Kierkegaard's Either/Or and the Parable of the Prodigal

Son:
Or, Three Rival Versions of Three Rival Versions
Charles K. Bellinger
[This essay was published in Robert L. Perkins, ed. International Kierkegaard
Commentary: Either/Or, Part II. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1995. 59-82.]
I propose an interpretive thought-experiment. What if Kierkegaard's Either/Or is a kind of
parable? I say a kind of parable, because part of the definition of a (standard) parable is
brevity.[1] An 800 page long parable is obviously out of the ordinary. But if we can allow
our thinking about what a parable is to be somewhat flexible on that point, then we may
be able to notice some interesting parallels between Either/Or and, for example, the
biblical story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). Noticing such parallels will be the
focus of the first section of this essay. The latter sections will consist of a consideration of
recent books by Alasdair MacIntyre and James Breech. These works contain thoughtprovoking insights into contemporary moral thought, which can be fruitfully compared
with Kierkegaard's concept of the three primary spheres of existence: the aesthetic, the
ethical, and the religious. Throughout, it will be my contention that Kierkegaard's thought
can only be interpreted accurately when it is seen in connection with the Bible.
Let us consider now the parable of the Prodigal Son. The younger son in the story
treats his father as if he were already dead by demanding his portion of the inheritance.
He then takes the money, travels to another place, and squanders it in loose living. His
actions reveal his character. He is so self-indulgent that he resembles someone who is
mentally ill.[2] He could be compared to a drug addict whose actions are so selfdestructive that they make the continuation of the addiction impossible. He is so full of
self-interest that he cannot even act according to enlightened self-interest. He lives
entirely in the present moment. In this he has come to resemble the swine which he
feeds; the animals do not live with an awareness of the past and the future. His
existence has been reduced to his wants.
When the younger son returns home, the elder brother is out in the fields. He is acting
as a mature, responsible manager of the family property. He is not concerned with
himself alone, but with his proper role in maintaining his father and in stewarding the
family property for the potential benefit of future generations. In a word, he seeks to live
ethically. When the elder brother returns home and learns that a party has been
organized for his younger brother, he is angry. His anger reveals that he lives within a
world of moral codes. He expects that those who live ethically will be rewarded, while
those who are self-indulgent will have to suffer the consequences of their actions. "Lo,
these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command; yet you
never gave me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends. But when this son of
yours came, who has devoured your living with harlots, you killed for him the fatted
calf!"[3]
The father's response shows that his highest concern is not enforcing a moral code,
but rejoicing in the return of one who was "lost." The father interprets the situation in
terms of spiritual death and life. His words and actions point to a source of renewal and
hope for those whose actions have been self-destructive. "God" is not specifically referred
to in the story, but it is not out of place to suggest that the father is intended by Jesus to
be a sign of the grace of God. The source of renewal which the father points to is the
source of all life.

What do we learn from a parable such as this? We learn that there are various
possibilities open to human beings concerning their pathway in life. Different pathways
will lead to different outcomes which must be borne by the individual.[4] The parable
opens our eyes to these possibilities and to the complications which they produce in
human relationships. The parable helps us to understand that there are others in the
world besides ourselves.
This is a very brief indication of what we learn from Jesus' parables. They arose out of
a situation of conflict between the Pharisees and the "sinners." To say that Jesus ate with
sinners is not to say that he approved of sin. Neither did he recommend the confidence
which the Pharisees seemed to place in their own moral probity. Jesus separated himself
from the Pharisees by refraining from identifying God as the giver of an increasingly
determined legal code.[5] He pointed through his words and deeds to a new possibility,
which he called the kingdom of God. This possibility to which Jesus points is the pathway
in which the human ego is dethroned; it is led to give up its attempt to be the master of
its own universe--either aesthetically or ethically.[6]
Let us turn now to Either/Or. What kind of book is this? Is it a philosophical or
theological treatise? No. Is it a work of history? No. Is it a social scientific study? No. Is it
a self-help book? No. What is it? It most closely resembles a novel or a play. In the
normal process of writing, a novelist combines various elements to produce the novel:
plot, setting, characters, etc. In Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authorship, we find that he
has imagined characters, as a novelist would, but instead of just placing these characters
in books, he has had these characters write books. The books (or parts of books) which
they write reveal "from inside" their various interpretations of reality and human
existence. In reading their productions, we find ourselves encountering different,
sometimes contradictory, perspectives on the world. In this encounter lies the possibility
that we may come to understand ourselves in a way which we had not before.
Volume One of Either/Or depicts the aesthetic sphere of existence. Kierkegaard was
reflecting here his perception of German and Danish Romanticism of the early 19th
century.[7] This mode of thought and life is fragmented and disconnected, which the
reader is led to understand through the form of the book (aphorisms, critical essays,
diaries, etc.). The aphorisms collected under the heading "Diapsalmata" express ironic
melancholy, swinging back and forth between comedy and tragedy. On the one hand, A
says that life is empty and meaningless. When we attend a funeral, "why not stay out
there and go along down into the grave and draw lots to see to whom will befall the
misfortune of being the last of the living who throws the last three spadefuls of earth on
the last of the dead?" (EO, 1: 29). On the other hand, he speaks of the marvelous
experience of being given a gift from the gods: to always have the laughter on his side
(EO, 1: 43). The remainder of the first volume describes the aesthetic sphere from
various angles, focusing on themes such as sexuality and seduction, sorrow and hope,
music and the demonic, fortune and misfortune, boredom and emptiness, hiddenness
and disclosure.[8]
Overall, the aesthete is depicted as having only a tenuous connection with reality. He
lives in the dream world of his poetic ideas and his emotions. He is naturally drawn to the
world of the theater, in which the flickering personalities of the stage are more
interesting than the banal reality of the Judge. The aesthetic sphere, taken to its logical
conclusion, is represented by Johannes the Seducer. He has been insightfully described
by George Pattison in this way:
He is, as is well known, no Don Juan, no masterful sensuous presence, but a man of
intrigues for whom the 'interesting' aspect of a relationship is of much greater value than
mere sexual gratification. A long, complex and delicately nuanced process of
psychological manipulation is what gives him most enjoyment. He seduces by means of

words and ideas rather than by glamour or potency. The 'stage' on which he carries out
his seduction is the interiority of the victim's consciousness, and his aim is to create an
'interesting' situation on this stage which he can then relish--being as much a spectator
as an actor. Indeed, the alarming associations of the title 'the Seducer' should not
mislead us. This is no Miltonic Satan nor yet a Hercules of the bedroom. This is a man
incapable of genuine relationships, incapable of love, friendship and contentment, a
narcissist, a voyeur. What incites him is the possibility of extracting an image from a
situation, which he can then take away and enjoy in the privacy of his own mental world,
without having to confront the reality of the Other. Unable to allow for the irreducible
otherness or autonomous freedom of those he manipulates, his view of life is essentially
pornographic. He is sheer perspective, a sequence of ideas with no intrinsic or
sustainable relation to reality.[9]
Volume Two of Either/Or describes the ethical sphere of existence, with Judge William
as its representative. He does not posit a simple conflict between the aesthetic and the
ethical spheres, rather he believes that the ethical incorporates the aesthetic within it.
His first essay is entitled "The Aesthetic Validity of Marriage," and begins with this thesis
statement: "There are two things that I must regard as my particular task: to show the
aesthetic meaning of marriage and to show how the aesthetic in it may be retained
despite life's numerous hindrances" (EO, 2: 8). The Judge's polemic against his young
friend does not consist of a puritanical harangue which commands a denial of the
aesthetic. The Judge seeks to show the younger man that his infatuation with the
aesthetic in itself is actually a limitation. It is the ethical person who can more fully
appreciate the aesthetic aspects of life, because he lives not just in the moment, but
within the broader horizon of continuity through time. "Romantic love can be portrayed
very well in the moment; marital love cannot, for an ideal husband is not one who is
ideal once in his life but one who is that every day" (EO, 2: 135). The ethical sphere is
grounded in the claims of the eternal and the claims of the community. It seeks to
stabilize human emotions through ordered structures of social life. Its goal is genuine
fulfillment through interpersonal relationships which are marked by disclosure and
faithfulness, rather than hiddenness and deception. From the Judge's point of view, the
aesthetic sphere is a failure to be whole as a person:
Consequently, it is manifest that every aesthetic view of life is despair, and that everyone
who lives aesthetically is in despair, whether he knows it or not. But when one knows
this, and you certainly do know it, then a higher form of existence is an imperative
requirement. (EO, 2: 192)
The concluding sermon by the Jutland pastor is recommended to A by the Judge, but it
should not be inferred from this that the sermon represents simply more of the same.
Actually, the sermon represents a crucial shift from the ethical sphere of existence to the
religious. Whereas the ethical sphere represents the human attempt to place oneself "in
the right" existentially, the religious sphere begins with the truth that human beings are
always in the wrong before God. The pastor takes as his text the passage from Luke 19
in which Christ weeps over Jerusalem. The pastor meditates on the theme of the
suffering of the just and the unjust together, within the universal judgment on
humankind. Of what value are the attempts of puny human beings to be "ethical" in the
face of the fallibility and corruption of the human race? The pastor seeks to persuade his
congregation that even though it is painful, recognizing that one is in the wrong before
God is the only pathway to genuine edification:
Therefore this, that in relation to God you are always in the wrong, is not a truth you
must acknowledge, not a consolation that alleviates your pain, not a compensation for
something better, but it is a joy in which you win a victory over yourself and over the
world, your delight, your song of praise, your adoration, a demonstration that your love
is happy, as only that love can be with which one loves God. (EO, 2: 351)

Within Either/Or as a whole we can see an analysis of relationships. In the first part,
the aesthetic sphere is analyzed as a lack of relationship between person and person.
Individuals are atomistic consciousnesses. In the second part the emphasis is placed
upon a "horizontal" relationship between husband and wife. Individuals exist in and for
another. In the concluding sermon, the focus is on the "vertical" relationship between the
individual and God. The ultimate "community" in which the individual participates is the
life of God. This same dialectic of relationship was foreshadowed in the parable of the
Prodigal Son, as we have seen. Our side-by-side exegesis of the parable and Either/Or
has reinforced our initial observation of a certain parallelism between the two accounts.
Of course, there are significant differences between them; the length, complexity,
literary allusions, etc. of Either/Or have no counterpart in the parable. A does not repent,
as the younger son does ( or at least appears to),[10] and the anger of the elder brother
is not very evident in Judge William. But even when all of this is considered, the
underlying thematic similarities are remarkable. In both cases we have three principal
ways of thinking and acting set forth as possibilities for human existence. The first is
individualistic and aesthetic, the second is communal and ethical, and the third is
transcendent and religious. (We may add in passing that these similarities could be a
reflection of the circumstances of Kierkegaard's life. Either/Or was written after
Kierkegaard's intense university years in which he himself often acted as a "prodigal son"
in relation to his older brother Peter and his father.)[11]
My contention is that Either/Or, which may appear to be a "secular" work by
Kierkegaard, can only be fully appreciated in connection with a passage in the New
Testament. In other words, this book has religious resonances which must be heard if it
is to be understood accurately. Such an approach to the interpretation of Either/Or is
completely foreign to a commentator such as Alasdair MacIntyre. We will now turn to his
writings to see how far off track one can go if one ignores the theological grounding of
Kierkegaard's thought.
MacIntyre has a fixed idea in his mind of Kierkegaard as a "philosopher of radical
choice"; in this regard MacIntyre's comments on Kierkegaard at least have the virtue of
consistency over time, even if they lack the virtue of accuracy of content. In his
encyclopedia article, for example, he says this:
The essence of the Kierkegaardian concept of choice is that it is criterionless. On
Kierkegaard's view, if criteria determine what I choose, it is not I who make the choice;
hence the choice must be undetermined. Suppose, however, that I do invoke criteria in
order to make my choice. Then all that has happened is that I have chosen the criteria.
And if in turn I try to justify my selection of criteria by an appeal to logically cogent
considerations, then I have in turn chosen the criteria in the light of which these
considerations appear logically cogent.[12]
In A Short History of Ethics, MacIntyre presents Kierkegaard as a philosopher of "radical
choice" who pictures modern individuals as adopting various ways of living through
arbitrary acts of decision making which cannot be rationally defended:
The fundamental doctrine of Sren Kierkegaard is that not only are there no genuine
objective tests in morality; but that doctrines which assert that there are function as
devices to disguise the fact that our moral standards are, and can only be, chosen. The
individual utters his moral precepts to himself in a far stronger sense than the Kantian
individual did; for their only sanction and authority is that he has chosen to utter
them.[13]
In his more recent book, After Virtue, MacIntyre continues to develop the same theme:
Kierkegaard is an Enlightenment thinker who has accepted the basic assumption of
modern relativism, that there is no stable, rational basis for morality:

What I earlier picked out as the distinctively modern standpoint was of course that which
envisages moral debate in terms of a confrontation between incompatible and
incommensurable moral premises and moral commitment as the expression of a
criterionless choice between such premises, a type of choice for which no rational
justification can be given. This element of arbitrariness in our moral culture was
presented as a philosophical discovery--indeed as a discovery of a disconcerting, even
shocking, kind--long before it became a commonplace of everyday discourse. Indeed that
discovery was first presented precisely with the intention of shocking the participants in
everyday moral discourse in a book which is at once the outcome and epitaph of the
Enlightenment's systematic attempt to discover a rational justification for morality. The
book is Kierkegaard's Either/Or....
Kierkegaard's professed intention in designing the pseudonymous form of Either/Or
was to present the reader with an ultimate choice, himself not able to commend one
alternative rather than another because never appearing as himself.[14]
I have quoted MacIntyre at length so that he may be allowed to speak in his own voice,
something which he certainly does not allow Kierkegaard to do in After Virtue. If
MacIntyre's interpretation of Kierkegaard is correct, then he is justified in describing
Kierkegaard in connection with other Enlightenment thinkers such as Hume and Kant who
made a significant break with the tradition of Christian rationality. But this "if" is not
substantiated by an accurate reading of Kierkegaard.
The mistakes which MacIntyre makes in interpreting Kierkegaard can be outlined as
follows: 1) MacIntyre's argument is based on his belief that the literary structure of
Either/Or implies that Kierkegaard thought that there is no rational basis for morality. He
is assuming that the "message" of Either/Or can be simplistically stated as follows: the
book presents two different ways of living one's life, the aesthetic and the ethical;
Kierkegaard does not recommend one over the other; therefore his "fundamental
doctrine" is that "there are no genuine objective tests in morality." According to both
Johannes Climacus and Kierkegaard, this is a faulty interpretation of Either/Or. Both
prefer the ethical way of life over the aesthetic way of life. This is clear from Climacus'
comments in the Postscript:
That there is no conclusion and no final decision is an indirect expression for truth as
inwardness and in this way perhaps a polemic against truth as knowledge.... Only the
truth that builds up is truth for you. (CUP, 252)
As a thinker, A is superior to B. A "possesses all the seductive gifts of understanding and
intellect" (CUP, 253). But B is closer to the truth concerning human existence:
He is a married man ... and, in direct opposition to the hiddenness of the aesthetic,
focuses on marriage as the most profound form of life's disclosure, whereby time is
turned to account for the ethically existing individual, and the possibility of gaining a
history is continuity's ethical victory over hiddenness, depression, illusory passion, and
despair. (CUP, 254)
When we look at Kierkegaard's signed works, once again we find that the aesthetic and
the ethical are not being viewed neutrally. Consider, for example, this passage from the
discourse "Strengthening in the Inner Being," which was published in the same year as
Either/Or. (It is obvious that MacIntyre could not have quoted this passage in After Virtue
without undermining his argument concerning Kierkegaard's "professed intention.")
Only a thoughtless soul can let everything around it change, give itself up as a willing
prey to life's fickle, capricious changes, without being alarmed by such a world, without
being concerned for itself. How unworthy and nauseating such a life is, how far such a
life is from witnessing to the human being's high destiny--to be the ruler of creation. If

the human being is to rule, then there must be an order in the world; otherwise it would
be a mockery of him to assign him to control brute forces that obey no law. And if he is
to rule, then there must be a law within him also; otherwise he would be incapable of
ruling; either he would disturbingly interfere, or it would be left to chance whether he
ruled wisely or not. If this were the case, then the human being would be so far from
being the ruler of creation that creation might wish instead that he did not exist at all.
(EUD, 84)
Kierkegaard does not believe that the aesthetic and ethical spheres are of equivalent
value, so that human beings are forced to make an arbitrary choice, like the hapless
donkey in front of the two piles of hay. Stephen Ross has argued that an interpretation of
Either/Or along lines similar to those suggested by MacIntyre is mistaken:
... this seemingly evenhanded reading is in fact a deeply partisan one. If we say this and
stop there, we have in fact accepted the aesthete's characterization of choice and value.
To interpret Either/Or as neutral between the aesthetic and the ethical means in fact to
have given the aesthete the nod.[15]
The "message" of the book, if we can put it that way, is that one can only gain true
selfhood by being serious about making a whole out of one's life. The cost of rejecting
the ethical pathway in life is a dissipation of self which leads ultimately to despair.
2) But even if it were the case that the ethical was not being recommended over the
aesthetic, which it is not, MacIntyre's interpretation would still be faulty, because he
would have jumped to a false conclusion. If an author were to reveal "from inside" what
it feels like to live one's life in mode A and in mode B, without recommending either, this
would not mean that the author believes that there is no sound, intelligible basis on
which human beings can ground their thought and action. It may very well be the case
that the author has in mind a third way of living, mode C, which he is recommending.
This journal entry is relevant at this point:
My contemporaries cannot grasp the design of my writing. Either/Or divided into four
parts or six parts and published separately over six years would have been all right. But
that each essay in Either/Or is part of a whole, and then the whole of Either/Or a part of
a whole: that, after all, think my bourgeois contemporaries, is enough to drive one daft.
(JP, 5: 5905)
When we pull the zoom lens back and look at Kierkegaard's authorship as a whole, it is
clear that the ethical sphere of existence is not an end in itself, but a pointer to the
religious sphere of existence.
3) One would never get this idea, however, from reading MacIntyre. This is pointed up
by the fact that in the chapter of After Virtue we are referring to, "The Predecessor
Culture and the Enlightenment Project of Justifying Morality," he does not mention the
concluding sermon by the Jutland pastor at all, and thus cannot begin to gage how its
contents impact his version of Kierkegaard's "intention." Also, he does not mention the
large corpus of works in which Kierkegaard speaks his mind most directly: Eighteen
Upbuilding Discourses, Two Ages, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Works of
Love, Christian Discourses, The Point of View for My Work as an Author, The Sickness
Unto Death, Practice in Christianity, For Self-Examination, and Judge for Yourselves. This
is the procedure of an author who claims to have a better insight into Kierkegaard than
"the best Kierkegaard scholars of our own time."[16]
4) In sum, MacIntyre paints a misleading picture of Kierkegaard by portraying him as
an "Enlightenment" thinker whose writings focus on the concept of "radical choice."
Actually, Kierkegaard is a Christian thinker, who inhabits the same tradition of intellectual

enquiry as Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Barth. The heart of Kierkegaard's
thought is not "radical choice" but the grace of God embodied in Christ. If there is a
choice which is of fundamental importance for Kierkegaard, it is the choice of God to
redeem sinners, without consideration of their merits. The telos to which Kierkegaard's
thought points is a life of discipleship to Christ:
As [Christ] is the truth, you do not learn to know from him what the truth is, to be left
then to your own devices, but you remain in the truth only by remaining in him; as he is
the way, you do not learn to know from him which way you shall go, and then being left
to your own devices can go down your own path, but only by remaining in him can you
remain in the way; as he is life, you do not have life given to you from him, and then can
shift for yourself, but only by remaining in him do you have life: so it is also that he is
the covering; only by remaining in him, only by living in him, are you covered, is there a
cover over the multitude of your sins.[17]
It should be clear by now that MacIntyre's comments on Either/Or are considerably off
the mark.[18] I say this, however, as one who finds himself in basic agreement with
much of what MacIntyre has said in his recent books. It is my concern, then, to show
how it is the case that Kierkegaard's thought is actually an example of MacIntyre's
conception of what it means to inhabit a tradition of philosophical rationality. Before I get
to that point, however, I need to bring into view some of the central ideas of MacIntyre's
most recent book.
In Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, MacIntyre divides modern moral thought into
three broad categories: encyclopedia, genealogy, and tradition. Under the heading of
encyclopedia he has in mind the optimistic version of Enlightenment thought. This was
the milieu in which Adam Gifford established his lecture series on "natural theology and
ethics," and which produced the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (18751889). It was an age in which the intellectual heirs of the Enlightenment believed that
"progress" was steadily being made in all of the fields of thought, from astronomy and
chemistry to anthropology and ethics.[19] The good, decent, educated, civilized people of
the Victorian world conceived of themselves as being on the cutting edge of human
evolution.
Under the heading of genealogy MacIntyre has in mind Nietzsche and his heirs. This
school of thought is the dark side of the aftermath of the Enlightenment. Nietzsche
ridiculed those 19th century professors who contributed, directly or indirectly, to an
enterprise such as the Ninth Edition. He analyzed their conception of progress in
knowledge of the truth as a hangover from the "sickness" of the Christian era. From
Nietzsche's point of view, there is no such thing as truth in itself. There is only a "mobile
army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms--in short, a sum of human
relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and
rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a
people."[20] "Truth" is always relative to a perspective, and an individual's perspective
can shift from one moment to the next. MacIntyre explains:
Nietzsche, as a genealogist, takes there to be a multiplicity of perspectives within each of
which truth-from-a-point-of-view may be asserted, but no truth-as-such, an empty
notion, about the world, an equally empty notion. There are no rules of rationality as
such to be appealed to, there are rather strategies of insight and strategies of
subversion.[21]
The version of moral enquiry which MacIntyre himself recommends is embodied in the
Roman Catholic tradition. Its leading representatives are Augustine, Aquinas, and Pope
Leo XIII, who published Aeterni Patris in 1879. The central feature of this tradition which
distinguishes it sharply from the other two is the authority which is recognized in

canonical texts. While the encyclopedists dispense with the authority of tradition in favor
of the authority of the enlightened professor, and the genealogists dispense with
authority altogether, those who live within a tradition of moral enquiry accept the
essential validity of certain texts such as the writings of Plato and Aristotle and the Bible.
These texts describe the world in which their readers live and give them the concepts
which they need to engage in rational enquiry into the nature of reality. Without such
texts and the guidance they provide, these readers would only flounder in intellectual
darkness. With them, they are enabled to carry on a conversation which is meaningful
and productive. In MacIntyre's words:
The order of good teaching is ideally the same as the order of effective learning and a
book which is well designed to teach, perhaps especially a book designed to teach
teachers such as the Summa Theologiae was, will follow the order of exploratory
learning, through which the pupil relives the history of enquiry up to the highest point of
achievement which it has reached so far, by rescrutinizing those arguments which have
sustained the best supported conclusions so far. Hence the Summa sets out in its
ordering of universal concepts the framework for a type of narrative of moral enquiry to
be enacted by individuals who do and will exhibit their rationality by participating in the
forms of rationality established by and through a particular tradition and indeed, insofar
as moral enquiry is integral to the moral life itself, a framework for a set of narratives of
particular lives.[22]
This brief outline of MacIntyre's book gives us food for thought. Have we not
encountered a three-fold schema for interpreting modern Western cultural life
somewhere before? Yes, we have, in Kierkegaard's conception of the three spheres of
existence. I believe that the outline for MacIntyre's book shows the influence on him of
Kierkegaard's thought. But influence is difficult to prove. I will be content, then, with this
mild suggestion. At the very least, MacIntyre ought to admit that Kierkegaard is a thinker
who inhabits the Christian tradition of rationality. MacIntyre should recognize this and
retract the faulty comments which he makes on Kierkegaard in After Virtue. He should
realize that Kierkegaard's life mission was to be an advocate of Christian discipleship
within the context of the tradition of Danish Lutheranism, and the context of the
emerging tradition of the "Enlightenment." Kierkegaard spoke to these traditions,
carrying on an argument about the goods to which they were committed. This is
MacIntyre's own definition of what it means to live in a tradition:
A living tradition then is an historically extended, socially embodied argument, and an
argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute that tradition. Within a
tradition the pursuit of goods extends through generations, sometimes through many
generations. Hence the individual's search for his or her good is generally and
characteristically conducted within a context defined by those traditions of which the
individual's life is a part, and this is true both of those goods which are internal to
practices and of the goods of a single life.[23]
Kierkegaard carried on his argument through a very subtle strategy of indirect and direct
communication. He narrated the story of those other traditions through his imaginary
authors. Once again, MacIntyre's words are very insightful:
... that narrative prevails over its rivals which is able to include its rivals within it, not
only to retell their stories as episodes within its story, but to tell the story of the telling of
their stories as such episodes.24
This is precisely what Kierkegaard has done as the cleverest of all narrative theologians
(before the invention of "narrative theology"). Through his invention of imaginary
authors, Kierkegaard was able to tell the stories of the dominant factions of his day in

literature, philosophy, and religion, in such a way that he could recount in his own voice
the story of New Testament faith.
Again, in speaking of the Augustinian tradition of theological enquiry, MacIntyre puts
his finger on the heart of Kierkegaard's theology:
The key texts were of course those of sacred Scripture. Reading was reading aloud
and the liturgical recitation of Scripture was an act of reading in which the oral and
written text were one. The reader in his or her own life enacts and reenacts that of which
he or she reads in Scripture; the enacted narrative of a single life is made intelligible
within the framework of the dramatic history of which Scripture speaks. So the reading of
texts is part of the history of which the same texts speak. The reader thus discovers him
or herself inside the Scriptures.[25]
Two passages from Kierkegaard come immediately to mind in this connection, the
preface to Purity of Heart, and the theses of the first part of For Self-Examination:
[This little book] seeks that single one, to whom it gives itself wholly, by whom it wishes
to be received as if it had arisen in his own heart, that single individual whom I with joy
and gratitude call my reader, that single individual, who willingly reads slowly, reads
repeatedly, and who reads aloud--for his own sake. (UDVS, 5)
What is required in order to look at oneself with true blessing in the mirror of the
Word? The first requirement is that you must not look at the mirror, observe the mirror,
but must see yourself in the mirror. (FSE, 25)
Nelly Viallaneix argues that this manner of discovering oneself in the Scriptures is the
theme of Kierkegaard's authorship from right to left, top to bottom. In her words:
The structure of the totality of Kierkegaard's authorship is religious. It is Christian,
centered on Christ. Christ is the Word of God: the universe to which he gives access
vibrates with the creative Word of a God whose "only joy is to communicate"; it is also
filled with the resounding waves of the words which human beings exchange one with
another. The Christian structure of the totality of the authorship and of the existence of
Kierkegaard thus cannot fail to be resonant.[26]
I, along with Viallaneix, am arguing that Kierkegaard's thought world is profoundly
shaped by the Bible. This means that it is not accurate to describe Kierkegaard as an
irrationalist, unless one holds that the theological content of the Bible as a whole is
irrational. Kierkegaard was acutely sensitive to the problematic of faith and reason as it
is presented in the Bible. This is obviously the theme of several of his books, and it has
already been addressed in countless secondary books and articles. Briefly stated, my own
outlook on this problem is that Kierkegaard was attempting to articulate a theological
understanding of rationality over against Kant's agnostic understanding. Human reason is
a gift from God, but it is limited. There are some things which reason cannot fully grasp.
For reason to recognize its own limits is itself an inherently rational act.[27] A mature
individual is one who lives with an attitude of faith seeking understanding; the religious
self seeks to comprehend reality, but does not arrogantly presume that he or she can do
so on this side of the grave. That such arrogance is a temptation for human beings is
seen in the comic figure of Hegel.
We turn now to James Breech. In Jesus and Postmodernism, Breech lays out three
basic alternatives for philosophical and religious thought. The first possibility which he
describes is "postmodernism," which he associates with authors such as Nietzsche,
Derrida, and Mark C. Taylor. The postmodernist/ nihilist viewpoint seeks to deconstruct
all traditional conceptions of moral selfhood. It holds that Death is God.[28] All efforts to

construct moral, philosophical, or religious systems of thought are at root false attempts
to give to human life a meaning and purpose which it does not have in reality. The lack
of any meaning built into the fabric of the universe means that moral beliefs are all
relative and are all inventions. Narrated stories are fictions which human beings dream
up out of their desire to believe that good people will be rewarded and evil ones
punished.
The second major alternative which Breech outlines is referred to as the "pro-closure
party." Breech has in mind Paul Riceour and other theorists who defend traditional
philosophy and theology from the attacks of the postmodernists.[29] Such authors hold
that the way in which human beings tell stories does "fit" with the basic realities of our
life. The plots of stories actually reflect the "plots" found in human lives:
Stories with closure allow us to evaluate the actions of the characters and to draw
inferences concerning what actions are valid or invalid. Ricoeur claims that there is no
action that does not give rise to "approbation" or "reprobation," that an action can never
be ethically neutral. Narrative, in his view, responds to a universal human impulse to
pass judgment on the actions of others and of themselves, and Ricoeur would argue that
this need corresponds to the way reality is ordered.[30]
Breech articulates and recommends a third possibility, distinct from either
postmodernism or "moral closure." He calls this third way "living in story," and finds it
rooted in the parables of Jesus. Breech is particularly interested in the way in which
Jesus' parables, such as "the rich man who had a steward" (Luke 16:1-7), "the man who
once gave a dinner and invited guests" (Matt. 22:2-9/ Luke 14:16-23), "the householder
who went out at dawn to hire laborers" (Matt. 20:1-15), "the man going down the road
who fell among robbers" (Luke 10:30-35), and "the man who had two sons" (Luke
15:11-32), seem to lack the "closure" which we expect from stories. They leave us
hanging; they don't give us pat answers, and thus lead us to ask: What is the question?
Paying close attention to Jesus' parables reveals that we will never know whether the
man going down the road ever regained consciousness or whether the third man was
ever rewarded for his actions. We will never know whether the man who had two sons
was ever reconciled with the elder. We will never know whether the householder who
went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard ever subsequently devised
a satisfactory working relationship with them. Nor will we ever know whether the man
who once gave a dinner and invited guests ever did find people to entertain. There is a
permanent gap where the ending should be in all of the stories Jesus narrated.[31]
Either/Or has this same characteristic. This is a significant sense in which it is like a
parable. Victor Eremita himself notes this aspect of the papers which he published:
A's papers contain a variety of attempts at an aesthetic view of life; to convey a unified
aesthetic life-view is scarcely possible. B's papers contain an ethical life-view. As I let this
thought influence my soul, it became clear to me that I might let this guide me into
determining the title. This is just what the title I have chosen expresses. If there be any
loss in this to the reader, it cannot be much, for he can just as well forget the title while
reading the book. Once he has read it he may perhaps then think of the title. Doing so
will free him from every finite question as to whether A was actually persuaded and
repented, whether B won the day, or whether, perhaps, it ended by B's going over to A's
point of view. For in this respect these papers are without an ending.[32]
Breech asks: How are Jesus' stories true? He observes that they are markedly
different from Homer's narratives, for instance, in that they are not "eyewitness" reports
which rely on visual descriptions to paint a believable picture of events. Jesus is not a
reporter of events but a teller of stories which he himself has created:

As narrator, he never abdicates the role of selecting and ordering reality. He never
permits the scene to dominate; by implication, his own imagination remains in control of
events, selecting and ordering them....
The kind of authority Jesus exercises is extremely rare. No other narrator, or artist for
that matter, in all of late Western antiquity presumes to speak about what is really the
case based only on his own imaginative capacity to select and order reality.[33]
Jesus' parables do not paint visual pictures, but they do tell us what their characters say.
Jesus used words in the most accurate way in which they can be used, to recount the
speech of human beings. The words of the characters reveal who they are. When we hear
them speak, we can see into their spiritual condition. This is the fundamental way in
which Jesus' stories are true. They reveal to us the human condition. Here again, we are
struck by a parallel with Either/Or. It is described as a novelistic work rather than a novel
precisely because it does not rely on painting a believable picture of scenes and events.
It consists primarily of the words of its characters, whose speech reveals to us the
various possibilities open to us as human beings.
Another aspect of Jesus' parables is the way they depict existence in time. Stories
usually depict events in a linear sequence, because that is the only way in which a story
can be told. But linear "story" time is an abstraction, because the real time in which
human beings live is multilinear.[34] Jesus' stories lack conventional moralizing endings;
instead, they open our eyes to the reality of the multilinearity of time. In other words,
they awaken us to the fact that there are other people in the world. Breech explains:
In each story the main character has acted for awhile in his own temporal sequence.
But at the end of the story each of these characters is addressing a new, disconcerting
situation brought about by the awareness that his own time is contingent with the
sequence of another. What opens up here is the dimension of self and other. Previously
the householder had ignored the workers' time, the father had ignored his elder son's
time, and the host ignored his guests' time. Now, as each one speaks, each is aware of
the time of others....
The voice of each makes the characters present to the maximum degree possible in
narrative. Each is real in that sense. Moreover, each addresses a situation in which his
previously closed temporal sequence has been brought into contiguity with another
temporal sequence and so opened up. In place of closure, ending, or finality, at the end
of these stories we have opening and complexity, a sudden revelation of the genuine
ambiguity that occurs when the consequences of actions are seen in terms of the way
they penetrate the lives of others.[35]
According to Breech, this is what it means to live in story: to become aware that one's
life impinges on the lives of others. How will one's interactions with others be
characterized? By ignoring them? By manipulating them for one's own purposes? By
being envious of them? By helping them if they are injured? Instead of answering our
questions, Jesus' parables place our lives and our character in question. Breech suggests
that they direct us toward becoming creatures of God who are open to God's life-giving
spirit, and to the ways in which we can participate in that spirit with our fellow
creatures.[36]
I would argue that this description of Jesus' parables is also an accurate description of
Kierkegaard's thought. This is clearly the case in a book such as Works of Love, but even
here, in Either/Or, we can see intimations of this theological message. To read Either/Or
is to become aware that the way in which we live our lives is one among a variety of
options. When we encounter others who are living out different options, we are reminded
of the fractured nature of fallen human existence. With this awareness we can open
ourselves to God who is the source of redemptive transformation, and we can turn to our
neighbors with the humility which we have learned from being in the wrong before God.

Breech argues that Jesus' parables are nonhistorical, nonmythological, and

nonmoralizing. As such, they represent the first examples in Western history of what we
now call realistic fiction.[37] This is a startling assertion. What I would like to point out is
that Either/Or shares these same characteristics. It is not an account of historical events,
it does not involve stories of gods taking on human form, and it does not have a
simplistic moralizing ending. It is a kind of realistic fiction. More precisely, it is a 19th
century literary echo of the parable of the Prodigal Son. We can say then, that Either/Or
is a work which inhabits a genre which has its home in the New Testament.
In conclusion, we have encountered in this essay three different authors who each
divide the intellectual terrain into three spheres, for heuristic purposes. We can
summarize these spheres in this chart:
Kierkegaard:
MacIntyre:

Breech:

aesthetic

ethical

religious

Don Giovanni

Kant, Hegel

New Testament

genealogy

encyclopedia

tradition

Nietzsche

Adam Gifford

Augustine

Foucault

9th Ed. Encyclo. Br.

Aquinas

postmodernism

moral closure

living in story

Nietzsche

Ricoeur

New Testament

The point which I would like to make is that there is a significant degree of
commensurability between these three columns, and the headings in the third column
are all pointing in the same basic direction. In other words, I believe that Kierkegaard's
conception of the life of Christian faith is commensurable with MacIntyre's conception of
the rationality of the Christian tradition. Breech's conception of living in story is another
way of formulating the same basic philosophical perspective. This is not to suggest that
these authors are saying exactly the same thing. Of course they are not. But I am
suggesting that we are not gathering together three unrelated languages such as
Mandarin and Swahili and Portuguese. We are gathering together French and Spanish
and Italian. There ought to be a way for these three to converse productively. I have
attempted, in a sketchy way, to suggest the outlines of such a conversation in the
preceding pages.
My argument in this paper has been that Either/Or should be interpreted as a literary
echo of the parable of the Prodigal Son. This can be seen on three different levels of
interpretation. The first is the exegetical level, on which the two stories are compared in
terms of their contents. The second is the level of genre, on which we saw that both
stories are a kind of realistic fiction. The third could be called the theological level, on
which it is seen that Either/Or communicates a message which is linked with the meaning
of Jesus' life and teachings.[38] When we hear what is being spoken in Either/Or we are
hearing indirectly the voice of Christ.[39]
Two concluding notes: 1) A certain question has most likely arisen in my reader's
mind: "Did Kierkegaard consciously design Either/Or as an echo of the parable, or not?" I
am not asserting that there was any conscious connection in Kierkegaard's mind, and I
have no textual evidence to suggest that there was. There are two minor references to
the parable at EO, 1: 228 and 261, but they do not amount to any sort of proof texts for
my thesis. My contention is that there was what could be called a subtle, subconscious
influence of the biblical parable on Kierkegaard's thinking. There is no question that
Kierkegaard had read the parable before writing Either/Or. And when we compare them,
as I have done in this essay, we can see in the texts (regardless of any speculations on
authorial intentions) certain striking parallels. All that I am asserting is that these
parallels are present in the texts, and that it is entirely plausible to suggest that

Either/Or is an "echo" of the parable, given Kierkegaard's theological education up to that

point in time. That this parable was important to Kierkegaard is clear from the three
1850 Journal entries on it, JP, 4: 3939 and 3949, which are sermon outlines, and the
following:
In the Gospel story the prodigal has an older brother, but he will not do a single thing
to save the prodigal.
But Christianity itself is, indeed, katexovchn [in an eminent sense] the gospel. And in
this gospel the prodigal son (the human race) has an older brother (the only begotten
Son), and he does everything, loses his life, in order to save the prodigal, in accord with
the Father from the beginning. (JP, 3: 2875)
2) I must admit that when I began writing this essay, I was working with the
assumption that Either/Or is basically an apolitical book. (I write this as one who is
seriously committed to defending Kierkegaard's thought as a whole against the charge
that it is apolitical.)[40] Yet by the time I arrived at the conclusion, I was surprised to
find myself once again thinking politically. The clash between A and the Judge, each in
his own psychic world, evokes the tension between different existing human beings:
between atheist and fundamentalist, Republican and Democrat, Serb and Muslim, Arab
and Jew, pro-life and pro-choice, in sum, between me and my neighbor. How will we all
get along? If Kierkegaard is truly asking the question, "How will we all get along?", then
Either/Or does make a contribution, however unusual, to political thought. Perhaps this
conclusion would not sound so strange to us if we had paid more attention to the text for
the Jutland pastor's sermon:
And when he drew near and saw the city he wept over it, saying, "Would that even today
you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes." (Luke
19:41-42)
We will certainly not achieve any sort of genuine peace on this earth as long as we live in
fragmented psychic colonies, each one sure that it is in the right--before itself. The way
to real change in this area has been indicated by the pastor: to acknowledge that we are
all in the wrong--before God.

NOTES
1. According to Oden, a parable is "a brief story of spare characterization and surprising
reversal, with the underlying intent of moral or spiritual illumination." Thomas C. Oden,
ed., Parables of Kierkegaard (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978) x.
2. James Breech, The Silence of Jesus: The Authentic Voice of the Historical Man
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1983) 192.
3. The Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version (New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1952)
Luke 15:29-30.
4. Breech, The Silence of Jesus, 212.
5. For this insight I am indebted to David Barrett-Johnson.
6. See Merold Westphal, "Kierkegaard's Teleological Suspension of Religiousness B," in
George B. Connell and C. Stephen Evans, eds., Foundations of Kierkegaard's Vision of

Community: Religion, Ethics, and Politics in Kierkegaard (New Jersey: Humanities Press
International, 1992) 113.
7. See George Pattison, Kierkegaard: The Aesthetic and the Religious (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1992) ch. 1.
8. See Gregor Malantschuk, Kierkegaard's Way to the Truth, trans. Mary Michelsen
(Montreal: Inter Editions, 1987) 23-39.
9. Pattison, Kierkegaard, 58.
10. See Breech, The Silence of Jesus, 195.
11. See Johannes Hohlenberg, Sren Kierkegaard, trans. T. H. Croxall (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1954) 74-76.
12. Alasdair MacIntyre, "Sren Aabye Kierkegaard" in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
Vol. 4, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan, 1967) 337.
13. Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics (New York: Macmillan, 1966) 215.
14. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1984) 39-40.
15. Stephen L. Ross, "Editor's Introduction" to Either/Or: Abridged Edition (New York:
Harper and Row, 1986) xiii.
16. MacIntyre, After Virtue, 41.
17. My translation of Sren Kierkegaard, Samlede Vrker, 2nd ed., ed. A. B.
Drachmann, et al (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1929) XII: 336. The quotation is from the
second of the Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays which were published on
August 7, 1851. Lowrie's translation is found on page 24 of For Self-Examination and
Judge for Yourselves! (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944).
18. For other critiques of MacIntyre's reading of Either/Or, see M. Holmes Hartshorne,
Kierkegaard, Godly Deceiver: The Nature and Meaning of His Pseudonymous Writings
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1990) 87-88; and Jeffrey S. Turner, "To Tell a
Good Tale: Kierkegaardian Reflections on Moral Narrative and Moral Truth," Man and
World 24/2 (1991) 181-198.
19. Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy,
and Tradition (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1990) 20.
20. Friedrich Nietzsche, "On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense," in The Portable
Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking Press, 1971) 46.
21. MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions, 42.
22. MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions, 129-130.
23. MacIntyre, After Virtue, 222.
24. MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions, 81.

25. MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions, 83.

26. Nelly Viallaneix, coute, Kierkegaard: Essai sur la Communication de la Parole (Paris:
Les ditions du Cerf, 1979) 1: 38 [my trans.]. Viallaneix's quotation from Kierkegaard is
found at JP, 2: 1414.
27. I take this to be the argument of C. Stephen Evans in his article, "Is Kierkegaard an
Irrationalist?: Reason, Paradox, and Faith," Religious Studies 25/3 (1989) 347-362.
28. Breech, Jesus and Postmodernism (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989) 15.
29. Breech, Jesus and Postmodernism, 39.
30. Breech, Jesus and Postmodernism, 40. Breech is referring to Paul Ricoeur, Time and
Narrative, trans. Kathleen McLauglin and David Pellhauer (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1984) 1: 59.
31. Breech, Jesus and Postmodernism, 28-29.
32. Either/Or, trans. Alasdair Hannay (London: Penguin Books, 1992) 36. Cf. EO, 1: 1314.
33. Breech, Jesus and Postmodernism, 67.
34. Breech, Jesus and Postmodernism, 73.
35. Breech, Jesus and Postmodernism, 74.
36. Breech sees his work as being a contribution to the doctrine of creation. See p. 78
and p. 79, n. 2.
37. Breech, Jesus and Postmodernism, 64.
38. In his book, Kierkegaard: The Myths and Their Origins, trans. George C. Schoolfield
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), Henning Fenger argues that Kierkegaard only
conceived the idea of becoming a "religious" author after his attempt to become an
"aesthetic" author failed to sufficiently impress Copenhagen's literati, who were led by
Heiberg. Fenger's argument, clearly, relies on the assumption that Either/Or was an
aesthetic, not a religious, book. It is obvious that my thesis is a direct contradiction of
Fenger's. One can argue, as I have, that the later religious writings show the true "heart"
of Kierkegaard's thought to be theological. But in this essay I have countered Fenger
(and MacIntyre) not obliquely but directly, by arguing that Either/Or is itself an
inherently religious work.
39. I have come across an essay which has a very striking first sentence: "The fullness of
what Jesus the man means to say about man may be found in the philosophy of
Kierkegaard." Robert S. Hartman, "The Self in Kierkegaard: Some Remarks on
Kierkegaard's The Concept of Dread and The Sickness Unto Death," Journal of
Existentialism 2 (1962) 409-436.
40. See my essay, "Toward a Kierkegaardian Understanding of Hitler, Stalin, and the
Cold War," in Foundations of Kierkegaard's Vision of Community. (Note 6 above.)

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