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A review by casparb
Either/Or: A Fragment of Life by Victor Eremita, Søren Kierkegaard, Alastair Hannay
5.0
Can't pin down why it is that I get on so well with the great Dane but he's really something unexpected.
Either/Or is divided in two - the first, a series of aphorisms and essays by an aesthete, whom we designate as 'A'. The second ('B') is an investigation into the ethical life, and is more strictly philosophical. I had expected dryness from B but no! I think it was my favourite section.
The opening aphorisms are just perfect. What the Book of Disquiet wishes it could have achieved. Much love for that.
I've not seen Mozart's Don Giovanni so I think I lost some of A's effect in his early section. His last writing is likely the most famous part of the book - the 'Seducer's Diary', a deeply Romantic (capital) piece, perhaps eyebrow-raising in a serious philosophical work, but it does well in its context even if it is uncomfortably sociopathic. B reprimands A for this - 'do not despise life itself... respect every honourable effort, every modest activity which conceals itself in humility, and above all show a little more respect for women'
I had heard that this book forces the reader to decide between the aesthetic and the ethical, and there's almost a truth to this, but Kierkegaard is an awful lot more sophisticated than that. The contradiction collapses, the radical choice is all. Beautiful work! Life-affirming, I feel.
There's also a gesture towards what appears to be a form of the eternal return here?? O the missed possibilities had Nietzsche read K. :(
Either/Or is divided in two - the first, a series of aphorisms and essays by an aesthete, whom we designate as 'A'. The second ('B') is an investigation into the ethical life, and is more strictly philosophical. I had expected dryness from B but no! I think it was my favourite section.
The opening aphorisms are just perfect. What the Book of Disquiet wishes it could have achieved. Much love for that.
I've not seen Mozart's Don Giovanni so I think I lost some of A's effect in his early section. His last writing is likely the most famous part of the book - the 'Seducer's Diary', a deeply Romantic (capital) piece, perhaps eyebrow-raising in a serious philosophical work, but it does well in its context even if it is uncomfortably sociopathic. B reprimands A for this - 'do not despise life itself... respect every honourable effort, every modest activity which conceals itself in humility, and above all show a little more respect for women'
I had heard that this book forces the reader to decide between the aesthetic and the ethical, and there's almost a truth to this, but Kierkegaard is an awful lot more sophisticated than that. The contradiction collapses, the radical choice is all. Beautiful work! Life-affirming, I feel.
There's also a gesture towards what appears to be a form of the eternal return here?? O the missed possibilities had Nietzsche read K. :(