My reading of Soren Kierkegaard began in the summer of 1994 and has opened a whole new world for me. In the course of independent exploration, I ran into an intriguing part of his writing: an almost-system of spheres of existence. It is my intent to briefly describe those spheres and then end with a short personal response. This is a collection of thoughts that I have pieced together concerning Kierkegaard's existence spheres as understood in three primary stages, the third of which will merit special attention. Though presented as progressing stages in two earlier works, in Stages on Life's Way, Kierkegaard sees the stages as occurring all at the same time. Read along and perhaps you will see what I have seen.

The Aesthetic stage is the first stage. It is primarily to be considered as a sphere of existence where an individual dwells within a world of abstractions and has no real connection with the outside world. His life is very simple; he need not consider the future nor the past, for he lives within the present. The Aesthete will continually seek pleasure and a sense of fulfillment outside of himself by pursuing life abstractly, and thereby precluding, for himself, a responsible interaction with a real, objective world.

The Aesthetic stage has two primary manifestations: "romantic hedonism" and "abstract intellectualism".

The Romantic Hedonist follows his own pleasures and fancies. For instance, a woman is not an existing, real individual for the hedonist. Instead, she is merely a "woman," a member (or perhaps a physical extension) of a category of things which bring pleasure to the hedonist. It is a subtle, not-always-powerful, but effective narcissism

The Romantic Hedonist holds no responsibility for his actions. Living only in the present (in the immediate), he does not recall the past in memory, for it would be a reminder of his actions, and he cannot call into consideration the future, for it too would demand a thoughtfulness and hence a responsibility on his part. He therefore must remain in the present, continually pursuing the passions that are at hand, and can be quickly satisfied. It can be fleshly lust or the all-too-common psycological disfucntion present in many modern relationships.

The abstract philosopher also loses herself in the immediate as she tries to comprehensively understand all of reality. Just as a hedonist discards the individuality of the people (or objects) who are his pleasure, so also the intellectual can discard the world as real and instead substitute for it categories of abstract thought. When the Aesthete looks at the world, she is not considering the world as it really is. Rather, she finds herself either analyzing or experiencing a set of categories that encompass all things and in such subjection to abstraction she thereby strips them of their existence. Ironically, the Aesthete, in his pursuit of pleasure and satisfaction in life, is actually controlled by life. To put a post-Kierkegaardien phrase around it, the essences have supersedes the existences. Under such circumstances, two things have been lost: the world, and the individual.

However, the Aesthetic stage often leads to boredom. This boredom occurs in two stages: first, there is boredom that is associated with the object of pleasure that no longer satisfies, and second, a boredom with the self, as the Aesthete begins to realize the predicament (which can be capsulated as a lack of meaning), and can easily be overwhelmed with the confusion of a situated experience which lacks the nuanced complexity of self that might lend insight.

Through the course of several works, Kierkegaard demonstrates the Aesthetic next leading to melancholy. Once the Aesthete recognizes that the dilemma is within herself, she becomes ill in her spirit (whick can be dexcribed as something of an "abyss of meaninglessness")as she observes that she cannot find meaning externally. She is in a predicament, for she tries to find herself outside herself, and is continually unsuccessful. In response to the dilemma, and in harmony with the aesthetic lifestyle, the Aesthete resorts to various diversions in a vain attempt to keep herself afloat. It can quicly become a circus of exaggerated self-extension though self-unaware modems.

A complete Aesthetic stage finally leads to despair. It comes when the diversions are no longer satisfying. Here, there is loss of hope, for the Aesthete knows the vanity of his pursuits. He cannot find himself (that is, gain meaning) at all without himself, whether it be in hedonistic pursuits or abstract intellectualism. He lacks such things as earnestness, passion, decision, commitment and freedom. In recognizing this, the Aesthete must choose these very things as the only course for deliverance. In this choice, he is moved from the Aesthetic into the realm of the Ethical.

The Ethicist has moved beyond the Aesthete, for he has entered a realm of choice and commitment. Because the ethical womman is choosing and committing, she is establishing herself with her self and is then choosing herself. She has escaped the peril of meaninglessness within the Aesthetic, for she has found herself. Decision and the act of deciding are what characterized the Ethicist. Choice is a way of choosing, not the object of that choice. To focus on choosing the "what" would be to lapse into an existence characterized by the immediacy of the Aesthete. Rather, the Ethicist knows that she must be a responsible individual who is more concerned on why and how she chooses than on what she chooses.

The past and present come alive for the Ethicist. She centers herself around her life and her life-responsibility. Through decision and responsibility, the self becomes central. Where the Aesthete has lost himself by continually looking outside himself and not finding himself, the Ethicist is strongly herself, for she knows the importance of her actions and decisions and realizes that meaning and concern will be determined within herself.

This focus on the self centralizes and unifies the Ethicist, granting her existential solidarity as a participator in life. This unity is not something that is identified (or simply given), but something that is achieved. It is also accompanied by a need for universal norms as compatible with the unity of the self. These are found in such things as ethical standards, moral law, and objective truth. There seems to be a need for a reliability in the interaction between the self and the external world that would demand such norms. This is not an elaborate and coherenet "new" narcissim, for it has strong and dutiful social extensions.

However, existing as she does, the Ethicist finds herself looking toward the future and finding uncertainty. Who can know what tomorrow will bring? The best planning, the most coherent ethical programs, and consistent self-identity have an inescapable uncertainty: the totality of all future events. One of the uncertainties that the Ethicist must deal with is that of death, for it will bring the whole self and its choosing enterprise to an end. With this in mind, the Ethicist realizes all the more the great significance that each choice carries, and here decision becomes so central and so involving of the whole of her being that she quickly finds herself existing in passion and inwardness. As an individual (and avoiding the errors of the Aesthete), the recourse is not external, but internal. She must focus on things that are not so readily available, yet somehow central to her self which in turn reveal the fullness of those things which ethical programs allow her in the confined limits of the moment. It is here that she extends herself, deeply and inwardly. It is here that she encounters the Religious stage.

It seems that the Religious individual has noticed the dilemma of the future's uncertainty, and a responsibility for the past's actions. The self is exposed to a need that calls for help outside the situation for something wholly other than the confines of regular existence, and yet somehow primal to the self and inwardly discovered. This is really a difficult and unusual thing.. something that is objective and subjective, distant and far, external and internal with none of those things subject to delusions of present passions and future uncertainties while remaining consistent to the self in an way that is simultaneously easy yet massively difficult. The fullness of existence is calling to the evolving Ethicist. A passion not available to the Aesthete compells her forward to embrace the situation.

This is a need for God.

An infinite passion and inwardness seem to reach deep down within the individual to draw on the working of God. Whereas the Ethical person's life centers around herself, the Religious person centers around God and eternity. Instead of continually choosing herself, the Religious person moves her will toward a choosing of God and a perpetuating of her life in faith. Her life becomes one of relationship with God that requires revelation from God for that to be possible. Kierkegaard saw that God was revealed in Christ, and the Religious individual commits herself to Christ. This Christ is the fullness of all the tensioned dichotomies which dominate and elude previously available existence. He is God. And he is human. He is near and far and he owns the future.

Ethically speaking, the Religious person occasionally finds what would seem to be a contradiction in certain choices between the ethical demands of a certain situation, even when such moral laws are God-given. Kierkegaard is famous for his presentation of Abraham being a truly faithful individual when he was confronted with the ethical dilemma when God told him to kill his son Isaac. Abraham chose God over universal norms even though there was a stark conflict between the moral law and the will of God (the law-giver). This obedience to God over the moral law is characteristic of the Religious stage. Universal norms and ethical programs are superceded by a commitment to the source of their coherence. The object is set in its place below the subject.

The Religious person is characterized by suffering, for in this suffering is the highest intensification of inwardness. This is a suffering within herself. It is neither the suffering associated with the Aesthetic stage (as is often represented romantically and poetically), nor is it to be confused with the suffering of a simple, outward, ethical manifestation. Religious suffering is the result of a paradoxical lifestyle that tears at the individual as she simultaneously must be an existing individual and yet realize that it is impossible to do so.

The Aesthetic person will find suffering and be disappointed in himself, for the pleasures have failed. The Religious person will encounter suffering as an essential part of her Religiousness. Kierkegaard records, "but suffering as the essential expression for existential pathos means that suffering is real, or that the reality of the suffering constitutes the existential pathos; and by the reality of the suffering is meant its persistence as essential for the pathetic relationship to an eternal happiness (Concluding Unscientific Postscript).

The Religious stage is broken into two sub-stages designated Religiousness A and Religiousness B. Religiousness A can be loosely considered an Ethical Religiousness for Religious Person A has a religion of immanence. Religious Person B, however, has a paradoxical Religiousness where God has revealed himself in Christ who was a man. (The paradox lay in the fact that the ahistorical became historical, and that the transcendent became immanent ...that God became human). Religiousness A recognizes the presenc of guilt within life, whereas Religiousness B sees sin. Primarily, guilt is a recognition that there is something wrong within the self. It is a concentration on the individual and still a movement of immanence. What Religious Person B notices is the presence of sin, which, properly understood, is a brokenness in relationship with God. It fully involves the self, but is a placement of the self under God and recognizes the gulf that lies between the two that only God could bridge. The realization of sin is owed to God, for it is God's crossing that infinite divide that grants the revelation that that which man would call guilt is really sin. It is an external personal presence which reveals truth that is subjective (since sin is a condition between two individuals: God and the self). Guilt, on the other hand is an internal relationship to external facts (an objective law).

Religiousness A is actually a deepening of the self and an intensification of one's reflective consciousness where awareness of God is merely an additional factor to the person (really just an extension of the Ethical program to satisfy the need for personal complexity which seems true to the world). Though recognition of God is largely characteristic of Religiousness A, it is the result of that person's inner reflection. This reflection on the finite introduces the individual to the infinite; experiencing life in a temporal sense shows her the eternal; and recognizing her imperfection drives her to a search for the perfect. This is accomplished within herself and does not necessarily seem to be a supernatural process. The person of Religiousness B, however, is in total reliance on the supernatural, namely God and His manifestation in Christ. The only religion for a person of Religiousness B is that of Christianity. God reveals himself in Christ, and in this we have the previously mentioned paradox which is central to faith. This very faith (a necessary characteristic of Religiousness B) is itself a gift from God. Only Christianity has the fullness of the intellectual program of the Ethicist, provides for the immediate, and extends the paradox of the future in a full and whole realization of God and of the self.

Kierkegaard clearly sets Religiousness B as the highest sphere of existence. It is constituted in a faith relationship with God and is found only in Christianity. It is the leap of faith which bridges the gap between the finite and the infinite. If this leap is not made, man will remain forever isolated from God. As opposed to the objective truth of the Ethical sphere, the Religious individual recognizes the subjectivity of truth. The oft-quoted phrase, "subjectivity is truth," is perhaps one of the most misunderstood maxims of Kierkegaard's thought. He is not rejecting the idea of objective truth (a claim often made with little good exposure to Kierkegaard's writing). While he acknowledges that objective truth does well in the areas of mathematics and science, he objects to the notion that objective truth is the only kind of truth. Instead, he demonstrates that there is truth that is intrinsically personal in nature. There is truth that is created by the individual and establishes that individual (as in performative statements, for example). This subjective truth is found in your choosing and your being. This truth accomodates the truth of God as an individual and provides the platform for responsible personal internaction with the divine.

It would be inappropriate of me to analyze these existence spheres and treat them as abstract ideas penned by a now dead Danish Lutheran philosopher/theologian, for in doing so, I fall prey to the very levels of existence I have just shown Kierkegaard to denounce. It is true that I am deeply moved by Kierkegaard's writings. The "Stages" as I've encountered them have been really very difficult to decipher and have been handled differently by a large number of individuals, making the research a complex project. I would like to explain why I have placed stock and value in Kierkegaard's thought. It is clear that Religiousness B is the grandest of the spheres, for in it lies a true, passionate, intimate relationship with the eternal in Christ. In escaping the troubling simplicity of my younger days, I, with Kierkegaard's help, have come to realize that my life will be roughly characterized by suffering, and this suffering being one that is deep within my self. I am seeing that I live a continual paradox in my own life: I am continually trying to die in order to live. Roughly encapsulated, my life is a struggle, and appropriately so. This melancholy philosopher has taught me to exist, and to exist here with God. The faith that I have from Him as a gift unites me to him and I have the fellowship of my Creator. In closing, I have found that I am able to persevere in my life, for in having risked it all in an infinite leap of faith, I have actually gained it all.