“The Immediate Erotic Stages” in Either/Or as Christian Writing

The article’s thesis is that Kierkegaard's “The Immediate Erotic Stages or The Musical-Erotic” in Either/Or is written from a Christian point of view rather than being the expression of the aesthetic life-view. Since Christianity as spirit is that which posits and excludes sensuality, music can properly express sensuality only by presenting it from the point of view of Christianity and thus referring indirectly to Christianity. Music can also express spirit, but only by continually annulling itself. A parallel can be drawn between “The Immediate Erotic Stages” and the second part of The Sickness unto Death. Arguing that Christian doctrine posits and eliminates sin, Anti-Climacus repeats the structure of the argument used by pseudonym A with respect to sensuality. For Kierkegaard, not only music, but art in general, seems to have two possibilities. The first consists in expressing the untruth as untruth and thus referring indirectly to the truth; the second in showing itself at the very moment by giving place to a truth that it cannot express.