SØREN KIERKEGAARD (1813–1855) THEMES, ARGUMENTS, AND IDEAS

Themes, Arguments, and Ideas

The Problems of Boredom, Anxiety, and Despair
Boredom, anxiety, and despair are the human psyche’s major problems, and Kierkegaard spends
most of his writing diagnosing these three ills. People are bored when they are not being
stimulated, either physically or mentally. Relief from boredom can only be fleeting. Passion, a
good play, Bach, or a stimulating conversation might provide momentary relief from boredom,
but the relief doesn’t last. Boredom is not merely a nuisance: a psychologically healthy human
must find some way to avert boredom. Conflicts between one’s ethical duty and one’s religious
duty cause anxiety. Social systems of ethics often lead one to make choices that are detrimental
to one’s spiritual health, and vice versa. The tension between these conflicting duties causes
anxiety, and like boredom, anxiety must be escaped for a person to be happy. Finally, despair is a
result of the tension between the finite and the infinite. Humans are frightened of dying, but they
are also frightened of existing forever. Kierkegaard believed that everyone would die but also
that everyone had an immortal self, or soul, that would go on forever. Boredom and anxiety can
be alleviated in various ways, but the only way to escape despair is to have total faith in God.
Having total faith in God, however, was more than simply attending church regularly and
behaving obediently. Faith required intense personal commitment and a dedication to unending
self-analysis. Kierkegaard thought that having total faith in God, and thus escaping despair, was
extremely difficult as well as extremely important.
The Aesthetic as the First Stage on Life’s Way
Kierkegaard proposed that the individual passed through three stages on the way to becoming a
true self: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Each of these “stages on life’s way”
represents competing views on life and as such potentially conflicts with one another.
Kierkegaard takes the unusual step of having each stage of life described and represented by a
different pseudonymous character. Thus, it becomes too difficult to ascertain which propositions
Kierkegaard himself upholds. This fits with Kierkegaard’s characteristic tendency to avoid
dictating answers. He preferred that readers reach their own conclusions.
The aesthetic is the realm of sensory experience and pleasures. The aesthetic life is defined by
pleasures, and to live the aesthetic life to the fullest one must seek to maximize those pleasures.
Increasing one’s aesthetic pleasures is one way to combat boredom, and Kierkegaard described
many methods of doing so. He proposes that the anticipation of an event often exceeds the
pleasure of the event itself, and so he suggests ways of drawing out anticipation. One suggestion
is to leave all of your mail for three days before opening it. Unplanned events can, at times, lead
to pleasures as great as anticipation, but the pleasure of planned events is almost entirely in the
anticipation.
The importance of the aesthetic is acknowledged, but it is also presented as an immature stage.
The aesthete is only concerned with his or her personal enjoyment, and because aesthetic
pleasure is so fleeting, an aesthete has no solid framework from which to make coherent,
consistent choices. Eventually, the pleasures of the aesthetic wear thin, and one must begin
seeking the ethical pleasures instead. The ethical life actually offers certain pleasures the
aesthetic life cannot. An aesthete can never do something solely for the good of someone else,
but we all know that doing things for others without personal motives can actually be incredibly
enjoyable.
The Ethical as the Second Stage on Life’s Way
Ethics are the social rules that govern how a person ought to act. Ethics are not always in
opposition to aesthetics, but they must take precedence when the two conflict. The aesthetic life
must be subordinated to the ethical life, as the ethical life is based on a consistent, coherent set of
rules established for the good of society. A person can still experience pleasure while living the
ethical life. The ethical life serves the purpose of allowing diverse people to coexist in harmony
and causes individuals to act for the good of society. The ethical person considers the effect his
or her actions will have on others and gives more weight to promoting social welfare than to
achieving personal gain. The ethical life also affords pleasures that the aesthetic does not.
Aesthetics steers one away from consistency, since repetition can lead to boredom. An ethical
person doesn’t simply enjoy things because they’re novel but makes ethical choices because
those choices evoke a higher set of principles. Kierkegaard uses marriage as an example of an
ethical life choice. In marriage, the excitement of passion can quickly fade, leading to boredom
and a diminishing of aesthetic pleasure. However, by consistently acting for the good of one’s
spouse, one learns that there are enjoyments beyond excitement. Still, the ethical life does little
to nurture one’s spiritual self. The ethical life diverts one from self-exploration since it requires
an individual to follow a set of socially accepted norms and regulations. According to
Kierkegaard, self-exploration is necessary for faith, the key requirement for a properly religious
life.
The Religious as Third Stage on Life’s Way
Kierkegaard considers the religious life to be the highest plane of existence. He also believes that
almost no one lives a truly religious life. He is concerned with how to be “a Christian in
Christendom”—in other words, how to lead an authentically religious life while surrounded by
people who are falsely religious. For Kierkegaard, the relationship with God is exclusively
personal, and he believed the large-scale religion of the church (i.e., Christendom) distracts
people from that personal relationship. Kierkegaard passionately criticized the Christian Church
for what he saw as its interference in the personal spiritual quest each true Christian must
undertake.
In the aesthetic life, one is ruled by passion. In the ethical life, one is ruled by societal
regulations. In the religious life, one is ruled by total faith in God. One can never be truly free,
and this causes boredom, anxiety, and despair. True faith doesn’t lead to freedom, but it relieves
the psychological effects of human existence. Kierkegaard claims that the only way to make life
worthwhile is to embrace faith in God, and that faith necessarily involves embracing the absurd.
One has faith in God, but one cannot believe in God. We believe in things that we can prove, but
we can only have faith in things that are beyond our understanding. For example, we believe in
gravity: we feel its effects constantly, which we recognize as proof of gravity’s existence. It
makes no sense, though, to say we have faith in gravity, since that would require the possibility
that, someday, gravity would fail to materialize. Faith requires uncertainty, and thus we can have
faith in God because God is beyond logic, beyond proof, and beyond reason. There’s no rational
evidence for God, but this is exactly what allows people to have faith in him.
The Pleasures of Repetition and Recollection
Repetition and recollection are two contrasting ways of trying to maximize enjoyment.
Repetition serves multiple purposes for Kierkegaard. First, it has an important aesthetic function.
People want to repeat particularly enjoyable experiences, but the original pleasure is often lost in
the repeating. This is due to the expectation that things will be just the same the second time as
the first time. The pleasure of expectation clouds the fact that the original experience wasn’t
undertaken with a specific idea of the joy it would cause. Repetition can produce powerful
feelings but usually only when the experience occurs unplanned. In this case, the pleasure might
even be magnified at the sudden resurgence of happy memories—in other words, the
recollection. There is pleasure in planned repetition, but it is a comfortable pleasure, not an
exciting one. While repetition offers the joy of anticipation—joy that seldom materializes in the
actual event—recollection offers the joy of remembering a particularly happy event. Recollection
can be cultivated along with the imagination to increase one’s day-to-day aesthetic pleasure.
Often, recalling a pleasant occurrence is more enjoyable than repeating the same event:
remembering the Christmases of your childhood is often more pleasant than Christmas is in
adulthood. Indeed, much of the pleasure of Christmas, for an older person, can come from
nostalgia. The pleasures of recollection, which are best enjoyed alone, are well suited to the
aesthetic life. Unplanned repetition is a truly aesthetic pleasure as well, while planned repletion,
such as that represented by marriage, affords more ethical pleasures than aesthetic ones.

Source: https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/kierkegaard/themes/ Retrieved January 8, 2019

Mike Sturm Nov 26, 2017Kierkegaard and the 3 Stages of a Full and Happy Life
What an Old Danish Philosopher Can Teach Us About Cultivating a Richer Existence

There are many ways to conceive of this huge block of time and movement that we call “life”.
But one of the big problems with capturing what it’s all about is reconciling the two conceptions
of life: the inner one and the outer one.

What I mean is that each of us lives both internally and externally. There is a way that our life
seems to those looking at it from outside, and a way that things look and feel to us from the
inside. The difference between the two is a difference of lived experience vs. observed experience.
It’s the difference between subjective and objective — between science and (for lack of a better
word) spirit.

In the 19th century, Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard identified 3 possible stages that a
person can move through in their lifetime: the aesthetic stage, the ethical stage, and the religious
stage. Most people only go through the first step, and mostly through the second step (though
many fall short even of that one).

Aesthetic Stage
The main motivation in this stage is pleasure. You could think of this stage as basically a from of
psychological hedonism (i.e., if it feels good, it is good). In this stage, people are after pleasure,
specifically the pleasure of experiencing beauty.

This is the fervor of one’s twenties — wrapped up in music, movies, and experiencing the wonder
of life. The objective of each day — and life in general seems to be to collect as much experience
of beauty and pleasure as possible.
I spent a long time in this stage — trying to gather all of the excitement and grandiose experience
that I could. I stayed up late, shirked responsibilities, and lived fast. My thought process was
entirely focused on the present, and entirely focused on myself. But I wasn’t focused on
enrichment (i.e., making myself better). I was focused on personal gain. And those are two
different things.

Enrichment involves becoming a better person. Gain involves just getting more — more stuff,
more experiences — but not necessarily becoming any better for it. I involved precious few others
in my life. I was not there for anyone, and as a result, nobody was really there for me. That’s the
aesthetic stage, and it’s a lonely and constantly disappointing existence.

Ethical Stage
In the Ethical Stage, a person has risen above her aesthetically focused mode of operation, and has
begun to follow the rules and laws of her society. Inclinations give way to obligations. We feel
responsibilities toward others — both particular others and others in general. We have kids, pets,
jobs and coworkers, neighbors, mature friends.

Our relationships in this stage are no longer understood as transitory — whereas in college or our
late adolescence, they were. There are more complex expectations, desires, and commitments in
place. We also tend to understand who we are in terms of those commitments.

In many ways, coming into the ethical stage is an act of throwing ourselves down in subservience 
— but in a positive and constructive way. Whereas we were once merely individuals, out for our
own gain and enrichment, we have now recognized principles worth submitting to. Now we
operate based on something other than our fleeting desires and appetites; we try to do the right
thing and the rational thing.

I entered this stage when I married and had children. It was a process. I slowly shed my concept
of who I was in terms of what I had, or what I had done, and began to see myself as someone
there for others — as a partner and a father. I also began my career, and I began to see myself as a
colleague and friend to those with whom I work. My objectives became much less about what I
could gain (whether material thing or experience), and more about what I could do to be a better
person for others.

That is the Ethical Stage — you realize yourself as intimately tied to others and society, and enrich
those ties. It is where many of us exist as adults. But it is not the end of the stages of existence.

“Religious” Stage
For Kierkegaard, the highest stage of life that humans can hope to be is what he calls the
“Religious” Stage. Now, Kierkegaard was a Christian — that’s no secret. But the “religious” stage
does not essentially involve any particular deity or belief system. It’s not about that. Rather, it’s
about progressing past the previous two stages in life — and onto
something profound and pulsating.

The move from the Aesthetic Stage to the Ethical Stage is about moving away from particular
things (possessions, experiences, people) and toward general things (principles, obligations, order
& progress). But after some time, that can begin to feel routine. It can feel as if there is no higher
purpose in it, other than to continue on doing the right thing — fulfilling obligations.

This final stage involves something more: a leap of faith. For Kierkegaard, this meant taking the
leap of faith in a deity. But the characteristics of the leap can be (and I think should be)
generalized to other things. The leap of faith involves embracing a belief in something that you
may not be able to prove to others. It involves the kind of faith or (to use a less loaded term)
confidence that comes from an internal passion and excitement. But it is the kind of belief
that moves you because it is utterly individual and unique. Kierkegaard describes the feeling as
“simultaneously to be out on 70,000 fathoms of water and yet be joyful.” It’s a kind of awesome
fear and excitement, all wrapped up into one.

We read about this leap all of the time — in the form of those who have taken it more publicly.
Visionaries and thought leaders who press toward the unknown future with a seemingly
unmatched clarity. But not those in it for the financial gain or the glory — those who are in their
chosen pursuit for its own sake. In other words, no passion and purpose heartfelt on an individual
level, the reason it’s not about the individual, but rather the art, science, or mission being
pursued. In short, it is about giving ourselves over to something higher than just us or just our role
in society.
Source: https://medium.com/@MikeSturm/kierkegaard-and-the-3-stages-of-a-full-and-
happy-life-a813c5bbdcb3 January 8, 2019

Defending Christianity: Kierkegaard’s 3 Stages of Life

nstead of aiming to provide arguments for the truth of Christianity, Negative Apologetics
examines the disastrous consequences that would result if Christianity were false. In this sense,
Negative Apologetics resembles existentialism. The Danish existentialist Soren Kierkegaard
(1813-1855) famously thought that life is lived on three different stages or planes: Aesthetic,
Ethical, and Religious. Kierkegaard’s apologetic is one of the best exemplifications of Negative
Apologetics. We’ll examine each to see why.

Stage 1: Aesthetic
The first stage on life’s way, according to Kierkegaard, is the Aesthetic. This is the stage of
sensuality and pleasure. The aesthete seeks to defeat boredom by maximizing pleasure. Man at
this stage needn’t be hedonistic; he can be cultivated and reflective. Nevertheless, life revolves
around sex, money, art, music, anything that brings personal enjoyment. He is ruled by his
passions.

The problem is that ‘this-worldly pleasure’ is ephemeral. A life defined by fleeting pleasures is
one in constant motion. There’s no solid framework from which to operate. Decision making is
built on a foundation of incoherence and inconsistency. Eventually the pleasures of aesthetics
wear thin and man becomes bored of fighting boredom. Despair, rather than happiness, is found
at this stage.

Stage 2: Ethical
The second stage on life’s way is the Ethical. When the pleasures of aesthetics wear thin, one
must seek ethical pleasures instead. The ethical life is built on a foundation of morality. Life is no
longer about satisfying personal passions, but rather about satisfying the demands of moral
obligations (be it absolute or cultural). At this stage, moral conformity becomes the greatest
good.

The problem here is that a transitional leap from the aesthetic to the ethical ends in a worse kind
of dissatisfaction than boredom. In the second stage of life, man learns that he cannot live up to
the demands of morality. The more he tries to conform and do what is required of him, the more
he is made painfully aware that he cannot. The ethical life ends in crushing guilt and utter
despair.

Stage 3: Religious
The third and most progressive stage, according to Kierkegaard, is the Religious. Once we
understand that we are destined to sin, we can understand there’s only one way out. Through
faith, we can come to embrace forgiveness of sin and enter into a personal relationship with God.
“If we can accept God’s forgiveness, sincerely, inwardly, contritely, with gratitude and hope, then
we open ourselves to the joyous prospect of beginning anew.” (source)

Some believe that for Kierkegaard, the transition from the ethical stage of life to the religious is a
leap of faith, a criterion-less choice. This is because Christian dogma is characterized by
absurdity [1]. Unless man makes this criterion-less leap, his own existence will be characterized
by absurdity. His life will remain in utter despair.

Kierkegaard was in essence saying, “In this life there are two choices: Either live a life of despair
(stages 1&2), or embrace the absurd (stage 3) and live a life of fulfillment.”
Assessment
The first important thing to note in our assessment is that, as explained above, Kierkegaard
believed that “reason” and faith were in some way at odds with one another [1]. While there
were prominent Christians that held a similar view in the past (see Wittgenstein, Pascal, and
William James), it isn’t endorsed by many contemporary Christian philosophers. So even if
Kierkegaard actually thought that the religious stage of life requires embracing the logically
absurd, that isn’t something Christians are necessarily committed to (this is also relevant).

The second important observation is that the first 2 stages are compatible with atheistic moral
realism. In other words, Kierkegaard’s Negative Apologetic doesn’t depend on establishing that
atheism entails moral relativism; it’s just as strong against the atheist that affirms objective moral
values and duties. So even if the intrinsic value of human beings can be squared with blind
evolutionary forces, the atheistic life (characterized by stages 1&2) still ends in despair.
Aesthetic pleasures in life eventually grow thin. A life built on fleeting pleasures is bound for
incoherence and boredom. Likewise, the person that consistently and pursuantly conforms to the
standards of morality, even on atheism, will inevitably discover that it can’t actually be done. The
ethical life is impossible to live.

Whatever stage the atheist finds themselves in, the only solution is the embrace of Christianity.
However, and importantly, this needn’t be at the cost of embracing “absurdity.” There are good
reasons to think that Christianity is true (see here and here).

Conclusion
Kierkegaard’s Negative Apologetic closely resembles a common way of presenting the Gospel.
In Tactics, Greg Koukl presents the Gospel to a lawyer by (a) establishing the belief that wrong-
doing deserves punishment and (b) getting the lawyer to admit that he’d done wrong things and
therefore deserved punishment. Christianity provides a succinct solution to this problem. Jesus
came and died for us, He bore our sins and endured the pain and suffering we deserved as
punishment so that we can be reconciled with the Father. Kierkegaard called this absurdity, I call
it love.
http://capturingchristianity.com/negative-apologetics-kierkegaard-3-stages-of-life/ January 8,
2019