Deeply perplexed by the absurdities and troubles of existence, nineteenth-century theologian
and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard explored and wrote of profound new ideas that would
ultimately challenge the way humanity thinks about philosophy, religion, and psychology. Considered
by most to be the father of Existentialism, his work examines themes common to this school of
thought, prodding, mocking, and attempting to resolve falsities of tradition and convention,
the inconsistency between people’s true selves and how they act in the world, and the
despair and anxiety so entrenched in it all. Kierkegaard was born in 1813 in Copenhagen,
Denmark as the youngest of seven children to a very well-off family. Early on in his life,
he was exposed to philosophical thinking, as his father was very interested in philosophy himself,
often reading and having conversations related to it around young Kierkegaard. In early adulthood,
he would go on to study philosophy and theology at the University of Copenhagen. Here, however,
he would soon find himself disliking and turning away from the historical and philosophical works
he was being exposed to, finding them often overly intellectualized and incongruent with how life is
actually lived. “What I really need to do,” he wrote, “is to get clear about "what am I to do",
not what I must know." This assessment would ultimately define the orientation in which
Kierkegaard would direct his philosophical efforts. Also arguably significant to this
orientation, by age twenty-two, five of his six siblings had already passed away,
engulfing his child and early adult life with the unsettling shadow of tragedy and transience,
reminding him five times over that life is synonymous with uncertainty and that the worst
case might be just around the corner. Around and following this time of his mid-twenties,
Kierkegaard began writing at an immensely productive rate, producing many books during
his lifetime under various pseudonyms as well as his own name before dying in 1855
at the age of forty-two, likely from a horrible case of spinal tuberculosis.
In terms of his philosophical work, one of Kierkegaard’s most notable and
profound contributions, the one that we will be mostly focusing on here, was what he would term
angst. In his book The Concept of Anxiety, he would describe this term as a particular
feeling of anxiety and dread—not any sort of anxiety disorder, but rather,
the underpinning existential anxiety that pervades the entire human condition in general.
Generally, anxiety is the heightened emotional response to a perceived threat or challenge,
especially one that is unknown or uncertain. And so, anxiety of this existential sort, which moving
forward will just be referred to as anxiety, is the response to the threat, challenge, or fear
of the unknown and uncertainty of existence as a whole. More specifically, it is the feeling of
freedom and responsibility that one has within this uncertainty. In the words of Kierkegaard,
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” In every moment, we are possessed by an awareness of our
freedom (or at least the sense of freedom) to choose and be accountable for how the nearly
infinite unknowns and possibilities of life become known and real through our choices and actions.
But yet, we are given very little if not none of the insights and information
needed to do so properly. Worse yet, there is perhaps no way of ever truly
making decisions correctly in the way we hope, even when we do make them so-called correctly.
In large part, we are driven by our anxiety to make choices that will eliminate our anxiety,
but arguably, if we have lived and thought long enough about this,
we realize we have and will remain condemned to a life inescapably pervaded by at least some form of
it. It is as if we are always at an intersection of the past and future, given a steering wheel,
a dashboard of dials, and a kill switch, but not given a brake, an accelerator, a reverse gear,
a map, or a navigation system. We are continually forced to drive through the world in this vehicle,
but the world is covered in an immense, thick fog. Naturally, we hope that in some of directions,
the ones we choose, the fog will clear, but it never does—not completely at least.
"…[A]nyone who really knows mankind might say that there is not one single living human being who
does not despair a little, who does not secretly harbour an unrest, an inner strife, a disharmony,
an anxiety about an unknown something or a something he dare not even try to know,
an anxiety about some possibility in existence or an anxiety about himself…” Kierkegaard wrote.
Recognizing the inevitability of anxiety and dread, Kierkegaard sought to make sense and use
of it. Despite how bleak everything might sound up until this point, he didn’t believe anxiety was
totally a bad thing. Rather, he believed anxiety was a necessary part of life, and our response
to it was what made the difference between a life lived fully and a life of emptiness and despair.
Understandably, the dizziness felt by anxiety can often be paralyzing. Walking forward while your
head is spinning is hardly ideal. And so, this feeling of the freedom to choose and do anything
in life can sometimes keep us from choosing or doing anything at all. If we imagine how
the anxiety of a large, intimidating item on our to-do-list might keep us from getting to it, the
anxiety induced paralysis felt by the to-do-list that is our entire life—one with a deadline not
yet revealed and the consequence literally being our existence—is certainly understandable. But our
head will never really stop spinning, and if we wish to achieve a potentially more fulfilled life
and actualize who we really are and could be, we must not succumb to the inaction of this anxiety.
In order to retain any sense of power over our life and derive any meaning of self,
we must retain an ability to move forward and act in the face of this anxiety.
Moreover, it is arguably this anxiety (or perhaps the source of this anxiety) that allows for any
possibility of developing and deriving a unique, meaningful self at all. Without any possibility,
there would be no anxiety. But without anxiety, there would be no possibility.
Kierkegaard suggested that in order to best make use of anxiety and live well with it,
the individual must pursue what he would refer to as passion. This could take the
form of things like a love, a creative endeavor, a family, personal growth,
a career, an ideology, a belief, and so on. What’s important for Kierkegaard, however,
is that one orients their passions based on subjective truth. In other words, truths that are
deemed to be true by the individual, not truths with which there is necessarily objective merit
or ultimate reason to ground them in. It is not purely a matter of intellectualization,
but also a matter of emotional, subjective experience. “…[T]he crucial thing is to find
a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die,”
Kierkegaard wrote. The individual must discover their subjective truth and then throw the full
weight of their being in its direction, committing to it fully regardless of reason
or intellectual certainty—to do something for the sake of itself, to take a leap of faith.
Often through conformity, distractions, addictions, and any other forms escapism,
individuals attempt to avoid the anxiety and responsibility of their existence.
By universally conforming to the status quo, one attempts to absolve themselves
from the responsibility of their choices. And by means of things like substance abuse,
chasing social status, superficial action, materialism, and so on, one attempts to
distract themselves away from the fact that there is no way to truly absolve themselves.
For Kierkegaard, the development of self is dependent on the ability to face up to the anxiety
of existence and move with and through it. For him, in an otherwise meaningless existence, this
is where the meaning can potentially be found. The consequences, rather, of succumbing to anxiety and
inaction, for Kierkegaard, is much, much worse. It results in despair—a depressed, apathetic state;
a failed, lost, and unrealized self; a frictional experience of existence. In the words of modern
psychoanalyst James Hollis, “Anxiety is the price of the ticket to life: intrapsychic depression
is the by-product of the refusal to climb aboard.” One must realize that life will never become more
sturdy or less scary; there will never be a perfect optimal time to climb aboard.
If life is a sequence of impossible decisions veiled by uncertainty,
we might as well attempt to justify it by at least making decisions that pursue the greatest and most
interesting heights and depths of the unknown we are capable of traveling. Kierkegaard’s framework
and solution to this problem was faith in the Christian God, but his philosophy, in some part,
can arguably provide a premise that is applicable to any subjective view of meaning and purpose.
Especially nowadays, anxiety is often seen as something wrong and negative—a weakness
or an illness. But anxiety is arguably a fundamental ingredient entrenched in
the experience of human consciousness. To feel and to think is to be anxious.
Perhaps added to the list of terms we ought to be called is Homo anxietatem, anxious man.
How could we not be anxious? It is a natural response to an intensely disquieting,
confusing, and uncertain existence that we are given an unrequested role in. And the more choices
we garner access to in the modern world, we are only left with even more reasons to fret and turn
in anxiety over more ways we hope can quite it, as well as more ways to feel responsible
when we inevitably don’t. But we must, like Kierkegaard suggested, try our best to learn
how to live with and through it, to keep moving forward into the unknown, and take our
leaps of faith into what we truly and personally believe makes it all worth living and dying for.