The Sickness unto Death

	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] suggests he is "an extraordinary Christian".^[2]^[3]

^ The Sickness unto Death, Lowrie translation 1941 Preface</rof 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)

[1] The Sickness unto Death, Lowrie translation 1941 Preface</rof The Sickness unto Death (1849) and Practice in Christianity (1850)

[2] Kierkegaard's Journals X6B 48

[3] 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)

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