The second part represents the ethical stage. Eremita found a group of letters from a retired Judge Vilhelm or William (in Danish: "Assessor Wilhelm"), another pseudonymous author, to "A", trying to convince "A" of the value of the ethical life by arguing that the ethical person can still appreciate aesthetic values. The difference is that the pursuit of pleasure is tempered with ethical values and responsibilities. Letters:
- "The Aesthetic Validity of Marriage": This letter is about the aesthetic value of marriage and defends marriage as a way of life.
- "Equilibrium between the Aesthetic and the Ethical in the Development of Personality" concerns the subject of choosing the good, or one's self, and of the value of making binding life-choices.
- "Ultimatum": The volume ends in a discourse on the Thought that, against God everyone is always wrong.[40] His spiritual advice for "A" and "B" is that they make peace with each other. Kierkegaard quotes from: the Gospel of Luke 19:42 NIV "and said, "If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace --but now it is hidden from your eyes." Sennacherib's prism 2 Kings 19:35 "That night the angel of the LORD went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp When the people got up the next morning -- there were all the dead bodies!" to the end for this discourse.
It is human nature to look to external forces when faced with obstacles, but the ethicist is against this. Comparison is an esthetic exercise and has nothing to do with ethics and religion. He says, "Let each one learn what he can; both of us can learn that a person’s unhappiness never lies in his lack of control over external conditions, since this would only make him completely unhappy."[41] He also asks if a someone in love can know whether they are more in love than another.[42] He advances this thought in Concluding Unscientific Postscript and expands on looking inward in Practice in Christianity.
The ethical and the ethical-religious have nothing to do with the comparative. ... All comparison delays, and that is why mediocrity likes it so much and, if possible, traps everyone in it by its despicable friendship among mediocrities. A person who blames others, that they have corrupted him, is talking nonsense and only informs against himself. p. 549-550
Comparison is the most disastrous association that love can enter into; comparison is the most dangerous acquaintance love can make; comparison is the worst of all seductions. Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (1847), Hong, p. 186
Lord Jesus Christ, our foolish minds are weak; they are more than willing to be drawn-and there is so much that wants to draw us to itself. There is pleasure with its seductive power, the multiplicity with its bewildering distractions, the moment with its infatuating importance and the conceited laboriousness of busyness and the careless time-wasting of light-mindedness and the gloomy brooding of heavy-mindedness-all this will draw us away from ourselves to itself in order to deceive us. But you, who are the truth, only you, Savior and Redeemer, can truly draw a person to yourself, which you have promised to do-that you will draw all to yourself. Then may God grant that by repenting we may come to ourselves, so that you, according to your Word, can draw us to yourself-from on high, but through lowliness and abasement. Søren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 1850 p.157 Hong
It is unclear if Kierkegaard acknowledges an ethical stage without religion. Freedom seems to denote freedom to choose the will to do the right and to denounce the wrong in a secular, almost Kantian style. However, remorse (angeren) seems to be a religious category specifically related to the Christian concept of deliverance.[43] Moreover, Kierkegaard is constant in his point of view that each individual can become conscious of a higher self and embrace the spiritual self in an "eternal understanding".
