SOURCE: Mullen, John D. “Between the Aesthetic and the Ethical: Kierkegaard's Either/Or.” Philosophy Today 23, no. 1/4 (spring 1979): 84-94.

In the following essay, Mullen questions the usual reading of Either/Or that positions the aesthetic and the ethical as two progressive stages of life.

Introduction

In the following paper I would like to call into question what seems to be the accepted way of reading S. Kierkegaard's Either/Or. ([4]) This interpretation can be developed in the following way. First, Either/Or depicts the first two stages of a journey of the spirit similar in logical structure to Hegel's Phenomenology, with the exception of the “leaps” between stages. Second, that the ethical is the second stage and is therefore “closer” to the “final” religious stage than the aesthetic. Third, that since Kierkegaard's own views coincide with (a version of) the religious stage, the views of the ethicist are “closer” to...