I will be teaching a remote class core texts in philosophy this spring starting mid-January

and I'd love you to join me.

For details please see partially examined life episode 332 part two. We've been discussing the latter part of either or the essay

balance between the aesthetic and the ethical and the development of the

personality and I believe we were up to around page 250-ish.

Well I think we talked a bit about the stretch from 250 to 256 last time.

It's the stretch in which he talks about the ethical person not simply being bound to rule following and external

duties, but essentially feeling secure and himself, and it kind of culminates with him saying the person who lives life

ethically sees the universal and the person who lives ethically expresses the universal in his life

thus he who lives ethically has himself as his task,

is self in its immediacy is defined by accidental characteristics. The task is to

work the accidental and the universal together into a whole.

And then I think what follows is a pretty

dense theoretical account of what that means

to have oneself as a task.

On 257, he will talk about how the fact that the aesthetic person has no notion of either

of the beautiful or pure earnestness of the ethical or the carefree joy of the inconsequential.

So this is another jab where he is saying that, you know, your worries about losing

beauty or not warranted.

And then it's on 258 that he starts talking about repentance and becoming oneself.

At this point with this stretch we get something that starts to sound very, you know, what we

think of as classically existentialist.

...