“The Sickness Unto Death” by Soren Kierkegaard (translated by Howard V. Hong & Edna H. Hong)

In this book, an accompaniment to “The Concept of Anxiety”, Kierkegaard is trying to define despair and sin Christianly, against psychological, ethical, pagan, Socratic, and speculative-philosophical accounts. The book is by Kierkegaard, but published under the pseudonym, Anti-Climacus. The book’s central claim is that despair is not merely unhappiness or psychological distress, but a sickness in the self’s relation to itself and to the power that established it. “The possibility of this sickness is man’s superiority over the animal; to be aware of this sickness is the Christian’s superiority over the natural man; to be cured of this sickness is the Christian’s blessedness…. Consequently, to be able to despair is an infinite advantage, and yet to be in despair is not only the worst misfortune and misery—no, it is ruination…. Every actual moment of despair is traceable to possibility; every moment he is in despair he is bringing it upon himself. It is always the present tense…. In every actual moment of despair the person in despair bears all the past as a present in possibility. The reason for this is that to despair is a qualification of spirit and relates to the eternal in man…. Every moment he is in despair he is bringing his despair upon himself. For despair is not attributable to the misrelation but to the relation that relates itself to itself…. This concept, the sickness unto death, must, however, be understood in a particular way. Literally it means a sickness of which the end and the result are death…. In that sense, despair cannot be called the sickness unto death. Christianly understood, death itself is a passing into life. Thus, from a Christian point of view, no earthly, physical sickness is the sickness unto death…. If there is to be any question of a sickness unto death in the strictest sense, it must be a sickness of which the end is death and death is the end. This is precisely what despair is…. To despair over oneself, in despair to will to be rid of oneself—this is the formula for all despair.”

Kierkegaard then radicalizes despair: it is not limited to the miserable or obviously broken person, but includes every form of life that avoids becoming conscious of itself as spirit before God. Even aesthetic brilliance, ethical achievement, or absorption into state, nation, or universality can still be despair if the self does not transparently rest in God. “Every human existence that is not conscious of itself as spirit or conscious of itself before God as spirit, every human existence that does not rest transparently in God but vaguely rests in and merges in some abstract universality (state, nation, etc.) or, in the dark about his self, regards his capacities merely as powers to produce without becoming deeply aware of their source, regards his self, if it is to have intrinsic meaning, as an indefinable something—every such existence, whatever it achieves, be it most amazing, whatever it explains, be it the whole of existence, however intensively it enjoys life esthetically—every such existence is nevertheless despair. That is what the ancient Church Fathers meant when they said that the virtues of the pagans were glittering vices: they meant that the heart of paganism was despair, that paganism was not conscious before God as spirit.”

One lower form of despair is immediacy, where the person has not yet become inward enough to possess a self in any serious sense. Such a person identifies the self with external conditions and imagines salvation as becoming someone else, as if changing the self were like changing clothes. “Immediacy actually has no self, it does not know itself; thus it cannot recognize itself and therefore generally ends in fantasy. When immediacy despairs, it does not even have enough self to wish or dream that it had become that which it has not become. The man of immediacy helps himself in another way: he wishes to be someone else…. Imagine a self (and next to God there is nothing as eternal as a self), and then imagine that it suddenly occurs to a self that it might become someone other—than itself. And yet one in despair this way, whose sole desire is this most lunatic of lunatic metamorphoses, is infatuated with the illusion that this change can be accomplished as easily as one changes clothes. The man of immediacy does not know himself, he quite literally identifies himself only by the clothes he wears, he identifies having a self by externalities.”

Kierkegaard’s more intense form of despair is defiance: not despairingly wanting to get rid of oneself, but despairingly willing to be oneself apart from God. This is more spiritually developed and therefore more dangerous; it is close to faith because it uses the eternal, but it misuses the eternal by refusing surrender, consolation, and the possibility that “for God everything is possible.” He continues, “First comes despair over the earthly or over something earthly, then despair of the eternal, over oneself. Then comes defiance, which is really despair through the aid of the eternal, the despairing misuse of the eternal within the self to will in despair to be oneself. But just because it is despair through the aid of the eternal, in a certain sense it is very close to the truth; and just because it lies very close to the truth, it is infinitely far away. The despair that is the thoroughfare to faith comes also through the aid of the eternal; through the aid of the eternal the self has the courage to lose itself in order to win itself…. In order in despair to will to be oneself, there must be consciousness of an infinite self. This infinite self, however, is really only the most abstract form, the most abstract possibility of the self…. The form of despair that despairs over the earthly or something earthly was understood basically to be—and it also manifests itself as being—despair of the eternal, that is, an unwillingness to be comforted by and healed by the eternal, an overestimation of the things of this world to the extent that the eternal can be no consolation. But this is also a form of the despair, to be unwilling to hope in the possibility that an earthly need, a temporal cross, can come to an end. The despairing person who in despair wills to be himself is unwilling to do that. He has convinced himself that this thorn in the flesh* gnaws so deeply that he cannot abstract himself from it (whether this is actually the case or his passion makes it so to him*), and therefore he might as well accept it forever, so to speak. He is offended by it, or, more correctly, he takes it as an occasion to be offended at all existence…. Hope in the possibility of help, especially by virtue of the absurd, that for God everything is possible.”

Kierkegaard’s account of sin turns on the difference between ignorance and will. Socrates can explain wrongdoing as a failure of understanding, but Christianity goes further: sin is not merely failing to know the good, but willing against the good, even when one understands it. “Socrates would say: If this happens, it just shows that a person such as this still has not understood what is right. This means that the Greek mind does not have the courage to declare that a person knowingly does wrong, knows what is right and does the wrong; so it manages by saying: If a person does what is wrong, he has not understood what is right…. Absolutely right. And no human being can come further than that; no man of himself and by himself can declare what sin is, precisely because he is in sin…. That is why Christianity begins in another way: man has to learn what sin is by a revelation from God; sin is not a matter of a person’s not having understood what is right but of his being unwilling to understand it, of his not willing what is right…. Socrates actually gives no explanation at all of the distinction: not being able to understand and not willing to understand…. Socrates explains that he who does not do what is right has not understood it, either; but Christianity goes a little further back and says that it is because he is unwilling to understand it, and this again because he does not will what is right. And in the next place it teaches that a person does what is wrong (essentially defiance) even though he understands what is right, or he refrains from doing what is right even though he understands it; in short, the Christian teaching about sin is nothing but offensiveness toward man, charge upon charge, it is the suit that the divine as the prosecutor ventures to bring against man…. To comprehend is the range of man’s relation to the human, but to believe is man’s relation to the divine…. Therefore, interpreted Christianly, sin has its roots in willing, not in knowing, and this corruption of willing affects the individual’s consciousness…. Sin is—after being taught by a revelation from God what sin is—before God in despair not to will to be oneself or in despair to will to be oneself.”

Because sin concerns the self before God, Kierkegaard denies that it can be mastered by speculative comprehension. Christianity requires faith, not because it is intellectually lazy, but because faith preserves the qualitative gulf between God and man that speculative thought is always tempted to smooth over. “I steadfastly hold to the Christian teaching that sin is a position—yet not as if it could be comprehended, but as a paradox that must be believed…. Whether one will believe or not must be left to faith…. So let others admire and praise him who pretends to be able to comprehend Christianity. I consider it an outright ethical task, perhaps requiring not a little self-denial in these very speculative times, when all “the others” are busy comprehending, to admit that one is neither able nor obliged to comprehend it…. Let us never forget that Socrates’ ignorance was a kind of fear and worship of God, that his ignorance was the Greek version of the Jewish saying: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…. Christianity teaches that everything essentially Christian depends solely upon faith; therefore it wants to be precisely a Socratic, God-fearing ignorance, which by means of ignorance guards faith against speculation, keeping watch so that the gulf of qualitative difference between God and man may be maintained as it is in the paradox and faith.”

Furthermore, Kierkegaard describes an even deeper intensification: despairing over one’s sin. Here the sinner does not merely sin, but encloses himself within sin, treating repentance and grace as impossible, meaningless, or even hostile. "Sin is despair; the intensification is the new sin of despairing over one’s sin…. We are not talking about particular sins here; the state of sin is the sin, and this is intensified in a new consciousness…. To despair over one’s sin indicates that sin has become or wants to be internally consistent. It wants nothing to do with the good…. It insists on listening only to itself, on having dealings only with itself; it closes itself up within itself, indeed, locks itself inside one more inclosure, and protects itself against every attack or pursuit by the good by despairing over sin. It is aware of having burned the bridge behind it and of thereby being inaccessible to the good and of the good being inaccessible to it, so that if in a weak moment it should itself will the good, that would still be impossible. Sin itself is severance from the good, but despair over sin is the second severance. This, of course, squeezes the uttermost demonic powers out of sin, gives it the profane toughness or perverseness that must consistently regard everything called repentance and grace not only as empty and meaningless but also as its enemy.”

Finally, Kierkegaard opposes the ethical and Christian category of the single individual to speculative abstraction. Sin may be universal, but it is never merely a universal idea; it becomes actual only in the individual sinner, standing before God. “The ethical does not abstract from actuality but immerses itself in actuality and operates mainly with the help of that speculatively disregarded and scorned category: individuality. Sin is a qualification of the single individual; it is irresponsibility and new sin to pretend as if it were nothing to be an individual sinner—when one himself is this individual sinner…. The earnestness of sin is its actuality in the single individual, be it you or I…. The dialectic of sin is diametrically contrary to that of speculation. Christianity begins here—with the teaching about sin, and thereby with the single individual…. Sin, however common it is to all, does not gather men together in a common idea, into an association, into a partnership (“no more than the multitude of the dead out in the cemetery form some kind of society”); instead, it splits men up into single individuals and holds each individual fast as a sinner…. If “the single individual” is to feel in kinship with God (and this is what Christianity teaches), then he also senses the full weight of it in fear and trembling, and he must discover—as if it were not an ancient discovery—the possibility of offense…. Being a human being is not like being an animal, for which the specimen is always less than the species. Man is distinguished from other animal species not only by the superiorities that are generally mentioned but is also qualitatively distinguished by the fact that the individual, the single individual, is more than the species. This qualification is in turn dialectical and signifies that the single individual is a sinner, but then again that it is a perfection to be the single individual.”

“The Concept of Anxiety” by Soren Kierkegaard (translated by Reidar Thomte)

Kierkegaard’s subject is not anxiety in the ordinary clinical sense, but anxiety as the peculiar mood of freedom confronting possibility. He begins from original sin and innocence, but quickly turns the discussion into a psychology of spirit: innocence is not moral purity already conscious of itself, but ignorance, and anxiety first appears as the unsettling presence of possibility before anything definite has been chosen. “The strongest, indeed, the most positive expression the Protestant Church uses for the presence of hereditary sin in man is precisely that he is born with concupiscentia…. All men begotten in a natural way are born with sin, i.e., without the fear of God, without trust in God, and with concupiscence.… Innocence is ignorance…. In this state there is peace and repose, but there is simultaneously something else that is not contention and strife, for there is indeed nothing against which to strive. What, then, is it? Nothing. But what effect does nothing have? It begets anxiety. This is the profound secret of innocence, that it is at the same time anxiety…. The actuality of the spirit constantly shows itself as a form that tempts its possibility but disappears as soon as it seeks to grasp for it, and it is a nothing that can only bring anxiety…. The concept of anxiety is almost never treated in psychology. Therefore, I must point out that it is altogether different from fear and similar concepts that refer to something definite, whereas anxiety is freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility…. Anxiety is a sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy. One easily sees, I think, that this is a psychological determination in a sense entirely different from the concupiscentia [inordinate desire] of which we spoke…. The anxiety that is posited in innocence is in the first place no guilt, and in the second place it is no troublesome burden, no suffering that cannot be brought into harmony with the blessedness of innocence…. This anxiety belongs so essentially to the child that he cannot do without it. Though it causes him anxiety, it captivates him by its pleasing anxiousness [Beængstelse]. In all cultures where the childlike is preserved as the dreaming of the spirit, this anxiety is found. The more profound the anxiety, the more profound the culture.”

For Kierkegaard, anxiety is the atmosphere around the qualitative leap into sin. Psychology can describe the dizziness of freedom before the leap, but it cannot explain the leap itself; once freedom has fallen, guilt appears retrospectively as if everything has changed. “Anxiety means two things: the anxiety in which the individual posits sin by the qualitative leap, and the anxiety that entered in and enters in with sin, and that also, accordingly, enters quantitatively into the world every time and individual posits sin…. Hence anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis and freedom looks down into its own possibility, laying hold of finiteness to support itself. Freedom succumbs in this dizziness. Further than this, psychology cannot and will not go. In that very moment everything is changed, and freedom, when it again rises, sees that it is guilty. Between these two moments lies the leap, which no science has explained and which no science can explain. He who becomes guilty in anxiety becomes as ambiguously guilty as it is possible to become…. In anxiety there is the selfish infinity of possibility, which does not tempt like a choice but ensnaringly disquiets [ængster] with its sweet anxiousness [Beængstelse]…. In each subsequent individual, anxiety is more reflective. This may be expressed by saying that the nothing that is the object of anxiety becomes, as it were, more and more a something.”

Kierkegaard then ties anxiety to time. The “moment” is not merely an instant in sequence, but the point at which eternity touches temporality; this matters because Adam’s fall is not simply a past event but a structure repeated in every subsequent individual. “Christianity, that which made all things new, is the fullness of time, but the fullness of time is the moment as the eternal, and yet this eternal is also the future and the past.” One of Kierkegaard’s central balancing acts is to preserve both inheritance and individual responsibility: every person begins “like Adam,” yet every person also sins only through his own qualitative leap. “Let us now consider Adam and also remember that every subsequent individual begins in the very same way, within the quantitative difference that is the consequence of the relationship of generation and the historical relationship. Thus the moment is there for Adam as well as for every subsequent individual…. The relation of freedom to guilt is anxiety, because freedom and guilt are still only possibilities.”

In Kierkegaard, unfreedom is not merely the absence of possibility; it is often a distorted relation to possibility, freedom, inwardness, and spirit. Superstition and unbelief are unfree because they evade or falsify the individual’s relation to freedom. “Both superstition and unbelief are forms of unfreedom. In superstition, objectivity is conceded to be a power—like that of Medusa’s head—which can petrify subjectivity, and unfreedom does not will that the spell be broken. Mockery is the highest and apparently the freest expression of unbelief. However, what mockery lacks is precisely certitude, and therefore it mocks. Yet how many a mocker’s existence, if only we could look into it, would recall the anxiety in which the demonic calls out: τί ἐμοὶ καὶ σοί [What have I to do with you]?”

For Kierkegaard, inwardness is a bellwether concept. The question is not whether one can produce an abstract proof of God, but whether the thought of God’s existence is allowed to become inwardly present for the individual’s freedom.“The thought of God’s existence [Tilværelse], when it is posited as such for the individual’s freedom, has an omnipresence that for the prudent individuality has something embarrassing about it, even though he does not wish to do anything evil. To live in a beautiful and intimate companionship with this conception truly requires inwardness, and it is a much greater feat than that of being a model husband. How depressed such an individuality may feel when he hears a naive and simple man talk about the existence of God. The demonstration of the existence of God is something with which one learnedly and metaphysically occupies oneself only on occasion, but the thought of God forces itself upon a man on every occasion. What is it that such an individuality lacks? Inwardness.”

As the book develops, the demonic appears as anxious evasion: the refusal to face eternity, freedom, guilt, and possibility directly. But Kierkegaard’s final twist is that anxiety is not merely a danger; rightly undergone, it becomes educative, because it strips away finite evasions and teaches the individual the weight of possibility. “Men are not willing to think eternity earnestly but are anxious about it, and anxiety can contrive a hundred evasions. And this is precisely the demonic…. I will say that this is an adventure that every human being must go through—to learn to be anxious in order that he may not perish either by never having been in anxiety or by succumbing in anxiety. Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate…. The more profoundly he is in anxiety, the greater is the man—yet not in the sense usually understood, in which anxiety is about something external, about something outside a person, but in the sense that he himself produces the anxiety…. Only in this sense can the words be understood when it is said of Christ that he was anxious unto death…. Anxiety is freedom’s possibility, and only such anxiety is through faith absolutely educative, because it consumes all finite ends and discovers all their deceptiveness…. Whoever is educated by anxiety is educated by possibility, and only he who is educated by possibility is educated according to his infinitude…. In possibility all things are equally possible, and whoever has truly been brought up by possibility has grasped the terrible as well as the joyful…. When he has thoroughly learned that every anxiety about which he was anxious came upon him in the next moment—he will give actuality another explanation, he will praise actuality, and even when it rests heavily upon him, he will remember that it nevertheless is far, far lighter than possibility was…. In order that an individual may thus be educated absolutely and infinitely by the possibility, he must be honest toward possibility and have faith…. When the discoveries of possibility are honestly administered, possibility will discover all the finitudes, but it will idealize them in the form of infinity and in anxiety overwhelm the individual until he again overcomes them.”

Finally, Kierkegaard affirms the role of faith and reiterates its role in the concept of the infinite. Faith is the qualitative leap that comes when the self, having been brought through possibility to the absolute, rests in the absolute. Faith is anticipating eternity in time — and what anxiety has done is empty the self of every finite anchor so that this resting becomes possible. Anxiety becomes saving only through faith: it educates the self in possibility, reveals guilt more radically than any external court could, and brings the individual to rest not in self-management but in providence and atonement. Anxiety is therefore ambiguous: it is neither guilt itself nor mere innocence, neither fear of a definite object nor freedom already actualized, but the trembling middle state in which possibility presses upon spirit. “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…. From finitude one can learn much, but not how to be anxious, except in a very mediocre and depraved sense. On the other hand, whoever has truly learned how to be anxious will dance when the anxieties of finitude strike up the music and when the apprentices of finitude lose their minds and courage…. Therefore he who in relation to guilt is educated by anxiety will rest only in the Atonement.”