Kierkegaard's Concept of Despair

Michael Theunissen, Barbara Harshav, Helmut Illbruck, Barbara Harshav, Helmut Illbruck

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780691163123, 9780691095585
• eBook ISBN: 9780691216195
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Esistenzialismo in filosofia

The literature on Kierkegaard is often content to paraphrase. By contrast, Michael Theunissen articulates one of Kierkegaard's central ideas, his theory of despair, in a detailed and comprehensible manner and confronts it with alternatives. Understanding what Kierkegaard wrote on despair is vital not only because it illuminates his thought as a whole, but because his account of despair in The Sickness unto Death is the cornerstone of existentialism. Theunissen's book, published in German in 1993, is widely regarded as the best treatment of the subject in any language. Kierkegaard's Concept of Despair is also one of the few works on Kierkegaard that bridge the gap between the Continental and analytic traditions in philosophy.


Theunissen argues that for Kierkegaard, the fundamental characteristic of despair is the desire of the self "not to be what it is." He sorts through the apparently chaotic text of The Sickness unto Death to explain what Kierkegaard meant by the "self," how and why individuals want to flee their selves, and how he believed they could reconnect with their selves. According to Theunissen, Kierkegaard thought that individuals in despair seek to deny their authentic selves to flee particular aspects of their character, their past, or the world, or in order to deny their "mission." In addition to articulating and evaluating Kierkegaard's concept of despair, Theunissen relates Kierkegaard's ideas to those of Heidegger, Sartre, and other twentieth-century philosophers.

SECOND STUDY

On the Transcending Critique of Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Despair

I

1. The study of the fundamental principle underlying the analysis of despair presented in The Sickness unto Death grounded the analysis on the theorem: we do not want to be what we are. Its main subject matter was the starting point of the analysis at which Kierkegaard stakes out the framework for his further considerations by separating inauthentic from authentic despair and especially by subdividing the latter into the two forms of a despaired not-willing to be oneself and an even more despaired willing to be oneself. The goal was to trace the whole as differentiated into the three forms back to a unified base. Its thesis first distinguishes in despair not to will to be oneself. It then emphasizes Kierkegaard’s insight that the complementary willing to be oneself means: we want to be what we are not. But it also calls for consideration that the reciprocal reducibility of the two forms of authentic despair asserted by Kierkegaard comes up against its limit in an asymmetry that attests to the priority of the not willing to be oneself. That is, while it invariably holds that we want to be what we are not because we do not want to be what we are, it is by no means always the case that we do not want to be what we are because we want to be what we are not. Finally, the thesis discloses the not willing to be oneself even in inauthentic despair. Not to be conscious of having a self—that means on the level on which Kierkegaard starts off: not even to begin to establish oneself in a relation of denial or acceptance to one’s Dasein. Therein lies, in turn, its own kind of not willing, one in which an act of willing does not even occur, neither the positive willing nor the not willing as willing in the mode of negation. Kierkegaard goes beyond the purview of his basic proposition only at the end of his course through the forms of consciousness, where he focuses on a despairing willing to be a self that has a different structure than the not willing to be what one is not, but that can only be understood theologically, as a revolt against a God, against whom the person in despair wants to be himself in such a way that he derides Him, in a kind of perversion of not being in despair. Nowhere does the course through the forms into which the failure to accomplish the synthesis of being human solidifies leave the space marked out at the beginning. He formulates the fundamental connection emanating from the basic proposition—which the philosophical consideration of consciousness divides into a sequence of stages—as an order of priority in the logical-ontological construction of failing existence: we do not want to be what we are as humans and we therefore want to be what as humans we are not.

Deducing Kierkegaard’s analysis of despair from a single principle was a work of reconstruction. From the work of reconstruction, which by and large has been accomplished, we not only demarcated the task which our study at least tackled toward the end: that of defining the place of The Sickness unto Death within the context of the history of human self-understanding. In addition, two research areas emerged, whose treatment remains a desideratum: the problematization of the premise that was designated fundamental and a critique, which in contrast to the immanent critique implicit in the reconstruction itself, may be called transcending. The premise of Kierkegaard’s analysis of despair that we exposed is to be examined in terms of the question of whether we really do not want to be what we are and, in if this holds true, why do we not want to be what we are. Kierkegaard himself is apparently so certain that it holds true that he is only interested in the “why,” and even to the question of “why,” he explicitly gives only a theological answer: we do not want to be what we are because we are in the state of sin.¹ In doing that, he describes the same figure of despair as in his philosophy of despair. He finds his answer by resorting to a depth level of the concept of sin as developed from the myth of original sin. That we want to be God means: we want to be what we are not, but that is because we do not want to be what we are. To get beyond the theological answer, we need only get into the historical situation to which Kierkegaard’s philosophy of despair is reacting. In Either/Or, the concept of despair was an interpretative category for the nihilism heralded by German Romanticism.²We do not want to be what we are because with being having become void, our own being has also become void from the very beginning and, in this very voidness, unacceptable for us. Yet the nihilistic connotations of the concept of despair manifest themselves only by way of a transcending critique. Such a critique not only has to examine whether the interpretation given by this concept of despair does justice to the nihilistic experiences of loss. It must also be open to which the possibility that nihilism informs the interpretation to which Kierkegaard subjects despair. First of all, the plan of a transcending critique is to be outlined more precisely.

2. The claim that Kierkegaard subjects despair to an interpretation implies that he is not content with pure description. We do owe him a genuine phenomenological insight into the matter. But in The Sickness unto Death, the attempts at a phenomenology of despair have to fend off a constructivist theory. Kierkegaard relies primarily on the consistency of thought, with the assumption, still close to idealism, that it is consistency that guarantees accuracy.³ In truth, the interpretation not only discloses; it also closes off. And it closes off in a twofold way. On the one hand, contrary to its own self-conception, it does not capture everything about despair. On the other hand, it apprehends a good many things which, on closer inspection, are not despair. In one respect, it impoverishes the phenomenon; in the latter respect, it enriches it with alien supplements. Accordingly, a transcending critique must observe the double function, on the one hand, to clear what has been made unfamiliar from what has been added from outside and, on the other hand, to reimburse what has been impoverished with what has been excised from it. The critique is productive especially in the latter sense. However, it does not become productive by bringing something external to bear on its subject matter. At least in our present case, it may take up the self-transcending acts of the theory under discussion. For these self-transcending acts, there is a relatively unambiguous criterion in The Sickness unto Death. They are indicated by the appearance of so-called unannounced facts. It is conspicuous in Kierkegaard’s treatise on despair that, amid remarks that ostensibly serve nothing but the development of its approach, it comes up against facts that were not foreseen by that approach. As early as the last part of A, the initial distinctions are joined by one whose relation to them remains obscure: the distinction between despair over something and despair over oneself.⁴ It advances to being the central topic in the passage devoted to the despair of weakness,⁵ even though, according to the outline of the treatise, this passage is only supposed to explain what it means, concretely, in despair not to will to be oneself. This is curious chiefly because the new topic can hardly be dismissed as being secondary to the one presented initially. On the contrary, it assumes a fundamental status. Consequently, it enters into competition with the initial approach. In this context, it is irrelevant for the moment whether Kierkegaard himself thinks—as he does with respect to the despair over oneself—he has something fundamental in mind or whether he dismisses the fundamental claim, as he does in the despair over something. It is precisely the emphasis with which he ostensibly seeks to dissolve the originality of despair over something that reveals how powerfully the facts emerging unannounced break into his prefabricated schema. Here as there, he reacts to the confrontation with aspects that are suppressed by his approach, here by repressing them, there by acknowledging them. The case at hand compels him not only toward acknowledgment but also toward repression. The difference is that, in the one case, it is an achieved self-transcendence of the theory; in the other, one that simply happens; and what the transcending critique, for its part, can use as its vehicle in the one case, it still has to make its subject in the other.

At the same time, the self-transcending acts of the theory which materialize all the same point to the direction in which the critique connected with them has to seek its material. If the study that was concerned primarily with the initial approach was able—for the sake of the fundamental premise of the theory—to pursue its further steps on the line on which they secure the territory initially seized, now what is of interest is what is not on that line; and if the focus on the progress loyal to the line concerned only the external view that was granted by the edifice constructed on the foundation, now the orientation is guided by the deviant tendencies within the internal space of the later sections. First of all, we must gain access to the inside of the passage on the despair of weakness. But even before that, the goal of the transcending critique is to be envisaged. Such a critique is called for because Kierkegaard also gives an obstructing interpretation of despair. How does his interpretation obstruct? Why does it not get a grasp on everything about despair? And why does it extend to things that have little or nothing to do with despair?

What in that study is regarded as a “fundamental premise” of Kierkegaard’s theory seems to be such only in the framework of the approach of his theory. One thing is certain: that we do not will to be what we are grounds our willing to be what we are not, as well as our ignorance of having a self. However, it looks as if there is an even more elementary premise in this concept of inauthentic despair and in the corresponding conception of authentic despair, according to which the will of impossibility defining it is aimed at the person in despair, that is, the premise that all despair is enclosed within the circle of the relation to the self. Here, indeed, two premises may be differentiated: one that is within reach of an immanent critique and one that becomes fully accessible only to a transcending critique. The former is inherent in the theory, in the sense that on its own ground, alternatives to that theory are conceivable; whereas the latter, insofar as it is virtually without alternative for the producer of the theory, occupies a meta-theoretical status. However, whether the second is a more elementary premise vis-à-vis the first is not the only question to be settled; we must also ask whether Kierkegaard, with his orientation to the self, makes a premise at all. The assertion that according to his own conception, all despair is enclosed within the circle of self-relation, uses a vague metaphor. It is a pressing task fully to differentiate the image in conceptual terms. The premise-like character and the status of what is undoubtedly the deepest of all convictions guiding the author of The Sickness unto Death will evolve from our conceptual work.

In Kierkegaard’s view, the self-relation of despair is based first and foremost on the fact that it always arises from the person in despair, regardless of what that person may trace his despair back to.⁶ Therefore, as it says in The Sickness unto Death, the outside can at most be an occasion for our being in despair, but never its source that, rather, has to be the so-called self. In any case, this assumption goes beyond a mere premise if by that we understand a thesis which is implausible prima facie and therefore may function only as a hypothesis until it is verified. For, as will be shown in detail, it is evident that despair at least also arises from the subject. A presupposition in the sense of an implausible supposition only consists in the idea that despair arises only from the subject. This is confirmed by authentic despair, in which the source becomes the subject matter. An adequate consciousness of the despair arising from the self evolves only—according to its diagnostician—if the person in despair reflects on himself. Even such a statement is valid, with the qualification that it is wrong as soon as it is linked with the view that, to be aware of his condition, the person in despair needs to reflect on nothing but himself. Incidentally, the concrete self-relation, which characterizes authentic despair per se, must not be confused with the self-relation which characterizes the despair over oneself mentioned above, a special form of authentic despair. Kierkegaard’s talk of a despair over oneself is fraught with a variety of equivocations. He can assert the originality of this form of despair⁷ only because he traces it back to a completely different one. In fact, despair over oneself coincides with the despair that objectifies its source in that it, too, is not immediate despair but constitutes an advanced stage in the subject’s history of suffering, still to be classified more precisely. But if I may again express myself metaphorically, the two forms of despair are written into the self-relation in an entirely different manner. The despairing person or, more precisely, the person in despair who recognizes himself as a source of his condition relates to himself in a way that is itself not in despair. For, by becoming aware of himself, he takes a first step on the path that can lead to his healing. The person who despairs over himself, on the other hand, has a self-relation that is beset by his despair. But the desperation of his relation to himself is nothing peculiar only to him. What is peculiar to him consists merely of the desperation of that which he relates to in despair. According to Kierkegaard, that the self-relation as such is in despair constitutes the original fact in any despair, in every authentic as well as in every inauthentic despair. That factum is in principle not identical with the fact that all despair has its source in the self, but does belong with it. Both define the sense in which it can be said that, for Kierkegaard, all despair is enclosed within the circle of self-relation. Thus, both also constitute the content of the newly envisaged premise. Therefore, there is no more reason to suppose that the thesis about the fundamental desperation of the self-relation breaks down into a pure premise than there is reason to suppose the assessment that all despair originates in the self does. No despair seems to be possible without the desperation of the self-relation, even if it is more than what is lodged in it.

To some extent, Kierkegaard’s interpretation already closes off the phenomenon by reducing despair to the desperation of the self-relation. It closes it off doubly in the way described by excluding everything to do with despair that goes beyond the desperation of the self-relation and by including a deficiency of the self’s relating to itself, which is not really despair. For, strictly speaking, that is, Kierkegaard does not even start with despair but with such a deficiency, namely such that he also subsumes its not-despaired instantiations under despair.⁸ Even so, he reduces the deficient self-relation as far as that is concerned. He limits it initially to willing and then to being, that is, to willing to be and its negation. This is proved by the result reached by the immanent critique of his doctrine of the failure to accomplish that synthesis that constitutes being human. Even if the failure to accomplish that synthesis is caused by the fact that we do not will to be what we are as humans and therefore will to be what as humans we are not, there is, according to Kierkegaard, no relating to oneself in despair or considered to be in despair that would be anything other than this willing to be or willing not to be. The desperation of the relation to oneself coincides with the fact that one wills in despair to be oneself or wills in despair not to be oneself. More precisely: it is only what it is, real desperation, as long as it can be shown to be the desperation of to will or not to will to be oneself, that of a willing which—as a willing of what is impossible to obtain—is undoubtedly in despair.

We are now in a position to answer the still open question of whether the premise of the transcending critique is more elementary than the one exposed in the immanent critique. If the self-relation, to whose desperation Kierkegaard reduces all despair, can for its part be traced back to that desperation he explicates in terms of being and willing, then the self-relation may be traced back even further to the one which the desperation explained in terms of being and willing, may be reduced, that is, to the fact that in despair we do not will to be what we are. In this respect, the premise that despair is at home in the self-relation and nowhere else is not more elementary than the premise Kierkegaard makes by starting with this not willing to be. In another sense, however, it is more elementary indeed. It is more elementary on the level of a pre-understanding that has, always already, marked out the only field in which substantive decisions can be made, including the decision for the primacy of not willing to be. This decision is already preceded by the decision to admit to the competition for primacy only forms of self-relation that are deficient because the called-for willing to be does not materialize. To be sure, in no case does a malformed relation to oneself suffice for admission. Rather, it must also be able to be identified as a failure to comply with the demand for willing to be. Linguistically, the admission criteria can be read in both forms of authentic despair, in whose definition none of the three elements of “self,” “being,” and “willing” may be l...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• First Study: The Existential Dialectical Basic Assumption of Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Despair
• Second Study: On the Transcending Critique of Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Despair
• Summarizing Conclusion: Dialectic in The Sickness unto Death
• Notes
• Index