‘the ethical sphere’, or simply ‘the world’

Regina was lucky, to miss all that anger and self-pity. But is sharing negative emotions really what marriage is for? And is ethics really just being judgmental? “Kierkegaard had no wife to talk to at the end of the day, and instead he wrote out his anger and self-pity in lucid, finely detailed prose. This was unusual, but his feelings were not: when we read his journals we recognize his ignoble sentiments because we already know them intimately. In his philosophy Kierkegaard interrogated the human habit of judging, so deeply rooted in our private thinking and collective culture that it is very nearly inevitable, and he called this ‘the ethical sphere’, or simply ‘the world’, because (like Plato’s cave) it surrounds and encloses us. But though the judgements of others are as difficult to avoid as our own, Kierkegaard believed that none of these human judgements is absolute or final. It is always possible, he suggested, to occupy a different place–for each individual belongs to a sphere of infinite depth, which he called ‘inwardness’, ‘the God-relationship’, ‘eternity’, ‘the religious sphere’, or simply ‘silence’. His writing opens up this sphere, right at the heart of life, and beckons the reader into it.” — Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard by Clare Carlisle