"Selections From the Writings of Kierkegaard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kierkegaard Soren)

reflective kind.

Following this climax of unrestrained Сstheticism we hear in the
second part the stern demands of the ethical life. Its spokesman,
Judge William, rises in defense of the social institutes, and of
marriage in particular, against the slurs cast on them by his young
friend A. He makes it clear that the only possible outcome of the
Сsthetic life, with its aimlessness, its superciliousness, its vague
possibilities, is a feeling of vanity and vexation of spirit, and a
hatred of life itself: despair. One floundering in this inevitable
slough of despond, who earnestly wishes to escape from it and to
save himself from the ultimate destruction of his personality, must
choose and determine to rise into the ethical sphere. That is, he
must elect a definite calling, no matter how humdrum, marry, if
possible, and thus subject himself to the "general law." In a word,
instead of a world of vague possibilities, however attractive, he
must choose the definite circumscription of the individual who is a
member of society. Only thus, will he obtain a balance in his life
between the demands of his personality on the one hand, and of
the demands of society on him. When thus reconciled to his
environment his "lot" all the pleasures of the Сsthetic sphere
which he resigned will be his again in rich measure, but in a
transfigured sense.

Though nobly eloquent in places, and instinct with warm feeling,
this panegyric on marriage and the fixed duties of life is somewhat
unconvincing, and its style undeniably tame and unctious at least
when contrasted with the Satanic Verve of most of A's papers. The
fact is that Kierkegaard, when considering the ethical sphere, in
order to carry out his plan of contrasting it with the Сsthetic
sphere, was already envisaging the higher sphere of religion, to
which the ethical sphere is but a transition, and which is the only
true alternative to the Сsthetic life. At the very end of the book
Kierkegaard, flying his true colors, places a sermon as an
"ultimatum," purporting to have been written bya pastor on the
Jutish Heath. Its text is that "as against we are always in the
wrong," and the tenor of it, "onlythat truth which edifies is truth
for you." It is not that you must choose either the Сsthetic or the
ethical view of life; but that neither the one nor the other is the full
truth God alone is the truth which must be grasped with all
inwardness. But since we recognize our imperfections, or sins, the
more keenly, as we are developed more highly, our typical relation
to God must be that of repentance; and by repentance as by a step
we may rise into the higher sphere of religion as will be seen, a
purely Christian thought.

A work of such powerful originality, imposing by its very size, and
published at the anonymous author's own expense, could not but
create a stir among the small Danish reading public. And
notwithstanding Kierkegaard's consistent efforts to conceal his