The Sickness Unto Death :: The forms without regard to consciousness (Part 5)

The person who gets lost in possibility soars with the boldness of despair; but the person for whom all has become necessary strains his back on life, bent down with the weight of despair

Within the introduction we identified that for most humans life is lived towards death. We orientate our lives as though death is the end. For the Christian however the picture is reframed; death is not the end of the self and there is something eternal in man. This realisation that the picture of what we are is incomplete is what it means to become eternally conscious. To realise that who I am is not defined by my temporality alone. The self I have inhabited thus far, is an incomplete picture of what I really am.

The more conscious I am that there is something eternal in man, that death is not the end, the more inclined [Will] I am to live differently. Consciousness plays an important role within Kierkegaards concept of the self. However this self that I am in this conscious moment is not present until it is brought into existence by becoming it. Put differently, who I am is not an abstraction, it is something concrete that I embody in the world. To not embody this self that I am before God; to live inauthentically as though temporality is all there is, is to despair.

Kierkegaard proposes that We can deduce the forms of despair by reflecting upon how the self is constituted. He begins with the forms of despair that relate to the self synthesis:

1. Despair under the aspect of finitude/infinitude

(i) Infinitude’s despair is to lack finitude

Fantasy is the faculty by which man represents himself to himself; What he imagines himself to be. My feelings, thoughts and will are an abstraction. A literary description of those real world experiences. In this way imagination is a reflection of what I could be; the possible self that I consider myself to be. As such the risk here is that infinitude leads me away from what I am into the endless possible me's I could become. My feelings become detached and volatile, my thoughts do not lead to self knowledge, and my will subtlely leads me away from myself.

(ii) Finitude’s despair is to lack infinitude

Finitudes despair is narrowness; to percieve onself as the same as all others. To become a clone, a copy, a number indistinguishable from the herd. It is the exchange of selfhood for performance and success. There is no challenge or difficulty with the self because he allows what he is to be worn away in exchange for an easy life. To sacrifice the self to avoid payment in the disagreeable consequences of decisive action.

2. Despair viewed under the aspect of possibility/necessity

(i) Possibility’s despair is to lack necessity

For a self to become itself is must have the freedom of possibility. For the despair of possibility is that I never become what I imagine myself to be. It is the movement that when united with necessity is what I am. For actuality is the unity of possibility and necessity. Possibility is the offer of a treat to a child; the child agrees but will the parents [necessity] consent also?

(ii) Necessity’s despair is to lack possibility

To lack possibility means that in the current moment, humanly speaking nothing is possible. But the christian knows that with God all things are possible, and the escape here is faith. The means of my redemption is not my concern. There is always possibility because with God all things are possible. It impossible to breath necessity alone, it is suffocating.