The ethical life as the quest for selfhood

Abstract

In Chapter 4 I began the discussion of Kierkegaard's view of the aesthetic by distinguishing between the aesthetic as a universal dimension of human existence, and the aesthetic as a particular way of life, one of the stages or spheres of human existence. There is therefore a sense in which the aesthetic is a part of all human life, including the lives of those who live in the ethical or religious spheres. A similar distinction must be made for the ethical. In one sense the ethical must be seen as a dimension of all human lives; every human confronts questions about how life should be lived, what kinds of actions are permissible or forbidden, what kinds of character traits are desirable or undesirable, what is good and what is bad. As argued in Chapter 4, this is true even for the aesthete, for whom the ethical may appear as an unwelcome and tiresome intrusion. It is even more true, as we shall see in the next chapter, for the religious person. However, besides the ethical as a dimension of human life, Kierkegaard also speaks about the ethical as a specific way of existing, one of the stages or spheres of existence. Even here, however, things are not simple. I claimed in Chapter 4 that the Kierkegaardian account of the “three stages on life's way” is not a rigid, metaphysical theory, since Kierkegaard characterizes each of the three spheres differently in different contexts for different purposes.