Introduction to Kierkegaard: The Existential Problem

the biggest danger wrote the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher søren kierkegaard that of losing oneself can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing every other loss an arm a leg five dollars a wife etc is bound to be noticed as a philosopher Kierkegaard was extremely interested with ideas such as freedom anxiety despair and what it means to live as a genuine human being his thoughts on these topics were of great interest to the 20th century existentialists such as Heidegger Camus and Sartre which is why he is now often called the father of existentialism according to Kierkegaard human beings are a synthesis of opposites one of these pairs of opposites he called the infinite and finite writing for the self is a synthesis in which the finite is the limiting factor and the infinite the expanding factor the infinite corresponds to possibility to the capacity to envisage new thoughts and ideas bring into existence new creations change oneself and choose from innumerable potentialities the finite corresponds to actuality or necessity to the concrete herein now to one's reality as a definite something in the world there is a compulsion to completely absorb oneself in either the finite or infinite for in doing so one abandons the responsibility of being a self to lose oneself in the finite is to live a life imprisoned in what one perceives as an inescapable environment where no alternatives exist such an individual frequently becomes depressed slavish and dependent on others finding safety and security by assimilating oneself into social institutional or familial networks the individual finds it to venturesome a thing to be himself far easier and safer to be like the others to become an imitation a number a cipher in the crowd to lose oneself in the infinite is to live as though life is nothing but a series of endless experiments different paths are sampled and personalities tried on for size but no one during choice or commitment ever made one who is lost in the infinite is obsessed with who one can potentially become yet in reality never becomes anything let alone itself now if possibility outruns necessity the self runs away from itself the self becomes an abstract possibility which tries itself out with floundering in the possible but does not budge from the spot not get to any spot for precisely the necessary is the spot to become oneself is precisely a movement at the spot to be a self requires that one balanced these opposing tensions it requires a recognition that innumerable possibilities lie before one but that one must choose a definite course of action appropriate to the self which one truly is this requires vigilance constant effort and much courage and thus is the greatest task there is to have a self to be a self is the greatest concession made to man but at the same time it is eternity z' demand upon him the weight of this greatest of all tasks elicits anxiety there are no manuals which guide one in the process of becoming a self and no external standards of success on the path to self hood one must walk without meeting one single traveller the individual is left alone in this balancing act of human existence and a dizziness and disorientation rises up as he stares into the abyss of possibilities which confront him anxiety may be compared with dizziness he whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy but what is the reason for this it is just as much in his own eyes as in the abyss anxiety is the dizziness of freedom far from signifying a pathological state which one must strive to alleviate Kierkegaard posited existential anxiety as an essential requirement on the path to self hood I will say that this is an adventure that every human being must go through to learn to be anxious whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate anxiety is a response to the awareness of one's freedom of one's power to gaze into the yawning abyss of possibilities and through an act of choice actualized one of those potentialities it is a response to the recognition that one is ultimately responsible for oneself and one's future this awesome sense of freedom and responsibility is apprehended as simultaneously attractive and repulsive an ambivalence Kierkegaard called dread in dread there is the egoistic infinity of possibility which does not tempt like a definite choice but alarms and fascinates with its sweet anxiety lacking the strength and courage to endure the continual anxiety required to walk the path of selfhood most strive to alleviate their anxiety by choosing on some level of awareness not to be a self such a choice vaults one into a state of despair a sickness of spirit characterized by the attempt to rid oneself of oneself and thus do away with the responsibility of being a self to despair over oneself and despair to will to be rid of oneself this is the formula for all despair despair takes many forms and is not necessarily accompanied by feelings of hopelessness and depression in fact Kierkegaard thought one could seem in the best of health precisely when the sickness is most dangerous such an individual would be wholly unconscious of their despair and thus in the most dangerous position for a sickness can inflict the most harm when one is unaware that one is even sick the despairing man who is unconscious of being in despair is in comparison with him who is conscious of it merely a negative step further from the truth and from salvation unawareness is so far from removing despair that on the contrary it may be the most dangerous form of despair by unconsciousness the despairing man is in a way secured but to his own destruction against becoming aware that is he is securely in the power of despair while there are numerous ways in which an individual through various forms of self-deception hides from his awareness the fact that he lacks herself Kierkegaard believed despair over the earthly to be the communist sort of despair despair over the earthly arises when an individual attempts to compensate for their lack of self by latching their identity onto something external in the world for example a job relationship one's family wealth or one's looks if the individual loses this external good he thinks his subsequent misery and emptiness is a result of such a loss not realizing that an inner hollowness was there all along he lacked a self and tried to compensate by projecting his identity onto something external and finite an attempt which is bound to fail every time an individual in despair despairs over something so it seems for a moment but only for a moment in the same moment the true despair or despair in its true form shows itself in despairing over something he really despaired over himself and now he wants to get rid of himself for example when the ambitious man whose slogan is either Caesar or nothing does not get to be Caesar he despairs over it but this also means something else precisely because he did not get to be Caesar he now cannot bear to be himself consequently he does not despair because he did not get to be Caesar but despairs over himself because he did not get to be Caesar if the individual in misery over an earthly lost has his fortunes reversed he will return to his previous health and his despair will return into the darkness of his unconscious if outward help comes then life returns to the despair he begins where he left off he had no self in the self he did not become but he continues to live on while Kierkegaard thought to be in despair the worst misfortune and misery he also maintained that to be able to despair is an infinite advantage for it implies that one potentially has a self the key factor is whether one is conscious of their despair or not the more consciousness the more intense the despair but the more consciousness the closer one is to eradicating despair and living a genuine existence appropriate for a human being as a young man at the age of 22 Kierkegaard was struggling with the tensions of human existence falling into the depths of nihilism and despair at this time he wrote in his journal of finding joy and refreshment in contemplating the great men who have found that precious stone for which they sell all even their lives proceeding on their chosen course without vacillating absorbed in themselves and and working toward their higher goal finding this precious stone or higher goal became for Kierkegaard an all-consuming passion and the pathway to selfhood which he recognized as absent in the lives of too many what I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do not what I must know what matters is to find a purpose to find a truth that is true for me to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die this is what my soul thirsts for is the African desert thirst for water the truth which Kierkegaard was thirsting for was not an abstract truth divorced from his existence as an individual such objective or conceptual truths are useful if one strives for detached intellectual or scientific understanding but when it comes to what it means to be a human being and how to successfully navigate the existential tensions of life such objective truths are meaningless what good would it do me wrote Kierkegaard if truth stood before me called and naked not caring whether I recognized her or not instead the truth Kierkegaard was seeking with subjective or existential truth a truth embodied in the inwardness of the individual expressed through one's passionate commitment to a certain idea or style of living the inward deepening in and through existing is truth while objective truths are known subjective truths are lived and experienced with respect to subjective truths if a person does not become what he understands then he does not understand it either Kierkegaard observed that practically everyone's life was stricken with some form of despair engaged in styles of living inadequate for genuine selfhood through his voluminous writings he attempted to convince his readers they lacked subjectivity or inwardness that their values attitudes and inner relationship with reality was destitute fertile for breeding despair Kierkegaard psychological sense was keen enough to recognize that this was no easy task he could not directly condemn the way of life of his readers as most react to such attacks with defense mechanisms justification tactics and even anger direct communication would be of no help in this project Kierkegaard understood a more subtle form of communication was needed no an illusion can never be destroyed directly and only by indirect means can it be radically removed that is one must approach from behind the person who was under an illusion Kierkegaard utilized a technique termed indirect communication instead of explicitly condemning faulty ways of life and imposing his own ideas about how to live on the reader he bypassed their defense mechanisms by stimulating them to think for themselves about their inward relationship with reality and the alternative life paths available in this sense if the reader came to see the baroness of his inner mode of being and decided to proceed along a different path more conducive to a genuine existence it would appear as if such an awakening was initiated solely by the reader himself to stop a man on the street and stand still while talking to him is not so difficult as to say something to a passerby in passing without standing still and without delaying the other without attempting to persuade him to go the same way but giving him instead an impulse to go precisely his own way such is the relation between one existing individual and another when the communication concerns the truth as existential inwardness Kierkegaard employed indirect communication through the use of pseudonyms in the majority of his works he does not write under his own name but through the guise of various fictional characters who speak from the perspective of one immersed in a given life view often even attempting to justify a way of life Kierkegaard himself thought inadequate for selfhood in the pseudonymous works there is not a single word which is mine I have no opinion about these works except as a third person no knowledge of their meaning except as a reader not the remotest private relation to them writing has different fictional characters living out certain ways of life enabled Kierkegaard to force his readers to try on different life views as one would try on clothes detaching themselves from their own lives and immersing themselves in different potentialities such a technique of becoming objective towards oneself and subjective towards other styles of life Kierkegaard called mastered irony most men are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others frightfully objective sometimes but the task is precisely to be objective toward oneself and subjective toward all others armed with indirect communication Kierkegaard analyzed what he thought to be the three general styles of living or spheres of existence possible for the individual the aesthetic the ethical and the religious these spheres and their appropriateness for the eradication of despair and cultivation of a self will be summarized in the next video to conclude this video wind breeze into the next it is crucial to note that Kierkegaard was passionately committed to the idea that everyone must walk the path to self hood as a solitary or single individual yet he recognized that most are too cowardly to endure the anxiety and dread this elicits and therefore that most will seek to lose their self and sense of responsibility by immersing themselves in a crowd of others for every single individual who escapes into the crowd flees in cowardice from being a single individual as Kiev Yard wrote it is far easier to emasculate oneself in a spiritual sense and cling to the herd in order to be at least something than to stand alone heeding the eternal demand to become oneself for one of the greatest fears in the individual is that ultimately he is alone and therefore ultimately responsible for his life deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety over the possibility of being alone in the world forgotten by God overlooked among the millions and millions in this enormous household a person keeps this anxiety at a distance by looking at the many roundabouts who are related to him as kin and friends but the anxiety is still there

Channel: Academy of Ideas

Views: 496,226

Rating: 4.9386759 out of 5

Keywords: academy of ideas, introduction to kierkegaard, kierkegaard, soren kierkegaard, existentialism, freedom, dread, anxiety, Søren Kierkegaard (Author)

Id: iw36V_iXR2k

Length: 14min 14sec (854 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 24 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/s818914]

Can someone explain how reddit knows Kierkegaard is my favorite philosopher? I've never searched for him here but topics about him continually pop up on my feed.

[u/Arcane_Xanth]

I love me some Kierkegaard.

[u/brettliv]

You need to read the Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundra

Do it, do it now.

[u/bubibubibu]

Can I ask for a suggestion about reading Kierkegaard? I finally finished my thesis (analytic phi.) and I want some of that "other" philosophy. I have a basic grasp of his line of thought but I want to delve deeper. Where should I start and is Sickenss Unto Death an ok start? I have a physical copy of The Seducer's Diary. Thank you.

[u/PoorProduct]

I appreciate the link. I do have a question: if Kierkegaard is so popular, and I can certainly see why, how is it I don't see him taught very often in freshman intro college courses?

I feel a lot of his work would hit home for a lot of young students at that point in life.