The Sickness Unto Death Part 1 Section C

Overview and Argument

This section of The Sickness Unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard details verbosely the different types of despair. Given the longer nature of the section and how much detail Kierkegaard goes into for each type, this discussion will be split into subsections.

Dialectic Discussion

Perhaps the most abstract ideas to understand in relation to this work is Kierkegaard's opinion on dialectic arguments. The first of which is the human relation between finitude and infinitude. The common thread with this argument and the following ones in this subsection is that either extreme results in despair. To live completely in infinitude means to be consumed by the abstract and imagination. In living completely in imagination, infinitude "only leads him away from himself". This concerns many first principles of humanity, including emotions, the will, and understanding. All of these results in losing oneself, which Kierkegaard simply puts, "The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing". Similarly, to live completely in finitude means to have just become a cipher, another cog in the machine in society. This of course, rids one of a self as they are no longer anyone. A quote I liked here was: "by being wise to the ways of the world, such a person forgets himself, in a divine sense he forgets his own name". The despair of extreme finitude often goes unnoticed, Kierkegaard claims, as they have become perfectly integrated and suited for everyday life. Take, for example, someone who remains quiet most of his life in order to not disturb anyone and to remain socially acceptable. Kierkegaard vehemently disagrees with this form of despair, claiming that "if I have ventured wrongly, very well, life then helps me with its penalty. But if I haven't ventured at all, who helps me then?"

The next dilemma is possibility and necessity. To solely possess possibility is to have "the self run away from itself in possibility so that it has no necessity to return to". This seems very circular, but it makes sense as the hypothesis of this dialectic is that "Becoming is a movement from some place, but becoming oneself is a movement at that place". Since possibility and necessity govern the process of becoming, to run away from oneself and never return is to be in despair and is to never become a self. There are two forms of extreme possibility:

1. Wishful possibility, like a knight in a fairytale who chases a beautiful butterfly and loses his track of way home
2. Melancholic possibility, like falling in love with dread. What we would say in modern terms to be "spiraling"

On the other hand, to maintain necessity is to suffer the same despair. With no possibility, one has become a shell of a human being. With no hope, no idea of possibility, one has completely lost themselves. With absolutely no possibility, "the question is wheter he will believe that for God everything is possible, that is, whether he will have faith". Only through faith can one with no hope be saved. Kierkegaard admits that this is seemingly an impossible task, because "to believe in his own undoing is impossible" yet this is the precise reason that faith is hard and truly rare in Kierkegaard's understanding. He wraps up these points with by saying that the "fact that God's will is possible means I can pray; if God's will is only the necessary, then man is essentially dumb as beast"

Unconscious Despair

The lowest and less "noble" sense of despair is one that is completely unnoticed. This happens with people that live completely in the aesthete, "He lives in the categories of the sensate... poo-poos spirit". Clearly, Kierkegaard does not hold worldly desires in high regard. A funnyIn an ironic sense way he delivers this is by saying that these people have a very humble view of themselves as they have no conception of the self, which is the most absolute a human can be. As abstract these ideas are, Kierkegaard loves analogies, this time with a house: "and now if one were to compare being a human being with such a house, the the sorry and ludicrous fact with most people is, alas, that in their own house they prefer to live in the basement". It is this unconscious despair that is the furthest from truth, from salvation. Yet at the same time, it is the most bearable sense of despair as the subject "considers himself at his healthiest, can appear to other to be in pink condition, just when the illness is at its most critical". From this point, he dives into almost a case study on paganism, faulting them for not even being able to see themselves before God. I didn't find that section to be too crucial, except for this interesting idea he had on suicide, which reminded me of The Myth of Sisyphus. Kierkegaard says that suicide is "something that for the spirit is the most critical sin, to flee from existence in this way in rebellion against God".

Despair to not be oneself

In despair not wanting to be oneself is the despair of weakness. What does this mean? An important concept of the immediate is introduced in this section. In this context, to live in the immediate is to indulge in wor;dly, temporal desires. Eventually, the immediate self will run into a roadblock, be it a change of fortuneTypically extreme misfortune, but theoretically extreme good fortune as well and suddenly the immediate self is lost. At this point, one becomes painfully aware of their despair. This despair, which had always been there as discussed in the last section, is simply made visible. At this point, there is nothing to do until help comes. "If help comes from the outside, life is restored to the despairer, he begins where he left off" and the despair is hidden, not removed, once again. If no help comes, the despairer eventually acquires a "modicum of understanding of life" as he learns to imitate, to conform himself to society. I wanted to note that in the discussion of this despair and the others, Kierkegaard elects to include the fact that the theoretical person in examples is always a part of Christendom and the Church. For example, here, the person that never receives help and begins to conform to society "goes to church every Sunday" and "for ten dollars the priest ushers him into eternity". This sarcasm is meant to tell the reader that to Kierkegaard it does not matter what your involvement with the Church is. If you are in a state of despair, you are not saved. Ultimately, when immediacy disappears, the immediate person wishes he were something else.

Now suppose that someone in a state of despair post-immediate gains a level of self-consciousness, what effect does this have? He despairs with weakness, as he realizes that the self that he possesses is weak, fragileAs they all are. Yet the weakness lies in the fact that there is nothing being done about it. Although he has separated himself from externalities, to truly not despair to not be oneself requires the relinquishing of all externality, "a complete break from immediacy". A condition that can not be met out of weakness and a condition that guarantees a certain vanity of struggle. At this point, many people will turn completely away from the inward direction, and, in a false sense of safety, gradually manages to forget all about this. This is common because "to be concerned for one's own sould and to want to be spirit looks from the world's point of view like a waste of time".

Despair to be oneself

The most nuanced and extreme form of despair is to be in despair over the eternal or over oneself. To despair over something earthly, Kierkegaard lectures, is to despair over the earthly in totality. At this stage, however, one now understands that it is weakness to be so touchy about the earthly, assuming a feeling of guilt: "he is now more clearly conscious of his despair, of the fact that he despairs the eternal". But even here, we are still witnessing despair in the realm of the previous section, to not be oneself. One wishes to not be himself as he becomes more and more aware of this despair over the desire over the earthly. If we observed individuals in this state, we would begin to see the emergence of the reserved, when "the self sits, keeping watch on itself, preoccupied or filling time with not wanting to be itself, yet still self enough to love itself". This presents itself by causing the individual to live a life of proud solitude, a state where he judges the purely immediate people as inferior, but struggles himself to hold himself to standards he knows to be true. "In general, the urge for solitude is a sign that there is after all spirit in a person and the measure of what spirit is there". It is obvious that Kierkegaard would say this person is closer to salvationAlbeit infinitely far away still, but the pride is the limiting factor since "the self must be broken down to become itself".

So what does it mean to be in despair to be oneself? If the reserved is still in despair over not being oneself, what else is left? At the introduction of this book, I mentioned that Kierkegaard believes that despair is only able to be cured when you return back to the creator, God. God is the one who grounds the synthesis and any despair is a sign that one is out of synthesis and unable to see themselves in front of God. The one who despairs to be oneself is a person that believes that they are what grounds themself. Kierkegaard specifically attacks Stoicism here. "The self wants in despair to rule over himself, or create himself". This is how Kierkegaard views stoic philosophy. Whether the despairing self is active or passive, "the despairing self is forever building only castles in the air" i.e. a king with no country, something worthless and futile. He drives this home, "The self wants in its despair to savour the full satisfaction of making itself into itself" but this is impossible because it did not. What is even deeper is why the self feels the need for this. The self is so aware of itself that the despair is at an all time high. This agony "he uses ... as an excuse to take offence at all existence; he wants to be himself in spite of it". So when help is offered through religion and God, the self "that for all the world he will not do; if it came to that, he would rather be himself with all the torments of hell than ask for help". For this agony and despair has ruminated for so long that it has become seemingly a part of himself, and to receive help is to lose oneself. One will, in this state, endure the despair "so as to retain the right ot be itself". Intense passion is attached to the torment, now he "prefers to rage. against everything and be the one whom the whole world, all existence, has wronged, the one for whom it is especially important to ensure that he has his agony on hand, so that no one will take it from himWow"

Connections

There is soooo much in this section and I think that going through and reading it slowly to really digest it has made this maybe the most interesting 30-40 pages of a book I've read. The only real connection I had here besides the direct Stoic comparison is that with Buddhism, as both Kierkegaard and Buddhists teach that attachment to ephemeral, worldly desires move you further away from your purpose and your higher self. Where these schools of thought differ, however, is that while Kierkegaard says that one must give up externality to consitute the self before God, Buddhism's teachings revolve more around dissolving both the self and attachment to solve suffering.