2.27 Kierkegaard’s Three Stages of Life: An Analysis

In this episode, I have a profound interaction on the three stages of life that Kierkegaard proposed: the Aesthetic, the Ethical, and Religious.

Joining me to discuss the Three Stages of life Dr and Professor J Aaron Simmons. Aaron is the author of many books including Kierkegaard’s God and the Good Life (Indiana UP, 2017)

I was at the funeral of a very dear man and friend three days ago. As we kept our “social distance,” we discussed life, and why even bother living when all we live for and work for or love will ultimately be lost. We all get into despair when we think about this too much. But to ignore it is to court a deeper sense of despair, the despair we don’t even know we are in. That is more dangerous for us.

Here is a paragraph that I found very profound from Kierkegaard:

“Whether you are man or woman, rich or poor, dependent or free, happy or unhappy; whether you bore in your elevation the splendour of the crown or in humble obscurity only the toil and heat of the day; whether your name will be remembered for as long as the world lasts, and so will have been remembered as long as it lasted, or you are without a name and run namelessly with the numberless multitude; whether the glory that surrounded you surpassed all human description, or the severest and most ignominious human judgment was passed on you — eternity asks you and every one of these millions of millions, just one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not, whether so in despair that you did not know that you were in despair, or in such a way that you bore this sickness concealed deep inside you as your gnawing secret, under your heart like the fruit of a sinful love, or in such a way that, a terror to others, you raged in despair. If then, if you have lived in despair, then whatever else you won or lost, for you everything is lost, eternity does not acknowledge you, it never knew you, or, still more dreadful, it knows you as you are known, it manacles you to yourself in despair!”

― Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening