søren kierkegaard the concept of anxiety

However, the exhilarating freedom of escaping “house arrest” and the surprising ease of finding a parking spot are soon soured upon entering the supermarket. AAI8904252.As the weeks of coronavirus isolation drag on and look like turning into months, the highlight of my week is a trip to the shops my wife and I fight over the privilege.

Dissertations (1962 - 2010) Access via Proquest Digital Dissertations. Recommended Citationīeabout, Gregory R., 'Kierkegaard on anxiety and despair: An analysis of 'The Concept of Anxiety' and 'The Sickness Unto Death'' (1988). Finally, a cure for despair must include anxiety, that is, freedom's possibility. Despair is the wrongful use of freedom through the failure to choose to be oneself. Rather, anxiety is the mark of human freedom and the condition for the possibility of despair. I argue that in Kierkegaard's writings, anxiety and despair are surely not different terms for the same mood or psychological state. Since the self is capable of relating itself (or misrelating itself) to itself in multiple ways, and since despair is the misrelation of oneself to oneself, despair has a multitude of forms. Instead, it is the structure of one's being who has wrongfully used freedom. Like anxiety, despair is not simply a psychological state. Kierkegaard understands despair (fortvivlelse) to be a not-willing-to-be-oneself. Further, anxiety is an explanation of choice only in the sense that it explains the possibility of choice it does not and can not explain the cause of this or that particular choice. Anxiety is that which psychology refers to in seeking an explanation to free human choices. Thus, anxiety is not simply a psychological state, mood or feeling, but is an ontological structure essential to human being and is the mark of human freedom. Kierkegaard understands anxiety (angest) to be both the attraction to and the repulsion from the nothingness of future possibilities. Therefore, the dissertation is a careful articulation of the structure and relation between anxiety and despair through a close textual analysis of The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness Unto Death.

This thematic interconnection between anxiety and despair is doubled and made more difficult by the textual relationship between the two works and the fact that they have different pseudonymous 'authors.' Further, both these works are very dense and bristle with problems of meaning and interpretation. Anxiety and despair each have a complex structure and are closely interrelated to one another. He discusses these concepts principally in two works, The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness Unto Death.

The concepts of anxiety and despair together are central to Kierkegaard's conception of the self. Kierkegaard on anxiety and despair: An analysis of 'The Concept of Anxiety' and 'The Sickness Unto Death'

Søren kierkegaard the concept of anxiety