Michael: Alright Kevin, pop quiz. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the name Søren Kierkegaard? Kevin: Oh, easy. Gloomy Danish guy, black turtleneck, probably sipping espresso in a smoky cafe, complaining about the meaninglessness of it all. The original emo kid. Michael: That is the perfect caricature. And it's what most people think! But the man and his work are so much more theatrical, more mischievous, and honestly, more wild than that. Today we're diving into his first major work, Either/Or, by Søren Kierkegaard. Kevin: Okay, I'm intrigued. You say theatrical, but I'm still picturing a dense, thousand-page philosophical doorstop. Michael: It is dense, but it's also a performance. What's wild is that he wrote this massive, complex book in about eleven months, right after breaking off his engagement to the love of his life, Regine Olsen. He even said part of it was designed to "repel" her. Kevin: Hold on. He wrote a book to get his ex to leave him alone? That's a level of post-breakup drama I can't even comprehend. That's not a subtweet, that's a whole subtome. We have to talk about that. Michael: Exactly. It’s not just a book; it’s an event. And that’s the perfect place to start. This whole thing is a kind of philosophical performance.

Kevin: So this whole book is some kind of elaborate performance? What do you mean? Michael: I mean it's not written by "Søren Kierkegaard." The book opens with a preface from a fictional editor named Victor Eremita, which means "Victorious Hermit." He tells this story about how he bought a fancy old writing desk at a secondhand shop. Kevin: Okay, a writing desk. I'm following. Michael: For months, he just enjoys the desk. Then one day, he's in a rush, the money drawer gets stuck, and in a fit of rage, he grabs a hatchet to break it open. But when he strikes it, he accidentally triggers a secret spring, and a hidden compartment pops open. Kevin: No way. A secret compartment? What's inside? Michael: Papers. Piles and piles of papers. He discovers two distinct sets of documents. The first set, which he calls "A's Papers," are these fragmented, poetic, and cynical essays about art, music, and boredom. The second set, "B's Papers," are long, serious letters from a judge to his young friend, arguing for a life of ethical commitment and marriage. Kevin: So the whole book is just these "found" documents from two anonymous guys? Michael: Precisely. And Kierkegaard, the real author, is nowhere to be found. He's hiding. And he went to incredible lengths to maintain this illusion in real life. The historical record shows he hired multiple different copyists to write out the final manuscript so that no one at the printing press could recognize his handwriting. Kevin: That is an insane level of commitment to a bit. Why all the drama? Was he just afraid of the critics? Michael: That's the million-dollar question. On one level, yes, he was a very private, sensitive person. The breakup with Regine was a huge public scandal in Copenhagen, and he wanted to create distance. But the philosophical reason is much deeper. He was writing against the dominant philosopher of his day, Hegel. Kevin: Ah, Hegel. Another guy I picture in a black turtleneck. Michael: Hegel's philosophy was all about creating these grand, all-encompassing systems. He believed you could resolve any contradiction—like, say, freedom and necessity—into a higher synthesis. It's all very neat and tidy. Kierkegaard thought this was a complete sham that ignored the messy reality of individual human life. Kevin: How so? Michael: He believed that life isn't a neat formula. It's a series of choices, of radical "Either/Ors." You can't be both a committed husband and a carefree bachelor. You have to choose. By creating these pseudonymous characters—'A' the aesthete and 'B' the ethical judge—he forces the reader to confront the two viewpoints directly, without the author telling them what to think. He doesn't want you to admire his system; he wants you to feel the anxiety of the choice. Kevin: Wow, okay. So the book's strange format is actually part of the argument. He's making the reader do the work instead of just passively receiving the information. Michael: You got it. He's not giving a lecture; he's staging a drama in your mind. And the first character he puts on that stage is 'A,' the author of the first part of the book. This is the guy who lives what Kierkegaard calls the aesthetic life.

Kevin: Okay, "aesthetic life." Break that down for me. Does this just mean he's a hedonist who likes art and nice things? Michael: It's more sophisticated than that. For 'A,' the ultimate goal in life is to find everything "interesting." The greatest evil, the root of all other evils, is not sin or suffering. It's boredom. Kevin: I can definitely relate. I think my phone is designed around that one single principle. Michael: Kierkegaard was 180 years ahead of his time on that. 'A' argues that humanity can be divided into two classes: the plebeians, who are boring, and the chosen ones, who bore themselves. The goal is to be one of the chosen ones and to find ways to constantly entertain your own mind. Kevin: So what's his method? How does he fight off the great evil of boredom? Michael: He develops a theory he calls the "Rotation of Crops." He says most people make a mistake. When they get bored, they change the soil—they move to a new city, get a new job, find a new partner. They seek novelty externally. Kevin: That sounds pretty standard. What's his alternative? Michael: 'A' says the true artist of life doesn't change the soil; he changes the method of cultivation. The key is limitation. He gives this amazing example of a prisoner in solitary confinement. That prisoner becomes so resourceful that he can be endlessly amused by a spider spinning a web in his cell. He finds infinite depth in a single, limited thing. Kevin: So it's about finding new ways to look at the same old things? Michael: Exactly. It's about being arbitrary. 'A' gives an example of being stuck listening to a dreadfully boring man. Instead of despairing, he suddenly notices that the man perspires a lot. So he starts focusing on the beads of sweat forming on the man's forehead, watching them merge and trickle down his nose. The boring lecture becomes a fascinating spectacle. He's changed his perspective. Kevin: That's both brilliant and incredibly weird. It sounds like a life hack for intellectuals. But it also sounds exhausting. You have to constantly be "on," constantly curating your own experience. Michael: It is! And it's a life lived entirely as a spectator. You're observing, you're analyzing, you're finding things "interesting," but you're never truly participating. You avoid any real commitment because commitment is, by definition, repetitive and therefore potentially boring. Friendship is dangerous. Marriage is the ultimate trap. Kevin: This is hitting a little too close to home for modern dating culture. The endless search for the 'more interesting' person, the fear of settling down, the curated online persona. It's the Rotation of Crops, but with people. Michael: It's exactly that. And Kierkegaard, through this character, is showing us the profound emptiness at the heart of it. A life dedicated only to avoiding boredom is a life that avoids meaning. You're so busy rotating your crops that you never actually plant anything that can sustain you. Kevin: That makes sense. It's a life of constant distraction, but distraction from what? What's the endgame of this lifestyle? Where does it lead if you take it to its logical, or illogical, conclusion? Michael: It leads to one of the most disturbing and brilliant parts of the book. It leads to a section called "The Seducer’s Diary."

Kevin: "The Seducer's Diary." That sounds... ominous. Michael: It is. It's presented as another "found" document within A's papers. It’s the diary of a man named Johannes, who is the ultimate aesthete. He takes the principles of the aesthetic life—the pursuit of the interesting, the avoidance of boredom, the spectator's stance—and applies them to seduction. Kevin: So he's a player. Michael: He's so much more than that. A mere player wants to conquer a woman physically. Johannes finds that boring, too common. His goal is psychological. He wants to orchestrate a young woman's entire experience of falling in love. He wants to be the secret author of her passion. Kevin: Whoa. That's a whole other level of manipulation. Who is his target? Michael: A young, innocent seventeen-year-old girl named Cordelia. He sees her by chance and is captivated not by her beauty, but by her potential. He sees her as a project. The diary meticulously documents his strategy. Kevin: What kind of strategy? Michael: It's all about making himself seem "interesting." He doesn't pursue her directly at first. He contrives "accidental" meetings. He learns about her aunt, who she lives with, and befriends the aunt to get into the house. He makes sure Cordelia overhears him having a brilliant, witty conversation with someone else, so she becomes intrigued by him on her own terms. Kevin: He's creating a narrative for her to walk into. Michael: A perfect way to put it. He wants her to feel like she is the one choosing him, that she is the one discovering this fascinating, mysterious man. He gets engaged to her, not because he wants to marry her—that would be the ultimate boredom—but because the engagement is a necessary step in the artistic process. It binds her to him. Kevin: This is horrifying. He's not a person to her; she's a canvas. Michael: Exactly. And the most chilling part is his goal. He wants to bring her to the absolute peak of love and devotion, and at that precise moment, he wants to break it off and abandon her. Kevin: Why? Why would he do that? Michael: For the memory. He believes the highest aesthetic pleasure is not the experience itself, but the perfectly curated recollection of it. By ending it at the peak, he can possess her forever in his memory as a perfect, tragic work of art. The real, living Cordelia, with her future and her feelings, is just raw material to be discarded. Kevin: Wow. That is one of the cruelest things I've ever heard. This isn't a love story; it's a psychological thriller. He's a monster. Michael: He is. And that's Kierkegaard's point. This is the dark, logical conclusion of the aesthetic life. When your only goal is to find life "interesting," you eventually stop seeing other people as human beings. They become objects, instruments for your own amusement. Johannes the Seducer is brilliant, witty, and utterly empty inside. He's trapped in his own head, and the only way he can feel anything is by orchestrating the feelings of others. Kevin: It's the ultimate spectator. He's not even living his own life; he's just directing someone else's tragedy. Michael: And that is the dead end of the aesthetic path. It leads to despair. Either the despair of boredom, where nothing is interesting anymore, or the despair of the Seducer, where you have to destroy others to feel alive.

Kevin: So after all this—the masks, the crop rotation, the monstrous seduction—what's the 'Either/Or'? What's the choice he's forcing on us? Michael: The choice is between the two lives presented in the book. We've only really looked at Part I, the aesthetic life of 'A'. The second part of the book presents the alternative: the ethical life, as described by the Judge. It's a life of commitment, responsibility, duty, and choosing to live within the bonds of society, like marriage. Kevin: So it's the choice between being a free-floating, ironic spectator or a committed, responsible participant in life. Michael: Exactly. And Kierkegaard doesn't just tell you which one is better. He embodies them in these characters and makes them argue. He wants you to feel the pull of both. The aesthetic life is alluring—it's exciting, it's poetic, it's free. The ethical life can seem boring, restrictive. But Kierkegaard shows that the aesthetic life, for all its glitter, is built on a foundation of nothingness. It ultimately collapses into despair. Kevin: It's like he's holding up a mirror. The book's structure, the pseudonyms, it all forces you, the reader, into the position of having to choose. He's fighting against that passive, abstract philosophy he hated. Michael: You've nailed it. He's not interested in giving you an answer. He's interested in making you realize that your life is a question, and you are the only one who can answer it, through the choices you make every day. Kevin: That's a powerful idea. He's not just writing about existentialism; he's making the act of reading an existential act. Michael: He is. He's essentially asking: Are you a spectator in your own life, or are you a participant? Are you endlessly rotating your crops, or are you going to plant something real and tend to it? It was a radical question in 1843, and it might be even more urgent today. Kevin: That's a heavy question to end on. It makes you look at your phone, your job, your relationships differently. We'd love to hear what you all think. Are we living in an 'aesthetic age'? Let us know your thoughts. We're always listening. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.