In my previous post, I reconstructed Kierkegaard’s aesthetic model for existence briefly, pointing out the implications this way of living has for human relationships and for one’s sense of identity. This is not unproblematic, of course. Hence the rejoinder, on Kierkegaard’s part, to the implicit claims made by the pseudonymous A in praise of the aesthetic model. This response (which represents the “ethical” model of existence) is presented as a series of letters from another pseudonymous character, a certain Judge William, to A, in which the judge reminds the latter that his endless quest for variation, invention, diversion and rotation, in the aesthetic interest of warding off any and all hints of boredom, comes at a high price — nothing less than sacrificing being someone.
In fact, the judge reminds A, the more one strives to be “novel” in every successive situation, the more it becomes apparent that one is no one. The more one avoids commitment to another in either friendship or love — Johannes the Seducer’s golden rule, which ensures that he remains in control of every situation — the less of a chance one has of becoming a self. And the point of human existence, the judge argues, is precisely to find a way of becoming such a self, instead of losing oneself in a series of unconnected performances that ultimately amount to being merely a concatenation of fragments or masks. The appropriate model for cultivating such a development or becoming of a self, according to Judge William, is marriage, or more accurately, conjugal love, for this requires a commitment to another which, in turn, entails having to do battle with the most redoubtable of all enemies, namely time.
Why? Because time is the great tester of commitment. Recall the awareness, on the part of the aesthete, of the stultifying effect of boredom, which presumably accompanies, without fail, the repetition of the same thing. One may therefore expect marriage — being married to one person — to be supremely boring after the novelty has worn off, as it were. The judge has a remedy for the anticipated boredom, however — this is why he argues that, far from being less aesthetic than romantic love (the kind espoused by A), conjugal love is, in fact, more aesthetic than the former. In defending the aesthetic relevance of marriage, Kierkegaard’s magistrate is simultaneously promoting the ethical, in so far as marriage exemplifies a different “style” of life, compared to that of A.
In brief, contrary to the “loss of self” entailed by the aesthetic lifestyle, choosing an ethical way of living (exemplified by marriage) implies “the development of the self”. One could say that it offers one the opportunity to make of one’s self — or of one’s life — a “work of art”. Instead of an aesthetic mode of living having the exclusive claim to being susceptible to aesthetic categories, therefore, the ethical and beauty are thus intimately connected, according to Kierkegaard.
So, for example, under the pseudonym of the judge he counsels A that the “beautiful” of which the latter speaks (the beauty of a woman, for example) is “the individually beautiful”, or “a tiny factor or moment of the whole” which, so long as it is abstracted from the totality of the “movement” of history (the realm of ethics and freedom), is not really beautiful. On the contrary (in Kierkegaard’s words), ” … only when one regards life ethically does it acquire beauty, truth, significance …”, and ” … only when I regard life ethically do I see it with a view to its beauty …”
What Kierkegaard has in mind here becomes apparent when the judge proceeds to argue that the beauty he is able to perceive in everything, is simultaneously particular and universal, in contrast to the beauty that A finds in women, art or nature, considered in isolation from everything else.
In passing, I should note that these two “models” for living a human existence may simultaneously be regarded as exemplifying something other than ways to exist, specifically different models of art. The reason for this is that both of them display certain structural features that are equally illuminating regarding diverse works of art (in painting, architecture, sculpture, music, literature or cinema) as in the case of diverse personalities. This is so, despite the initial impression, created by the terms Kierkegaard employs for the two different types of human existence, that the “aesthetic” somehow pertains to the arts, while the “ethical” is related specifically to the domain of moral or ethical practice.
However, it should be apparent from the preceding (brief) reconstruction of these two existential paradigms that, regardless of the names Kierkegaard uses to distinguish between them, both have to do with aesthetic as well as ethical concerns: A’s choice to live his life “aesthetically” has a certain ethical and existential status, while the “ethical” life recommended by the judge is given an aesthetic justification. Living “aesthetically” is not ethically or existentially irrelevant for A (or for others subsumed under this category, such as the hedonists I alluded to in Part 1 of these posts); on the contrary, as the judge enables one to realise, it is ethically problematical because of its existentially fragmentary or non-integrated status.
Besides, if a person lives in such a way as to disintegrate into a concatenation of unconnected pseudo-selves — each one of which is no more than the nerve centre for another, distinct set of enjoyable or hedonistic experiences — there could hardly be a question of ethical action in terms of accountability or moral “autonomy”. On the other hand, living “ethically” as described by Judge William, entails a certain aesthetic integrity, otherwise one could not think of it along the lines of “becoming a self”, or making one’s life a “work of art”. The question is: what structural feature is it in each of these exemplars of human existence that is distinctive, and that lends itself to functioning exemplarily regarding distinct kinds of art as well?
The answer has already been supplied in the above discussion of the aesthetic and the ethical, and can be summarised in two contrasting words and their respective associates. These are: “fragmentary” or “unconnected” (characteristics captured in the words “becoming” and “flux”), and “integrated” or “unified” (traits summarised in the words “being” and “stability”). It is no secret that postmodernist art displays structural features variously recognisable under the rubric of “becoming”, “flux” or “fragmentation”, while modernist art typically exhibits the antithetical traits consonant with “being”, namely “unity” or “wholeness”.
For example, Frank Stella’s Newburyport of 1962 may be perceived as a modern(ist) artwork in these terms, as Karsten Harries’s discussion of it (in his book, The Ethical Function of Architecture) clearly demonstrates. Similarly, Orson Welles’s modern classic film Citizen Kane (1941), projects the conceit of wholeness and unity by offering a “conclusive conclusion”, as it were, through the connection of the word “Rosebud”, on the dying Kane’s lips, with the sled by that name, seen as it is thrown into the fire. In other words, the sled offers the key to a (modernist) psychoanalytical understanding of Kane’s relentless quest for something apparently elusive, namely his (prematurely lost) mother as metonymically represented by the sled.
In contrast to this, postmodern(ist) works such as Robert Rauschenberg’s collages, where some of their constituent components breach the frame — in this way subverting any semblance of wholeness and somehow “speaking with its own voice” (as Harries puts it in his The Meaning of Modern Art) — or open-ended and alternative-ending novels such as John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), are paradigmatic of the “dis-unity and flux associated with the postmodern.
In other words, in every artwork — as indeed, in accordance with Kierkegaard’s insights, in every person — there are countervailing tendencies of flux or instability, and being or stability (stabilisation). What a work (or a person) is, is ultimately determined by the question, which of these would gain the upper hand. It should be noted, however, that every person and every artwork is always precariously “stretched” between these different polarities, and that whichever one of them should dominate (and in so doing bestow its structural identity on the person or the work in question), it is never without a certain amount of violence, a certain coercive force that is employed to suppress the other. This is why I would like to go further (and show that Kierkegaard himself goes further) than the two Kierkegaardian models discussed so far. But that is for the next post.
Really interesting – can’t wait for instalment 3, particularly your poststructuralist take (alluded to in your response to a commentator in your previous post). Thanks.
I can’t help wondering, Bert, whether Kierkegaard’s musings would have turned out quite differently if he had never met Regine, not been left so much money by his father that he never had to ‘work for a living’, had not inherited his father’s tendency to depression, and had lived in a sunnier, warmer clime than Denmark’s (consider how Poms cheer up when they emigrate to South Africa). Breaking off his engagement to Regine clearly left him with an enormous sense of guilt, and for many years he picked away at it as if at a scab, producing archetypes with which few people could wholly identify and finally escaping into the arms of religious faith. For my money, he’s more interesting as a psychological study than as a philosopher. So, too, the French Existentialists of the post-war 1950s, and their camp followers, puffing away gloomily at Gauloise cigarettes.
Regine’s response to the hours she spent with Kierkegaard was exquisitely healthy. She married someone else and went to live in the West Indies.
Sir, I think you ought to set up a specialist blog for admiring readers. There are few academics or intellectuals looking in on this one. You are wasted on us (or so you’d no doubt like to think).
Thanks for giving us this three part input on Kierkegaard’s models of existence. I am enjoying and appreciative.
@ MLH
Speak for yourself.
Some of us enjoy reading Prof Olivier and try to get something from what he writes. In my experience, these blogs are best read with his previous blogs since many of them continue with a similar theme. His past writing on love, autonomy and edifying experience go quite nicely with this discussion of the ethical and aesthetic.
Certainly, the content can be quite heavy (academic or intellectual if you prefer) but Im sure that does not justify snide remarks.
John – I agree with most of the biographical things you say about Kierkegaard, and also that he is an interesting psychological ‘study’, but you underestimate his philosophical relevance, which I here try to lift out in only a small respect. Don’t you think the ‘archetypes’, as you call them, are illuminating regarding real people, even if (as I have indicated here), one seldom encounters them in pure form? Besides, it is well-known that there is often a hiatus separating the ‘real’ person and his or her work – I have often thought this about Heidegger, who comes across as thoroughly un-likeable in many respects as far as his character was concerned. (Although even there one finds contradictory elements; think of his relationship with Hannah Arendt, who confirmed her ‘faith’ in him after meeting with him post-2nd WW.) And yet, when one turns to Heidegger’s philosophy, one finds there undeniable originality and even, arguably, the stuff of philosophical greatness. Which reminds me of something Derrida once said to me, when I remarked that Heidegger was a ‘great thinker’ – Derrida chuckled, and then retorted: ‘Maybe you should say his thought was great’. That is spot-on. In psychoanalytic terms, this concerns the subject of ‘what is said’ (the symbolic), while the ‘real’ person is a complex tension at the level of all three Lacanian registers (the real, the symbolic and the imaginary).
MLH – No reason why one should not give non-specialists access to philosophy! I am against ‘specialization’.
I disagree MLH. Take from it what you can. Or not. But there’s no harm in being exposed to a bit of thoughtful stuff, whether it’s your scene or not. It can do no harm and may even do some good.
Sounds like this Kierkegaard oke needs to harden up
I suggest, Bert, that the value we place on another person’s thoughts and observations depends on how they square with our experience and the Weltanschauung it has produced. If, too, we suspect the person we’re listening to (or reading) doesn’t believe in what he’s saying, we’re likely to dismiss him as a fraud. As you report, Kierkergaard preached the virtue of marriage. Yet he never married. And his declared reason for not doing so was that the demands of married life would have got in the way of his work as philosopher and writer. The affair between the Nazi anti-Semite Martin Heidegger and the Jewish Hannah Arendt also has me wondering about the intersection of philosophers’ lives and the ideas they promote. I think there should be one, but I don’t expect you to agree with me.
I think what you are getting at is that there is no state or position that is ultimately right. Unity leads to inertia,stagnation whereas disunity often causes fracturing or instability. Our existence cannot be made up of either one or the other, we cannot move forward in a straight line, but have to duck and swerve to miss unforeseen perils. The strong grow complacent, with thick hard round shells that deflect disharmonious influences, while the fragmented do not have strong defenses. This allows new ideas to enter and possibly work together to make up the next strong harmonious unit.
Of these, I prefer the ethical model, for it asks you to be an integrated person.