The Concept of Anxiety by Kierkegaard

1) Main themes:

The fundamental difficulties of the human mind are boredom, anxiety, and despair, and Kierkegaard utilizes most of his literature addressing these three ailments. People get bored when they are neither physically nor intellectually stimulated. Boredom relief can only be temporary. Passion, a good play, Bach, or an interesting discussion may give a little respite from monotony, but it is fleeting.

Boredom is more than an annoyance: a psychologically healthy person must discover a solution to avoid it. Anxiety arises from conflicts between one’s ethical and religious obligations. Social ethical frameworks often lead to decisions that are harmful to one’s spiritual health, and vice versa. The conflict between these competing responsibilities generates anxiety, which, like boredom, must be overcome in order for a person to be happy. Finally, despair arises from the conflict between the limited and limitless. Humans are afraid of dying, but they are also afraid of living indefinitely.

Kierkegaard studied the psychology of anxiety and anguish and connected it to religion. He felt that a person’s most essential purpose in life should be to develop a self that has entire confidence in God, since salvation is only possible through faith. As a result, the person has responsibility, as his decisions in life will determine whether or not he will be saved. A person in such a scenario feels fear and agony with every decision he makes in life, since the freedom of choice exhilarates him but the consequences of his actions concern him.

Kierkegaard thought that although everyone would die, everyone also possessed an eternal self, or soul, that would go on indefinitely. Boredom and anxiety may be relieved in a variety of ways, but having complete confidence in God is the only way to avoid despair.

2) About the Author:

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard, a Danish religious author, theologian, and philosopher, was born on the 5th of May 1813 in Copenhagen to a rich family. His mother Ane Sorensdatter Lund Kierkegard worked as a maid in the same home as his father Michael Pedersen Kierkegard before marrying him. His mother wasn’t very attractive or well-educated; in fact, she was fairly plain. His father, on the other hand, was a severe guy who looked to be quite boring and dry, and he managed to keep his active imagination hidden despite his advanced age.

He went to school in 1830 and subsequently to Copenhagen University to study religion. Soren is widely considered as the founder of existentialism, which he divided into three spheres: human existence, knight of faith, and infinite qualitative distinction. Christianity, metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, psychology, and philosophy were among his other passions. He panned the writings of Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, Fredrick Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel throughout his lifetime. Not only that, but he was opposed to the state as well as the practice of Christianity in the Danish church.

The first existentialist philosopher was Soren Kierkegaard. All of his work in this sector focused on how one lives alone as an individual, placing a greater emphasis on human reality rather than abstract thinking that focused on commitment and personal choice. In terms of his theological work, it is focused on Christian ethics, namely the Church’s institution and the differences in the evidence of Christianity. He also spoke on each person’s personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The majority of his writing is focused on Christian love. His psychological study, which was influenced by Socrates and the Socratic Method, uncovered the emotions and sentiments that a person experiences when faced with tough life decisions. Soren’s prior work was authored under pseudonyms and included conversation between characters with differing points of view. He did it for feedback as well. He wrote several publications, including Upbuilding Discourse, which was devoted to a single person under his own name who desired to delve further into the essence of his work.

Scientists generally believed that observation could teach them about the world, but Soren Kierkegaard disagreed, claiming that it could not teach them about the spiritual realm. Ludvig Holberg’s comedies, Christian Wolff’s philosophy, and Georg Johann Hamann’s publications, particularly those about Plato and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, were among his favorites. At the age of 42, he died on November 11th, 1855. Many twentieth-century philosophers have been influenced by Soren’s work emphasizing the centrality of the individual. His work was restricted to Scandinavia, but his thought was revived in the twentieth century, since it had a lasting impact on the West.

3) Anxiety in our times:

Anxiety, according to Kierkegaard, informs us of the options we have. He begins with the biblical storey of Adam, who was presented with the decision of whether or not to eat from the forbidden tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Although Adam had no concept of good or evil, right or wrong, Kierkegaard emphasizes that anxiety arises when Adam decides to eat from the tree over God’s ban. Kierkegaard acknowledged Adam’s sinful character for humanity in eating from the tree, but he also emphasized the constructive importance of the concept that anxiety educates us of the options available to us.

This implies development in the form of increased self-awareness, the desire for personal accountability, and the ability to learn and grow from experience. The way Kierkegaard saw anxiety, as a chance for progress from a more self-centered demand for immediacy to a more self-reflective, self-conscious condition, is crucial to the more current study of anxiety. It is the belief that anxiety may lead to a greater understanding of one’s own genuine identity and feeling of freedom, as well as a greater knowledge of one’s own potential. Sigmund Freud’s subsequent thinking on anxiety, as well as that of more current psychoanalysts, may be traced back to Kierkegaard’s philosophy of anxiety.

To be able to feel Kierkegaard’s ‘dizziness of freedom’—the freedom to choose, to have options—we must first be able to withstand tremendous levels of anxiety, which are vividly present at those formative moments of existence. As we’ve seen, this isn’t a skill that we can learn on our own. In such circumstances, we need the presence of a ready and interested intellect capable of providing reverie to our most fundamental fears and concerns, which frequently originate from inside.

The use of widespread biomedical therapies isn’t the sole solution. Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety was a groundbreaking “psychological deliberation,” brilliantly combining human truths with Christian theology, arguing that the best way to overcome anxiety was to embrace it with open arms, rather than using “powder and pills.”

We need to acquire the ability to withstand excessive degrees of anxiety that are profoundly present in those early stages of existence, as Kierkegaard emphasizes, given the current incidence of individuals coming with anxiety to mental health centers across the world. With our society’s present pandemic of anxiety, we must ask whether institutions, organizations, government, and society as a whole offer adequate confining functions to its inhabitants to assist alleviate such primal fears. Or, maybe worse, do we increasingly live in communities where noncontainment just serves to enhance anxiety and arousal levels