The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin (Danish: Begrebet Angest) is a philosophical work written by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1844.
The original 1944 English translation by Walter Lowrie (now out of print), was named The Concept of Dread.[1]The Concept of Anxiety was dedicated "to the late professor Poul Martin Møller". Kierkegaard used the pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis (which, according to Josiah Thompson, is the Latin transcription for "the Watchman"[2][3] of Copenhagen) for The Concept of Anxiety.[4]
All of Kierkegaard's books have either a preface, dedication, or prayer at the beginning. This book includes a lengthy introduction. The Concept of Anxiety was published on exactly the same date as Prefaces, June 17, 1844. Both books deal with Hegel's idea of mediation. Mediation is a common thread throughout Kierkegaard's works. His work up to this point was to show that faith was being mediated by knowledge. Here he takes up the questions of sin and guilt.
For Kierkegaard, anxiety/dread/angst is "freedom's actuality as the possibility of possibility." Kierkegaard uses the example of a man standing on the edge of a tall building or cliff. When the man looks over the edge, he experiences an aversion to the possibility of falling, but at the same time, the man feels a terrifying impulse to throw himself intentionally off the edge. That experience is anxiety or dread because of our complete freedom to choose to either throw oneself off or to stay put. The mere fact that one has the possibility and freedom to do something, even the most terrifying of possibilities, triggers immense feelings of dread. Kierkegaard called this our "dizziness of freedom."
Kierkegaard focuses on the first anxiety experienced by man: Adam's choice to eat from God's forbidden tree of knowledge or not. Since the concepts of good and evil did not come into existence before Adam ate the fruit, Adam had no concept of good and evil, and did not know that eating from the tree was "evil". What he did know was that God told him not to eat from the tree. The anxiety comes from the fact that God's prohibition itself implies that Adam is free and that he could choose to obey God or not. After Adam ate from the tree, sin was born. So, according to Kierkegaard, anxiety precedes sin. Kierkegaard mentions that anxiety is the presupposition for hereditary sin (which Augustine was the first to call peccatum originale, "original sin").
However, Kierkegaard mentions that anxiety is a way for humanity to be saved as well. Anxiety informs us of our choices, our self-awareness and personal responsibility, and brings us from a state of un-self-conscious immediacy to self-conscious reflection. (Jean-Paul Sartre calls these terms pre-reflective consciousness and reflective consciousness.)[5] An individual becomes truly aware of their potential through the experience of anxiety. So, anxiety may be a possibility for sin, but anxiety can also be a recognition or realization of one's true identity and freedom. Alternatively, sin exists in the very resolution of anxiety through right and wrong; to embrace anxiety is to not pass judgment.
In 1793, forty-one years before Kierkegaard wrote The Concept of Anxiety, Immanuel Kant wrote his book Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone; his book elevated reason in the realm of Christianity.[6] Many continental philosophers wrote their books in relation to Kant's ideas. Kierkegaard was familiar with Book Two of Kant's book The Conflict of the Good with the Evil Principle for Sovereignty over Man[7] and he made a similar study in this book; however, he might call it the conflict of ethics and anxiety for sovereignty over man. Kierkegaard would replace Kant's term "Good" with "Ethics" and his term "Evil" with "Anxiety about the Good". He wrote about the ideal good versus the actual good that a single individual can do in the following way: "Ethics proposes to bring ideality into actuality. On the other hand, it is not the nature of its movement to raise actuality up into ideality. Ethics points to ideality as a task and assumes that every man possesses the requisite conditions. Thus ethics develops a contradiction, inasmuch as it makes clear both the difficulty and the impossibility."[8] He was wondering how any existing human being can make any movement in an ideal world.
Kierkegaard begins this book with a short preface. By now he expects his readers to be aware that the preface is a key to the meaning of the book. Haufniensis uses the word "generation' several times as well as "epoch" and "era" in his introduction to prepare the reader for his subject. Progress from the "first science", ethics, to the "second science", psychology. Historians, psychologists, anthropologists, theologians and philosophers were all in agreement that the past must be preserved if there is to be a future for humankind. These soft sciences were of interest to Kierkegaard only in so far as they related to the progress of Christianity. His preface is followed by his first introduction since he published his thesis, The Concept of Irony. It could mark a new beginning but that is not known for certain.
Repentance is a recollection of guilt. From a purely psychological point of view, I really believe that the police aid the criminal in not coming to repent. By continually recounting and repeating his life experiences, the criminal becomes such a memory expert at rattling off his life that the ideality of recollection is driven away. Really to repent, and especially to repent at once, takes enormous ideality; therefore nature also can help a person, and delayed repentance, which in regard to remembering is negligible, is often the hardest and deepest. The ability to recollect is the condition for all productivity. If a person no longer wishes to be productive, he needs merely to remember the same thing that recollecting he wanted to produce, and production is rendered impossible, or it will become so repulsive to him that the sooner he abandons it the better.
Søren Kierkegaard, Stages on Life's Way, Preface, Hong p. 14 (1845)
All of them were involved with the dialectical question of exactly "how" an individual, or group, or race changes from good to evil or evil to good. Kierkegaard pressed forward with his category of "the single individual."[13] Kierkegaard's Introduction is in Primary sources below.
I understand the words of Peter, "To whom shall we go?"[14] to refer to his consciousness of sin. It is this that binds a man to Christianity. And, since it is God, who, through the consciousness of sin, binds every individual person to Christianity, so it must be assumed that he also determines every man's conflicts individually. Journals and Papers of Søren Kierkegaard IX A 310; J820 Croxall translation Meditations from Kierkegaard, p. 119
Many men and women are anxious about whom they should marry and how they will pick the right person. The anxious person stands at the crossroads and wonders which way to go. Kierkegaard captured the sentiment in his book Either/Or, which is filled with examples of people at the crossroads. Johann Goethe (1749–1832) was at a crossroads and couldn't make up his mind about what he wanted so he talked to the devil about it in his play Faust. Adam Oehlenschläger (1779–1850) wrote a book about a single individual wanting to get married in his book Aladdin.[15] He let a genie make up his mind for him.[16] Kierkegaard points out that Isaac didn't have freedom to choose his wife either. He wrote:
Isaac presumably dared with a certain degree of assurance to expect that God would surely choose a wife for him who was young and beautiful and highly regarded by the people and lovable in every way, but nevertheless we lack the erotic, even if it was the case that he loved this one chosen of God with all the passion of youth. Freedom was lacking. Either/Or II, Hong p 44
Isaac had expectations, but he didn't have an easy time just because God made his choice for him. Both freedom and anxiety were absent in these examples of three personal choices but ignorance was present because none of them were personally involved in a very important decision.
Neither Goethe nor Oehlenschläger tells the reader if Faust or Alladin was faithful to the one chosen for him, they just end the story. But Isaac's story continued and showed that he was faithful to the choice made for him. Kierkegaard questions: how a person can remain faithful to a choice that is made by others? The others are external powers whereas his spirit is an internal power. All three stories deal with the world of the spirit. Kierkegaard thinks the "spirit is a hostile and a friendly power at the same time". He wrote:
"That anxiety makes its appearance pivotal. Man is a synthesis of the psychical and the physical; however, a synthesis is unthinkable if the two are not united in a third. This third is spirit. In innocence, man is not merely animal, for if he were at any moment of his life merely animal, he would never become man. So spirit is present, but is immediate, as dreaming. It is in a sense a hostile power, for it constantly disturbs the relation between soul and body, a relation that indeed has persistence and yet does not have endurance, inasmuch as it first receives the latter by the spirit. On the other hand, spirit is a friendly power, since it is precisely that which constitutes the relation. What, then, is man's relation to this ambiguous power? How does spirit relate itself to itself and to its conditionality? It relates itself as anxiety. Do away with itself, the spirit cannot; lay hold of itself, it cannot, as long as it has itself outside itself. Nor can man sink down into the vegetative, for he is qualified as spirit; flee away from anxiety, he cannot, for he loves it; really love it, he cannot, for he flees from it. Innocence has now reached its uttermost point. It is ignorance; however, it is not an animal brutality but an ignorance qualified as spirit, and as such innocence is precisely anxiety, because its ignorance is about nothing. Here there is no knowledge of good and evil etc., but the whole actuality of knowledge projects itself in anxiety as the enormous nothing of ignorance. The Concept of Anxiety, p. 43–44
This "ambiguous power" is discussed further in Kierkegaard's 1847 book Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits and his 1848 book Christian Discourses[17] where he finds himself standing against his own best intentions.
The person who is to be master (it is, of course, he himself) ruins it; such a person works with perhaps scarcely a third of his power in the right place and with more than two-thirds of his power in the wrong place or against himself. Now he gives up working in order to begin to deliberate all over again, now he works in instead of deliberating, now he pulls on the reins in the wrong way, now he wants to do both at the same time-and during all this he does not move from the spot. During all this, his life comes to a standstill, as it were; he cannot get the task firmly set, so that it stands firm, so that he is able to tear himself away from this work and have his strength available to carry out the task. The task does not become a burden, but he is swamped with the burdensome muddling with the task in order to get it, if possible to stand firm. When this is so, he naturally never gets around to carrying the burden; after all, he cannot even get it to stand still; the moment he wants to turn his back, as it were, in order to pick up the burden, the burden seems to tumble down and he has to stack it up again. Ah, if one looks at people's lives, one often must say in sorrow: They do not themselves know what powers they have; they more or less keep themselves from finding that out, because they are using most of their powers to work against themselves. Soren Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits Hong p. 295-296
Kierkegaard was interested in how an individual can keep faith awake and hope alive.
Prayer: Thou my God and Father! The question of my salvation concerns no other being but me-and thee. Should there then not remain uncertainty in fear and trembling until the last, I being what I am, and thou what thou art, I on earth, thou in heaven-a difference infinitely great-I a sinner, thou the Holy One? Should there not, ought there not, must there not, be fear and trembling till the last? Was it not the fault of the foolish virgins that they became sure, and went to sleep; while the wise virgins kept awake? But what is it to keep awake? It is uncertainty in fear and trembling. And what is faith but an empty fantasy, if it be not awake? And when faith is not awake, what is it but that same pernicious feeling of security which ruined the foolish virgins? Christian Discourses, Lowrie 1939 p. 219, Meditations from Kierkegaard, Translated and Edited by T.H. Croxall, The Westminster Press, copyright 1955, by W. L. Jenkins p. 56–57
The Brothers Grimm were writing about the use of folktales as educational stories to keep individuals from falling into evil hands. Kierkegaard refers to The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was in The Concept of Anxiety (p. 155). Can the "power of the example",[18] or theatre pedagogy, or the theatre of the absurd, help an individual learn how to find the good? Danish folklore was at this time also coming to the attention of pedagogs. Imagination can be of assistance but it can also keep an individual from making crucial decisions. But failing to "become honest with yourself so that you do not deceive yourself with imagined power, with which you experience imagined victory in imagined struggle" is how a decision can become an impossibility.[19]
What's keeping him from making the decision? Nothing except the imagination of the individual involved in making the decision, imaginations of guilt and sin and fear and rejection.[20] In Fear and Trembling Abraham had to choose to follow God or call him a monster. In Repetition the Young Man had to choose to get married or to follow his love of writing. Both were "imaginative constructions"[21] created by Kierkegaard that dealt with hope and love.
Kierkegaard felt that imaginative constructions should be upbuilding. Kierkegaard wrote about "the nothing of despair",[22] God as the unknown is nothing,[23] and death is a nothing.[24]Goethe's Der Erlkönig and The Bride of Corinth (1797)[25] are also nothing. The single individual has a reality which fiction can never represent. People should learn the difference between imaginary constructions and reality. Many things are hard to understand but Kierkegaard says, "Where understanding despairs, faith is already present in order to make the despair properly decisive."[26]
God grant, that all playwrights compose nothing but tearjerking plays, full of all possible anxiety and horror that would not allow your flabbiness to rest on the cushioned theater seats and let you be perfumed with supranatural power but would horrify you until in the world of actuality you learn to believe in that which you want to believe in only in poetry. Either/Or Part II p. 122
Kierkegaard is not concerned with what Eve's sin was, he says it wasn't sensuousness,[27] but he is concerned with how Eve learned that she was a sinner. He says "consciousnesspresupposes itself."[28] Eve became conscious of her first sin through her choice and Adam became conscious of his first sin through his choice. God's gift to Adam and Eve was the "knowledge of freedom" and they both decided to use it.[29] In Kierkegaard's Journals he said, "the one thing needful" for the doctrine of Atonement to make sense was the "anguished conscience." He wrote, "Remove the anguished conscience, and you may as well close the churches and turn them into dance halls."[30]
Kierkegaard says, every person has to find out for him or her self how guilt and sin came into their worlds. Kierkegaard argued about this in both Repetition and Fear and Trembling where he said philosophy must not define faith.[31] He asks his reader, the single individual, to consider some questions. Can sin and guilt be transferred from one person to another? Is it "an epidemic that spreads like cowpox"?[32] Was every Jewish person responsible for the crucifixion of Christ?[33] Does the single individual find sin in others or in him or herself?[34] He believed in a rigorous self-inspection and at the same time a lenient inspection of others. He put it this way in Four Upbuilding Discourses of 1844:
We do not know the life of Paul in great detail, but we do, however, know Paul, which is the main consideration. That is to say, just as the sensate man is distinguishable by his seeing the speck in his brother's eye but not seeing the log in his own, by his rigorously condemning the same fault in others that he lightly forgives in himself, so the mark of a more profound and concerned person is that he judges himself more rigorously, uses all his ingenuity to excuse the other person but is unable to excuse or forgive himself, indeed, is convinced that the other one is more excusable, because there is always still a possibility, since the only one in relation to whom a person is deprived of this possibility is he himself. Bold confidence is a difficult matter, because it is not exactly synonymous with mental weakness. One may very well stop with it and need not go further by even wishing to judge God, that is, if in other respects bold confidence is bold confidence in the judgment, which certainly requires that God's judgment penetrate the thought and heart, that is, if it is bold confidence in God's mercy and there words are not a feigned pious expression of one's own thoughtlessness, which does not trust God but is consoled by having ceased to sorrow long ago. If no human being is capable of acquitting himself he is capable of one thing-of indicting himself so terribly that he cannot acquit himself but learns to need mercy. With regard to this, it is difficult for one person to understand another, because the earnest person always lays the stress on himself. Søren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong p. 339-340
What was the intention of Christianity? Does the concept emerge through definitions and examples? Sin and guilt are both religious categories as far as Kierkegaard is concerned. He wrote:
The concept of guilt as a totality-category belong essentially in the religious sphere. As soon as the esthetic wants to have something to do with it, this concept becomes dialectical like fortune and misfortune, whereby everything is confused. Esthetically, the dialectic of guilt is this: the individual is without guilt, then guilt and guiltlessness come along as alternating categories of life; at times the individual is guilty of this or that and at times is not guilty. If this or that had not been, the individual would not have become guilty; in other circumstances, one who is not considered as being without guilt would have become guilty. Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, (1846) Hong p. 525-537
With the help of faith, anxiety brings up the individuality to rest in providence. So it is also in relation to guilt, which is the second thing anxiety discovers. Whoever learns to know his guilt only from the finite is lost in the finite, and finitely the question of whether a man is guilty cannot be determined except in an external, juridical, and most imperfect sense. Whoever learns to know his guilt only by analogy to judgments of the police court and the supreme court never really understands that he is guilty, for if a man is guilty, he is infinitely guilty. Therefore, if such an individuality who is educated only by finitude does not get a verdict from the police or a verdict by public opinion to the effect that he is guilty, he becomes of all men the most ridiculous and pitiful, a model of virtue who is a little better than most people but not quite so good as the parson. What help would such a man need in life? Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, Thomte p. 161
In Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard described the Learner in Error before God. Here he questions how the Learner discovers this Error. New sciences were emerging that challenged the conventional ethics of the time as well as the notions of guilt and sin. Kierkegaard described the struggle elegantly. He says:
"Ethics and dogmatics struggle over reconciliation in a border area fraught with fate. Repentance and guilt torment forth reconciliation ethically, while dogmatics in this receptivity to the proffered reconciliation, has the historically concrete immediacy with which it begins its discourse in the great dialogue of science. And now what will be the result?" and "Innocence is ignorance, but how is it lost?" The Concept of Anxiety pp. 12, 39
In Rosenkranz's Psychology there is definition of disposition [Gemyt]. On page 322 he says that disposition is the unity of feeling and self-consciousness. Then in preceding presentation he superbly explains "that the feeling unfolds itself to self-consciousness, and vice versa, that the content of the self-consciousness is felt by the subject as his own. It is only this unity that can be called disposition. If the clarity of cognition is lacking, knowledge of the feeling, there exists only the urge of the spirit of nature, the turgidity of immediacy. On the other hand, if feeling is lacking, there remains only the abstract concept that has not reached the last inwardness of the spiritual existence, that has not become one with the self of the spirit." (cf. pp. 320–321) If a person now turns back and pursues his definition of "feeling" as the spirit's immediate unity of its sentience and its consciousness (p. 142) and recalls that in the definition of Seelenhaftigkeit [sentience] account has been taken of the unity with the immediate determinants of nature, then by taking all this together he has the conception of a concrete personality. [but, Kierkegaard says] Earnestness and disposition correspond to each other in such a way that earnestness is a higher as well as the deepest expression for what disposition is. Disposition is the earnestness of immediacy, while earnestness, on the other hand, is the acquired originality of disposition, its originality preserved in the responsibility of freedom and its originality affirmed in the enjoyment of blessedness.
Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, Nichol p. 148
We are all predisposed to certain actions, some good some evil. Are these habits or sins? "How does a person learn earnestness?"[38] Kierkegaard and Rosenkranz thought it was a good idea for a person to find out about their own dispositions so he or she can live a happier life.
if you cannot control yourself, you will scarcely find anyone else who is able to do it.
"B" to "A", Either/Or, Vol II pp. 206–207 Hong 1987
Especially among woman there are instances of an individual who in anxiety conceives of most trivial bodily functions as sinfulness. A person may smile at this, but no one knows whether the smile will save or destroy, for if the smile contributes not to the opening of the individuality but to the closing of it, such a smile can cause irreparable harm. Søren Kierkegaard Papers V B 53:34 1844
Kierkegaard believed that each generation has its own task and should not concern itself with being everything to previous and future generations. He argued that every generation and individual begins anew, and no generation learns to love or the "essentially human" from another. He opposed the Hegelian idea of mediation, which introduces a "third term" between the individual and the object of desire. Kierkegaard questioned whether teaching begins with prohibition or love—whether Christianity starts with the negative (the works of the flesh) or the positive (the Fruit of the Holy Spirit). He raised these questions as part of the "great dialogue of science," first discussed in his Two Upbuilding Discourses of 1843 in relation to Galatians 3: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
The individual does not relate himself to the ideal through the generation or the state or the century or the market price of human beings in the city where he lives-that is, by these things he is prevented from relating himself to the ideal-but relates himself to it even though he errs in his understanding of it. … Because of the jumbling together of the idea of the state, of sociality, of community, and of society, God can no longer catch hold of the single individual. … The immorality of our age could easily become a fantastical-ethical debilitation, the disintegration of a sensual, soft despair, in which individuals grope as in a dream for a concept of God without feeling any terror in so doing. God in the indefinite. … Let us sin, sin outright, seduce girls, murder men, rob on the highway-that at least can be repented, and God can at least catch hold of such a criminal. Let us mock God outright, this is always preferable to the debilitating importance with which one wants to demonstrate the existence of God. One demonstrates the existence of God by worship-not by demonstrations. Søren Kierkegaard Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Hong p. 543-545
Kierkegaard questions whether each generation can learn virtues like wonder, love, anxiety, peace, and hope from previous ones, or if every "single individual" must mostly learn these things on their own. He posed a similar question in Philosophical Fragments about how one becomes Christian: Is it due to family and personal history or a "decisive resolution"? What is the Christian seeking to gain? Is hope a good and despair an evil to be changed into hope? Is patience a good and impatience an evil that can be transformed? Is the soul a gift for all, or only for the chosen few? Is our future shaped by fate, choice, or both? Kierkegaard answers this way:
If a person does not first make clear to himself the meaning of "self," it is of no use to say of sin that it is selfishness. Only when the concept of the particular is given can there be any talk of selfishness, however, no science can say what the self is without stating it quite generally. And this is the wonder of life, that each man who is mindful of himself knows what no science knows, since he knows who he himself is, and this is the profundity of the Greek saying know yourself, which too long has been understood in the German way as pure self-consciousness, the airiness of idealism. It is about time to seek to understand it in the Greek way, and then again as the Greeks would have understood it if they had possessed Christian presuppositions. However, the real "self" is posited only by the qualitative leap. In the prior state there can be no question about it. Therefore, when sin is explained by selfishness, one becomes entangled in indistinctness because, on the contrary, it is by sin and in sin that selfishness comes into being.
Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, Nichol p. 78-79[39]
The soul is a self-contradiction between the external and internal, the temporal and eternal. Therefore, the same thing can be both possessed and gained at once. If the soul is this contradiction, it can only be possessed by gaining it, and gained by possessing it. The person who possesses the external does not need to gain it, and cannot do so; they can only give it away and see if they can regain it. However, if a person seeking to gain their soul doesn’t understand that gaining patience is the greatest gain, they will never achieve it. The more the world deceives, the more patience wins. This gain is secure, independent of anything external, unlike when a merchant or fisherman sells or catches their goods. In the external world, patience is something extra, needed depending on fortune, and a person becomes its debtor when they seek it. Søren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong p. 163-168
Man is a synthesis of psyche and body, but he is also a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal. In the former, the two factors are psyche and body, and spirit is the third, yet in such a way that one can speak of a synthesis only when the spirit is posited. The latter synthesis has only two factors, the temporal and the eternal. Where is the third factor? And if there is no third factor, there really is no synthesis, for a synthesis that is a contradiction cannot be completed as a synthesis without a third factor, because the fact that the synthesis is a contradiction asserts that it is not. What, then, is the temporal? The Concept of Anxiety p. 85
June 3 Midnight: So once again I am sitting on watch. If I were to say that to a third party, it no doubt would need an explanation, for it is readily understood that the pilot along the coast, the sentinel at the top of the tower, the lookout at the bow of a ship, and the robber in his lair sit and watch because there is something to watch for. But someone sitting alone in his room-for what can he be watching? And someone who anticipates that everything-that is, the minor little affair that everyone else would perhaps disregard-will pass quietly, he, of course, is on watch for nothing. No wonder it is a strain for his soul and his head, because to look for something is good for the eyes, but to look for nothing strains them. And when the eyes look for nothing for a long time they finally see themselves or their own seeing; in the same way the emptiness surrounding me presses my thinking back into myself. Søren Kierkegaard, Stages on Life's Way, Hong p.356-357
Anxiety and nothing always correspond to each other. As soon as the actuality of freedom and of spirit is posited, anxiety is canceled. But what then does the nothing of anxiety signify more particularly in paganism. This is fate. Fate is a relation to spirit as external. It is the relation between spirit and something else that is not spirit and to which fate nevertheless stands in a spiritual relation. Fate may also signify exactly the opposite, because it is the unity of necessity and accidental. … A necessity that is not conscious of itself is eo ipso the accidental in relation to the next moment. Fate, then, is the nothing of anxiety. The Concept of Anxiety p. 96-97
Kierkegaard repeats his synthesis in The Sickness unto Death, linking it to his idea of the "Moment" from Philosophical Fragments. He says, "For the Greeks, the eternal lies behind as the past that can only be entered backwards. The category I maintain is repetition, by which eternity is entered forwards." In Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits (1847), he explains that Providence guides individuals with two calls: one forward to the good, the other back from evil, through repentance and remorse. These calls work in harmony, not opposition. Kierkegaard also writes in his Journals that life must be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. Christina Rossetti echoed this in her poem Advent. Kierkegaard warns against looking to the past for Christianity's origin, citing Constantine and others as examples. Instead, he emphasizes moving forward. Hegel saw eternity as unfolding in stages, while Kierkegaard created his own system of good in 1847. He brought eternity into relation with his personal guilt in Stages on Life's Way (1845), particularly regarding his anxiety about disclosing himself to Regine Olsen, his fiancée.
The healthy individual lives simultaneously in hope and in recollection, and only thereby does his life gain true and substantive continuity. Thus he has hope and therefore does not wish to go backward in time, as do those who live only in recollection. What, then, does recollection do for him, for it certainly must have some influence? It places a sharp on the note of the moment; the further back it goes, the more often the repetition, the more sharps there are. For example, if in the present year he experiences an erotic moment, this is augmented by his recollection of it in the previous year etc. … Hope hovers over it as a hope of eternity that fills out the moment. Søren Kierkegaard, 1843, Either/Or Part II, Hong pp. 142–143
Compared with eternity, is time the stronger? Has time the power to separate us eternally? I thought it had only the power to make me unhappy within time but would have to release me the instant I exchange time for eternity and am where she is, for eternally she is continually with me. If so, then what is time? It was that we two did not see each other last evening, and if she found another, it was that we two did not see each other last evening because she was out somewhere else. And whose fault was that? Yes, the fault was mine. But would I or could I nevertheless act in any other way than I have acted if the first is assumed to have happened? No! I regret the first. From that moment on, I have acted according to the most honest deliberation and to the best of my ability, as I also had done the first, until I perceived my error. But does eternity speak so frivolously about guilt? At least time does not; it will no doubt still teach what it has taught me, that a life is something more than last evening. But eternity will, of course, also heal all sickness, give hearing to the deaf, give sight to the blind and physical beauty to the deformed; hence it will also heal me. What is my sickness? Depression. Where does this sickness have its seat? In the power of the imagination, and possibility is its nourishment. But eternity takes away possibility. And was not this sickness oppressive enough in time—that I not only suffered but also became guilty of it? After all, the deformed person only has to bear the pain of being deformed, but how terrible if being deformed made him guilty! So when time is over for me, let my last sigh be to you, O God, for my soul's salvation; let the next to last be for her, or let me for the first time be united with her again in the same last sigh! Søren Kierkegaard, Stages on Life's Way pp. 390–391
Walter Lowrie translated The Concept of Dread in 1944. He was asked "almost petulantly" why it took him so long to translate the book. Alexander Dru had been working on the book and Charles Williams hoped the book would be published along with The Sickness unto Death, which Lowrie was working on in 1939. Then the war started and Dru was wounded and gave the job over to Lowrie. Lowrie could find "no adequate word to use for Angst. Lee Hollander had used the word dread in 1924, a Spanish translator used angustia, and Miguel Unamuno, writing in French used agonie while other French translators used angoisse.[40]Rollo May quoted Kierkegaard in his book Meaning of Anxiety, which is the relation between anxiety and freedom.
I would say that learning to know anxiety is an adventure which every man has to affront if he would not go to perdition either by not having known anxiety or by sinking under it. He therefore who has learned rightly to be anxious has learned the most important thing.— Kierkegaard, The Concept of Dread.[41]
The book’s title is highly interpretive—dread, anxiety, angst, or sin? It's up to the reader to determine. If the individual can't choose the meaning of a word, all choice is taken away. Lowrie interpreted the book as dealing with "an apprehension of the future, a presentiment of a something which is a nothing" that must be fought internally, about what one, as an individual, can become. Professor Lorraine Clark (1991) explained, "Existence is not just a given but also a task—the task of becoming oneself" (Concept of Irony, Hong p. 293). One cannot become all possibilities in reality; one must become something specific. Otherwise, one remains abstract. Lee Hollander also addresses what he views as Kierkegaard's problem, which could be every individual's problem.
In earlier works, Kierkegaard suggested that the consciousness of sin drives man to confront the paradox or fall into "demonic despair." In The Concept of Sin, he explores sin's nature with laborious subtlety, tracing its origin to the "sympathetic antipathy" of dread, a force that both attracts and repels, present even in childhood innocence. This leads to a fatal "dizziness." Kierkegaard argues that man's "fall" is always due to a deliberate act of the will, a "leap," which contradicts modern views of environment and heredity. Despite its somberness, the work is enriched by insightful observations on dread in human life, drawn from history and literature.
Robert Harold Boethius, in his 1948 book Christian Paths to Self-Acceptance, discusses Kierkegaard's concept of dread, explaining that the distorted doctrines of man's depravity from the Reformation and Protestant scholasticism are clarified by neo-orthodox theologians. While sin is often preached in undialectical forms, Kierkegaard offers a modern reinterpretation, linking sin to anxiety. He explains that "dread or anxiety" precedes sin, coming close to it but without fully explaining it, which only breaks forth through a "qualitative leap." Kierkegaard views this "sickness unto death" as central to human existence, teaching that a "synthesis" with God is necessary for resolving inner conflicts and achieving self-acceptance."[42]
Hunt, George Laird interpreted Kierkegaard's writing as basically asking "How can we understand ourselves?" He wrote the following in 1958:
Kierkegaard views man’s humanity through his creatureliness, defined by his position between life and death. Made in God's image, man feels the presence of eternity but also knows his inevitable death. This tension creates his anguish and possibility of immortality. Man sins by avoiding faith and the uncertainty of existence, either denying death or rejecting eternity. He refuses to face the anguish of being both mortal and dependent on God. True humanness lies in acknowledging both life and death, which marks the beginning of redemption.
Søren Kierkegaard, the flag of Denmark, and Rodin's The Thinker
Mortimer J. Adler, Director, Institute for Philosophical Research, answered a newspaper question about existentialism asked in 1965: He was asked, "Dear Dr. Adler: What exactly is existentialism? Can a person be a Christian and, at the same time, be an existentialist?"
In 1947, Jean-Paul Sartre divided existentialism into Christian and atheistic types. He explained that existentialism means "first, man exists, and then defines himself." For Kierkegaard, rational thought is ineffective for discovering identity or duty; only through examining one's unique existence—desires and tensions—can an individual understand themselves. A true Christian, Kierkegaard argues, must embrace an irrational world and make choices without certainty of salvation or damnation, requiring a "leap of faith." While atheistic existentialists reject Kierkegaard's belief in God, they accept his notion of the individual who creates meaning through personal choices. Sartre noted, "Men are condemned to be free," responsible for all their actions.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Walter Kaufmann discussed the existentialism of Sartre and Kierkegaard in his 1960 lecture Kierkegaard and the Crisis in Religion. The lecture is in primary sources under see also.
Kierkegaard offered an avenue of hope for those who have anxiety and human nervousness near the end of this little book.
Now the anxiety of possibility holds him as its prey until, saved, it must hand him over to faith. In no other place can he find rest, for every other place of rest is mere chatter, although in the eyes of men it is sagacity. Therefore possibility is absolutely educative. In actuality, no man ever became so unhappy that he did not retain a little remnant, and common sense says correctly that if one is cunning, one knows how to make the best of things. But whoever took possibility's course in misfortune lost all, all, as no one in actuality ever lost it. Now, if he did not defraud the possibility that wanted to teach him and did not wheedle the anxiety that wanted to save him, then he would also receive everything back, as no one in actuality ever did, even though he also he received all things tenfold, for the disciple of possibility received infinity, and the soul of the other expired in the finite. In actuality, no one ever sank so deep that he could not sink deeper, and there may be one or many who sank deeper. But he who sank in possibility-his eye became dizzy, his eye became confused, so he could not grasp the measuring stick that Tom, Dick, and Harry hold out as a saving straw to one sinking; his ear was closed so he could not hear what the market price of men was in his own day, did not hear that he was just as good as the majority. He sank absolutely, but then in turn he emerged from the depth of the abyss lighter than all the troublesome and terrible things in life. However, I will not deny that whoever is educated by possibility is exposed to danger, not that of getting into bad company and going astray in various ways as are those educated by the finite, but in danger of a fall, namely, suicide. If at the beginning of education he misunderstands the anxiety, so that it does not lead him to faith but away from faith, then he is lost. On the other hand, whoever is educated [by possibility] remains with anxiety; he does not permit himself to be deceived by its countless falsifications and accurately remembers the past. Then the assaults of anxiety, even though they be terrifying, will not be such that he flees from them. For him, anxiety becomes a serving spirit that against its will leads him where he wishes to go. Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, Nichol pp. 158–159
^Kierkegaard wrote again about dread in his 1847 book Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, translated by Howard Hong
Alas, although many call themselves Christians and yet may seem to be living in uncertainty as to whether God actually is love, it would truly be better if they made the love blaze just by the thought of paganism's horror: that he who holds the fate of everything and also your fate in his hand is ambivalent, that his love is not a fatherly embrace but a constraining trap, that his secret nature is not eternal clarity but concealment, that the deepest ground of his nature is not love but a cunning impossible to understand. We are not, after all, required to be able to understand the rule of God's love, but we certainly are required to be able to believe and, believing, to understand that he is love. It is not dreadful that you are unable to understand God's decrees if he nevertheless is eternal love, but it is dreadful if you could not understand them because he is cunning. If, however, according to the assumption of the discourse, it is true that in relation to God a person is not only always in the wrong but is always guilty and thus when he suffers also suffers as guilty-then no doubt within you (provided you yourself will not sin again) and no event outside you (provided you yourself will not sin again by taking offense) can displace the joy. Soren Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Hong pp. 267–269
^Prefaces/Writing Sampler, Nichol pp. 33–34, 68 The Concept of Anxiety pp. 115–116
"Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, 'You shall surely die,' and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you will have saved your life. Again, if a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die; because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, and his righteous deeds which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood I will require at your hand. Nevertheless if you warn the righteous man not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning; and you will have saved your life." Ezekiel 3:17–19 The Bible
"The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen. Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you." 1 Peter 4:7–12 Three Upbuilding Discourses, 1843
^Kierkegaard Josiah Thomson Alfred A Knopf 1973 pp. 142–143
^Kierkegaard wrote against prereflection and how it can keep the single individual from acting in his book Two Ages, The Age of Revolution and the Present Age, A Literary Review, 1845, Hong 1978, 2009 pp. 67–68
^Kierkegaard discusses Hebart in relation to the question of whether an individual would begin with the negative or the positive.
In his treatise De affectionbus (The Affections), Descartes calls attention to the fact that every passion has a corresponding passion; only with wonder that is not the case. The detailed exposition is rather weak, but it has been of interest to me that he makes an exception of wonder, because, as is well known, according to Plato's and Aristotle's views precisely this constitutes the passion of philosophy and the passion which all philosophizing began. Moreover, envy corresponds to wonder, and recent philosophy would also speak of doubt. Precisely in this lies the fundamental error of recent philosophy, that it wants to begin with the negative instead of the positive, which always is the first, in the same sense affirmatio [affirmation] is placed first in the declaration omnis affirmatio est nagatio [every affirmation is a negation]. The question of whether the positive or the negative comes first is exceedingly important, and the only modern philosopher who has declared himself for the positive is presumably Herbart. The Concept of Anxiety Thomte p. 143
^Kierkegaard had already discussed this in his first unpublished book, Johannes Climacus, in Chapter 2, Philosophy Begins With Doubt, (Croxall translation): here he compares the positive principle with the negative principle and wonder with doubt. see pages 49ff here is the book from Goodreads Johannes Climacus
^See Soren Kierkegaard's 1847 book Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits 141–154 Hong translation
^Philosophical Fragments, Swenson p. 30, The Concept of Anxiety p. 12-13, Three Discourses On Imagined Occasions, Søren Kierkegaard, June 17, 1844, Hong 1993 p. 13-14
^The Concept of Anxiety P. 109, Concluding Postscript, Hong p. 259, 322–323
^The Concept of Anxiety, p. 39, Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 1847 Hong 1995 p. 297-298
^The Concept of Anxiety Note p. 33, There is an eternal difference between Christ and every Christian. Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, Hong 1995 p. 101
^Søren Kierkegaard, Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions p. 31-32
^See Søren Kierkegaard, Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, 1845, Hong p. 94-95
^Also see Sickness unto Death, Hannay 1989 p. 74-77
^The Concept of Dread, Walter Lowrie Princeton University May 26, 1943 his preface to the book
Søren Kierkegaard The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin June 17, 1844 Vigilius Haufniensis, Edited and translated by Reidar Thomte Princeton University Press 1980 Kierkegaard's Writings, VIII ISBN0691020116
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