Kierkegaard: The Concept of Anxiety

Reading Kierkegaard without sufficient knowledge of Christian theological tradition and the Western philosophical tradition, Hegel in particular, is like watching a boxing match where one opponent is invisible to the audience: you see the movement of only one boxer, you might appreciate his physique and agility, but you don’t know at all whether his attacks and dodges are effective. I’ve read eight of Kierkegaard’s works, and enjoyed them all, but I’ve always felt that I’m missing at least half the picture, having not read Hegel firsthand. The Concept Of Anxiety is no exception. In fact, it intensified my anxiety, the feeling of dizziness over the vast abyss of ignorance.

Original Sin is one of many Christian doctrines I can’t articulate, although Augustine expounds the doctrine clearly in his magnum opus, The City of God. There is a saying, “If you can’t explain it to a six-year old, you don’t understand it well enough yourself”. Of course, even if you can explain, it doesn’t mean you understand correctly. To the extent I understand them, Kierkegaard’s theology is very much grounded in and consistent with the Augustinian tradition, while at the same time striving to emphasize the existential nature of the latter.

Pelagius, an opponent of Augustine and the doctrine of Original Sin, teaches that each individual has essentially the same choice as Adam, and can avoid the Fall if he so wills. The problem with the Pelagian heresy, Kierkegaard writes, is that he denies the history of the human race, and takes each individual outside of it, as if he were created anew as the head of a new race. If that is the case, then there would be no race at all. The history of the race is (like) the history of the individual. If every act of an individual is independent of what happened to him previously, then there would be no history of the individual. In other words, there would be no individual.

There are some interesting parallels between Fear and Trembling (1843) and The Concept of Anxiety (1844). Both books deliberate on a prominent New Testament passage involving a prominent Old Testament figure: In the former, it is a passage in Hebrews 11 on the faith of Abraham, and in the latter, Roman 5 on the sin of Adam; Both treat the Old Testament figures as individuals in history, in such a way that a reader can relate to them through introspection and reflection; Both deal with the concept of a “leap” preceded by the state of anxiety, a leap of faith in the former, and a qualitative leap to sin in the latter.

In summary, the point Kierkegaard wants to drive home repeatedly is simple: Each individual is Adam, and he is Abraham, in the sense that each must face the same challenges and dangers those two individuals have faced, and their fall or triumph are distinct possibilities for everyman. He further deliberates on the effect of sin on the individual in his later work, The Sickness Unto Death (1849).

What is not clearly articulated here is how Adam’s –and for that matter, each individual’s– qualitative leap changes the existence of the human race. This question belongs to the domain of dogmatics, not of psychology.

References:

• Kierkegaard, Søren. The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Oriented Deliberation in View of the Dogmatic Problem of Hereditary Sin. Translated by Alastair Hannay. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2015.
• Kierkegaard, Søren. “The Concept of Dread“. Internet Archive. Accessed August 6, 2018. https://archive.org/details/TheConceptOfDread.