Kierkegaard: Stages on Life's Way

Life is a quest to know and become one's true self. Slogans, like the previous sentence, is an age-old claim of wise men - like that of Socrates down to the present with the existentialists. In this essay, I will highlight Kierkegaard's view on this life-long quest of self-discovery and self-becoming. For him, there are at least three stages on our life's quest for knowing and becoming our authentic self. These stages are, consecutively, (1) the aesthetic life, (2) the ethical life, and (3) the religious life. There is a need to become one's true self because that is the only way to live a meaningful life - a worth-living life. That is, a life filled with satisfaction and not of despair.

The starting point for everyone, before arriving at the three mentioned stages, is the primordial stage which Kierkegaard calls as the "crowd life". This stage is very familiar to many, because many of us just settle on living our lives at this stage. Crowd life is characterized by living one's life copying other's. It is living unreflectively by just doing as anybody does. We will never uncover our true self in this stage. Because, we just live our lives in accordance with the crowd.

If we are able to go beyond the crowd life and try to exert effort in reflecting how we should live our lives uniquely, the next stage is the aesthetic life. This stage is characterized by some sort of reflection or choice on our part. But the choice here is much more influenced by the idea of enjoyment, or more specifically of sensual pleasure for oneself. Still, at this stage, we cannot uncover our true self because we are enslaved by the idea of sensual pleasure - we live a life of "multiple" selves. At this stage, whatever goes to be pleasurable, then, that becomes our way of life. Today, drinking liquor whole day gives you pleasure. While tomorrow a company of multiple girls will satisfy it. This is what happens if we live our life at the aesthetic stage, there is a "multiplicity" of selves - our way of life is not stable, it will always change based on the command of pleasure.

If we desire to overcome the problem posed by the aesthetic life - the "multiplicity" of selves - and choose the kind of life that is singular, or governed, then we will arrive at the next stage called the ethical life. This stage is characterized by living our lives according to ethical norms - like that of our culture or tradition. However, the ethical life still cannot lead us to discovering our true selves. For, we will see in the ethical life that ethical norms are actually just based on "human criterion" - it is not absolute. Thus, ethical norms are just relative to a particular place and time. The norms present in the Philippines is not necessarily the same with the norms in a different place. And, also, the norms now, here, will not necessarily be the same 50 or 100 years after. 

The discovery of our true self, for Kierkegaard, demands something which is absolute. And, for him, we only find the absolute in God himself. So, the final stage on life's way requires God-relation, which is called the religious life. It is only through religious faith, especially Christian faith, that we can become our true selves. In the Christian faith we see the greatest paradox - the paradox of the God-man, Jesus Christ. With this great paradox, our reason struggle to understand and accept its truth. But, through faith, we may be able to believe it. This paradox of Christ - being both God and man at the same time - provides us the possibility of a "leap of faith". Thus, the possibility of an utmost "inwardness" of commitment. In simpler words, though our reason cannot understand, we still believe in the God-man, Jesus Christ, through faith which leaps from doubt and uncertainty to a life-long commitment.

Our true self is a self that is living a life of commitment to God. It is only in God that we find the settlement of our quest - like the Augustinian quote: "In you [God], my soul finds rest". In the crowd life, aesthetic life, and the ethical life, our lives are not grounded in the absolute but of temporary and unstable grounds. In God we find and become our true self.

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