Kierkegaard’s aesthete, named only as A, continually laments the lack of meaning in his life. He suffers through passions that flare up and quickly die away, leaving him in a melancholic state. His mode of being is on display in the Diapsalmata, the fragmentary writings at the start of Either/Or. In this chapter, we examine why he avoids becoming consistently engaged in the world and remains trapped within his alienated melancholia. We offer a general account of melancholy, arguing that melancholia is an existential condition that must be understood in terms of the metaphysics of possibility. We also provide a sympathetic interpretation of A’s melancholy, rather than placing blame upon him, because melancholia attunes us to certain aspects of the world and of human existence. The aesthetic life has epistemic, moral, and aesthetic worth on its own terms, so a person may legitimately decide to remain melancholic. This avoids compromising our possibilities, makes us receptive to the suffering of others, and may inspire creative activity such as writing poetical fragments.

The Sickness unto Death is one of a few pseudonymous texts designated “psychological” by Kierkegaard: taking this designation seriously, the chapter examines what The Sickness unto Death can contribute to our understanding of moods. A promising approach taken by recent philosophical analyses of depression has focused on the concept of possibility, and has argued that possibilities are typically a feature of the world as experienced by human beings, but that a depressed person feels that possibilities are severely impoverished or utterly absent. Manic and hypomanic states tend toward the opposite extreme, of an overabundance of possibility. This chapter draws upon the resources of existential thought in order to develop an understanding of cyclothymic spectrum conditions, demonstrating how Kierkegaard’s work provides resources for a non-reductive phenomenological psychology of moods.

Prophecy, Philosophy, and Truth

The book of Ezekiel begins by recounting a colorful vision of divinity, such as the prophet claims to have seen. According to Maimonides, however, this does not refer “to the eye’s seeing” but to “intellectual apprehension,” of the same kind that any of us might use in solving a mathematical problem. Assuming that a genuine prophetic insight could only be an insight into abstract rational truth, Maimonides asserts that this is what Ezekiel must have “beheld,” so to speak. Clearly, the great medieval thinker would agree with William James that “some states of mind are inwardly superior to others, and reveal to us more truth.” However, on his view, it is only through our rational faculty that we comprehend any truths that are worthy of the name. This way of thinking leads Maimonides to conclude that the biblical narrative of Abraham and Isaac is meant to convey “rational ideas” such as those found in the writings of the Greek philosophers. So he argues that Abraham ought to be understood as a vessel of philosophical wisdom, whose “prophetic” insights are epistemically on par with whatever else is “apprehended through … the intellect.” On his view, what it means to be an inspired prophet is to be blessed with abstract knowledge. And Maimonides is adamant that the rational faculty which gives us access to truth is pure of any emotion or passion. At the moment of hearing God’s word, he explains, Abraham was not “in a state of passion” by any means, but employing his capacity for cold, unemotional thought.

Søren Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript, ascribed to a pseudonymous author named “Johannes Climacus,” is the source of the notorious claim that “truth is subjectivity.” That alone has provoked a variety of divergent interpretations of the work as a whole, from the time of its publication in February 1846 until the present day. Yet the Postscript has been both celebrated and condemned under many other descriptions: as the chief inspiration for twentieth-century existential thought, as a subversive parody of philosophical argument, as a prelude to later phenomenology, as a critique of mass society, as a forerunner of postmodern relativism, and as a testimonial for Christianity conceived in either theologically conservative or radically progressive terms. For a book that sold only about fifty copies during the first few years after its publication, it has caused quite a stir in the long run.

The Postscript was regarded by Kierkegaard as a culminating work – although he later came to view it as more of a turning point in his authorship – and, as a result, it resembles a sort of “container into which all of the important ideas he has ever had must be crammed.” Philosophers have appropriated and opposed various claims endorsed in the Postscript, which seems more like a philosophical treatise in form and content than perhaps any other work in Kierkegaard's corpus.