Peder Jothen

Abstract: This dissertation examines S? ren Kierkegaard's aesthetic, which includes the aesthetic stage and a critique of art. As his thought is not systematic, to understand his aesthetic requires first engaging his theological anthropology in which a self develops ...

Abstract: This dissertation examines S? ren Kierkegaard's aesthetic, which includes the aesthetic stage and a critique of art. As his thought is not systematic, to understand his aesthetic requires first engaging his theological anthropology in which a self develops ...

Contributing to the debate about Kierkegaard's conception of the aesthetic, Kierkegaard, Aesthetics, and Selfhood argues that Kierkegaard's primary concern is to provocatively explore how a self becomes Christian, with aesthetics being a vital dimension for such self-formation. Specifically, he claims that “to exist is an art,” an idea that producing oneself as an ethically responsible person, and in particular a Christian, is the highest aesthetic endeavor. This idea of art as self-production within a grace-filled idea of God’s love argues that each person utilizes three formative capacities to relate to visual and mental images: the imagination, will and passion. These three capacities are interrelated and interdependent, as formation depends on the proper inward relationship between the capacities expressed outwardly in moral action. Specifically, the imagination contains mental representations of visual images. Through imaginative reflection, an image becomes normative. The will chooses the image to redouble, though it is only because of the imagination that any choice is possible. Finally, passion, when formed by this chosen normative image, moves the self towards redoubling it outwardly within one’s existence. As interdependent, all three capacities must rightly relate to Christian truth and each other in order for a self to move towards becoming a Christian. Thus, in order to rightly relate to any visual image, a self must be formed by the image of the true moral exemplar: Christ.
Christ’s image serves a teleological, rather than deontological, purpose as the measure and telos of one’s being, and thereby the basis for good action. Imitating Christ is to “redouble” Christ: A self must imagine oneself as Christ’s double, re-creating his narrative as a mental image, will to be it and desire to become in one’s form the ethical content of Christ.