Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.89 AVERAGE
3.89 AVERAGE
challenging
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
My first foray into Kierkegaard's work left me wanting more.
I think it was more than the fact that I wasn't prepared for the dialectical nature of his work (I haven't gotten around to reading Hegel because I can't start Kant until after I get through Hume and Leibnitz – philosophy is exhausting). Kierkegaard's big problem, in my view, isn't synthesis in the philosophical sense, but in the rhetorical sense: his arguments are well developed, but they don't follow from one another.
He begins with a definition of despair, that it is a sickness of the soul, and three categories of despair. He then moves on to a discussion of sin, which he claims is despair. To me, it seems that he intends this to be a self-evident conclusion. Despair is a sickness of the spirit and so is sin, therefore they must be one and the same. But of course there are more than one physical ailment, so why is it impossible that the self is the same? It seems to me that this is two treatises, one about despair and one about sin, but Kierkegaard couldn't get away with having them so short, so he combined them.
He also leaves the reader on their own with regard to how to cure this sickness unto death. Even if I buy the argument that despair is sin, how do I get out of sin? Or, if it is improbable that I can get out of sin (since most people are in despair, then most people must also be in sin), how do I alleviate my sinful state? What, specifically, is sin?
While I was reading, I kept trying to ignore the 13 year old Reddit atheist that's inside all of us who "don't do organized religion" or whatever we're calling it when our mom can't make us go to her church. But I just couldn't help but think about the stacks of contradictions upholding Christianity itself. For millennia, really smart men like Kierkegaard tried to pull together a cogent, rational ideology out of a collection of aphorisms by a chill guy who just wanted to feed the poor, a dozen or so letters from a homophobic narcissist, and the 5000 year old religious beliefs that we technically share with the people we've been trying to kill since we got started. It isn't wrong to kill or to steal because it hurts another person or degrades the public spirit, but because God said not to. Similarly, you shouldn't despair, not because it isn't good for you, but because God doesn't like you when you're sad. And that's really all Kierkegaard can tell you to do: stop despairing.
On the bright side, the cover for this edition is simply stunning. That's the main reason I picked up this book in the first place. Bruce Kirmmse has a translation of Fear and Trembling with similar cover art and I have to get my hands on it. I guess we'll meet again, Mr. Kierkegaard.
I think it was more than the fact that I wasn't prepared for the dialectical nature of his work (I haven't gotten around to reading Hegel because I can't start Kant until after I get through Hume and Leibnitz – philosophy is exhausting). Kierkegaard's big problem, in my view, isn't synthesis in the philosophical sense, but in the rhetorical sense: his arguments are well developed, but they don't follow from one another.
He begins with a definition of despair, that it is a sickness of the soul, and three categories of despair. He then moves on to a discussion of sin, which he claims is despair. To me, it seems that he intends this to be a self-evident conclusion. Despair is a sickness of the spirit and so is sin, therefore they must be one and the same. But of course there are more than one physical ailment, so why is it impossible that the self is the same? It seems to me that this is two treatises, one about despair and one about sin, but Kierkegaard couldn't get away with having them so short, so he combined them.
He also leaves the reader on their own with regard to how to cure this sickness unto death. Even if I buy the argument that despair is sin, how do I get out of sin? Or, if it is improbable that I can get out of sin (since most people are in despair, then most people must also be in sin), how do I alleviate my sinful state? What, specifically, is sin?
While I was reading, I kept trying to ignore the 13 year old Reddit atheist that's inside all of us who "don't do organized religion" or whatever we're calling it when our mom can't make us go to her church. But I just couldn't help but think about the stacks of contradictions upholding Christianity itself. For millennia, really smart men like Kierkegaard tried to pull together a cogent, rational ideology out of a collection of aphorisms by a chill guy who just wanted to feed the poor, a dozen or so letters from a homophobic narcissist, and the 5000 year old religious beliefs that we technically share with the people we've been trying to kill since we got started. It isn't wrong to kill or to steal because it hurts another person or degrades the public spirit, but because God said not to. Similarly, you shouldn't despair, not because it isn't good for you, but because God doesn't like you when you're sad. And that's really all Kierkegaard can tell you to do: stop despairing.
On the bright side, the cover for this edition is simply stunning. That's the main reason I picked up this book in the first place. Bruce Kirmmse has a translation of Fear and Trembling with similar cover art and I have to get my hands on it. I guess we'll meet again, Mr. Kierkegaard.
I needed a tutorial for the first half of this.
https://youtu.be/64tsAc2ncJQ
Interesting to learn the history. Interested to learn more.
https://youtu.be/64tsAc2ncJQ
Interesting to learn the history. Interested to learn more.
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
really interesting conception of despair but i am always left unsatisfied by his tendency to use faith as the ultimate cure-all
cannot decipher this. english is my second language
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
There truly isn't much I can say is *wrong* with this work. Kierkegaard often fails to define his terms -- perhaps that is a flaw in his writing. No, I think the primary reason I was unable to appreciate the book is that my mind is far more exegetical than it is philosophical. While I could follow much of what the author wrote, I often felt I missed the purpose, or otherwise only tentatively grasped it through philosophical jargon that means little to me.
In part two, in Kierkegaard's definition of sin, I had an easier time with his assertions. I even agreed with a few of them. But many, I felt, were opinions on theology rather than exegetically divined truths. Perhaps if I had more time to devote to the study Hegel and Kant I would find more here to whet my appetite. As it is, I don't have terribly strong opinions on this book.
In part two, in Kierkegaard's definition of sin, I had an easier time with his assertions. I even agreed with a few of them. But many, I felt, were opinions on theology rather than exegetically divined truths. Perhaps if I had more time to devote to the study Hegel and Kant I would find more here to whet my appetite. As it is, I don't have terribly strong opinions on this book.
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
The Sickness Unto Death is Kierkegaard's deep dive into despair.
Kierkegaard explores and ultimately defines despair as being a sensation inevitably present in the Christian human condition.
Likewise, with the exception of pagans, he claims all human beings must now exist in relation to this Christian human condition as humans, in this part of history, either accept the existence of Christ or choose not to.
The idea that one is or can be without an opinion on this matter is a false one, which he explains, at length, in the latter half of the work.
That being said, be it belief or unbelief, despair is inevitable. Kierkegaard then takes his reader on a ride, and what a ride it is....
Kierkegaard's descent or rather ascent into faith and despair is an engaging one.
His logic is circular, much like walking around a labyrinth that has a single entrance and exit into each subsequent phase of the journey. Think of the shape of Dante hell only with less creatures...In essence, Kierkegaard makes a full circle in each phase the argument, concluding right before where he repeats himself.
He does so in order to better define and contextualize the next phase of his proposal.
Proposal is a key word here, as Kierkegaard's writing, at least in translation, never really feels as though it is attempting to convince you, as a reader, rather, his writing proposes a way of possibly seeing and understanding the world.
It's particularly liberating, as a reader, to understand, but not necessarily believe, that christians have it wrong when they see sin and virtue as opposites. His proposed prayer both somber and hilarious: There is a prayer which especially in our times would be so apt: 'God in heaven, I thank you for not requiring a person to comprehend Christianity, for if it were required, then I would be of all men the most miserable. The more I seek to comprehend it, the more I discover merely the possibility of offence. Therefore, I thank you for requiring only faith and I pray you will continue to increase it.'(162)
Kierkegaard suggests that the Christian dialectic actually consists of sin and faith.
To me, this is modern in thinking in so that it places less emphasis on action and more on belief. Suggesting that actions can be misinterpreted or acted out for the wrong reasons but faith is inherently extant at any given moment. That faith is either pure or non-existent.
There are wonders to behold in terms quotations and it is a beautiful day today so I will only add a few though I strongly recommend you read and share your favourites:
'The self is not the relation but the relation's relating to the self' (9)
'If there were nothing eternal in man, he would simply be unable to despair' (19)
'eternity will nevertheless make it evident that his condition is that of despair, and will nail him to his self so that the torment will still be that he cannot be rid of his self, and it will be evident that his success was an illusion. And this eternity must do, because having a self, being a self, is the greatest, the infinite, concession that has been made to man, but also eternity's claim on him. (20)
'What is rare is not someone should be in despair; nom what is rare, the great rarity, is that one should truly not be in despair' (22)
'Commonly a person is assumed to be healthy if he himself doesn't say that he is ill' (22)
'he who says without pretence that he despairs is, after all, a little nearer, a dialectical step nearer being cured than all those who are not regarded and who do not regard themselves as being in despair' (27)
'the only life wasted is the life of one who so lived it, deceived by life's pleasures or its sorrows, that he never became decisively, eternally, conscious of himself as spirit, as self, or, what is the same, he never became aware- and gained in the deepest sense the impression- that there is a god there and that 'he' himself, his self, exists before this God, which infinite gain is never come by except through despair; (28)
'eternity asks you, and every one of these millions of millions, just one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not, whether so in despair that you did not know what you were in despair, or in such a way that you bore this sickness concealed deep inside you as your gnawing secret, under your heart like the fruit of a sinful love, or in such a way that, a terror to others, you raged in despair' (29)
'In general, what is decisive with regard to the self is consciousness, that is to say self-consciousness. The more consciousness, the more will; the more sill, the more self. Someone who has no will at all is no self. the the more will he has, the more self-consciousness he has too. (30)
'for in the world a self is what one least asks after, and the thing it is most dangerous of all to show signs of having' (35)
'The world really only interests itself in intellectual or aesthetic limitations, or in the indifferent, which is always what the world talks about most. (35)-Imagine the cojones on writing this 170 years ago.
'by being busied with all sorts of worldy affair, by being wise to the ways of the world, such a person forgets himself, in a divine sense forgets his own name, dares not believe in himself, finds being himself too risky, finds it much easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, along with the crowd...this form of despair goes practically unnoticed in the wold. Precisely by losing himself in this way such a person gains all that is required for a flawless performance in everyday life, yest, for making a great success out of life. (36)
'Naturally the world has no understanding of what is truly horrifying' (37)
'A self that has no possibility is in despair, and likewise a self that has no necessity (38)---Think of the ties to capitalism here.... Strong indictment for the importance of possibility and desire for things, they need not be religion, but things other than material goods....
'the mirror of possibility is no ordinary mirror' (40)
'The necessary is as though there were only consonants, but to utter them there has to be possibility' (41)
'The believer possesses the ever-sure antidote to despair:possibility; since for God everything is possible at every moment' (44)
'To lack possibility means either that everything has become necessary or that everything has become trivial' (44)
'Personhood is a synthesis or possibility and necessity' (45)
'the urge for solitude is a sign that there is after all spirit in a person and the measure of what spirit in a person and the measure of what spirit there i. So little do chattering nonentities and socializers feel the need for solitude that, like love-birds, if left alone for an instant they promptly die. As a little child must be lulled to sleep, so these need the soothing hushaby of social life to be able to eat, drink, sleep, pray, fall in love, etc. (77)
'in our own day it is indeed a crime to have spirit, so the fact that such people, the lovers of solitude, are put into the same category as criminals is just as it should be' (78)
'the self must be broken down to become itself, just stop despairing over it' (79)
'because he has opened himself to another, he despairs over that; it may strike him that it would have been infinitely preferable to have kept silent than to have someone privy to his despair (80)-21st century
'The formula always is: wanting in despair to be oneself. (83)
'The despairing self is forever building only castles in the air, and is always only fencing with an imaginary opponent. (84)
'A man who admires something but feels he cannot be happy surrendering himself to it, that man chooses to be envious of what he admires. (105)
'To defend something is always to discredit it' (106)
'Admiration is happy self-surrender, envy is unhappy self-assertion' (106)
Kierkegaard explores and ultimately defines despair as being a sensation inevitably present in the Christian human condition.
Likewise, with the exception of pagans, he claims all human beings must now exist in relation to this Christian human condition as humans, in this part of history, either accept the existence of Christ or choose not to.
The idea that one is or can be without an opinion on this matter is a false one, which he explains, at length, in the latter half of the work.
That being said, be it belief or unbelief, despair is inevitable. Kierkegaard then takes his reader on a ride, and what a ride it is....
Kierkegaard's descent or rather ascent into faith and despair is an engaging one.
His logic is circular, much like walking around a labyrinth that has a single entrance and exit into each subsequent phase of the journey. Think of the shape of Dante hell only with less creatures...In essence, Kierkegaard makes a full circle in each phase the argument, concluding right before where he repeats himself.
He does so in order to better define and contextualize the next phase of his proposal.
Proposal is a key word here, as Kierkegaard's writing, at least in translation, never really feels as though it is attempting to convince you, as a reader, rather, his writing proposes a way of possibly seeing and understanding the world.
It's particularly liberating, as a reader, to understand, but not necessarily believe, that christians have it wrong when they see sin and virtue as opposites. His proposed prayer both somber and hilarious: There is a prayer which especially in our times would be so apt: 'God in heaven, I thank you for not requiring a person to comprehend Christianity, for if it were required, then I would be of all men the most miserable. The more I seek to comprehend it, the more I discover merely the possibility of offence. Therefore, I thank you for requiring only faith and I pray you will continue to increase it.'(162)
Kierkegaard suggests that the Christian dialectic actually consists of sin and faith.
To me, this is modern in thinking in so that it places less emphasis on action and more on belief. Suggesting that actions can be misinterpreted or acted out for the wrong reasons but faith is inherently extant at any given moment. That faith is either pure or non-existent.
There are wonders to behold in terms quotations and it is a beautiful day today so I will only add a few though I strongly recommend you read and share your favourites:
'The self is not the relation but the relation's relating to the self' (9)
'If there were nothing eternal in man, he would simply be unable to despair' (19)
'eternity will nevertheless make it evident that his condition is that of despair, and will nail him to his self so that the torment will still be that he cannot be rid of his self, and it will be evident that his success was an illusion. And this eternity must do, because having a self, being a self, is the greatest, the infinite, concession that has been made to man, but also eternity's claim on him. (20)
'What is rare is not someone should be in despair; nom what is rare, the great rarity, is that one should truly not be in despair' (22)
'Commonly a person is assumed to be healthy if he himself doesn't say that he is ill' (22)
'he who says without pretence that he despairs is, after all, a little nearer, a dialectical step nearer being cured than all those who are not regarded and who do not regard themselves as being in despair' (27)
'the only life wasted is the life of one who so lived it, deceived by life's pleasures or its sorrows, that he never became decisively, eternally, conscious of himself as spirit, as self, or, what is the same, he never became aware- and gained in the deepest sense the impression- that there is a god there and that 'he' himself, his self, exists before this God, which infinite gain is never come by except through despair; (28)
'eternity asks you, and every one of these millions of millions, just one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not, whether so in despair that you did not know what you were in despair, or in such a way that you bore this sickness concealed deep inside you as your gnawing secret, under your heart like the fruit of a sinful love, or in such a way that, a terror to others, you raged in despair' (29)
'In general, what is decisive with regard to the self is consciousness, that is to say self-consciousness. The more consciousness, the more will; the more sill, the more self. Someone who has no will at all is no self. the the more will he has, the more self-consciousness he has too. (30)
'for in the world a self is what one least asks after, and the thing it is most dangerous of all to show signs of having' (35)
'The world really only interests itself in intellectual or aesthetic limitations, or in the indifferent, which is always what the world talks about most. (35)-Imagine the cojones on writing this 170 years ago.
'by being busied with all sorts of worldy affair, by being wise to the ways of the world, such a person forgets himself, in a divine sense forgets his own name, dares not believe in himself, finds being himself too risky, finds it much easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, along with the crowd...this form of despair goes practically unnoticed in the wold. Precisely by losing himself in this way such a person gains all that is required for a flawless performance in everyday life, yest, for making a great success out of life. (36)
'Naturally the world has no understanding of what is truly horrifying' (37)
'A self that has no possibility is in despair, and likewise a self that has no necessity (38)---Think of the ties to capitalism here.... Strong indictment for the importance of possibility and desire for things, they need not be religion, but things other than material goods....
'the mirror of possibility is no ordinary mirror' (40)
'The necessary is as though there were only consonants, but to utter them there has to be possibility' (41)
'The believer possesses the ever-sure antidote to despair:possibility; since for God everything is possible at every moment' (44)
'To lack possibility means either that everything has become necessary or that everything has become trivial' (44)
'Personhood is a synthesis or possibility and necessity' (45)
'the urge for solitude is a sign that there is after all spirit in a person and the measure of what spirit in a person and the measure of what spirit there i. So little do chattering nonentities and socializers feel the need for solitude that, like love-birds, if left alone for an instant they promptly die. As a little child must be lulled to sleep, so these need the soothing hushaby of social life to be able to eat, drink, sleep, pray, fall in love, etc. (77)
'in our own day it is indeed a crime to have spirit, so the fact that such people, the lovers of solitude, are put into the same category as criminals is just as it should be' (78)
'the self must be broken down to become itself, just stop despairing over it' (79)
'because he has opened himself to another, he despairs over that; it may strike him that it would have been infinitely preferable to have kept silent than to have someone privy to his despair (80)-21st century
'The formula always is: wanting in despair to be oneself. (83)
'The despairing self is forever building only castles in the air, and is always only fencing with an imaginary opponent. (84)
'A man who admires something but feels he cannot be happy surrendering himself to it, that man chooses to be envious of what he admires. (105)
'To defend something is always to discredit it' (106)
'Admiration is happy self-surrender, envy is unhappy self-assertion' (106)
An old-world view into solving existential crisis, which is nice but outdated.