The Sickness Unto Death Part 1 Section B

Overview and Argument

A much smaller section compared to the last one, Kierkegaard devotes this text to explaining just how widespread despair truly is.

The argument is steered through an analogy/comparison between the sickness of despair and a physician treating a more "typical" type of sickness. He starts with his most crucial point: people assume that despair is an uncommon trait as that it is very rarely observed. When it comes to common sickness or just generally being unwell, observability is one of the main drivers in diagnosing/awareness of the presence of the sickness. However, even from reading the last section, Kierkegaard believes that this is not the case with despair. He states over and over again that the lack of consciousness of despair is in its own form despair.

This hidden form of despair, to Kierkegaard, is the worst kindFor reasons that he gets into with the next section. A particularly compelling way he gets this point across is by saying that the amount of people who are actually in a state of despair is the inverse to the amount of people we perceive to be despaired. In simpler words, we assume that despair is rare but actually the freedom from despair is actually rare.

Another application of this physician analogy is through Kierkegaard's teachings on the "tenure" of despair. Traditional sickness makes itself known at the time when it is caught. This differs drastically from despair in the sense that if despair is found in someone (or more realistically if someone finds despair in themselves), it must mean that they have always been in a state of despair. This is because despair is a state of the self, of the spirit, which exists in an eternal state.

The other parallel being drawn that I found to be illuminating was the idea that "despair is the sickness of which it is true that it is the greatest bad fortune never to have had it". For to never have had it means to have been in a state of unconscious despair for one's whole life. This is clearly the opposite of any traditional, physical sickness as living entirely without sickness would be a blessing and a miracle.

It is after all of these ideas and descriptions of despair that we, the reader, really get a good sense of just how dreadful this is, especially to Kierkegaard. Before the section ends, we start to see his thesis taking form with what I think is the best block of text in the entire section, "but the only life wasted is the life of one who so lived it, deceived by life's pleasures or its sorrows, that he never became decisively, eternally, conscious of himself as spirit, as self, or, what is the same, he never became aware -- and gained in the deepest sense the impression -- that there is a God there and that 'he', himself, his self, exists before this God, which infinite gain is never come by except through despair". Kierkegaard gently is introducing the topic that by ourselves alone we can not be rid of despair. It is only by returning to the original creator, the being that grounded us in this synthesis to begin with, that we can be saved from despair. It is also important to note that to even conceive of this notion requires a sort of self actualization and development of consciousness. In other words, to be aware of your despair. This aligns very well with Kierkegaard's hierarchical beliefs in the aesthetic, ethical, and religious pillars or layers of life.