Sem.
Joemie Fantilaga
AB PHILO IV
KIERKEGAARDS WYAS OF LIVING The Aesthetic Stage Kierkegaards aesthetic stage of living is the most fragile and least stable of all forms of existence. Accordingly, it is where the individual almost always begins, as it is attributed to the life of the average. The man living in this stage is merging within the crowd, the world. The entire liturgy of his life is usually dictated by them. As a consequence he is incapacitated of making any genuine choices and decisions in life. The totality of his outlook in his life is greatly characterized by pleasures and he is mostly carried to act by and through sudden impulses and emotions. One of the most serious problem and disorder in the man living in the aesthetic sphere of life is that he is not capable of forging or establishing synthesis and equilibrium of the two sets of polar opposites, primarily because he is not even aware of the existence of these contradicting dialectical pairs. Another concerning issue in the aesthetic man is his inadequacy to acquire proper outlook of what is true. The kind of truth for him reflects the kind of way he is living.
The Ethical Stage If the aesthetic man in the aesthetic stage wants nothing other than enjoyment and sensual pleasures, and is moved by sudden impulses and emotions, the man in the realm of the ethical on the other hand wants commitment towards universal standards, and prompted to act not by urges but by freedom and choice. The ethical individual integrates himself and lives out a commitment. This
means that the ethical man is capable of establishing balance between passion and intellect. Kierkegaard realizes that as the ethical man conform his life to the universal ethical standards and principles of the world, there is a tendency that he will totally subsumed to the dictates and demands of the crowd and society. The ethical man soon realizes that there is something more than what he is expecting from the society where he is living in the ethical realm where he currently belongs. Along the way of his ethical living, man is again confronted by despair which could serve as his point of departure towards the higher realm. The Religious Stage Falling yet into the same despair, man now re-evaluates the kind of life he has, with all of its inconsistencies and dissatisfactions. He now realizes that living in a purely ethical realm, and conform his existence to a universal duty is never enough. The individual is now, driven by despair, takes his life to a much greater reality, forgoing a union with a transcendent telos in the realm of religious. The religious individual is one who attempts to fill in the void of unstable ethical existence and intensifying it by forging relationship between him and God. However, this task is never easy, because in doing so, it entails that man has to undergo a three-fold process of transformation which involves resignation, suffering, and guilt consciousness. This process is that which help man transform from the ethical stage towards the stage of religiousness.
