Kierkegaard’s Existential Sacrifice

This paper aims to analyze the notions of sacrifice and existential entrapment in the early writings of Søren Kierkegaard. I look at two female characters that appear in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or – Marie Beaumarchais and Donna Elvira – and I argue that an encounter with a deceptive individual (a seducer) forced these two women to sacrifice their capacity for existential-spiritual growth. Donna Elvira and Marie Beaumarchais remain trapped – as Kierkegaard frames it – within the aesthetic existential sphere. The goal of my paper is twofold: first, I describe in detail the nature of their sacrifice and the reasons for their existential entrapment, and, secondly, I determine whether Kierkegaard believes this to be an existential affliction that affects exclusively women, i.e., whether it is gendered or not.