Books

Second edition Kierkegaard's Famous Either-Or in original publisher's boardsKIERKEGAARD, Soren. Enten-Eller. Et Livs-Fragment. udgivet af Victor Eremita (Either-Or, A Fragment of Life), C.A. Reitzel, Kj�benhavn, 1849. TP + [iii]-XIV = Forord + [XVI] = Indhold + half-title + [3]-320 + TP + 1 leaf = Inhold + half- title + [3] - 250 + 1 blank leaf, Octavo, SECOND Edition."Kierkegaard's third published book and the first of many pseudonymous 'aesthetic' works. Generally regarded as the first major statement of his own unsystematic philosophy, this 'fragment' is a literary and philosophical tour de force incorporating a stunning array of subject matter, literary effects, and moods, including melancholy aphorisms and personal meditation, elaborate musical, dramatic and literary criticism, lyrical effusions, odd essays on unhappiness and boredom, a strange 'Seducer's Diary' and, in the second volume, an extended treatise on marriage, the human personality and the ethical life in the form of a letter from a Judge to a younger man, capped by a sermon sounding a note of radical doubt about both the aesthetic and ethical justifications for existence." (Wronoski, p. 11)"Enten-Eller was written before he was twenty-nine. It is a curious bundle of papers, essays, semi-dialogues and notes, seemingly ill-assorted, but in fact dialectically arranged. Adopting what he called an 'aesthetic attitude' he held that this consisted in balancing possibilities, and that in matters religious and ethical it was up to the individual to make his choice. Choice, as the title of his work suggests, was at the root of Kierkegaard's theory. There can be no system of existence, only a system of ideas. From this he develops his thesis of 'Existence" (since taken up by the modern Existentialist), in which human beings considered as subjects not objects are the only real existence: their reflective as opposed to active nature being focused on the 'acts' of making perpetual decisions" (PMM, pp. 190-91)CONDITION: Very good or better in rare original publisher's blue card-stock covers. Pages untrimmed. Faint name inscribed to top corner of front board. Retaining most of the original paper label to spine. Spine with some chipping and loss to heel. Internally bright and clean PHOTOS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST.

Either/Or is a philosophical work by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, written in two volumes published in 1843, exploring the aesthetic and ethical modes of life.