The ‘Comic’ in Kierkegaard’s Three Stages of Life and Their Parallels in Buddhism

Abstract

What is called the aesthetic stage in Kierkegaard’s three stages of life cracks up due to its inner incoherence, the other stages being the ethical and the religious. As the Buddha also points out, a life dominated by sensuality without any ethics is deemed to generate inner incoherence and boredom as however attractive you try to make without ethics and marriage, you ultimately face a brick wall. Kierkegaard’s graphic description of different characters, how with a sense of irony they are presented is a blend of the comic and the tragic. Kierkegaard is also associated with the theory of humour described as ‘incongruity’ and he is well-known for his study of irony. He writes under pseudonames and thus has the freedom to generate the pleasure lover and the crisis within and the erosion of ethics in a graphic manner.