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Kierkegaard's Theory Of Ambiguity

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Kierkegaard 's view of people having no character is incorrect, at best it’s flawed. In the Present Age his critique “no character and neither has abstract intelligence”, is due to passionless people having no values. Ambiguity arrives when Kierkegaard 's equates ‘being carried away’ to folly. Kierkegaard identifies character as something that is fixed ‘engraved’ and is largely based on people having global character traits that are influenced by society and one 's environment. My argument revolves around a particular question: Why is there common ambivalence regarding character? I conclude that through the concerning relationship of personality and moral behavior people don 't have general or universal character traits; Why? Because we lack …show more content…

Kierkegaard states, “Morality is character, character is that which is engraved but the sand and the sea have no character and neither has abstract intelligence, for character is really inwardness (in this case values)” (PA 14). Here is the ambiguity, the notion that character is fixed and engraved. However, it’s not. Let me unpack this quote then apply it to the overall picture of how ‘selling one’s breeches to buy a wig’ is not a constituent of character. It 's not justifiable to assign virtues based on a systematic observation which does not represent our character or human behavior. One, being values are not fixed, values can change depending on the situation. This is seen coming into the present age. A new social force emergences, the working class, a voting working class in the 19th century. A century where things are shifting at such a speed it scares people, specifically tradition. For example going from an all-white context to a mix racial status all within a person 's lifetime. Witnessing these changes shakes them at their core and makes them unsure about their future. “Being carried away” does not apply in selling one 's breeches to buy a wig because it has nothing to do with character or value. If we were to view value as something you attend to, the question of how one should or shouldn 't attend to that particular value is going to differ, hence, no universal character

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