Either/Or

⚖The case for it

The aesthetic life versus the ethical life. Kierkegaard stages the conflict through pseudonyms, letters, and the seducer's diary. Philosophy performed as literature, the first existentialist text, a devastating portrait of what it means to live without commitment. 'The most common form of despair is not being who you are.' Published under a fake name, because of course it was.

— the canon

✕The case against

Eight hundred pages, and the deck is stacked: the aesthete gets the wit, the opera essay, and the Seducer's Diary, while Judge Wilhelm answers with two letters of bottomless ethical throat-clearing. Kierkegaard hides behind pseudonyms inside pseudonyms, and the committed life he means to defend is the worst-written thing in the book. Cordelia exists to be an experiment.

— the honest librarian