To Live Ethically Is to Choose Oneself
– a reflection in practical philosophy
Introduction
What does it really mean to live ethically? In a time marked by endless choices, life can easily become restless and without direction. This essay explores another path: not to choose more—but to choose oneself.
When Life Asks the Question
There is a question that follows us throughout life:
What shall I do?
We may try to silence it. Fill our days with tasks, activities, and choices that keep us in motion. But sooner or later, the question returns. Often when we least expect it. Often when something in life breaks open.
I remember how this question gained new depth for me when I read Twenty Years at Hull-House by Jane Addams.
I had imagined her as one of those rare individuals who always know what to do—a figure of moral clarity. But what I encountered was something else.
She doubted.
She struggled.
She despaired.
She describes a time when she felt “adrift at sea” in matters of moral purpose. She held on to only one conviction: she wanted to live in the real world, not in an intellectual or aesthetic shadow of it.
It took her eight years to find her answer.
Not because she was weak.
But because she took life seriously.
The Aesthetic Life – The Restlessness of Freedom
We live in an age of possibilities—perhaps more than ever before.
We can choose education, career, lifestyle, identity. There is something profoundly beautiful in this.
The aesthetic life—as described by Søren Kierkegaard—is a life oriented toward enjoyment, interest, and the pursuit of what feels good. There is nothing wrong with this. We are meant to experience joy.
Yet the aesthetic life has a shadow.
When everything is possible, nothing is necessary.
When everything can be chosen, choice loses weight.
And then something strange happens:
In the midst of abundance, a sense of emptiness arises.
We recognize it as:
– a restless search for “something more”
– a feeling that something is missing, even when everything seems in place
– a lack of direction despite endless options
The aesthetic life offers freedom.
But not necessarily meaning.
The Ethical Life – Becoming Oneself
Here the ethical life emerges.
To live ethically is not primarily about following rules.
Nor is it about appearing morally good.
To live ethically is something far more demanding:
It is to choose oneself.
This is not one choice among many.
It is the choice that gives all other choices direction.
To choose oneself is to take responsibility for one’s own life. To say:
This is my life.
This is my task.
And I will live it.
For Kierkegaard, the self is not something we simply are. It is something we must become.
And we become it through choice.
Not arbitrary choices—but committed ones.
A Choice That Is Not a Choice
It may seem as though we are free to choose whether or not to live ethically.
But in reality, we face something more radical:
We stand between the meaningful and the meaningless.
To not choose oneself is not neutral.
It is to drift into indifference.
And we feel it.
As emptiness.
As unease.
As a sense of not being fully present in our own lives.
In this sense, the ethical choice is not really a choice.
It is a necessity.
The Path Through Despair
But the path toward this choice is rarely easy.
It often passes through despair.
Jane Addams struggled for years before finding her way. Only when she stopped searching for answers in others and began engaging directly with life did something begin to take shape.
She did not merely discover what to do.
She discovered herself.
This is essential: we do not find ourselves by withdrawing from life, but by entering it.
A Night Encounter
I remember a night from my own practice.
The phone rang late. I almost referred the call elsewhere. But something in the voice made me stay.
The woman on the line had lost her husband and son in an accident. Now she had just been told that her daughter-in-law and grandchildren had also died.
Everything was gone.
She asked:
What shall I do?
Is life worth living?
There are no professional answers to such questions.
I could not explain. Only listen.
We spoke through the night.
When she hung up, I believed she would choose death.
But an hour later, she called again.
She had chosen.
She would live.
She had resigned from her job, sold what she owned, and decided to work with street children in India.
This was her answer.
Not given by me.
Not given by any theory.
But born from her own life.
Opening to What Cannot Be Explained
In such moments, life reveals another dimension.
Martin Heidegger describes the human being as being-in-the-world-with-others. We are never isolated. We are always in relation.
And sometimes—in grief, in love, in loss—we encounter something that cannot be explained.
Only lived.
Then our task is not to understand everything.
But to be.
This is also the essence of all genuine helping:
to find the other where they are—and begin there.
Appropriating Oneself
To choose oneself involves what Kierkegaard calls appropriation of the self.
It means saying yes to one’s whole life:
– what is good
– what is difficult
– what hurts
It also means taking responsibility for one’s past.
To repent is not to condemn oneself.
It is to return to oneself.
To say:
This, too, is me. And I will take responsibility for it.
Here lies freedom.
Not in escaping.
But in standing within.
Freedom as Responsibility
Jean-Paul Sartre famously states that we are condemned to be free.
But freedom is not light.
It is heavy.
Because it requires us to choose—and to stand by what we choose.
Kierkegaard adds a crucial dimension:
It is not enough to choose.
We must choose that which makes us ourselves.
Formation – A Lifelong Work
To live ethically is not something we achieve once and for all.
It is a lifelong task.
It is a process of formation.
Of maturing.
Of learning from experience.
Of enduring contradictions.
Of remaining present in difficulty.
This path is not without pain.
But it is a path with meaning.
Standing in One’s Life
There comes a point when we can no longer escape.
Not because we must.
But because we no longer want to.
We remain.
In our own life.
And then something quiet yet decisive occurs:
The choice gains weight.
We say:
This is my life.
And I will live it.
Not perfectly.
Not without error.
But truthfully.
Conclusion: At the Beginning
Friedrich Hölderlin writes of human beings as thrown between heights and abysses, without rest.
It may seem like a dark insight.
But perhaps there is also freedom here.
For if life does not give us ready-made answers,
it gives us something else:
The possibility to live it.
We are never finished.
We are never fully formed.
We always stand at the beginning.
And the question returns:
What shall I do?
The answer cannot be given once and for all.
But it can be lived.
Again and again.
Signature
References
Addams, J. (1920). Twenty Years at Hull-House. New York: Macmillan.
Goethe, J. W. von. (1999). Italian Journey (1786–1788). New York: Penguin Classics.
Heidegger, M. (1975). The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
Hölderlin, F. (1993). Hyperion, or The Hermit in Greece. New York: Archipelago Books.
Husted, J. (1999). The Ethical According to Kierkegaard. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
Kierkegaard, S. (1987). Either/Or, Part II. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kierkegaard, S. (1967). Journals and Papers (Vol. 1). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Lundstøl, J. (1999). On Making Others Good (lecture). Oslo: Oslo University College.
Pettersen, K. T. (2001). Paths to Self-Understanding. Oslo: Oslo University College.
Plato. (1997). Ion. In J. M. Cooper (Ed.), Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Sartre, J.-P. (2007). Existentialism Is a Humanism. New Haven: Yale University Press.
To live ethically is not to become a better person in the eyes of others.
It is to become a truer person in one’s own life.
It is to dare to stand in one’s life—with all that it entails of responsibility, doubt, guilt, and freedom.
It is to choose oneself.
Again and again.
As long as life lasts.
