The ethical dimension of this relation between life and form becomes most explicit in Lukács’ essay on Kierkegaard and in “On Poverty of Spirit”. Kierkegaard’s rejection of Regine Olsen’s love is lauded for its expression of the need of giving one’s own empirical life a definite, unambiguous form and thereby transforming it into absolute life—in Kierkegaard’s case, by attempting to perform an authentic gesture (1910c: 28). But Kierkegaard’s ethical position suffers from a defect: Kierkegaard attempts to reconcile ordinary life with a form that is appropriate for genuine, “absolute” life (that is, he tries to live tragic life as ordinary life). But due to its inherent ambiguity and foreignness to form, ordinary life cannot ever be successfully lived in such a way (1910c: 40). Thus, Kierkegaard’s attempt to live a genuine life was doomed from the beginning.