KIERKEGAARD: How To Avoid Boredom and Maximise Happiness

In Either/Or, Kierkegaard dedicates a chapter on the problem of boredom and the difficulty of maintaining happiness, and proposes his solution for it through the aesthetic sphere of existence.

To explain how one avoids boredom, the aesthete’s worst enemy, he proposes “crop rotation” as an attempt at a theory of social prudence. It is a sort of science of seeking pleasures characteristic of the reflective aesthete, and not mindlessly doing it as an unreflective aesthete, such as the legend of Don Juan.

This method can be done extensively or intensively. The aesthete proposes the intensive cultivation of pleasure as the means to avoid boredom, achieve pleasure and subsequently, happiness.

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━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⌛ Timestamps (0:00) Introduction (0:45) Boredom (5:10) Crop Rotation: Extensive Cultivation (6:33) Crop Rotation: Intensive Cultivation (7:35) Remembering and Forgetting (10:33) Arbitrariness (13:00) Conclusion