Antonio Garcia Martinez's Key Ideas from Sickness Unto Death
by Søren Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard’s distinct humor and irony (no that from his appreciation of Socrates) is shown in the preface for ‘The Sickness Unto Death’. It has an interesting quality of coming about as an almost ‘Self-Help’ book, which was contrary to popular scholastics at the time.

The center of Kierkegaard’s book and the prevailing theme of many of his stories is ‘the Self’, the individual within, participating towards, and participated by ‘the whole’. With ‘Anti-Climatus’, he wishes to focus on faith and its power to address and answer deeply troubling and philosophical issues, specifically losing oneself

Kierkegaard’s introductions do a fascinating job at it’s namesake, with many of his introductions working towards getting people acquainted with a problem that he wished to speak on, as well as ‘justifying’ the title and why it must be so.

‘The Sickness Unto Death’ is the idea that one fears or anticipates death with some terrible sorrow. They ‘despair’ of over it.

Do we find this to not be true? Kierkegaard says, specifically in regards to death, that this isn’t the case for Christians. He writes it is their blessed advantage over the natural man. Like an adult to a child. Why?

Kierkegaard interestingly uses the story of Lazarus being risen from the bible to communicate this idea.

He writes how Christ had in mind the miracle, and that ‘the sickness’ was not unto death because nothing was lost with Lazarus.

Even if Christ had not gone out of his way to resurrect Lazarus, the sickness would not be unto death. Simply in that Christ exists, this is so for Christians, death is not the last of all

But Kierkegaard writes that Christians have learnt of this afflicting ‘miserable condition’, the despair of something else, what is apparent ‘The Sickness Unto Death’, the despair.

For Kierkegaard, people are spirit, this perfect blend of ‘Human Being’ and ‘Self’.

A human being in as much as we are a synthesis (the infinite relation of the two) of infinitude (limited limitlessness).

And a Self, the relating relation. A self thats constantly relating itself to itself. This is how Kierkegaard describes a developing and growing self.

A major idea to come from this is the established self. If a self is relating to itself constantly, it is constantly resting in the power that established itself. For in a relating way, the power is the self. For Kierkegaard, this power is God.

So then what is despair? If not precisely death, or of death? Despair must be of something, for when the natural man despairs of death, his despair is this ‘miserable condition’ pertaining to death.

So when Kierkegaard says one is in despair, that something must be the self. Specifically, there exists a mis-relation of the self with itself. It is not at ease, not at oneself.

To be in despair of oneself, means to wish to be someone else, to not rest transparently in the establishing power, to not rest in God, which for the Christian, Anti-Climatus, is the worst state to be in.

Everyone has been sick at least a little bit in their lives, and for Kierkegaard, this extends into despair. That everyone must have had despair for one reason or another.

This notion places everyone under the same umbrella, people seeking to be spirit. They are in despair because they are not, or more accurately, they are in despair because they know not how.

Kierkegaard writes that much of this universality in his ‘Concept of Anxiety’ (which we have a post on). The idea that everyone is anxious of not knowing, not doing, not being, is precisely the sickness unto death, precisely despair.

Kierkegaard writes in detail, that the dialectal self, when in mis-relation with itself, will despair over its synthetic relations. Infinite and finite. Possibility and Necessity.

This is the Despair the Kierkegaard writes is the most common. He describes that due to the christian relationship with God, Christians have the keen gift of being able to recognize ‘the sickness unto death’.

What if one is unable to recognize the despair in the first place? Well for Kierkegaard, that means losing the parts of you that make you human in the first place. One’s freedom, one’s limited limitlessness.

Kierkegaard first recognizes the dialectical nature of the self in its Infinite-Finite synthesis. It’s ‘limited-limitlessness’

Infinitude’s Despair is to lack Finitude

To wish to be infinite, is despair. To be lost in the imagination, the self abstracts till it can’t be said to belong to the human being. Humanity in abstracto. One has lost their reality tether, their self.

Finitude’s Despair is to lack Infinitude

“To lack infinity is despairing reductionism, narrowness”. It means to emasculate the spiritual self, to let one be defined, to be a self given to you by the world. To go unnoticed.

Just the same, we have dialectic Despairs in Possibility and Necessity

Possibility’s Despair is to lack Necessity

In this form, one is lost in possibility. Only ever thinking to oneself what may be the case, or may not occur. They get lost either by some desire or craving of the actualized possibility. Or some melancholic imagination, a hope, fear, or anxiety.

Necessity’s Despair is to lack Possibility

Here, one is incapable. They lack the belief of a possibility, of a God. Either everything is necessary but never able, or everything becomes trivial to one because it “will never not be so”.

Kierkegaard calls this the feminine despair, for the sake of an interesting analogy.

He writes of the beauty and strength of the woman, and how in their love, in their self, they devote themselves whole to that to which they love. A self-sacrificing devotion that only women have. He explains how when a woman then wishes not to devote herself, to not be a self, she is turning away and is ‘in despair not to will to be oneself’.

For this, one either despairs over the earthly, the immediate. Or they despair over the eternal, despair over the weakness, despair over the fact that they can despair.

This is what Kierkegaard calls the ‘demonic’ despair. Here, one misuses the eternal, in some vain effort to find oneself. They want the satisfaction to find their self, so they delve into the void:

“This self is not myself! I must find, or change, and become this self!”

In defiance, one undergoes a ‘demonic rage’, where the torment of the despair feeds further delving into the despair. Yet they ask for you to not remove their torment, for then they will cease being in despair and not find the self they looked for.

They grow so defiant, that they lose their old self, and severe away God.