When Kierkegaard wrote of the three spheres, as ultimately achieved in his writing Postscript, but also explained in his earlier works Either/Or and Stages, he did not intend to have the reader understand these spheres as stages which one progresses through (he stopped using the word stages and instead began to call them spheres in Postscript), but rather as three different ways of existing. These spheres include the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. The first is the aesthetic which concerns itself with what one sees and experiences: music, art, poetry, and theater, for example. In it one holds a sense of wonder for the natural world, and it is here that our most base passions, such as food and sex, keep us occupied with the present moment The aesthetic is characterized by desire and spontaneity and holds no to higher moral law or sense of responsibility; it is in a way animalistic.
The second stage is the ethical, where one chooses to lead a life of morality. This would be the sphere of existence where one is concerned with obedience to governing authorities and possesses a sense of duty. In Kierkegaard’s Authorship (1967), co-authors George E. and George B. Arbaugh explain the ethical as “a quasi-religious consciousness of the moral law,” and a “form of godly repentance arising as an acknowledgment of the debacle of the moral endeavor” (p. 28). It is here that one chooses to either remain in a place of self-righteousness marked by morality or realizes the cruel deception of self-righteousness and seeks yet a higher level of being.
Kierkegaard named the ultimate sphere of existence the religious. This is not merely head knowledge of the Absurd, which Kierkegaard would define more precisely as the incarnation of Christ, but a heart knowledge which consisted of devotion to God made through a subjective choice. When one is in the religious sphere of existence, the aesthetic and the ethical are realized and “redeemed so that full human existence is found” (Arbaugh, 1967, p. 31). Therefore, it can be understood that living a life of authentic Christianity is the ultimate goal of existence.
However, these spheres should not be understood as necessarily progressive in nature. One does not evolve or grow into the next existential state naturally; rather, they are entered into through a cognizant choice to do so. Some remain forever in the aesthetic, concerned only with the here and now, the fleeting pleasures of today. Still, others live their whole lives in the ethical sphere as good, upstanding citizens and moral saints. It is only those who choose to believe in the absurdity of the Christian faith that Kierkegaard regards as fulfilling their existence and living essentially for that which they were ultimately created.
