Stages on Life's Way

Stages on Life's Way 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 considers the religious. Kierkegaard's "concern was to present the various stages of existence in one work if possible". Kierkegaard was influenced by both Christian Wolff and Immanuel 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.
David F. Swenson cited this book when discussing Kierkegaard's melancholy, which was corroborated by Kierkegaard's older brother Peter Kierkegaard, though he could have been writing about Jonathan Swift.

Criticism

Georg Brandes is credited with introducing Kierkegaard to the reading public with his 1879 biography about him; he also wrote an analysis of the works of Henrik Ibsen and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson in which he made many comparisons between their works and Kierkegaard's. He considered Stages on Life's Way in relation to Either/Or and the works of Ibsen:
Julia Watkin says the bulk of Stages was composed between September 1844 and March 1845. And that Quidam's diary is the counterpart of the seducer's diary.
Walter Lowrie notes that Kierkegaard wrote a "repetition of Either/Or" because it stopped with the ethical.
In 1988 Mary Elizabeth Moore discusses Kierkegaard's method of indirect communication in this book.