The Concept of Anxiety

This article is about the work by Søren Kierkegaard. For the topic of "anxiety", see anxiety.
"The Concept of Dread" redirects here. For the topic of "dread", see dread.
The Concept of Anxiety
Danish title page to The Concept of Anxiety
AuthorSøren Kierkegaard as Vigilius Haufniensis
Original titleBegrebet Angest
TranslatorReidar Thomte
LanguageDanish
Subject
Publication date
June 17, 1844
Publication placeDenmark
Published in English
1946
Media typePaperback
Pages~162
ISBN0-691-02011-6
Preceded byPrefaces 
Followed byFour Upbuilding Discourses, 1844 

The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin (Danish: Begrebet Angest) is a philosophical work written by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1844.

The original 1944 English translation by Walter Lowrie (now out of print), was named The Concept of Dread.[1] The Concept of Anxiety was dedicated "to the late professor Poul Martin Møller". Kierkegaard used the pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis (which, according to Josiah Thompson, is the Latin transcription for "the Watchman"[2][3] of Copenhagen) for The Concept of Anxiety.[4]

All of Kierkegaard's books have either a preface, dedication, or prayer at the beginning. This book includes a lengthy introduction. The Concept of Anxiety was published on exactly the same date as Prefaces, June 17, 1844. Both books deal with Hegel's idea of mediation. Mediation is a common thread throughout Kierkegaard's works. His work up to this point was to show that faith was being mediated by knowledge. Here he takes up the questions of sin and guilt.

For Kierkegaard, anxiety/dread/angst is "freedom's actuality as the possibility of possibility." Kierkegaard uses the example of a man standing on the edge of a tall building or cliff. When the man looks over the edge, he experiences an aversion to the possibility of falling, but at the same time, the man feels a terrifying impulse to throw himself intentionally off the edge. That experience is anxiety or dread because of our complete freedom to choose to either throw oneself off or to stay put. The mere fact that one has the possibility and freedom to do something, even the most terrifying of possibilities, triggers immense feelings of dread. Kierkegaard called this our "dizziness of freedom."

Kierkegaard focuses on the first anxiety experienced by man: Adam's choice to eat from God's forbidden tree of knowledge or not. Since the concepts of good and evil did not come into existence before Adam ate the fruit, Adam had no concept of good and evil, and did not know that eating from the tree was "evil". What he did know was that God told him not to eat from the tree. The anxiety comes from the fact that God's prohibition itself implies that Adam is free and that he could choose to obey God or not. After Adam ate from the tree, sin was born. So, according to Kierkegaard, anxiety precedes sin. Kierkegaard mentions that anxiety is the presupposition for hereditary sin (which Augustine was the first to call peccatum originale, "original sin").

However, Kierkegaard mentions that anxiety is a way for humanity to be saved as well. Anxiety informs us of our choices, our self-awareness and personal responsibility, and brings us from a state of un-self-conscious immediacy to self-conscious reflection. (Jean-Paul Sartre calls these terms pre-reflective consciousness and reflective consciousness.)[5] An individual becomes truly aware of their potential through the experience of anxiety. So, anxiety may be a possibility for sin, but anxiety can also be a recognition or realization of one's true identity and freedom. Alternatively, sin exists in the very resolution of anxiety through right and wrong; to embrace anxiety is to not pass judgment.

  1. ^ Kierkegaard wrote again about dread in his 1847 book Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, translated by Howard Hong

    Alas, although many call themselves Christians and yet may seem to be living in uncertainty as to whether God actually is love, it would truly be better if they made the love blaze just by the thought of paganism's horror: that he who holds the fate of everything and also your fate in his hand is ambivalent, that his love is not a fatherly embrace but a constraining trap, that his secret nature is not eternal clarity but concealment, that the deepest ground of his nature is not love but a cunning impossible to understand. We are not, after all, required to be able to understand the rule of God's love, but we certainly are required to be able to believe and, believing, to understand that he is love. It is not dreadful that you are unable to understand God's decrees if he nevertheless is eternal love, but it is dreadful if you could not understand them because he is cunning. If, however, according to the assumption of the discourse, it is true that in relation to God a person is not only always in the wrong but is always guilty and thus when he suffers also suffers as guilty-then no doubt within you (provided you yourself will not sin again) and no event outside you (provided you yourself will not sin again by taking offense) can displace the joy. Soren Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Hong pp. 267–269
  2. ^ Prefaces/Writing Sampler, Nichol pp. 33–34, 68 The Concept of Anxiety pp. 115–116
  3. ^ Kierkegaard presents an Either/Or here:

    "Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, 'You shall surely die,' and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you will have saved your life. Again, if a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die; because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, and his righteous deeds which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood I will require at your hand. Nevertheless if you warn the righteous man not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning; and you will have saved your life." Ezekiel 3:17–19 The Bible

    "The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen. Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you." 1 Peter 4:7–12 Three Upbuilding Discourses, 1843

    http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/r/rsv/rsv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=3114629
  4. ^ Kierkegaard Josiah Thomson Alfred A Knopf 1973 pp. 142–143
  5. ^ Kierkegaard wrote against prereflection and how it can keep the single individual from acting in his book Two Ages, The Age of Revolution and the Present Age, A Literary Review, 1845, Hong 1978, 2009 pp. 67–68