 Front cover of the Penguin Classics edition | |
| Author | Søren Kierkegaard |
|---|---|
| Original title | Sygdommen til Døden |
| Language | Danish |
| Series | Second authorship (Pseudonymous) |
| Genre | Philosophy |
Publication date | 1849 |
| Publication place | Denmark |
| Pages | 265 |
| ISBN | 978-0-691-02028-0 |
| OCLC | 10672189 |
| Preceded by | Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays |
| Followed by | Practice in Christianity |
The Sickness unto Death (Danish: Sygdommen til Døden) is a book written by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1849 under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus. A work of Christian existentialism, the book is about Kierkegaard's concept of despair, which he equates with the Christian concept of sin, which he terms "the sin of despair". Walter Lowrie wrote that he saw the themes in The Sickness unto Death as a repetition of those in Kierkegaard’s earlier work, Fear and Trembling, and as being even more closely related to those in The Concept of Anxiety.[1] Kierkegaard used two pseudonyms for opposite purposes: "Johannes Climacus"[2] suggests that he is not a Christian, whereas "Anti-Climacus"[3] suggests he is "an extraordinary Christian".[4][5]
- ^ The Sickness unto Death, Lowrie translation 1941 Preface
- ^ The author of Philosophical Fragments (1844) and Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846)
- ^ The author of The Sickness unto Death (1849) and Practice in Christianity (1850)
- ^ Kierkegaard's Journals X6B 48
- ^ I, Anticlimacus, who wrote this little book (a poor, simple, mere man just like most everybody else) was born in Copenhagen and am just about, yes, exactly, the same age as Johannes Climachus, with whom I in one sense have very much, have everything in common, but from whom in another sense I am utterly different. He explicitly says of himself that he is not a Christian, this is infuriating. I, too, have been so infuriated about it that I — if anyone could somehow trick me into saying it — say just the opposite, or because I say just the opposite about myself I could become furious about what he says of himself. I say, in fact, that I am an extraordinary Christian such as there has never been, but, please note, I am that in hidden inwardness. I shall see to it that no one, not one, detects anything, even the slightest, but profess I can, and I can profess (but I cannot really profess, for then, after all, I would violate the secret's hiding-place) that in hidden inwardness I am, as I said, an extraordinary Christian such as there has never been. (Journals of Søren Kierkegaard X 6 B 48)