Existential
Published on Mar 14, 2019
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PRESENTATION OUTLINE
But what is this self of mine? If I were to speak of a first moment, a first expression for it, then my answer is this: It is the most abstract of all, and yet in itself it is also the most concrete of all—it is freedom.
Photo by Riccardo Mion
Now, if a person could continually keep himself on the spear tip of the moment of choice, if he could stop being a human being, if in his innermost being he could be nothing more than an ethereal thought, if personality meant nothing more than being a nisse who admittedly goes through the motions but nevertheless always remains the same—if that were the situation, it would be foolish to speak of its being too late for a person to choose, since in a deeper sense there could be no question of a choice at all. The choice itself is crucial for the content of the personality: through the choice the personality submerges itself in that which is being chosen, and when it does not choose, it withers away in atrophy.
Hong, Howard V.; Edna H. Hong. The Essential Kierkegaard (Kierkegaard's Writings) (Page 72). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
Photo by Jens Lelie
But what does it mean to live esthetically, and what does it mean to live ethically? What is the esthetic in a person, and what is the ethical? To that I would respond: the esthetic in a person is that by which he spontaneously and immediately is what he is; the ethical is that by which he becomes what he becomes. The person who lives in and by and from and for the esthetic that is in him, that person lives esthetically.
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With that you have chosen—not, of course, as you yourself will probably acknowledge, the better part; but you have not actually chosen at all, or you have chosen in a figurative sense.Your choice is an esthetic choice, but an esthetic choice is no choice. On the whole, to choose is an intrinsic and stringent term for the ethical. Wherever in the stricter sense there is a question of an Either/Or, one can always be sure that the ethical has something to do with it. The only absolute Either/Or is the choice between good and evil, but this is also absolutely ethical.
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if one does not choose absolutely, one chooses only for the moment and for that reason can choose something else the next moment.
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Therefore, the ethical choice is in a certain sense much easier, much simpler, but in another sense it is infinitely more difficult.The person who wants to decide his life task ethically does not ordinarily have such a wide range; the act of choosing, however, is much more meaningful to him. Now, if you are to understand me properly, I may very well say that what is important in choosing is not so much to choose the right thing as the energy, the earnestness and the pathos with which one chooses.
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And this is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out their lives in quiet lostness; they outlive themselves, not in the sense that life’s content successively unfolds and is now possessed in this unfolding, but they live, as it were, away from themselves and vanish like shadows.Their immortal souls are blown away, and they are not disquieted by the question of its immortality, because they are already disintegrated before they die.
Let us now compare an ethical and an esthetic individual. The primary difference, the crux of the matter, is that the ethical individual is transparent to himself and does not live ins Blaue hinein [in the wild blue yonder], as does the esthetic individual. This difference encompasses everything.
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The person who lives ethically has seen himself, knows himself, penetrates his whole concretion with his consciousness, does not allow vague thoughts to rustle around inside him or let tempting possibilities distract him with their juggling; he is not like a “magic” picture that shifts from one thing to another, all depending on how one shifts and turns it. He knows himself. [...] This is why I have with aforethought used the expression “to choose oneself” instead of “to know oneself.”
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Something marvelous has happened to me. I was transported to the seventh heaven.There sat all the gods assembled. As a special dispensation, I was granted the favor of making a wish. “What do you want,” asked Mercury. “Do you want youth, or beauty, or power, or a long life, or the most beautiful girl, or any one of the other glorious things we have in the treasure chest? Choose—but only one thing.”
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For a moment I was bewildered; then I addressed the gods, saying: My esteemed contemporaries, I choose one thing—that I may always have the laughter on my side. Not one of the gods said a word; instead, all of them began to laugh. From that I concluded that my wish was granted and decided that the gods knew how to express themselves with good taste, for it would indeed have been inappropriate to reply solemnly: It is granted to you.
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Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
-Nietzsche, Epigram 146
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