Just thinking about different existential stages of existence, as one does… Kierkegaard’s spheres of existence were the aesthetic, moral and religious. In the aesthetic sphere, a person seeks new experiences while avoiding commitment or choice. The pathos of this stage is that all worldly and finite experience is fleeting and results in despair. In the moral stage, a person recognises universal law exists but again despairs of following this law. Perhaps this is similar to SK’s knight of infinite resignation, who as a tragic hero, hopeless follows laws to self destruction. The pathos of the moral stage is the unavoidably of sin. In SK’s third stage, the religious, a person acts in accordance to God’s infinite will while existing in the finite world. Because knowledge of the infinite is, rationally speaking impossible, a leap is made into the absurd to achieve this synthesis of finite and infinite. This is perhaps an echo of the Hegelian dialectic.

This stuck me as similar to Nietzsche’s early writings of Dionysus, Apollo and tragedy. Dionysus mirrors SK’s aesthetic stage in the appreciation of transient reality. On the other hand, FN compares this to the tragic hero as the hero’s downfall is a reflection of the finite world and can be celebrated as such. The Apolloian ideal of knowledge, reason, wisdom and visual beauty represents ideals that exist beyond time and are finite, in a similar way to SK’s moral sphere of striving for an unattainable ideal. The only way this can desire can be satisfied in the finite world is the intervention of the divine. Nietzsche comments that deus ex machina is used to replace aesthetic and tragic theatre. SK argues that the religious stage can be achieved by a personal relationship with God. The third stage for Nietzsche is also a synthesis of the other two stages. Since finite humans have competing desires and impulses, the ideal of Dionysus and Apollo are unattainable and people must exist between the two states. To be only one or the other is harmful to a person since their goals are unattainable.

If FN had read SK’s spheres of existence, he might have appied this discription to the moral sphere:

The true [infinite] world — unattainable, indemonstrable, unpromisable; but the very thought of it — a consolation, an obligation, an imperative. (At bottom, the old sun, but seen through mist and skepticism. The idea has become elusive, pale, Nordic, Königsbergian [Kantian].) Twilight, FN

Both thinkers where influenced by Hegel at the start of their writings but eventually distanced themselves from him. Another three stages of life advanced by FN are the three metamorphoses, as stated in the first chapter of Zarathustra but I will only outline them briefly. The metaphorical names of the stages are the camel, the lion and the child. The camel is perhaps similar to SK’s moral sphere. The lion is a process of complete rejection of the infinite and a most likely a backward step according to SK. The third stage is in a word the superman, but in this context could be expressed as asking “why does the aesthetic sphere necessarily lead to despair?” and redefining the purpose from pursuit of happiness to some self chosen goal. But even in the child there is a hint of the infinite which is more fully expressed in the eternal return (of the finite), evoked here by the metaphor of perpetual motion:

Art thou a new strength and a new authority? A first motion? A self–rolling wheel? Zarathustra, FN

This is again a synthesis of the finite and infinite which ties into his Dionysian/Apollonian model as well as a parallel to SK’s religious sphere. I might even call SK an objective existentialist and it would be necessary to transcend the normal bounds of those labels for his position to make any sense… FN is more of an existential monist as he applies the meanings of finite and infinite to everything.

Anti Citizen One

PS My question now is can we suppose we can know these spheres exist from an existential starting point, the aesthetic?
PPS This dilemma is again referenced in the title of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”
PPPS I have slightly revised the conclusion of this post.