ABSTRACT
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.
