The Sickness Unto Death

The Sickness Unto Death
Penguin Books · Public domain · source
Name	The Sickness Unto Death
Original title	Sygdommen til Døden
Author	Søren Kierkegaard
Country	Denmark
Language	Danish
Published	1849
Genre	Philosophy
Subject	Christian theology, existential despair

The Sickness Unto Death is a philosophical and theological work by Søren Kierkegaard published in 1849, written under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus. The text addresses despair as a condition of the self, engaging with Christianity, Lutheranism, and contemporary debates in Denmark during the Danish Golden Age (1800–1850); it intervenes in discussions involving figures such as G. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and contemporaries in European philosophy. Kierkegaard frames despair in relation to concepts from St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and the New Testament, situating his argument amid exchanges with Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and wider 19th-century philosophy.

Background and Context

Kierkegaard wrote the work following publications like Either/Or and Fear and Trembling, responding to intellectual currents epitomized by German Idealism, Hegelianism, and debates at institutions such as the University of Copenhagen. The pseudonymous authorial practice echoes practices used by Friedrich Nietzsche in later years and contemporaneous strategies by Alexandre Dumas (fils), while the theological orientation converses with figures like Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Pietism movements in Scandinavia. Publication occurred amid cultural shifts influenced by events including the Revolutions of 1848 and intellectual networks linking cities like Copenhagen, Berlin, Paris, and London. The work’s title and themes draw on biblical allusions to passages in the King James Bible and patristic sources such as Augustine of Hippo and Origen.

Summary of Content

Kierkegaard, via Anti-Climacus, defines the self as a relation that relates itself to itself and posits despair as the sickness of not being oneself. He analyzes forms of despair through dialectical moves reminiscent of Hegelian dialectic while explicitly rejecting Hegel’s systematic optimism, invoking authorities like St. Paul, Martin Luther, and Augustine to ground an existential reading of sin and redemption. The text unfolds with psychological and theological analyses that reference practices and institutions such as Confession, Sacrament of Baptism, and the pastoral roles exemplified by figures like John Wesley and Pope Gregory I. Kierkegaard contrasts earthly temporal concerns linked to cities like Aarhus and Rome with eternal perspectives derived from Jerusalem and the Holy Land narrative.

Key Themes and Concepts

Kierkegaard elucidates concepts including despair, the self, sin, faith, and repentance, engaging with philosophical antecedents such as Immanuel Kant, Baruch Spinoza, and David Hume. He articulates stages of life comparable to those in Either/Or and elsewhere, echoing motifs familiar to readers of Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger, later existentialists who would reference his topology of selfhood. Theological commitments align with traditions traced through Patristics, Augustinianism, and Lutheran theology, invoking doctrinal texts like the Augsburg Confession and councils including Council of Nicaea. Kierkegaard’s method combines rhetorical strategies seen in Rhetoric (Aristotle) with pastoral exhortation associated with figures such as John Calvin and liturgical practices rooted in Trinity Sunday observance.

Reception and Criticism

Contemporary reception involved reactions from academicians at the University of Copenhagen, clerics in the Church of Denmark, and continental critics in Germany, France, and England. Critics ranged from defenders of Hegelianism to proponents of Romanticism like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and institutional theologians echoing Friedrich Schleiermacher. Later critics and interpreters include Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, and commentators in the Cambridge School and Harvard Divinity School. Scholars such as Walter Lowrie and translators like Alastair Hannay and Howard V. Hong have debated nuances of Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous strategy, while philosophers including Ludwig Wittgenstein and Gaston Bachelard engaged indirectly with his modes of critique. Feminist and liberation theologians in the traditions of Simone de Beauvoir and James Cone have read Kierkegaard through lenses of subjectivity and ethics, prompting debates in journals associated with Modern Theology and institutions like Princeton Theological Seminary.

Influence and Legacy

The work significantly influenced existentialist thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir, and theological figures like Paul Tillich and Karl Barth. It shaped discourse in phenomenology via Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger and impacted psychiatric and psychoanalytic readings by practitioners linked to Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Erik Erikson. The text’s legalistic and pastoral implications informed pastoral counseling programs at institutions like Yale Divinity School and Union Theological Seminary (New York), while literary modernists including T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Thomas Mann drew on Kierkegaardian themes. Academic courses in departments across Oxford University, University of Cambridge, University of Chicago, and Columbia University continue to examine its intersections with movements such as Existentialism, Phenomenology, and 20th-century theology, ensuring its persistent role in debates involving ethics, metaphysics, hermeneutics, and pastoral practice.

Category:Philosophy books Category:19th-century books