I listened to a couple of Blinkist book summaries tonight. Even though I knew of Kierkegaard as the father of existentialism, I did not understand that there was some humor and humanity in his writings.
His first major work, published 1843 in Danish under the pseudonym Victor Eremita (suggestively similar to the Danish word for hermit, eremit), was titled Enten/Eller, Either/Or.
It contrasts aesthetic, his word for hedonistic, versus ethical views of life and states neither is all good, and whatever we choose, we will have to deal with the anxiety of our choices. The hedonist tries to escape their guilt by more hedonistic acts while the ethicist feels anxious by whatever degree of self-denial they have.
In the end he points out that the human condition is messy and unfair and we have to accept its unfairness and absurdity with a sense of humor.
I was surprised by his claim that living an ethical life would create anxiety. It’s easier for me to see that hedonism can lead to anxiety and attempts to sink deeper into their pathology (which Nietzsche saw as the new way of ruling the word). Link to my piece about that below. Meanwhile, I’m thinking of writing about anxiety and my lack of it on my personal Substack soon.
Beyond Good and Evil: Nietzsche Foresaw the Übermenschen of Today
A Country Doctor Writes: 
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