This article is about the work by Søren Kierkegaard. For the topic of “anxiety”, see anxiety.
“The Concept of Dread” redirects here. For the topic of “dread”, see dread.
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), had the title 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.
Progress[edit]
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.
Friedrich Schelling wrote Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom in 1809, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel wrote his Science of Logic between 1812 and 1816,[9] and Johann Friedrich Herbart[10] wrote about pedagogy. All of them were discussing how good and evil come into existence. Kierkegaard questioned Hegel and Schelling’s emphasis on the negative (evil) and aligned himself with Hebart’s emphasis on the positive (good). Kierkegaard says “anxiety about sin produces sin”[11][12] in this book and later says it again:
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.
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
Anxiety[edit]
