Page:Selections from the writings of Kierkegaard.djvu/31

 whereas the older work stands solidly in reality.

It is with definite purpose that the theme of the speeches of the five participants in the banquet is love, i.e., the relation of the two sexes in love; for it is there the main battle between the aesthetic and the ethical view of life must be fought out. Accordingly, Judge William, to whom the last idyllic pages of "The Banquet" again introduce us, in the second part breaks another shaft in defense of marriage, which in the ethical view of life is the typical realization of the "general law." Love exists also for the ethical individual. In fact, love and no other consideration whatsoever can justify marriage. But whereas to the æsthetic individual love is merely eroticism, viz., a passing self-indulgence without any obligation, the ethical individual attaches to himself the woman of his choice by an act of volition, for better or for worse, and by his marriage vow incurs an obligation to society. Marriage is thus a synthesis of love and duty. A pity only that Kierkegaard's astonishingly low evaluation of woman utterly mars what would otherwise be a classic defence of marriage.

The religious sphere is shown forth in the third part, Skyldig—Ikke-Skyldig "Guilty—Not-Guilty," with the apt subtitle "A History of Woe." Working over, for the third time, and in the most intense fashion, his own unsuccessful attempt to "realize the general law," i.e., by marrying, he here presents in the form of a diary the essential facts of his own engagement, but in darker colors than in "Repetition." It is broken because of religious incompatibility and the lover's unconquerable melancholy; and by his voluntary renunciation, coupled with acute suffering through his sense of guilt for his act, he is driven up to an approximation of the religious sphere. Not unjustly, Kierkegaard himself regarded this as the richest of his works.

One may say that "Guilty—Not-Guilty" corresponds to Kierkegaard's own development at this stage. Christianity is still above him. How may it be attained? This is the grand theme of the huge book whimsically named "Final Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Trifles," Afsluttende Uvidenskabelig Efterskrift (1846): "How