Either/Or is the earliest of the major works of Søren Kierkegaard, one of the most startlingly original thinkers and writers of the nineteenth century, and the first which he wrote under a pseudonym, as he would for his greatest philosophical writings.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855): Either/Or | SparkNotes, Either /Or: A Fragment of Life by Søren Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855): Either/Or | SparkNotes, Either /Or: A Fragment of Life by Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or is his first major work and remains one of his most widely read. Kierkegaard wrote the book under a series of false names, or pseudonyms. The book has two parts: the first deals with the aesthetic, a word that Kierkegaard uses to denote personal, sensory experiences. The second part of Either/Or deals with ethics. In this part Kierkegaard discusses the merits of a social and morally proper life.
During his stay, Kierkegaard worked on the manuscript for Either/Or, took daily lessons to perfect his German and attended operas and plays, particularly by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He returned to Copenhagen in March 1842 with a draft of the manuscript, which was completed near the end of 1842 and published in February 1843.
In Either/Or, using the voices of two characters—the aesthetic young man of part one, called simply “A,” and the ethical Judge Vilhelm of the second section—Kierkegaard reflects upon the search for a meaningful existence, contemplating subjects as diverse as Mozart, drama, boredom, and, in the famous Seducer’s Diary, the cynical seduction and ultimate rejection of a young, beautiful woman.
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