Narrator: Imagine buying a dusty, old writing desk from a secondhand shop. For months, it sits in your apartment, an object of simple curiosity. Then one day, in a fit of frustration over a stuck drawer, you strike it with a hatchet. Instead of splintering, a secret panel springs open, revealing a hidden compartment filled with a trove of papers. These documents, written by two different, unknown authors, detail two profoundly conflicting ways of living. One is a life of art, seduction, and the relentless pursuit of pleasure. The other is a life of duty, marriage, and moral responsibility. This is the framing device for Søren Kierkegaard's monumental work, Either/Or, a book that doesn't just present philosophical arguments but stages a dramatic confrontation between two possible selves, forcing the reader to confront the most fundamental choice of all: how to live.

Narrator: Before one can even begin to understand the choice presented in Either/Or, one must appreciate the elaborate structure Kierkegaard built around it. The book is presented not as his own work, but as a collection of papers discovered and edited by a fictional figure named Victor Eremita, the man who found the documents in the secret compartment of the writing desk. This use of pseudonymity was a core part of Kierkegaard's philosophical method.

He went to extraordinary lengths to protect this secret. During the book's creation, he hired multiple copyists to transcribe the final manuscript so that no single person at the printing house could recognize his handwriting. He made a point of making brief, regular appearances at the theater, cultivating the public image of a man of leisure, not a serious author laboring over a massive philosophical work. When rumors began to circulate that he was the author, he even published a signed disclaimer denying it.

Kierkegaard believed this distance was essential. He wanted readers to engage with the ideas on their own terms, to feel the pull of the aesthetic life and the weight of the ethical life without being influenced by their knowledge of him. The book was a "necessary deception," an act of indirect communication designed not to provide answers, but to provoke the reader into a state of self-examination.

Narrator: The first part of Either/Or belongs to "A," the aesthete. He is a young, brilliant, and melancholic man who lives for art, irony, and momentary sensation. For him, the highest expression of this life is found in music, specifically in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni.

"A" argues that Don Giovanni is the single greatest work of art ever created. Why? Because it perfectly captures the essence of the "sensuous in its elemental originality." Don Giovanni himself is not a reflective, calculating seducer; he is a force of nature, a pure expression of desire that exists only in the moment. This idea, "A" claims, is so abstract and immediate that it can only be expressed through the equally abstract medium of music. Sculpture, painting, and even poetry are too concrete. Music is the only art form that can convey the pure, effervescent energy of a life lived for desire. For "A," to listen to Don Giovanni is to experience the aesthetic life at its absolute peak, a life of passion so powerful it becomes a whirlwind of sound, sweeping away all moral considerations.

Narrator: The primary enemy of the aesthete is not morality, but boredom. Boredom, "A" writes, is "the root of all evil." It is a demonic pantheism, a suffocating emptiness that drains life of all meaning. To combat this, he proposes a theory of social prudence he calls the "Rotation of Crops."

He argues that most people try to escape boredom by constantly changing their surroundings—new jobs, new friends, new lovers. This is like a farmer who exhausts his soil by continually changing it. The truly resourceful person, the aesthete, does not change the soil but changes the method of cultivation. The key is limitation. By limiting one's desires and engagements, one becomes more creative in finding enjoyment. The art lies in knowing how to remember and how to forget, how to engage with the world without becoming entangled in it. One should avoid binding relationships like marriage and deep friendships, as they lead to obligation and, inevitably, boredom. Instead, life should be a game of arbitrariness, of finding amusement in the accidental and unexpected. For instance, "A" recounts being forced to listen to a dreadfully boring man, only to save himself from despair by focusing his entire attention on the beads of sweat forming on the man's forehead, turning a tedious lecture into a fascinating spectacle.

Narrator: While the aesthetic life promises freedom and pleasure, Kierkegaard shows it ultimately collapses into despair. The character sketches, or "Silhouettes," and the essay "The Unhappiest One" explore the sorrow that lies beneath the surface of the aesthetic. The most vivid illustration of this is the analysis of Goethe's Faust.

Faust, like the aesthete, seeks to overcome the emptiness of his life. He desires rejuvenation, which he believes he can find by absorbing the innocent life force of a young girl, Margarete. He doesn't want a spiritual connection; he wants her purity sensually. He seduces her not through brute force, but by subtly undermining her simple faith, making her dependent on him for her entire worldview. This act of exploitation is the dark side of the aesthetic. Faust's pursuit of an "interesting" experience shatters Margarete's soul, leaving her abandoned and disgraced. He ultimately destroys the very innocence he sought to possess. This story reveals the endpoint of a life lived without ethical commitment: it becomes parasitic, consuming others to feed its own insatiable need for novelty and sensation, and leaving only misery in its wake.

Narrator: The second half of the book presents the alternative, voiced by "B," an older, married judge named Wilhelm. He represents the ethical life. In a series of letters to "A," he argues that the aesthetic life is ultimately a life of despair because it is a life without real choice. The aesthete is a slave to circumstance, mood, and external stimuli.

The ethical life, in contrast, is founded on the power of choice. Judge Wilhelm argues that it is in choosing that a person truly creates their self. The most significant choice is the choice to commit, and the highest expression of this is marriage. Where the aesthete sees marriage as the ultimate bore, the judge sees it as the ultimate expression of freedom, because it is a freely chosen commitment that gives life history, continuity, and meaning. He argues that the tragic in the modern world is different from that of the ancient Greeks. For the ancients, tragedy was about fate. For moderns, tragedy is about the pain of individual guilt and responsibility. The ethical life is about accepting this responsibility. It is not about choosing between good and evil, but about choosing to choose, thereby lifting oneself out of the drift of aesthetic despair and into a life of purpose.

Narrator: Ultimately, Either/Or is not a textbook that calmly weighs two options. It is a mirror and a challenge. Kierkegaard's central argument is that the most important decision in life is the one between a life defined by external sensations and a life defined by internal commitment. The aesthetic life, for all its beauty and excitement, is a form of slavery to the accidental, leading to a fragmented self and profound despair. The ethical life, while demanding responsibility and facing the pain of guilt, is what allows a person to become a unified, whole individual.

The book's most enduring legacy is its insistence that you cannot have it both ways. To drift without choosing is, in itself, a choice for the aesthetic—and therefore, for despair. Kierkegaard leaves the reader at a crossroads, with the haunting implication that while the path you take matters, the most critical step is to consciously and deliberately choose one at all.