SOURCE: "Modes of Existence," in Kierkegaard, Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 40-64.

In the following essay, Gardiner studies the three "modes," or "spheres," of existence identified by Kierkegaard (the aesthetic, ethical, and religious). Gardiner explains that in the works in which Kierkegaard discusses these modes, he takes an indirect approach in demonstrating the three perspectives.

There can certainly be no dispute that all the early 'aesthetic' works—Either/Or, Repetition, Fear and Trembling, and Stages on Life's Way—exemplify the 'indirect' approach to which Kierkegaard attached such importance. Not only do they set out to present opposed outlooks and styles of living; they do this in an imaginative or 'poetical' fashion which is designed to exhibit—from the inside—what it is like to envisage life within the perspectives identified. The reader is invited to participate vicariously in these contrasting visions, much as he might if he were entering...