A founding work of Existentialism
KIERKEGAARD, Søren. Either/Or. London: Oxford University Press. 1946.
8vo. 2vols. Original cloth with wrappers; p. x + 387, xvi + 304; a little sunning to spines, chipping to top edges of jackets, previous owner's bookplate to ffeps, otherwise very good.
Second English language edition. The first was in 1944, 101 years after the work's first publication in Denmark as Enten-Eller. In 1841, the 28 year old Kierkegaard made the brave but unhappy choice to break off his brief engagement to Regine Olsen for reasons which are still obscure. The making of this decision, this act of resolution, lit in him the spark behind this bold work which sees Kierkegaard pitting two sides of his personality against each other, the aesthete of the first volume being at odds with the ethicist of the second. This was an attack on, rather than an affirmation of, Hegelian synthesis and one of the founding works of Existentialist philosophy: "Choice…was at the root of Kierkegaard's theory. There can be no system of existence, only a system of ideas. From this he develops his thesis of 'Existence'… in which human beings considered as subjects not objects are the only real existence: the reflective as opposed to active nature being focused on the 'acts' of making perpetual decisions" (PMM 314).
Being produced just after the war and subject to paper rationing, the plain dustwrappers are printed on the reverse of very colourful blue and yellow dustwrappers for The Grand Book of Girls. A less complementary work it is hard to imagine.
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