In this post I shall discuss my experience of reading Søren Kierkegaard’s ‘The Concept of Anxiety’, also sometimes known as ‘The Concept of Dread’.

I must admit approaching this post that I found this book a challenging, but equally rewarding, book. Concepts such as ‘sin’ and ‘guilt’ are found throughout and it is not always easy understanding what Kierkegaard means when engaging with the Christian faith. Nevertheless, the focus on ‘anxiety’ is an interesting one. I bought this book hoping to find a philosophical approach to anxiety which may help with that state of mind which we all sometimes find ourselves in. I am a firm believer in the idea that philosophy should have a practical impact. Did the book do this? Unfortunately, apart from a few observations, it generally did not provide a complete answer, in my opinion, on how to approach anxious situations. Yet in this post I shall still discuss the observations I found most interesting and useful, alongside other ideas which were present throughout the text.

On the other hand, its comments on anxiety are still sometimes thought-provoking. One idea that I found particularly engaging is that anxiety is the result of freedom. Kierkegaard writes ‘anxiety is the dizziness of freedom’ and later states ‘anxiety is constantly to be conceived here in terms of freedom. Therefore, the presence of free will causes anxiety because we can make any decision we want. Anxiety arises from the possibilities in the world. Kierkegaard also comments that anxiety is future driven. This point seems obvious, but it is nevertheless pivotal to still state it. Anxiety only depends on the potentialities of the future- if something from the past is making us anxious it is only because it may influence what lies ahead.

Kierkegaard also makes some other observations about anxiety. He states that it ‘through being a synthesis the human being can me made anxious, and the more profoundly, the greater the human being.’ There are several points made in this instance. Firstly, it highlights Kierkegaard’s insistence throughout the book that human beings are a mixture of mind and body supported by spirit. Humans are a synthesis of mind and body and are not composed of two separate parts, like in the Cartesian view. What has this to do with anxiety? Well, Kierkegaard writes that ‘as a beast or an angel, a human being could not be made anxious’. Beasts (body/material) and angels (mind/spiritual) can not get anxious like humans because they are not a synthesis. Humans are also a combination of finitude and infinitude because of their synthetic nature. I tend to agree with Kierkegaard here on that humans are combination of mind and body, to me it seems the best way of dismissing the older binary view that differentiates between the two.

The other point made in the above is the greater the human the greater the anxiety. This links to Kierkegaard’s earlier comments about genius. Geniuses are, according to Kierkegaard, strongest in the moment of danger. However, their anxiety lays in the moment before and after an anxiety has passed, when they must face the great unknown of fate. While I do not exactly adhere to the concept of geniuses, intelligence is far more complex and diverse than that, Kierkegaard does make a valid insight here. Anxiety is often about the past or future, it is rarely in the moment. It is also interesting how Kierkegaard refers to ‘the great unknown that is fate’, which seems to contradict his earlier point about anxiety being the dizziness of freedom. Kierkegaard, it appears, believes in a mixture of free will and determinism, which is yet another synthesis on his part. I have not exactly thought or read a lot about free will before, but then our actions and lives are, in my view, often both the victim of circumstance and our own choices in particular moments.

Sin, as mentioned, is also a theme that is repeated throughout The Concept of Anxiety. In fact, Kierkegaard ties it closely to anxiety. He writes ‘anxiety is the psychological state that precedes sin, that comes as close as possible to it, as anxiously possible, yet without explaining sin which breaks out only in the qualitative leap.’ Anxiety is therefore deeply related to sin. I did not find Kierkegaard’s extensive treatment of sin in the book that thought-provoking to be honest, but the one thing that does come across clearly is that it is an important concept to him. In fact, the subtitle of the book is A Simple Psychologically Oriented Deliberation in View of the Dogmatic Problem of Hereditrary Sin. As a theist and postmodernist, I am not sure where I exactly stand on the concept of sin. However, I do believe that one should not be blamed for the actions of another. Sin, if it exists, should not be used as a tool to burden mankind with guilt.

Time is another topic Kierkegaard deals with in The Concept of Anxiety. He distinguishes between the present, which he calls the eternal and ‘the infinite succession’ of the life in time (outside of the eternal). There are some thoughts I have about Kierkegaard’s attitude to time, mainly about how he places importance on the present. It would seem he follows the tradition of the metaphysics of presence, which, as the name suggests, sees presence as more important than absence (including the future and past). In fact, he states ‘the instant is that ambiguity in which time and eternity touch each other.’ The present intersects with eternity, the former ‘touches’ the latter. Therefore, yet another synthesis is posited by Kierkegaard. I cannot help but find his synthesising approach agreeable. It is interesting to see a nineteenth-century thinker having a distaste for binaries. However, he is still not Heidegger or Derrida, due to how he believes presence is more important than absence, even if his view is more nuanced than some other thinkers.

This post has discussed some of the points I found interesting in Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety. I have not covered everything comprehensively, but instead I have discussed some of the sections or themes of the book and the thoughts they provoked. Overall, it was an interesting read, although challenging at points. Would I read more Kierkegaard? Yes, probably, his synthesising is something I like a lot. However, I would have liked it more if he focused in on anxiety throughout. His thoughts on sin, which are prominent throughout, are not as interesting as his other ideas. Nevertheless, there were few moments, as outlined above, that sparked my mind and so therefore it was worth reading.