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In the digital world, Kierkegaard's thought is valuable in thinking about aesthetics as a component of human development, both including but moving beyond the religious context as its primary center of meaning. Seeing human formation as interrelated with aesthetics makes art a vital dimension of human existence. Contributing to the debate about Kierkegaard's conception of the aesthetic, Kierkegaard, Aesthetics, and Selfhood argues that Kierkegaard's primary concern is to provocatively explore how a self becomes Christian, with aesthetics being a vital dimension for such self-formation. At a broader level, Peder Jothen also focuses on the role, authority, and meaning of aesthetic expression within religious thought generally and Christianity in particular.

This chapter discusses a number of interpretations of the Kierkegaardian aesthetic as offering only a partial, and thus limited explanation of Kierkegaard's aesthetic. Kierkegaard's argumentative concern is to use the existential stages as categorical tactics that lead a reader to a greater awareness of the type of relation that determines one's selfhood. In the aesthetic stage, the aesthetic self relates to the existence through natural passion as in the desire for sensuous things alone or imaginative possibility rather than any ethical system or religious idea that must be actualized within existence. The ethical form of life is of a reflective, mediate existence in which one acts in time through a universal ethical system. The primary description of the aesthetic stage comes from Either/Or written by the pseudonym A and edited by Victor Eremita. Climacus suggests an ironic self is partially trapped or tilted towards either the demands of the aesthetic or ethical stage.

This chapter describes the Kierkegaardian account of the human self as the interpretive tool to understand his aesthetic fragment of artistic production and reception. Kierkegaard connects the becoming self to poetry throughout the authorship, but particularly within the Climacus and Anti-Climacus texts. Though subtle, the differences between Climacus' and Anti-Climacus' ideas of poetry can best be explained by elucidating how a self relates to poetry through the imagination, will, and passion. The logic of Kierkegaard's argument itself suggests that music can inspire one's passionate interest in the self-God relation. Artistic critique showcases how art can point towards Christian possibility, though ever limited and imperfect, that thereby affirms a unessentiual value for art. When related to rightly, the self-music relation can help move a self, particularly through passion, towards redoubling Christ; yet, when one loses oneself in the sensual, aural pleasantness of music, one ceases to relate to Christian possibility as one's highest art.

This chapter discusses view of the braidedness of form and content because it is a particularly apropos concept through which to engage Kierkegaard's conception of the aesthetic. It suggests that few 'fragments' within Kierkegaard's aesthetic. These fragments are not part of a whole, unified idea of the aesthetic, that when combined, creates a complete Kierkegaardian aesthetic system. A fragment focuses on Kierkegaard's literary style, explicating how a variety of literary styles directly and indirectly communicate Christian faith. The chapter examines the aesthetic as fragments require making sense of Kierkegaard's conception of selfhood, particularly through a theological anthropology that recognizes the importance of aesthetics within self-formation. The prime example of the aesthetic self living through natural passion is Either/Or I written by A and edited by Victor Eremita. As a tactic of provocation, Kierkegaard through A is using the aesthetic self to call a reader to reflect upon the nature of ethical responsibility, something the Don lacks.

Generally the poet, the artist is criticized for introducing himself into his work. But this is precisely what God does; this he does in Christ. And precisely this is Christianity. Creation is really fulfilled only when God has included himself in it. Tactically, Kierkegaard aimed to provoke and upbuild his readers to see selfhood as a divinely-framed artistic task. To fully appreciate Kierkegaard's aesthetic also requires thinking again about his ontology. For one, the Kierkegaardian self is more than a willed being, as Charles Taylor, Derrida, and an existentialist such as Sartre suggest. A self determining its relation to God through a mere choice or a qualitative leap becomes an overly simplistic account of the self's movement to faith. In the end, passion, intertwined with the will and imagination, causes such movement as every self has a strong natural desire and drive to become something else and more.

This chapter describes Kierkegaard's conception of becoming subjective as enveloped in a richly aesthetic framework. It offers clarity about the precise ontological content that lies at the heart of becoming. This chapter describes the human capacities that each self, as a particular form, must use to actualize ontological content. Amidst the dialectical structure that orients human becoming, Kierkegaard offers an artistically-rich concept of how such a formation is possible, a view that then adds depth to his development of the aesthetic as a fragmented authorial tactic. With Christ being the content, God's activity is always an element in producing a self, as a type of poesis; yet, as becoming is a dialectical action, human activity is also necessary. The Bible is a 'sign' that points to Christ, thereby ensuring that he is universally available to all no matter one's education or social status.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book argues, one must actualize the Christian possibility of self, one only available because of divine action, within one's embodied, existing form. It discusses artistic styles such as satire, story-telling, and pseudonymity. The book explains that Christ has an aesthetic dimension. Christ makes his appearance in the middle of actuality, teaches, suffers and says: Imitate me; imitation is Christianity. The human imagination and passion are both aesthetic elements that provide further support for the importance of narrative, as an aesthetic genre, within human existence. Kierkegaard's account of the art of subjectivity provides a way to critique the role that the aesthetic plays today. Grounding his idea of selfhood in a Christian idea of subjectivity, he wrote to correct views that emphasized the necessity of art in understanding the nature of selfhood.