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Abstract

This article examines the aphoristic passage on regret in the "Diapsalmata" section of Volume I of Kierkegaard's Either/Or, through the analytical apparatus of Learnable Theory. It argues that the aesthete's paradox, whereby every choice and its negation both lead to regret, is not primarily a psychological observation about idealizing unlived possibilities, but a structural consequence of what Learnable Theory identifies as the umbra cone and the inverse difference. Reading the passage together with its dialectical counterpart in Volume II, Judge Wilhelm's ethical response, the article shows that the text stages a condition rather than explaining one: whatever is defocused by a choice does not disappear but persists as an unfalsifiable alternative whose value grows precisely because it cannot be tested against experience. The analysis further argues that in Kierkegaard's text regret does not follow the choice but is co-implicit with it, which sharpens the claim that the inverse difference operates independently of the existential weight of the content chosen. The article then introduces a further refinement: the rate at which the shadowed alternative gains value is not uniform, but depends on the affective vector, approach or avoidance, with which it was originally excluded from the field of enacted options. Drawing on the literature on separate approach and avoidance motivational systems and on the temporal asymmetry of regret, the article predicts that idealization should be strongest when the enacted choice was driven by fear while the foreclosed alternative remained desired. The article closes by considering what the ethical stage's response to this condition, commitment renewed in time rather than declared once for eternity, suggests for a theory of decision that takes seriously the impossibility of eliminating the shadow cast by any choice.

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Citation: Luca Magni (2026). Whether You Marry or Not, You Will Regret It: Fear, Desire, and the Inverse Difference. Epistora J. Philos. Humanit. 1(1), 1-5. Article EJPH-2026-101