What is the three stages of life?

Søren Kierkegaard, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Søren Kierkegaard answers

The three existence-spheres are the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious — and I must say at once that the metaphysical is not among them, for the metaphysical is abstraction, and there is no human being who exists metaphysically.1 The aesthetic sphere is the sphere of immediacy — of enjoyment, and ultimately of perdition.2 The person who lives aesthetically lives in the moment, in sensation, in possibility; he has not yet executed what I call the infinite movement, the movement by which a self turns inward and takes responsibility for itself.3

The figures I constructed in Stages on Life's Way — the Young Man in his thought-depression, Constantin Constantius hardening through the understanding, Johannes the Seducer moving toward perdition — each represents a mode of aesthetic existence, and the Seducer concludes by saying that woman is merely a moment.4 That conclusion is the aesthetic verdict on all things: everything is a moment, nothing binds, nothing costs.

The ethical sphere is the sphere of requirement, and this requirement is so infinite that the individual always goes bankrupt before it.5 The Judge in Stages does not give a friendly lecture; he grapples in existence, because he cannot rest in the aesthetic even when he triumphs over it in argument.6 The highest expression of the ethical is repentance — and here lies what Fichte did not see: repentance is not a positive movement outward but a negative movement inward, not a doing but a letting-something-happen-to-oneself.7

The ethical sphere is therefore only a transition sphere; it exhausts itself in the recognition of its own insufficiency.8 The religious sphere is the sphere of fulfillment — but not the fulfillment of a vessel being filled, as if one simply received what the ethical demanded and failed to supply. The religious comes into existence through suffering, and suffering is precisely the religious category.9

Between the aesthetic and the ethical stands irony as the boundary zone; between the ethical and the religious stands humor.10 The religious individual may wear humor as an incognito — which is why an observer seeking a religious individual might find only a humorist and be deceived.11 Three stages, and yet an either/or — that is the formula I noted while sketching the Postscript.12

The ethical and the religious have an essential relationship to one another, so that the real decision is not a smooth progression through three comfortable stations but a rupture: between living in immediacy and taking existence seriously, and then between taking existence seriously on one's own resources and acknowledging that those resources are insufficient before what the religious requires.13

Sources

  1. There are three existence-spheres: the esthetic, the ethical, the religious. The metaphysical is abstraction, and there is no human being who exists metaphysically.
    Stages on Life's Way, p. 602
  2. The esthetic sphere is the sphere of immediacy, the ethical the sphere of requirement (and this requirement is so infinite that the individual always goes bankrupt), the religious the sphere of fulfillment
    Stages on Life's Way, p. 602
  3. The individual who lives in his immediacy is at once recognizable, and as soon as he is recognized it is a given fact that he is no ethicist, for he has not executed the infinite movement.
    Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 448
  4. Johannes the Seducer (perdition, a 'marked' individual). He concludes by saying that woman is merely a moment.
    Stages on Life's Way, pp. 777–779
  5. the ethical the sphere of requirement (and this requirement is so infinite that the individual always goes bankrupt)
    Stages on Life's Way, p. 602
  6. The ethical component is polemical: the Judge is not giving a friendly lecture but is grappling in existence, because he cannot end here, even though with pathos he can triumph again over every esthetic stage
    Stages on Life's Way, pp. 777–779
  7. to repent is not a positive movement outwards or off to, but a negative movement inwards, not a doing but by oneself letting something happen to oneself.
    Stages on Life's Way, p. 602
  8. The ethical sphere is only a transition sphere, and therefore its highest expression is repentance as a negative action.
    Stages on Life's Way, p. 602
  9. A story of suffering; suffering is precisely the religious category.
    Stages on Life's Way, pp. 777–779
  10. There are thus three spheres of existence: the aesthetic, the ethical, the religious. Two boundary zones correspond to these three: irony, constituting the boundary between the aesthetic and the ethical; humor, as the boundary that separates the ethical from the religious.
    Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 448
  11. the religious individual is not a humorist, but a humorist only in his outward appearance. Thus, for example: an observer seeking a religious individual and finding me would be deceived, for he would indeed find the humoristic in me
    Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 448
  12. Three Stages and yet an Either/Or.
    Stages on Life's Way, pp. 777–779
  13. The ethical and the religious stages have in fact an essential relationship to one another. The difficulty with Either-Or is that it was rounded out to a conclusion ethically... In the Stages this is clarified, and the religious is thus assigned to its proper place.
    Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 261