Saturday, November 4, 2017

Kierkegaard: Seducer’s Diary

 Summary

An existentialist novel

Soeren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, Christian and one of the founders of existentialism. This novel features a seducer who strives to seize an innocent girl.

This charmer is actually a philosophical character, an existential metaphor embodies the aesthetic of the three stages of existence in the philosophy of Kierkegaard. The aesthetic is a category that refers to the individual day to day living, in the moment (the moment is not present in Kierkegaard, it is far outside the temporality), and master of irony and manipulation.

As Don Juan, the seducer seeks not so much physical as intellectual domination possession.

Seduction and Aesthetics

The seducer not only of reality, he saw potentialities, he invents his destiny and therefore seeks to develop the full potential from being coveted, in the manner of Pygmalion:

“There is nothing more exhilarating than possible”

Kierkegaard summarizes the project seducer as follows:

“Loving one is too little, love is all lightness of superficiality, but know yourself and love as many as possible, locked in his soul all the powers of love so that each of they receive the appropriate food at the same time the consciousness encompasses all – that enjoyment, that’s life ”

This novel gives a unique and concreteness to an abstract philosophical idea: the dissolute life of the seducer, dominated by the irony and pathos of an endless quest.


Finally, the aesthetic life described by Kierkegaard is not related to moral (ethical life) or religious (metaphysical stage), Kierkegaard manages to embody this new attitude of life in this philosophical novel.

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