Beauty

The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard identifies three forms of life—the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious—available to us in our ongoing attempt to escape the universal human condition of despair.

The aesthetic life is lived when individuals relate to themselves. Such people focus their attention on personal considerations and seek out novel experiences of beauty and pleasure. The ethical life is lived when individuals define themselves in reference to other human beings. Such people live lives of duty, and seek above all else to serve others. Finally, the religious life is lived when individuals relate themselves to something which transcends their own self, other people, and even this world. Such people “rest” their identity in the absolute.

For Kierkegaard, the religious life is the superior life, the only way of being that really allows someone to overcome despair; one does so by taking the necessary “leap of faith” into believing in the existence of God.

Sure.  Whatever.

I mean, far be it for me to criticize such an eminent thinker, especially one generally considered the first Existentialist, thereby pretty much paving the way to the dominant cultural worldview that essentially characterizes the contemporary world.

Still, I think the old brooding Dane gives short shrift to the aesthetic life.  

After all, human beings have been gifted with such a remarkable array of senses, all of which allow us to perceive beauty in its endless multifarious forms; and if that’s not a religious experience, and one which enables us to overcome despair—even for a few moments on a snowy evening in the Pacific Northwest—then what else could be?

No matter where you looked, (or listened or smelled or tasted or touched) atop the tippy-top of the snowy mound, beauty abounded.  Even the Space Needle showed off.

Fun—itself a kind of spiritual awakening—was had by all and laughter slid all the way down the icy hill again and again.

Good God it was grand.