 Seren Kierkegaard wrote one of the most remarkable, theistic, existentialist works of the 19th century. The sickness unto death is famed for the depth and acuity of its psychological insights. Writing under the pseudonym Antiochlimacus, Kierkegaard explores the concept of despair. Despair is a deeper expression for anxiety, which is a not wanting to be oneself. It is a misrelation that arises in the self when one cannot balance the eternal God. Although Kierkegaard was a Christian, he was a heavy critic of the Danish established church. He was solely focused on the individual relationship with God. The full title of the book is The Sickness unto Death, a Christian psychological exposition for edification and awakening. One of the key things one has to get used to when reading Kierkegaard is his use of irony. His hero was Socrates. Throughout the book, Kierkegaard uses double meaning in a comedic way. The sickness unto death is actually considered to be a self-help book, a genre that was unusual back in the day as it was frowned upon by scholars. The book is centered in being oneself and individual. Kierkegaard wants us to be who we are. In the introduction, he explains the meaning behind the sickness unto death, comparing it to the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. For the natural man or the atheist, the sickness which he refers to as unto death is a resistance to the belief in God. It is the inclination to accept that death is indeed the end, which can bring a sense of meaninglessness. For the Christian, there is no sickness unto death in the atheistic sense, as he has something eternal, earthly suffering as a temporary inconvenience on the way to eternal life. However, they experience the true sickness unto death, which is the fear that their faith is not sufficient to bring them eternal life, giving way to despair. The book is a psychological exposition with Christianity as its background and as intended for edification and awakening. In the widest sense, a sickness is a disturbance in what would otherwise be a state of general well-being. The sickness which is the topic of Kierkegaard's work is mental. He describes it as a sickness of the spirit. His notion of mental disturbance as sickness unto death comes from one's personal choice. One is responsible for catching the illness. The sickness comes to a crisis in the form of a choice between well-being, true salvation and a fully conscious rejection of Christianity. The book presents a step-by-step progression towards this crisis, from a state in which the sufferer is not even aware of the sickness. The principle focuses the raising of the level of a person's awareness of the urgency of the choice. The human being is spirit, but what is spirit? Spirit is self, but what is the self? The self is a relation which relates to itself, or that in the relation which is its relating to itself. The self is not the relation, but the relation relating to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two terms, looked at in this way, a human being is not yet a self. So if you were to read this as a sample of what to expect of the book, it is quite likely that you'd put the book back on the shelf in no time. But don't get too far ahead, they simply function as a table of contents for the book. His point is to prove that man really isn't a self. For Kierkegaard the self is not an abstract idea, but rather best understood in the concept of relationship, specifically with man and God. It is not a relationship of the self, for that would mean us being independent from God. Man must be in a relationship with God, such that he must stand before him in truth. Only then can one achieve the infinite self. This is at the heart of Kierkegaard's thinking. The notion of God is paradoxical and too absurd to be defended with rational arguments. It is a matter of faith, and it is the highest form of human life that frees us from despair. It is not our goal to become aware of the self, but rather to stand before God transparently as he puts it. We're the only self that exists being God's self, the self that overwhelms our self. The closer to God one is, the more of a self. However you can have the conception of God and have your back turn to God, but the conception of God is an extraordinarily strong requirement of selfhood. The more we try to become a self, the more independent we become of God. Kierkegaard's idea of trying to define himself is another one of his ironies, as it goes against his general thesis. It is likely intended as to produce frustration in one who believes he can figure out his self alone. A central feature of Kierkegaard's account of despair is the inability of a person to manufacture his own identity. Something essential is missing, something that would prevent you from simply demolishing the ideal and beginning all over again with a new ideal. Sometimes a person lacks something eternally firm. The message of the book of its account of despair is that we are all more or less in despair. By man trying to become his own self, he becomes an imitation. Even if he succeeded in becoming a new self, he would fail to become his true self and he despairs. He'd be like a king without a country. And if he remains his own self, he also despairs because he wants to become a new self and cannot. There are three kinds of despair, being unconscious in despair of having a self. This is an inauthentic despair because it is born out of ignorance. One is unaware that one has a self, separate from its finite reality. Then we have two authentic kinds of despair, not wanting in despair to be oneself, a state of awareness of the self but which is only in finite or immediate terms and wanting in despair to be oneself. A type of demonic despair, the most heightened form of it in which one accepts the eternal but refuses to accept the self that one in reality is, the self that one is in love. Kierkegaard's notion of despair has two principal components. The first is a set of polarities, infinite and finite, freedom and necessity, eternal and temporal. The book starts off by saying that a human being is a synthesis of these factors and must remain in balance. The life of a person who gets lost in the infinite without a counterbalance in the finite is given over to imagination while a person who has nothing of the infinite lives a totally unimaginative everyday life. Imagination must be applied to something specific or everyday life must become the workplace of the imagination. Similarly, to have a freedom or possibility not counterbalanced by necessity is to treat all projects as though they were accomplished at the start while to have nothing of the possible is to see oneself bound to a chain of ongoing events that leaves no place for personal initiative. A healthy balance being one in which time and trouble are duly taken in the realization of possibilities. The third polarity, eternal and temporal, has to be treated apart. To become aware of oneself is to become aware of something eternal. The eternal represents a goal of human endeavor, a fundamental goal to achieving selfhood, to not be in despair to have reconciled these factors, existing in awareness of one's own self. But what is the self? This is the second main component of despair, the idea of the self not as something one becomes but as a relation which relates to itself. This self-relating synthesis is what Kierkegaard calls spirit. The eternal and the temporal allows us to see how we become progressively conscious of the imbalance of this relation and more particularly with the imbalance of the first two polarities. The more aware a person is of having an eternal aspect, the closer the goal of true selfhood, turning an imbalanced self into a balanced self. This despair however is not something that should be rooted out, from the point of spiritual development, there is actually something healthy about it. Spiritual development is bound to progress through a state of sickness. The only way out of escaping despair therefore seems to be to go through with it. While in the first part Kierkegaard describes despair and its factors to help the reader understand why it's a problem, in the second part he talks about despair in religious terms, that it is sin. This concept of sin is to be in despair before God or with the conception of God. Sin is a condition that may be overcome only by pursuing faith. He stresses that faith, not virtue, is the opposite of sin. This is crucial. He links the concepts of sin, faith and despair together, noting that faith is the solution to both sin and despair. Sin can range from a general indifference to religious matters to an outright rebellion against Christianity. Since the final paragraph provides the closest thing to an overall summary of the book, it may be helpful to think back over the book using the final paragraph as a key. The biggest danger that of losing oneself can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing. Every other loss, an arm, a leg, $5, a wife, etc. is bound to be noticed.