Fractured Passion in Kierkegaard's Either/Or

Abstract

The authorship of Soren Kierkegaard has long been thought to be one unified by a religious purpose that connects the many diverse perspectives present in his corpus-and with good reason, since Kierkegaard himself explicitly made this claim about his life's work.1 Recently, the efforts of several scholars have called this interpretation of Kierkegaard's corpus into question, often by deconstructing the religious sphere of existence presented in the corpus and/or by discrediting the religious intentions of Kierkegaard as an author.2 This project shares these scholars' goal of locating disruptions of unity and irruptions of uncontainable multiplicity in the Kierkegaardian corpus. However, rather than pursue this goal by focusing on the texts that deal with the religious aspects of Kierkegaard's corpus, I will examine the ethical sphere of existence as presented in Either/Or.3 By examining the role of ethical in Either/Or, this essay will uncover the fractured composition of ethical passion, which serves to disrupt unity and reveal multiplicity. As Judge William presents it in Part II of that work, ethical is composed of a twofold demand that conflicts with itself. As the distinctive characteristic of ethical choice, is responsible for the creation of the unified, continuous self that distinguishes ethical existence from aesthetic existence as presented in Either/Or and that enables a person to progress to the highest (religious) sphere of existence. However, ethical is also that by which a person comes to discover that her choice is wrong and thus should be abandoned. As we will see, while ethical creates the resoluteness of the ethical self and the concomitant task of continually renewing one's commitment through the repetition of one's choice, it at the same time creates the possibility of abandoning one's choice through its power to reveal the rightness or wrongness of the choice. Ethical simultaneously provides for both the need for continuity and the possibility of the disruption of that continuity, a dual provision that reveals the fractured composition of ethical passion. This fracturedness is crucial because it ruptures the necessity of the unity of the person that is formed in passionate choice. The very act of passionate choice that gives the self its unity is the act by which the creation of that self is undercut. Instead of guaranteeing the unity of the self, ethical opens up the possibility for the creation of a person that is characterized not by her unity, but by a mosaic multiplicity of voices. But before we unfold the various possibilities and demands of ethical passion, let us remind ourselves of Judge William tells us about the role that plays in ethical choice. In his letters to the aesthete, in which he tries to seduce the aesthete into choosing so that the aesthete might make the leap into the ethical, the judge says that what is important in choosing is not so much to choose the right thing as the energy, the earnestness, and the pathos with which one chooses.4 It is that is ultimately definitive of the ethical because it is that brings the self into existence: Since the choice [of the ethical person] has been made with all the inwardness of his personality, his inner being is purified.... The person who chooses only esthetically never reaches this transfiguration.... Despite all its passion, the rhythm in his soul is only a spiritus lenis (weak aspiration). (E/O II:167) Whatever passion the aesthete has for something, it is not genuine because it is not strong enough to sustain itself. And as a result of his lack of (real) passion, the aesthete never transforms himself into a self. The self that is created through ethical choice is one that is characterized by its resolute commitment to that which it has chosen. The value of one's choice is not measured by the intensity felt when choosing it, just as the value of a beer is not assessed by the amount of foam it produces when one pours it, as Kierkegaard tells us in his journal: The thinnest beer can effervesce just as much as the strongest, but the difference is that the thin beer holds its foam a minute at most and the strong beer holds it in proportion to its strength. …