ETHICS career that leads to renunciation But whereas Schopenhauer’s system was built on an atheistic metaphysic, Kierkegaard’s evolves against a background of Protestant Christianity For him the renunciation that is the high point of the ethical life is only a preliminary to an ultimate leap of faith Whereas Schopenhauer’s programme is designed to lead to the erasure of individuality, Kierkegaard’s aims to put the individual in full possession of his own personality as a unique creature of God The final stage of the Kierkegaardian spiritual journey will be considered in Chapter 12; our present concern is with the previous stage—the ethical, which comes between the aesthetic and the religious Kierkegaard’s aesthetic person is governed by his feelings, and blind to spiritual values; but we must not think of him as a sensual boor, a philistine glutton, or a sexual deviant As he is portrayed as one of the two protagonists in Either/Or he is a cultured, law-abiding person, popular in society and not without consideration for others What distinguishes him from a serious moral agent is that he avoids entering into any engagements that would limit his capacity for the pursuit of whatever is immediately attractive To preserve his freedom of choice he refuses to take any public or private office; he avoids any deep friendship, and marriage above all The aesthetic person, Kierkegaard argues, is deluded when he thinks of his existence as one of freedom; in fact it is extremely limited In case one were to think of a house, consisting of cellar, ground floor, and premier ´etage, so tenanted, or rather so arranged, that it was planned for a distinction of rank between the dwellers on the several floors; and in case one were to make a comparison between such a house and what it is to be a man—then unfortunately this is the sorry and ludicrous condition of the majority of men, that in their own house they prefer to live in the cellar The soulish–bodily synthesis in every man is planned with a view to being spirit, such is the building; but the man prefers to dwell in the cellar, that is, in the determinants of sensuousness And not only does he prefer to dwell in the cellar; no, he loves that to such a degree that he becomes furious if anyone would propose to him to occupy the piano nobile which stands empty at his disposition—for in fact he is dwelling in his own house (SD 176) Such a person, Kierkegaard says, is in a state of despair ‘Despair’, as used in Sickness unto Death and other works, does not mean a state of gloom or despondency; the aesthetic person, in fact, may well believe that he is happy A despairing person, in Kierkegaard’s terms, is a person who has no hope of anything higher than his present life To despair is to lack 234