Summary: Either/Or (page 2)

It is in 'The Seducer's Diary', a few pages earlier, that Kierkegaard presents a worthy representative of this type in action.

Johannes takes an interest in the beautiful Cordelia and sets himself the goal of winning her favours. He does not truly love her: it is only from an erotic and physical point of view that she captures his attention. As a seducer, love is an empty notion for him—a feeling he has never known, which he can only imitate by giving it the appearance of reality in the eyes of his future victims.

To seduce her, he devises a subtle and complex strategy. Patiently, he gradually tightens the bonds between them. An engagement—of which Cordelia herself is the first to be surprised—seals this long process. But Johannes still does not have what he wants. To hasten matters, he feigns coldness and draws back, bringing about the breaking-off of the engagement. The psychological upheaval this causes the poor Cordelia leads her to see him again and give herself to him. He then leaves her, dishonoured—in that puritan society which nineteenth-century Denmark still was—having achieved his aim.

From an ethical point of view (the second stage of the spirit), this is abject; but from the aesthetic point of view, it is a success: he has reached his goal—pleasure. The seducer mimics love, but it is only its shadow. He makes love ridiculous, and more generally anything that is sacred in this world, committing himself to no serious project whatsoever.

Of course, not all aesthetes behave in this way. But there is, in their conception of life as such, nothing that could lead them to condemn such an attitude: for them, good and evil are merely empty notions, devoid of meaning.

These few lines will probably be enough to give a first sense of the aesthetic stage.

But we will gradually see, as we read this chapter, what Kierkegaard means by it.

Judge Wilhelm does indeed refer to the aesthete's ironic streak, tinged with nihilism. When such a person is asked about a choice to be made, this is how he would reply: Yes, I fully understand: two solutions are possible. One can either do this, or one can do that. Here is my sincere opinion and my friendly advice: do it—or do not do it—you will regret it all the same. ¹

Such, then, is the aesthetic view of choice. As we can see, it conceals, beneath a humorous varnish, a deep bitterness—a disenchanted view of life.

In fact, we have already encountered this idea: Kierkegaard develops it fully in one of the aphorisms that open the book:

Marry, and you will regret it; do not marry, and you will regret it too; marry or do not marry, you will regret it all the same […] Laugh at the world's follies, you will regret it; weep over them, you will regret that too […] Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret it all the same […] This, gentlemen, is the sum total of life's wisdom.

As we can see, regret applies not only to each of the two branches of the alternative, but to the alternative itself.

This underlying nihilism within the aesthetic view of life emerges in two other aphorisms:

My soul is so heavy that no thought can bear it, no beat of wings can lift it into the ether […] upon my soul there weighs an oppression, an anxiety that seems to foretell an earthquake.

How insignificant and empty life is! A man is buried: one follows him to the grave, throws three spadefuls of earth upon him; one arrives by carriage, and returns home by carriage […]. What are seventy years? Why not have done with it once and for all? Why not stay there, not enter the carriage, but go down into the grave?

This nihilism is masked—hidden even from itself, and from others—behind the mask of laughter: Life is a masquerade, you say, and that gives you an inexhaustible source of amusement.

The aesthete, then, is not transparent to himself, and is therefore enigmatic—an enigma that the moralist, in the person of Judge Wilhelm, pierces easily enough: For that is what you want: you want to annihilate everything.

Where does the aesthete's nihilism come from? By what process is he led to such an outcome?

To answer this question, Kierkegaard now focuses on choice itself. What is it to choose? What are the stakes and the modalities of this very particular act?

In fact, it is through choice that I gradually build my identity, that I become what I am, that my self is constituted—shaped and made precise: The choice itself is decisive for the content of personality; through choice it sinks down into what has been chosen, and if it does not choose, it withers away.

Since Aristotle, choice has often been understood in terms of deliberation. Deliberation is the act in which the mind considers possible alternatives in turn, calculates consequences, and by this intellectual operation prepares the moment of choice—which belongs to the will. If deliberation is conducted properly, we then have an enlightened choice.

Kierkegaard rejects this overly intellectualist conception. Deliberation is only an abstraction, which has no true existence, for it presupposes that the objects it concerns—the possible choices—remain external to the self. The mind would thus be able to analyse them coldly, since there is no relation between it and them, [and] it can remain indifferent towards them.

¹ Our translation. The references for the quotations are available in the book Kierkegaard: A Close Reading