Kierkegaard gave anxiety and despair such importance because he believed they reveal something fundamental about what it means to be human: we are beings who must become ourselves, who are free to choose what we become, and who cannot escape the responsibility of relating ourselves to God.
For Kierkegaard, anxiety and despair are not simply unpleasant psychological experiences. They are disclosures of the human condition. They reveal the structure of freedom, the difficulty of becoming an authentic individual, and ultimately the spiritual predicament of human existence.
There are several layers to his reasoning, and I think it is important to distinguish the philosophical from the theological.
1. Anxiety reveals that we are free
Kierkegaard's most distinctive insight is that anxiety is fundamentally connected to human freedom.
In The Concept of Anxiety (1844), he distinguishes anxiety from ordinary fear.
Fear has an identifiable object: a threatening person, an illness, a dangerous situation.
Anxiety has no similarly definite object. It concerns possibility itself.
His famous expression is that anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Consider standing at the edge of a high cliff. You might feel afraid of falling. But alongside that fear there might be something stranger: an awareness that you could throw yourself over the edge.
You are not necessarily inclined to do so. But you recognise that you could.
That awareness of possibility is what interests Kierkegaard.
The experience reveals that you are not simply determined by your circumstances. You have possibilities open to you, including possibilities that you might find frightening.
Anxiety is therefore the psychological experience of freedom becoming conscious of itself.
This is why Kierkegaard regards anxiety as potentially valuable. It reveals a dimension of existence that would otherwise remain concealed.
2. Anxiety arises because possibility is infinite
There is a deeper reason why freedom produces anxiety.
Human beings do not simply inhabit the present. We anticipate futures that have not yet happened.
We can imagine:
Becoming someone radically different.
Making an irreversible mistake.
Losing everything we value.
Choosing one life and abandoning another.
Failing to fulfil our possibilities.
Becoming something we do not yet understand.
The future is open, and we cannot completely control what it contains.
Kierkegaard thinks this creates a peculiar psychological tension: we are simultaneously attracted to and repelled by possibility.
We desire freedom, but freedom is also frightening because it exposes us to responsibility and uncertainty.
Anxiety is thus not merely a response to danger. It is a response to the openness of existence.
There is an important qualification: Kierkegaard does not consider anxiety inherently pathological. Properly understood, it can educate us. It can deepen our awareness of freedom and help us become more fully human.
Indeed, he suggests that learning to be anxious in the right way is part of learning what it means to exist.
3. Despair arises because we cannot simply escape ourselves
This takes us from The Concept of Anxiety to The Sickness Unto Death (1849).
Here Kierkegaard develops a remarkable account of the human self.
He argues that the self is not simply something we possess. It is a relationship that relates itself to itself.
That sounds abstract, but his meaning is profound.
Human beings exist through a series of tensions:
Dimension | The tension |
|---|---|
Finitude | Infinitude |
Necessity | Possibility |
Temporality | Eternity |
What we are | What we might become |
We are finite creatures with particular bodies, histories and circumstances. Yet we can imagine possibilities extending far beyond our present circumstances.
We are temporal beings, yet we can contemplate eternity.
We have necessities imposed upon us, yet we experience ourselves as free.
The self must somehow bring these dimensions into a meaningful relationship.
Despair occurs when this relationship becomes disordered.
And this is where Kierkegaard makes an extraordinary move.
He argues that despair is not necessarily something we recognise as despair.
A person can be outwardly successful, socially integrated, wealthy and apparently content, yet still be in despair.
Why?
Because despair is not primarily about how we feel. It is about the relationship we have with ourselves.
4. There are two fundamental forms of despair
Kierkegaard identifies two basic ways in which we can fail to become ourselves.
A. Not willing to be oneself
This is the despair of avoidance.
A person does not want to inhabit their own existence. They may seek refuge in:
Social conformity.
Other people's expectations.
Distraction and entertainment.
Professional achievement.
Romantic relationships.
An imagined alternative identity.
The underlying impulse is to avoid the difficulty of being the particular individual one actually is.
We might spend our lives trying to become someone else because we cannot accept ourselves.
B. Willing to be oneself defiantly
This is more subtle.
Here the individual insists on being self-sufficient. They want to construct themselves entirely through their own will, refusing to acknowledge any dependence upon anything beyond themselves.
They effectively say:
"I will be myself entirely on my own terms. I owe nothing to anyone or anything beyond myself."
For Kierkegaard, this is also despair.
Why? Because the self is not self-created. We have not brought ourselves into existence, and we cannot establish the ultimate foundations of our own being.
Both forms of despair involve a failure to relate properly to oneself.
This is the central argument of The Sickness Unto Death.
5. The theological foundation: the self exists before God
This is perhaps the most important part of Kierkegaard's thinking.
His philosophy of anxiety and despair is ultimately theological.
In The Sickness Unto Death, he argues that the self is a relation established by another: God.
This changes the meaning of everything that has gone before.
We are not autonomous beings who happen to exist and subsequently decide whether to believe in God.
Rather, our existence is already grounded in a relationship with God, whether or not we acknowledge it.
Despair is therefore not simply a psychological failure. It is a spiritual misrelation.
We despair when we refuse to be the self that we are, or when we attempt to establish ourselves independently of the source of our existence.
This explains the famous concluding definition in the book:
The opposite of despair is not simply happiness, confidence or psychological wellbeing.
It is faith.
Faith means becoming oneself by transparently resting in the power that established the self.
In other words, the resolution of despair is not self-assertion or self-abandonment, but a proper relationship between the individual and God.
6. Why anxiety and despair are so important to Christianity
Kierkegaard's theological reasoning becomes clearer if we consider the Christian doctrine of sin.
He is dissatisfied with explanations that treat sin as though it were simply an inherited defect, a biological condition or an inevitable consequence of human nature.
He wants to understand how an individual actually becomes a sinner.
In The Concept of Anxiety, he explores the relationship between freedom, anxiety and the possibility of sin.
Anxiety is the psychological condition in which the possibility of sin becomes apparent.
But it does not mechanically produce sin.
The individual must make a qualitative leap.
This is important because Kierkegaard wants to preserve human responsibility. If sin were simply the inevitable result of psychological or historical circumstances, the individual's responsibility would become difficult to explain.
Anxiety reveals the possibility of freedom; the individual acts through freedom.
The theological importance is that Christianity is concerned with the transformation of the individual, not merely with providing an explanation of human behaviour.
7. His philosophical opponent: Hegel and the temptation of certainty
There is also a historical reason why Kierkegaard gave these experiences such prominence.
He was writing in a period when Hegelian philosophy exerted enormous influence. Hegel had attempted to develop a comprehensive philosophical system explaining reality, history, consciousness and human development through rational principles.
Kierkegaard thought this approach neglected something essential: the individual human being who actually has to live.
A philosophical system might explain the nature of freedom, morality or religion in abstract terms. But it cannot make an individual's choices for them.
Nor can it remove the uncertainty, risk and responsibility involved in living.
Kierkegaard was particularly concerned that people could become intellectually sophisticated about Christianity without actually living as Christians.
They could understand Christian doctrine, participate in established religious institutions and discuss theology, while avoiding the existential demands of faith.
Anxiety and despair expose this evasion.
They force us to confront the fact that we cannot live at a distance from our own existence.
The individual must choose, commit and take responsibility.
This is one reason Kierkegaard became such an important precursor to existentialism.
8. The deeper structure of his argument
I would reconstruct Kierkegaard's reasoning as follows:
Human existence
We are finite beings who nevertheless experience freedom, possibility and the capacity to transcend our immediate circumstances.
Anxiety
We become conscious of the possibilities our freedom opens up. We experience the uncertainty and responsibility of becoming ourselves.
The problem of the self
We can evade ourselves or attempt to establish ourselves entirely through our own power.
Despair
The self becomes incorrectly related to itself and, ultimately, to the power that established it.
Faith
The individual accepts being the self they are, resting transparently in God.
This is a simplified representation, rather than a sequence that everyone necessarily passes through.
9. But were anxiety and despair important because of God, or because of human existence?
This is the question I find most interesting.
There are two possible ways to interpret Kierkegaard.
The existential interpretation
Anxiety and despair are fundamental because human beings are self-conscious, free and capable of imagining possibilities beyond their present circumstances.
They are consequences of the structure of human existence.
On this interpretation, Kierkegaard anticipates modern existential psychology and philosophy.
The theological interpretation
Anxiety and despair are fundamental because human beings are created beings whose existence is grounded in God.
Their difficulties arise partly from the fact that they cannot establish themselves independently of their creator.
On this interpretation, anxiety and despair reveal the individual's spiritual condition and the need for faith.
For Kierkegaard, these interpretations are ultimately inseparable. The existential predicament is precisely where the theological question becomes unavoidable.
However, we should recognise that his theological conclusion depends on accepting his Christian understanding of the self. His psychological observations do not independently prove the existence of God.
10. Some further philosophical connections
His ideas become particularly interesting when placed alongside other thinkers.
Martin Heidegger
Heidegger develops anxiety (Angst) as a way in which ordinary familiarity with the world breaks down, revealing the fundamental condition of human existence. He moves away from Kierkegaard's specifically Christian interpretation.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Sartre develops the relationship between freedom, responsibility and anguish, but without Kierkegaard's grounding of the self in God.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche also confronts the problem of becoming oneself, but approaches it through self-overcoming, the creation of values and the critique of Christianity.
My concluding thought
I think Kierkegaard's most profound insight is that the capacity to become ourselves is simultaneously a source of freedom and a source of suffering.
If we were simply determined by circumstances, we might not experience the same anxiety about possibility.
If we were entirely self-sufficient, we might not experience the same despair about our dependence and limitations.
But we are neither.
We are finite beings who can imagine infinity; beings who must choose without complete certainty; beings who want to be ourselves but are often frightened by what that entails.
Kierkegaard gave anxiety and despair such importance because he believed they brought us face to face with this fundamental contradiction.
And, for him, that confrontation was not something to be avoided. It was potentially the beginning of becoming a genuine individual.
The two books I would particularly recommend reading together are The Concept of Anxiety (1844) and The Sickness Unto Death (1849). The first explains the existential significance of freedom and possibility; the second explores what happens when the self fails to become properly related to itself and God.
