Stages on Life's Way (Danish: Stadier på Livets Vej; historical orthography: Stadier paa Livets Vej) is a philosophical work by Søren Kierkegaard written in 1845. The book was written as a continuation of Kierkegaard's prior work Either/Or. While Either/Or is about the aesthetic and ethical realms, Stages continues onward to the consideration of the religious realms. Kierkegaard's "concern was to present the various stages of existence in one work if possible." His father Michael Pedersen read Christian Wolff, and Søren himself was influenced by both Wolff and Kant to the point of using the structure and philosophical content of the three special metaphysics as the scheme or blueprint for building the ideas for this book. But Kierkegaard wasn't satisfied until the completion of Concluding Unscientific Postscript in 1846. Here he wrote: "When my Philosophical Fragments had come out and I was considering a postscript to “clothe the issue in its historical costume,” yet another pseudonymous book appeared: Stages on Life’s Way, a book that has attracted the attention of only a few (as it itself predicts) perhaps also because it did not, like Either/Or, have The Seducer’s Diary, for quite certainly that was read most and of course contributed especially to the sensation. That Stages has a relation to Either/Or is clear enough and is definitely indicated by the use in the first two sections of familiar names." Later in the same book he said, In Either/Or, I am just as little, precisely just as little, the editor Victor Eremita as I am the Seducer or the Judge. He is a poetically actual subjective thinker who is found again in “In Vino Veritas”. In Fear and Trembling, I am just as little, precisely just as little, Johannes de Silentio as the knight of faith he depicts, and in turn just as little the author of the preface to the book, which is the individuality-lines of a poetically actual subjective thinker. In the story of suffering (Guilty?/’Not Guilty), I am just as remote from being Quidam of the imaginary construction as from being the imaginative constructor, just as remote, since the imaginative constructor is a poetically actual subjective thinker and what is imaginatively constructed is his psychologically consistent production. Concluding Unscientific Postscript 1846, Hong pp. 625—626. David F. Swenson cited this book when discussing Kierkegaard's melancholy which was corroborated by Kierkegaard's older brother Peter Christian Kierkegaard. However, Kierkegaard could have been writing about Jonathan Swift. The background is the giving of a banquet yet it seems so difficult; Constantine, from Repetition says he would never risk putting one on. Kierkegaard says, "repetition that involved good luck and inspiration is always a daring venture because of the ensuing comparison, an absolute requirement of richness of expression is made, since it is not difficult to repeat one's own words or to repeat a felicitously chosen phrase word for word. Consequently, to repeat the same also means to change under conditions made difficult by the precedent. By taking the risk, the pseudonymous author (Hilarius Bookbinder) has won an indirect victory over the inquisitive public. That is, when this reading public peers into the book and sees the familiar names Victor Eremita and Constantin Constantius, etc., it tosses the book aside and says wearily: It is just the same as Either/Or." But Kierkegaard maintains it is the author's job to make it "the same, and yet changed, and yet the same". He continued writing for 494 pages in Hong's translation and in his "Concluding Word" says, "My dear reader-but to whom am I speaking? Perhaps no one at all is left." Source: Wikipedia (en)