Søren Kierkegaard. The Melancholy as the Foundation of Aesthetic Existence

Abstract

In discussion with German Romanticism, Kierkegaard built in Either/Or the profile who lives aesthetically as the culmination of the romantic aesthetic ideals. In Romanticism, the irony becomes so essential to life, allowing detachment from reality as superiority of me who is conceived absolutely, by means of a critical distance that it allows him to be contemplate himself as a work of art. However, in the Kierkegaard’s reprocessing, it can be shown that irony is the instrument to appear in the world as absolute and dominant, but the foundation of aesthetic existence remains anchored in the melancholy. The thesis of this paper is to show precisely that hidden element in the aesthetic existence is the melancholy in the measure that determines a broken vision of the world and therefore a dispute between man and reality.