it agrees with Nietzsche on the description of the ethical state (i.e. the thematisation, with the daily newspaper, of the variation which separates the situation from the individual of the situation in which it should be ), it N 'has no claim to denounce it. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche see, roughly speaking ethical/esthetic antagonism in the same way. But for the first it is about a passage violent, necessary and inescapable, one moment of the life to its following, when for the second, it is the place of a stake métamoral: there exists a transcendent morals, in particular founded on the refusal of the illogical behaviors, which refuses the moral existence.

synthetic mini-conclusion on this topic

Nietzsche : There thus exists only one requirement taking a moral form (i.e. posing what must be and what should not be): that not to make of morals. For all the remainder, the couple well/badly is not-relevant.

And the exit of ethics passes by a fight, a hygiene of the heart consisting with to return towards esthetics, to refuse to project to become other thing that what one is already. It is a question of turning back. It is about déconstruire this perversion of the esthetics, which is ethics. With the difference of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche thus sees both " stades" as in competition, and the possibility of a passage of the one with the other considers.

Kierkegaard : There does not exist transcendent morals (which would indicate one needs , or not, food with the idea of good and evil) because the individual does not have the choice between the ethical life and the esthetic life (not more than with the religious life). But there is not to rise against ethics, when well even one would not feel there at ease. (it is a common point of the two authors which of thématiser the greyness, heavinesses and, in a sense, the weaknesses of the ethical existence )

One will always finish by leaving there… but by the other end that at Nietzsche, and in a way more passive than at Nietzsche: no return towards esthetics is possible, and even less décidable, because ethics not builds at side esthetics, but on the ruins of the esthetics arrived at its exhaustion. Ethics (the search for values, and the moment determined by values, representations of the good…), as the stage which precedes it, will end itself in the entry in the religious stage.

External bonds

Enten-Eller. And livs-fragment of 1843 in vo under the pseudo one of Victor Eremita (in pdf, 27,3 Mo, on Google).
Introduction to '' the alternative (Or… Or…)''

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