about Søren Kierkegaard's "Either/Or"

This review is incomplete. In fact, this isn't properly a review of Either/Or at all. I struggled to stay interested, and by the latter third of this collection of essays, I was barely even skimming the text.

My edition is abridged, and the editor's preface reasons that passages in the original complete text could (read: should) have been edited out in the first place. After having pushed through a majority of these pages, I can understand the temptation to trim a text in hopes of avoiding the kind of wheel-spinning that can mar an otherwise valuable work.

Now, Either/Or.

Kierkegaard wrote and published Either/Or using pseudonyms. He even fronted the text with an editor's preface that gives a fictional account of the book's contents--various writings roughly divided into an aesthetically-oriented first half, followed by an ethically, duty-oriented second.

The aesthetic portion is a collection of essays largely about artistic appreciation, love, and boredom. It's also largely consumed with melancholy. Kierkegaard's fictional authors discuss real works of art, and focus on the abstract, lending otherworldly qualities to the finer arts. Early on, there is some discussion that reminds me of Plato's forms--things themselves and ideas of things.

The "Shadowgraphs" essay has some of the more interesting content in this half. Here is a striking, although very historically-situated passage:

The point in reflective sorrow is that the sorrow is constantly in search of its object; the searching is the unrest of sorrow and its life. But this searching is a constant fluctuation, and if the outer were at every moment a perfect reflection of the inner, to represent reflective sorrow would require an entire series of pictures and no one picture would require genuine artistic value, since it would not be beautiful but true. We would have to look at the pictures as we do at the second hand of the watch; the works themselves are invisible, but the inner movement constantly expresses itself in the constant change of the outer. But this change cannot be represented in art, yet it is the whole point.

And, soon after, Kierkegaard's fictional author compares the pain of broken engagements to that of a broken marriage; this comparison is especially meaningful coming from Kierkegaard because, prior to Either/Or's publishing, he broke off an engagement and was much scandalized for it publicly, and much tormented by it privately. He reasoned in his journals that he broke the engagement because he did not have faith, supposedly. In Either/Or, he writes:

What must evoke reflective sorrow even more ... is the fact that it is only an engagement that has been broken off. An engagement is a possibility, not something actual, yet just because it is only a possibility, it might seem that the effect of its being broken off would be less, that it is much easier to withstand this blow. And sometimes that may well be true. On the other hand, the fact that it is only a possibility that is destroyed tempts reflection much more to the fore. When something actual is brought to an end, generally the break is far more radical, every nerve is cut asunder and in itself the fracture, regarded as such, remains complete. When a possibility is broken off, the instantaneous pain may not be as great, but then it leaves one or another small ligament whole an unharmed, which becomes a constant source of continued suffering. The destroyed possibility appears transfigured in a higher possibility, while the temptation to conjure up such a new possibility is less when it is something actual that is broken off, because actuality is higher than possibility.

Then the book continues with exercises in art appreciation. The focus on seen and unseen aspects of art continue, as the speaker strives to see real works as higher representations. Obviously, Kierkegaard does not regard the aesthetic as the equivalent of hedonism.

The second half (maybe less than half) of the book focuses on ethical considerations and a sense of duty. I didn't necessarily see these halves as being in direct tension. But my attention started to wane. So much so that I won't continue here. I'll have to revisit this later.