Works › Either/Or
Work #99 · Early period

Either/Or

Enten-Eller — Kierkegaard's first major pseudonymous work — aesthetic vs ethical existence

Søren Kierkegaard (under the editorship of Victor Eremita) · 1843 · Danish · Two-volume literary-philosophical work

Tradition: Christian existentialism / Danish Lutheranism

The aesthetic life of immediate pleasure vs the ethical life of commitment — and the choice that constitutes the self

Either/Or is Kierkegaard's first major literary-philosophical work. Through a complex pseudonymous apparatus — Victor Eremita edits papers found in an old desk — the work presents two contrasting voices: the aesthete "A" (Volume I) lives in the immediate present, pursuing pleasure and avoiding commitment (the Don Juan essay, the Seducer's Diary); Judge William (Volume II) writes letters defending the ethical life of marriage, work, and personal continuity. The work opens the famous "stages on life's way" — aesthetic, ethical, religious — that structure all of Kierkegaard's subsequent pseudonymous authorship. Either/Or is the most read of Kierkegaard's works and one of the founding texts of Danish modern literature as well as philosophy.

Author

Editions cited

  • Either/Or, Parts I and II (Howard V. & Edna H. Hong, Princeton, 1987 — Kierkegaard's Writings 3-4)
  • Either/Or: A Fragment of Life (Alastair Hannay, Penguin, 1992 — abridged)
Compare this work

School Embodiments

Existentialism · 45%
Lutheranism · 15%
Absurdism · 15%
Phenomenology · 10%
Reformed / Calvinist Theology · 5%
Christian Personalism · 5%
Postmodernism · 5%
Existentialism 45%

The stages-of-life doctrine and the existential analysis of choice that Either/Or introduces are foundational for the entire existentialist tradition.

"Either/or — the absolute choice between the aesthetic and the ethical." (Either/Or II, Judge William, paraphrasing)
Lutheranism 15%

The Lutheran framework runs underneath the aesthetic-ethical-religious progression, though Either/Or itself stops at the ethical stage.

"The most dangerous thing of all is to lose oneself." (Either/Or II)
Absurdism 15%

The Seducer's Diary and the broader aesthetic voice have been read by Camus and the absurdists as a precursor to the analysis of meaninglessness in modern life.

"Marry, you will regret it; do not marry, you will regret it; marry or do not marry, you will regret it either way." (Either/Or I, "Diapsalmata")
Phenomenology 10%

Either/Or's analysis of moods, choices, and the texture of lived experience shaped Heidegger's phenomenology of authentic existence.

"What I really need is to get clear about what I am to do, not what I must know." (Kierkegaard's journal, August 1835 — formula consonant with Either/Or)
Reformed / Calvinist Theology 5%

A theological neighbourhood: Kierkegaard's critique of bourgeois Christendom and his call to authentic selfhood before God overlap with Reformed self-criticism.

"Subjectivity is truth." (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, paraphrasing the existential commitment of Either/Or)
Christian Personalism 5%

The personal commitment that Judge William defends — choosing oneself, marriage, work — is one of the founding texts of Christian personalist ethics.

"To choose oneself absolutely is the supreme choice." (Either/Or II)
Postmodernism 5%

The pseudonymous structure and the play of voices in Either/Or has been read by Derrida and others as a precursor to postmodern destabilisations of authorial voice.

"Take it for what it is worth." (Victor Eremita, Preface)

Internal Tensions

Where the work itself sits in Kierkegaard's authorship has been disputed. Either/Or presents the aesthetic and ethical voices without an explicit religious resolution; the later pseudonymous works (Fear and Trembling, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Sickness Unto Death) push toward the religious stage. Whether Either/Or itself favours the ethical over the aesthetic, or holds them in genuine tension, has been argued ever since.

⧖

I. Time

The aesthete lives in the immediate present; the ethical agent lives in the continuity of repetition and commitment. Time is morally significant.

Attributes
Extent: Both Ontological Status: Substantival Grain: Continuous Freedom: Non-Deterministic Traversability: Linear Direction: Uni-directional Dimensionality: One
✦

II. Space

Lived Copenhagen of the bourgeois nineteenth century. Substantival.

Attributes
Extent: Finite Ontological Status: Substantival Curvature: Flat Dimensionality: Three Locality: Local
◉

III. Matter

The material conditions of married, working, civic life are real and significant.

Attributes
Extent: Finite Ontological Status: Substantival Conservation: Conserved Dimensionality: Three Locality: Local
◎

IV. Observer

The Either/Or observer is the choosing individual — embodied, plural, active. Moral authority is the experience of choice itself, though the ethical stage culminates in encountering the religious.

Attributes
Time Instance: Multiple Space Instance: Single Knowledge Extent: Immediate Knowledge Retainment: Total Physicality: Embodied Agency: Active Number: Plural Metaphysical Agency: Personal
⚡

V. Energy

Not engaged.

Attributes
Extent: Finite Ontological Status: Substantival Conservation: Conserved Dispersibility: Irreversible
⧉

VI. Information

Real choices shape real selves across time.

Attributes
Ontological Status: Substantival Cosmic Conservation: Conserved Personal Conservation: Conserved Granularity: Continuous

Personas that cite this work

Søren Kierkegaard

Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint

Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.

94%
Edith Stein (Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross)
32/34
94%
Howard Thurman
32/34
94%
James Baldwin
32/34
94%
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
32/34
94%
Mani
32/34
94%
Pope Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio)
32/34

Computed school proximity

The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.

85%
Catholic/Thomistic
24/26
85%
Christian Personalism
24/26
85%
Liberation Theology
24/26
85%
Christian Existentialism
24/26
85%
Methodism
24/26
85%
Southern Baptist / Baptist Tradition
24/26
85%
Radical Reformation / Anabaptism
24/26
82%
Lutheranism
23/26

How Either/Or resolves each dilemma

51 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 7 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 6 unaligned.

Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.

Time · 9 dilemmas, all mainstream
Do you really choose? The future is open and you are a genuine origin of it. 69% Are addicts responsible for their addiction? The addict could have chosen otherwise — that's why recovery is real. 69% Should we hold AI systems responsible for what they do? An AI without a free will is not the kind of thing that can be responsible. 69% How much weight do future people deserve? Future people are as real as you are — and their interests count for as much. 47% Is regret rational? The past is as real as the present; regret is a real attitude toward a real thing. 47% Do we owe extinct species something we cannot give them? Extinct species are as real as we are; they have standing. 47% Is the universe running out of usable energy? Time both has and lacks bounds depending on the level you ask at; finitude is conventional. 26% Are natural resources fundamentally finite, or only practically so? The finitude question is level-dependent; resource ethics happens at the level that constrains us. 26% Could we owe future generations more than is materially possible to provide? The owing-and-possibility question is level-dependent; we owe what is appropriate at the level we act on. 26%
Matter · 7 dilemmas, all mainstream
Is the world created from nothing? Yes — matter was created and is conserved as a real substance. 55% Is the physical world fully real? Yes — the physical world is fully real, mind-independent, persisting. 55% Does matter have intrinsic moral standing? Matter is morally considerable insofar as it is created or conserved good. 55% What is money? Money is a real institution with intrinsic features. 54% What is a nation? A nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character. 54% What makes someone male or female? Sex is a real biological kind with given content. 54% Should we edit the human germline? Human nature is a real biological kind given by reproductive biology or by creation; editing the germline transgresses what is given. 54%

Observer · 37 dilemmas · 5 distinctive

Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.

Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree (18/202)
What makes someone the same person over time?
When dementia hollows out memory, when a coma resolves with no recall, when you imagine being uploaded — the question of whether the surviving person is still you turns on what kind of thing the 'you' was to begin with.
You span moments — identity is a pattern that need not be located at a single now.
On this view, the observer is not bound to a single present. Identity is something that exists across moments — as a pattern, an ancestral line, a trans-temporal structure. Uploading, in this picture, is not a metaphysical impossibility but an engineering question; ancestors are real …
Roads not taken You are your body — continuity is bodily continuity. (36%) · You are a soul — what persists through change is the non-bodily aspect. (29%) · There was never a fixed self to either preserve or lose. (14%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree (18/202)
Is the late-stage dementia patient still the person their spouse married?
Loss of memory, of recognition, of the cognitive patterns that made the person — does this end the person, or merely the person you knew? The answer turns on what makes someone who they are.
The person is the pattern across moments — diminished pattern, diminished person.
On this view, the person is constituted by a pattern extending across moments — memory, narrative, characteristic ways of being. As dementia erodes the pattern, the person is correspondingly diminished. What remains is real but is less than what was; the marriage to the person …
Roads not taken Same body, same person — even when the cognitive pattern has changed. (36%) · The soul persists; the cognitive change is the body's, not the person's. (29%) · There was no fixed person to lose; care is owed to whoever is here. (14%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree (18/202)
If a teleporter copied and destroyed you, would you have survived?
The Star Trek transporter problem: a machine scans your body atom by atom, transmits the pattern, builds an exact duplicate at the destination, and dismantles the original. Whether you arrive at the destination or die in the scanner is the question; the answer depends on what you are.
You are the pattern; the pattern survives the substrate change. You arrive.
On this view, you are the trans-temporal pattern that has shown up in this body up to now. The teleporter preserves the pattern — destroys one instance, builds another — and the pattern is what matters. You step in and you step out. The fact …
Roads not taken Different body, different person — you died in the scanner. (36%) · The soul accompanies the person; engineering can't transfer it. (29%) · There was no fixed you to either survive or fail to; the question is malformed. (14%)
Distinctive · only 13% of schools agree (26/202)
Are the dead morally present to the living?
Ancestor veneration, intercession with saints, the moral weight of a promise made to someone now gone — these all presuppose that the dead are present in some sense beyond memory. Whether they are turns on whether an observer is the kind of thing that exists in a single moment or across many.
Observers span moments; the dead are present in a real (not merely metaphorical) way.
On this view, an observer is not located at a single moment but extends across moments. The dead, on this signature, are not gone — they are elsewhere on the same trans-temporal structure that you yourself occupy. Ancestor veneration, intercession with saints, the moral weight …
Roads not taken Observers are bounded by their own moment, and no further agency makes the dead present. (44%) · The dead are present through divine memory, communion of saints, or ancestor presence. (35%) · From the standpoint of the One, the distinction between living and dead is conventional. (8%)
Distinctive · only 13% of schools agree (26/202)
Is divine omniscience compatible with human freedom?
If God knows what you will do tomorrow, does your tomorrow-self choose freely? The classical problem of foreknowledge turns on whether the divine vantage stands outside time or inside it.
An observer can occupy multiple times at once; foreknowledge is not foreordering.
On this view, observers can in principle exist in more than one moment simultaneously — and divine omniscience is exactly the case of an observer occupying all moments at once. The future actions God 'foresees' aren't foreseen at all in the temporal sense; God simply …
Roads not taken The observer is in time; foreknowledge across times raises real freedom problems. (46%) · The human observer is in time, but God's vantage is not — and foreknowledge is not foreordering. (33%) · Distinction of the One and observed time is itself conventional; the question dissolves. (8%)
26 mainstream positions
Does meditation reveal something genuinely timeless? Meditation accesses a trans-temporal level the ordinary observer doesn't ordinarily reach. 13% Does prayer change God's mind? Prayer participates in a trans-temporal liturgy or communion; the question of 'changing the mind' misses the trans-temporal mode. 13% Could causation work backwards? Causation runs one way — the arrow of time is real and structural. 68% Is the asymmetry between memory and anticipation a real feature of time, or just of us? The asymmetry is real because time itself has a real direction. 68% Is the arrow of time a real feature of the cosmos, or only of how we describe it? The arrow is real and structural; the asymmetry isn't an artifact of description. 68% Is environmental damage ever truly permanent? Damage is real and permanent on the relevant timescales. There is no recovery; there is only limitation. 66% Can a civilization recover from collapse? Civilizational complexity is hard to build and easy to lose; recovery is at best partial. 66% Does the second law of thermodynamics mean something morally? Entropy is what time is. The moral weight, if any, is the weight of working against the current. 66% When does a person begin? A person exists from conception — when a new being comes into existence. 54% What is marriage? Marriage has a given form — it’s a kind of thing we recognize, not make. 54% What is our place in nature? Active in a real nature — we cultivate, steward, transform. 48% Should we colonize space? Cultivating worlds beyond Earth is the next form of stewardship. 48% Is genetic engineering of food stewardship or domination? Genetic modification is cultivation by other means. 48% Is reality fundamentally digital? No — continuous divine sustaining act, the Tao that knows no joints, the One's self-disclosure. 44% Are there indivisible units of experience? No — continuous divine presence; consciousness is the unbroken witness. 44% Is memory stored or reconstructed? Held in continuous divine or ancestral remembering — neither stored discretely nor purely reconstructed. 44% What happens to "you" when you die? A soul continues into another mode of being. 37% Can prayer for someone far away affect them? Prayer reaches because God or a cosmic ordering acts on the prayed-for. 37% Are coincidences ever more than coincidence? What looks like coincidence is providence — there is no such thing as a real coincidence. 37% Could an AI have a mind that matters? No — minds are not the kind of thing we engineer. 30% Do animals have moral standing comparable to humans? Moral standing comparable to humans requires what only humans have. 29% Could a fetal brain organoid in a petri dish be conscious? Without ensoulment, an organoid is tissue, not a person. 29% Does environmental harm in another country bind me morally? Distance doesn't dilute obligation; communion of saints / divine relation spans the cosmos. 29% Should we trust expert testimony when we can't verify it? Trust expertise only insofar as it coheres with first-person experience. 17% Is religious revelation a real source of knowledge? What gets called 'revelation' is real direct experience — not a text. 17% Does an LLM 'know' the things it correctly produces? An LLM has no first-person experience, so no knowing in the relevant sense. 17%
6 unaligned
Does history have a direction or meaning? Schools split: 37% / 23% / 19% — How is knowledge of reality produced? Schools split: 25% / 17% / 13% — Is salvation, liberation, or fulfillment individual or communal? Schools split: 15% / 14% / 4% — Is truth universal, tradition-bound, situated, or constructed? Schools split: 65% / 16% / 10% — What kind of religious-theological authority does the tradition recognize? Schools split: 44% / 16% / 14% — Who is the moral primary — the individual, the community, the cosmos, the class, or the species? Schools split: 40% / 28% / 14% —
Information · 4 dilemmas, all mainstream
Is anything truly lost when someone forgets? Information is conserved — the personal pattern is held even when an individual mind loses it. 39% Does deleting your data online destroy something real? Information at the cosmic level isn't destroyed; deletion only obscures access. 39% Could the dead, in principle, be brought back? The information that constitutes a person is conserved; restoration is in principle possible. 39% Is forgiveness ontologically possible? The offense persists ontologically; forgiveness is real moral work, but it doesn't erase what was. 39%
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