Quotation
Last reviewed:
“The choice itself is decisive for the content of the personality.”
Søren Kierkegaard · Existentialism (forerunner) · Modern · 1843
What does it mean?
The choice itself is decisive for the content of the personality. Judge William, writing to the aesthete, argues that what you are is not a set of tastes you discover but a self you take on by choosing. A rival reading hears existentialist self-creation a century early, Sartre with a waistcoat. William's choice is ethical, concrete, and, in his letters, married. It is not the invention of a nature from nothing. Another reading thinks he makes one grim decision do the work of a life.
Did Søren Kierkegaard really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. The sense of Judge William's claim, in Either/Or II, that in choosing absolutely one chooses oneself, and that the choice shapes the personality. Not a verbatim Hong sentence isolated as a maxim. Hong and Hong are the translation to consult.
Where it comes from
Either/Or II, Judge William on choice
Approximate date: 1843.
How to use it
A person in their thirties in Liverpool says they are still 'finding themselves' and has never had to refuse a live option. William thinks the finding is the delay, and that the personality is already being decided by the delay. The point can be made without his praise of marriage. The praise of marriage is still what he wrote, and a modern reader may not want it. The wanting is not a reason to pretend he was Sartre.
A mindset reading
Either/Or II is an answer to Either/Or I. Quote the judge as if he were the aesthete and you have merged the book into one mood. The mood will be confusion, which is not what either voice was for.
Understand the philosophy
Judge William is a pseudonym's character, and the ethical life is what Kierkegaard puts up against the aesthetic. Hong and Hong translate the letters. This card is the sense of the claim about choice, labelled as sense, not as a line to engrave.
- self
- ethics
- freedom
FAQ
What does it mean?
The choice itself is decisive for the content of the personality. Judge William, writing to the aesthete, argues that what you are is not a set of tastes you discover but a self you take on by choosing. A rival reading hears existentialist self-creation a century early, Sartre with a waistcoat. William's choice is ethical, concrete, and, in his letters, married. It is not the invention of a nature from nothing. Another reading thinks he makes one grim decision do the work of a life.
Did Søren Kierkegaard really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. The sense of Judge William's claim, in Either/Or II, that in choosing absolutely one chooses oneself, and that the choice shapes the personality. Not a verbatim Hong sentence isolated as a maxim. Hong and Hong are the translation to consult.
Which work is it in?
Either/Or II, Judge William on choice Approximate date: 1843.