[MUSIC]. After he returned to Copenhagen, Kierkegaard continued to work on his manuscript and he published Either/Or on February 20th, 1843, that is, two years after The Concept of Irony. Now as we've seen, in the second part of The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard examined the use of irony in the German romantics. Now, here in Either/Or, Kierkegaard tries to create a literary character like that of the romantic ironist in the figure of the aesthete. So in a sense one can say that in The Concept of Irony, he gave a third person description of the modern ironist, but then in Either/Or, he moves to a first person description from the perspective of the ironist himself. Moreover he moves from an academic work in the The Concept of Irony, which is in dialogue with other academic works and which quotes extensively in German and Greek to a literary work, which allows him a greater degree of literary freedom. The first volume of Either/Or ostensibly written by the aesthete A, consists of a series of different texts in which we can discern many traces of his earlier analysis of romantic irony from his previous work. For example the final text in the first part is entitled The Seducer's Diary which tells the story of a certain Johannes who seduces the naive young woman Cordelia. Johannes strikes the reader as calculating and unfeeling in the way he goes about seducing Cornelia. He seems to disregard all conventional ethics and to act merely to satisfy his own desires. Johannes mentions humourously this place, which is the old college called Regensen, much of student life at the University of Copenhagen during Kierkegaard's time, took place at colleges like this one, where the students lived, ate and studied. Students gathered here to debate the important topics of the day such as Martensen's lectures, Hegel's philosophy and so on. In The Seducer’s Diary, Johannes the seducer writes, "If I wanted to impart to a young man a distaste for tobacco, I would take him into some smoking room or other in Regensen.". But one of the clearest texts that illustrates the esthete as a romantic ironist, is the first chapter of the book entitled, The Diepsolmoton. This is a series of scattered aphorisms written and collected by aesthete. They seem to ramble from one topic to another with no clear organization or rules. The aesthete seems to jot down whatever happens to pop into his mind after he has an experience or reads a text. When one reads these aphorisms at first one has the impression that they are rather flippant and perhaps a bit confusing, but as one continues to read, the world view and personality of the aesthete begin to emerge. Let's take a few examples. The aesthete writes I prefer to talk with children. One may still dare to hope that they may become rational beings. But those who have already become that, good Lord. What does this tell us about the aesthete? Children are naive and inexperienced in the ways of the world. According to the romantic view, adult life has been corrupted by society we have been taught to repress our feelings into a beta rules. Adults develop different ways to hide their true feelings they engage in strategies and intrigues in order to get what they want. But this undermines honest and open human relations and corrupts individuals. Children are mercifully free from this since it takes time to learn such things. Thus, the aesthete prefers to talk with children who are still in touch with their own basic human feelings and emotions. They're true to themselves, and don't try to dissemble who they are. To be sure, they've not yet developed the rational capacity and thus, might be subject to temper tantrums occasionally. But even in this, there's a certain authenticity, and one knows exactly what a child wants and doesn't want. Knows exactly where one stands with children. By contrast, with adults, one's never certain, since they often strategically hide who they really are and what their true intentions might be. Although adults have developed their rationality, it's used in a negative way, to plot and deceive others. By saying that he prefers to talk with children, the aesthete is, in a sense, offering an indictment against bourgeois culture, which corrupts people, and destroys the true human spirit found in childhood. In another of the aphorisms, the aesthete exclaims, "I don't feel like doing anything." And he goes on to enumerate a stream of different activities that he doesn't feel like doing, some of which are even the opposite of one another. What does this tell us about this person? The romantic ironist is also a kind of nihilist. He doesn't believe that there's anything that has any intrinsic truth or value. We remember how the ironist exploited this in order to invent himself, so to speak. But the negative side of this disposition is that if nothing is true or viable, then there's no reason to do anything. For the person who truly believes this it would be very difficult to be motivated to do anything at all. Why would you study hard if you really believe that it didn't matter at all? Why would you read a book or take a class if you really believed that it didn't matter or nothing meaningful would ever come of it? This is the view of the aesthete, and it leaves him in a state of lethargy, with no inclination to do anything at all. In another aphorism the aesthete claims the most ludicrous of all ludicrous things, it seems to me, is to be busy in the world, to be a man who is brisk at his meals and brisk at his work. Here the aesthete criticizes the sense of importance that people invest in bourgeois life They take themselves very seriously, and their work and activities become monumental labors of world historical importance. From the perspective of the nihilist, none of this really matters. Nothing in bourgeois life has any deeper or lasting meaning. Seduced by the routine of daily life, people become unreflective and fail to see the wider perspective. Instead, they deceive themselves and try to conceive of their lives as profoundly important and meaningful. They don't see that they will die and it will all have come to nothing. They could be struck by a falling roof tile and die on the spot. This example that the aesthete uses sounds absurd at first, but it underscores the fragility of life and human existence. It reminds us that for however busy we are with our lives and daily activities, we should not lose sight of the ultimate questions of life. We become absurd and comic when we pretend that we will live forever, and when we invest our trivial pursuits and endeavors with great importance. The voice of the nihilist comes out perhaps most clearly in the aphorism that begins, "How empty and meaningless life is". The aesthete contemplates the death of a man. When we experience the death of another person. It's always an occasion to recall our own mortality. We feel comfort that we still have some time left to live. But the aesthete's point is that this is little consolation in the big picture. Even a long human life is short on a larger cosmic scale. What is really won by living a few years longer? Moreover, the length of life doesn't invest it with any meaning. From this perspective, even things that might seem important, such as life and death, are, in fact, matters of indifference. Two aphorisms further down in the text, he beckons "Come, sleep and death; you promise nothing, you hold everything." In another aphorism, the contrast between childhood and adulthood is again thematized. The aesthete recalls that when he was young, he didn't laugh at things, presumably since he was only learning how the world worked. Then, when he learned about life and society, he could only laugh at it. The aesthete gives a long list of things that are taken to be important by bourgeois society and claims that they're all worthy of laughter. He writes, "I saw that the meaning of life was to make a living, its goal to become a councilor, that the rich delight of love was to acquire a well-to-do girl, that the blessedness of friendship was to help each other in financial difficulties, that wisdom was whatever the majority assumed it to be. That enthusiasm was to give a speech, that courage was to risk being fined ten dollars. That cordiality was to say may it do you good after a meal. That piety was to go to communion once a year. This I saw and I laughed." The aesthete thus openly mocks the virtues of bourgeoise society. In each case, he enjoins the reader to deposit higher ideals. Surely love must be something more than marrying a rich girl. Friendship must be something more than loaning money to someone in need. Religious piety must be something more than just going to communion once a year. The aesthete doesn't elaborate on these things, but it's clear that he thinks that bourgeois culture makes a mockery of them. By means of these rich aphorisms, Kierkegaard introduces his reader to the character of the aesthete. Which was a figure that he began to study in The Concept of Irony in connection of Schlegel in romantic irony. Today we know Either/Or is Kierkegaard's great breakthrough work but at the time, the immediate reception of the work was very mixed. It caused a great stir in intellectual circles of the Danish Golden Age. People were intrigued by the odd pseudonym Victor Eremita and they saw in the book something very original but the work was also offensive for some people. Part one of the text, that is the part written by the aesthete, seemed to many to display as one of arrogant superiority that many people also saw in Kierkegaard's own personality. The aesthete seems to take himself to be more intelligent than his fellow citizens, and this places him beyond the sphere of bourgeois ethics. Especially, The Diary of the Seducer from the first part of the work offended the sensibilities of the contemporary reader. Johannes the Seducer's cynical, manipulative behavior made for uncomfortable reading. And one asked, what kind of a mind could have produced such a figure. The leading literary critic of the day, Johan Ludvig Heiberg, gave a short review of the work in his journal, Intelligensblade, on March the first, 1843. Heiberg lived here in this house with his wife, the actress Johanna Louisa Heiberg. Heiberg seems to have been rather annoyed by Kierkegaard's Either/Or, which he regarded as poorly organized and rambling. his review is thus largely dismissive of Kierkegaard's effort. Heiberg begins by poking fun at the enormous size of the work by writing, it is therefore almost with respect to its volume that the book must be called a monster, for it is already impressive in its size before one knows what spirit lives in it, and I do not doubt that if the author wanted to let it be exhibited for money, he would take in just as much as by letting it be read for money.". Here, Heiberg sets a tone that seems to indicate that he doesn't take the work entirely seriously. While he grants that the book contains some occasional interesting reflections or formulations He says that it's confusing and difficult to follow. Moreover he claims the reader loses patience with the author and quickly wants to move ahead. Heiberg imagines a reader who after having finished part one loses patience and closes the book with the words enough! I have enough of Either, and I'll have no Or. Kierkegaard was deeply offended by this and could never forgive Heiberg, he responded to it with an article in the journal The Fatherland, dated March 5, 1843, still under the pseudonym Victor Eremita. The article is entitled, A Word of Thanks to Professor Heiberg. Kierkegaard in a sense takes the same approach as Socrates does with his interlocutors. He begins by acknowledging Heiberg's great expertise in literary affairs, just as Socrates begins by acknowledging that the other person is an expert in whatever it is he claims to know something about. Kierkegaard goes on to mock satirically different passages from Heiberg's review. Heiberg casts his review, in terms of the experience of an imaginary reader whom he refers to as the impersonal pronoun of one. Kierkegaard humorously seizes on this and constantly refers to one's view of the work. At the end Kierkegaard exuberantly thanks Heiberg for his insightful review. He does so with such enthusiasm that there can be no doubt about the sarcasm. He has Victor Arameta write quote For all this I thank you, Professor! I rejoice that learning is so swiftly imitated. I thank you for wanting to communicate it so quickly. If I were to choose the person in literature who I would thank, first of all I would choose you, professor. This profuse expression of gratitude can be seen to mirror Socrates' more reserved sarcasm when he claims, for example, to want to learn from Euthafru and to want to become his student. The natural reaction of most writers who suffer a negative book review is to react by trying to point out things that the book does well, and thus trying to refute the criticisms that have been raised against it. But Kierkegaard doesn't try to defend the merits of his work in any positive way. Instead, his approach is negative, just like that of Socrates. He seems on the face of it, to grant the truth of Heiberg's claims, and then indirectly to undermine him. With Either/Or, Kierkegaard began a remarkably productive period of writing. He lived here, in this building, on a street called Nørregade, during this time. Specifically, from April 1840 until October 1844. This was where he lived both before and after his trip to Berlin. Only eight months after the publication of Either/Or, three new books appeared on the same day, October 16th, 1843. These works were Repetition written by the pseudonymous author Constantine Constantius, Fear and Trembling by Johannes Di Silencio, and Three Edifying Discourses in Kierkegaard's own name. With regard to Three Edifying Discourses, this is one of a series of collections of edifying or upbuilding works that Kierkegaard published between 1843 and 1844. In each of these years, he published individual collections of two, three and four edifying discourses respectively. These were then later collected by his publisher and published under the title of 18 Edifying or Upbuilding Discourses. These texts are generally regarded as some of the key works of Kierkegaard as a Christian author. They're all signed in Kierkegaard's name and are not attributed to pseudonymous authors. They're moreover intended to be more popular works than the pseudonymous writings. They addressed the common religious believer without any sophisticated or complex argumentation. There's no direct reference for example to Greek or German philosophers by name, although Socrates is referred to as the wise man of old. Kierkegaard returned to Berlin for a short stay in May of 1843. And this provided him with the inspiration for the short book Repetition. This novella is the story of a young man who asks the question of whether or not a repetition is possible. Like Kierkegaard, the young man had been in Berlin once before, and so he hits upon the idea of making a return trip to see if he can repeat his experience. He thus goes back to the Prussian capital and tries to visit the old places that he went to during his first visit. But he finds that many things have changed in the interim and it's impossible to recreate his original experience of the city. Not only has the city itself changed, but he has changed. So the way in which he experiences the city is also different. His conclusion from this experiment is that no true repetition is really possible since things are always changing. Given this, one might think that the concept of repetition isn't a very important one for Kierkegaard, but in fact, this isn't the case. Indeed, it's quite an important idea for him. He speaks of repetition in the sense of appropriation. There are for example, a number of abstract, ethical principals or rules that the individual must appropriate in terms of his or her particular situation. When one appropriates these rules in a concrete action, one is, in a sense repeating the original rule. If there were no element of repetition here, then one couldn't be said to be following the rule. In this sense, Kierkegaard's explores the concept in the context of ethics. The third work that appeared on the same day, Fear and Trembling, is one of Kierkegaard's best known works. In this work, he takes as a central motif, the story from the Old Testament, about God's command to Abraham, that he sacrifice his son, Isaac. The work is divided into three chapters called problemata, or problems, which refers to the problems raised by Abraham's reaction to the command of God. In this work, Kierkegaard, through a pseudonym, focuses on the difficult demands of faith, using Abraham as his example. Scholars have often taken his analysis here to be presenting a model for the difficulties involved in Christian faith. [MUSIC]
