The Concept of Anxiety

The term anxiety ( Original title: Begrebet Angest ) is a signature of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, which he published under the pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis ( the guardian of Copenhagen ) 1844. It Kierkegaard analyzes the term anxiety from psychological point of view. This fear is not limited to a mental state, but shows a range of different aspects. The text is addressed to the Copenhagen readership, which can be seen at many allusions. Such for the modern reader not immediately understandable side comments and the compressed form of the presentation of his thoughts make access to the text.

Content

Construction

The chapter can be outlined as follows ( while retaining the title):

• Introduction: Observations on the analysis of the concept of a psychological decision → access; Critique of Hegel taxonomists ( the past thinking on actual people )
• Chapter One: Fear as a condition of original sin and original sin as the backward -explanatory on their origin: Adam and original sin, Adam as a prototype
• Chapter II: Fear as the original sin in the progression: the importance of original sin for the following generations
• Chapter Three: anxiety as a result of those sins, which is the absence of sin consciousness: What if a consciousness of sin is missing or does not arrive?
• Chapter Four: The fear of sin or fear as a result of sin in the detail: analysis of the fear of evil ( sin again ) and before the good (as neurosis )
• Chapter Five: Fear as the power of faith proceeds End: Fear as an educator, which allows using the faith the salvation

Interpretation

Kierkegaard describes that every science must move as part of their ( ever own ) task in order to achieve sustainable results. The sin corresponds to no science, most likely still the ethics (because its corresponding mood of seriousness is ). Therefore, only phenomena to be analyzed ( the real possibility of sin ) In psychological analysis, but it can not be explained that sin comes into the world ( ideational possibility of sin ).

Before the fall, there is ignorance, this does not (as in Hegelian thinking) will inevitably be canceled. So Adam had the ability not to sin. Kierkegaard takes great care to describe Adam as part of humanity. So with the same conditions as we ( as a prototype ). Fear existed before the case already and that when fear of nothingness. Adam did not know what he chose them because he did not know good and evil, nor the meaning of mortality. In this respect there was no appeal from the Promised God for him. Sin came into the world through Adam ( original sin ).

For subsequent generations is the same situation as for Adam. You can not sin also. However, as the sin finally comes into the world only understands each itself, because it always goes by the individual in the world. The difference with Adam is not a qualitative ( our sins only as a consequence of his sin; see plague ), but a quantitative. Kierkegaard calls the individual fall a " qualitative leap ". He means that it happens suddenly and you can not return back to its original state.

In this context, Kierkegaard describes the human being as a synthesis. Man is for him a synthesis of body and soul, which is held by the Spirit. At the moment, the sin of the spirit shall be additional to soul and body and creates the synthesis. Kierkegaard describes the human being as a dynamic unity of different parts. This indicates the fragility of human existence, the ratio is disturbed, the man is distraught. But it also illustrates our task that man has to be himself and creates a unity.

Kierkegaard describes the situation with the image of vertigo as the atmosphere in which occurs the sin: for him it is due to the frightening abyss, on the other hand at the approach of man. He looks into the possibility of his freedom, tackle reeling and staggering grabs the wrong thing. Willy- nilly is done the sin and the person looks back and it can not change.

With the sinfulness and the sensuality is set. Here are some hints seem to happen at puberty, when the sensibility is there, begins the history of man. He is the reduction of the mind to the individual. This is happening right now, because man is a double synthesis, secondly, a synthesis of temporality and eternity. This synthesis is also set by the spirit and although at the moment.

The "religious genius" finally distinguished by the fact that it sinks by themselves, for themselves in the depths of sin consciousness. Whereas paganism with the fate and Judaism with the guilt make this impossible.

After the individual has sinned, there are two types of anxiety. The fear of the wicked, it is the fear of sinning again, and the fear of the good. The fear of the good ( the demonic ) is a type of disorder / neurosis ( for the good designated the salvation / redemption ). Kierkegaard describes mental / physical and mental forms of anxiety before the good: hypersensitivity, hysteria, etc. The fear of the good is a condition that it is an expression of a disturbed synthesis of body, soul and spirit.

Fear is in Kierkegaard not an isolated issue, but it opens up what it means to be human.

Fear does not refer here only refers to a mental state, Kierkegaard's analysis is more complex. Three key statements about the fear are:

Fear can make people unfree because they gained power over him and makes him unable to act. Because man is frightened, he does not act itself anxiety is a possibility of freedom, because it can expose the finite as finite. It leads to a radical consciousness of sin, because it exposes the repentance as inadequate.

Anxiety is in contrast to fear indefinite. She is in Kierkegaard's analysis also ambiguous. Firstly, it can cause the person she feels a burden and a threat ( change ), on the other hand it is a challenge and an opportunity that he himself is. Therefore fear aroused sympathetic antipathy and antipathetic sympathy: that is, it is both attractive and repulsive. Comparable to the bottle of alcohol for an alcoholic.

But if the person learns to be afraid right, that is the fear unmasked, the finite blocks as last and therefore the way to possible to, then faith must ( in Hegel's sense ) as "inner certainty which anticipates the infinity " ( BA 163) added, so that we are ready for salvation. Kierkegaard indicated here again the frailty of life, by pointing out that a wrong education through the fear to commit suicide.

Different readings of The Concept of Anxiety

• Biographical as a hidden interview with Regine and therein also with themselves Up to " stages on the life path " can be the writings after 41 read as a hidden interview with Regine: with his melancholy and his guilt.

The term anxiety can be interpreted as the dizziness of freedom.

• Psychologically - dogmatic than reformulation of the Christian doctrine of sin New approach aware pseudonym as a critique of the Hegelian doctrine of sin imprinted Martensen. Kierkegaard it comes to the perception of sin and its effects. It borders while his psychological Analasysen several times on the attempt to justify sin. The fear he calls a psychological approximation (approximation ), which can be explained that an individual sins, without denying their own responsibility and freedom.
• Existential - poetically as an analysis of human existence before God Understanding of Socrates as Copenhagen, the people - and himself - questioned how it is with her ​​soul ( inanity? ). Kierkegaard wants to pack his existential reader ( of dealing with anxiety gives information about being a Christian ). Anxiety can quite positively expose the finiteness of the world. If you still can stand at his guilt and sin can believe in their inscrutability, is a truly free and responsible person for K. because he the only faith can, with which he is resting in Providence. ( God's power ratio and depth of sin consciousness)