Summary: Either/Or (page 3)

In reality, what is to be chosen stands in the deepest relation to the one who chooses, especially when the choice concerns a vital question. ¹

Called upon—shaken to the core by the choice he must make—confronted with the fact of his own responsibility, the first reaction of the free subject is… flight. He postpones the choice, puts it off until later, through deliberation, by endlessly weighing up possible consequences. That is why deliberation no longer appears as a prelude to choice, as the tradition had it, but rather as what obstructs and delays it.

To illustrate this, Kierkegaard takes the example of a ship's pilot: just as the pilot cannot halt the vessel's progress for a moment in order to calculate—through a long deliberation—whether it will crash on the reefs, so a human being cannot suspend the course of his life for even an instant in an abstract deliberation in order to make his choice.

This mere delay, produced by deliberation, exposes him to wholly damaging consequences: A moment will come at last when the question is no longer "either—or", not because he has chosen, but because he has neglected to do so; or, if you like, because others have chosen for him—because he has lost himself.

The moment of choice, then, is as important as the choice itself: The instant of choice is for me a very grave matter. Kierkegaard here revalues the ancient notion of the 'opportune time': That is why it is important to choose—and to choose in good time.

The aesthete is precisely the one who is trapped by deliberation: he postpones the moment of choice, endlessly analyses the consequences of every project, and in the end commits himself to none of them, coming to view them only with mockery.

Kierkegaard describes this phenomenon with some amusement:

Either pastor—or actor. That is the dilemma. Now all your passionate energy awakens; reflection, with its hundreds of arms, seizes upon the idea of becoming a pastor. You find no rest, day or night, thinking about it; you read every book you can lay your hands on […]
Now you have finished: you can speak about the pastoral office with more competence, and apparently more experience, than many another who has been a pastor for twenty years […]. That may well be true—but you have not become a pastor.
Now you behave in the same way with regard to the second problem, and your artistic enthusiasm almost surpasses your ecclesiastical eloquence. At last you are ready to choose. Yet one may be sure that [during this period of reflection you have discovered many things, and so] a new "either—or" appears: man of law—perhaps advocate. […] So your life goes on […] you have not advanced a single step.

We can now see the process by which the aesthete is led to nihilism: Then the thread of thought snaps; you become impatient, passionate; you set everything ablaze […] You despise men, you make them ridiculous, and you have become what you most detest—a critic, a universal critic across all the faculties.

And yet Judge Wilhelm runs into a difficulty. He reproaches Johannes—and beyond him the aesthetic approach—for failing to make choices. And yet Johannes seems to have made one: the choice to take leave of the world. Nihilism seems to rest on a choice as deep as the choice to become moral. What, then, can one reproach him for?

Judge Wilhelm sweeps this objection aside with four answers that converge:

- the aesthete has not chosen the better part

- in reality, he has not chosen at all

- he has chosen only in a figurative sense

- it is an aesthetic choice, which is not a real choice

How are we to understand this? What is a 'real choice' for Kierkegaard—if the expression has any meaning?

This brings us to the conception that stands opposed to the aesthetic approach to existence: the ethical conception.

The ethical approach gives meaning to the notions of good and evil—and, beyond that, the most absolute meaning of all: existence acquires meaning only through these notions, which the aesthete, for his part, rejects as mere empty concepts.

What Kierkegaard argues, however, is that genuine choice in the absolute sense of the term exists only within the ethical sphere:

Wherever, in a stricter sense, there is a question of an "either—or", you can always be sure that the ethical has something to do with it. The only absolute "either—or" that exists is the choice between good and evil.

Yet Kierkegaard refines his claim. In fact, the choice in the absolute sense—the choice that conditions all the others—is not the one we must make between good and evil. It is, rather, the choice we must make between the ethical and the aesthetic conceptions of existence.

We might even go further: by choosing the ethical, a person brings the very possibility of choice into existence. By turning towards the aesthetic, by contrast, he abolishes any possibility of anything that might remotely resemble a choice.

The reason is simple: with the aesthetic disappears the seriousness of the spirit. In that sphere, only caprice has a place; no genuine will can emerge. Caprice, which chooses only for the moment, and the moment after […] may choose something else, is therefore only an insubstantial force upon which no existence can be built.

That is why Judge Wilhelm maintains that what matters most in choosing is not to choose what is right, but the energy, the seriousness and the passion with which one chooses.

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