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Video Description
The scariest way to lose yourself, Kierkegaard warned, is so quiet that no one notices — not even you. This first lecture from Academy of Ideas on Søren Kierkegaard introduces the father of existentialism and his razor-sharp account of the human condition. He saw each self as a tug-of-war between the infinite and the finite, possibility and necessity. And in that tension, freedom gives birth to anxiety, dread, and the quiet sickness of despair. The video follows him toward the truth that cannot simply be known — it must be lived.
Full Video Transcript
The biggest danger, wrote the 19th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing. Every other loss, an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc., is bound to be noticed.
As a philosopher, Kierkegaard was extremely interested with ideas such as freedom, anxiety, despair, and what it means to live as a genuine human being.
His thoughts on these topics were of great interest to the 20th century existentialists, such as Heidegger, Camus, and Sartre, which is why he is now often called the father of existentialism.
According to Kierkegaard, human beings are a synthesis of opposites.
One of these pairs of opposites he called the infinite and finite, writing,
For the self is a synthesis in which the finite is the limiting factor, and the infinite the expanding factor.
The infinite corresponds to possibility, to the capacity to envisage new thoughts and ideas, bring into existence new creations, change oneself and choose from innumerable potentialities.
The finite corresponds to actuality or necessity, to the concrete here and now, to one’s reality as a definite something in the world.
There is a compulsion to completely absorb oneself in either the finite or infinite,
for in doing so one abandons the responsibility of being a self.
To lose oneself in the finite is to live a life imprisoned in what one perceives as an inescapable environment where no alternatives exist.
Such an individual frequently becomes depressed, slavish, and dependent on others.
Finding safety and security by assimilating oneself into social, institutional, or familial networks,
The individual finds it too venturesome a thing to be himself
Far easier and safer to be like the others
To become an imitation, a number, a cipher in the crowd
To lose oneself in the infinite is to live as though life is nothing but a series of endless experiments
Different paths are sampled and personalities tried on for size
But no enduring choice or commitment ever made
One who is lost in the infinite is obsessed with who one can potentially become
Yet in reality never becomes anything, let alone a self
Now, if possibility outruns necessity, the self runs away from itself.
The self becomes an abstract possibility, which tries itself out with floundering in
the possible, but does not budge from the spot, not get to any spot, for precisely the
necessary is the spot.
To become one’s self is precisely a movement at the spot.
To be a self requires that one balance these opposing tensions.
It requires a recognition that innumerable possibilities lie before one, but that one
One must choose a definite course of action appropriate to the self which one truly is.
This requires vigilance, constant effort and much courage, and thus is the greatest task
there is.
To have a self, to be a self, is the greatest concession made to man, but at the same time
it is eternity’s demand upon him.
The weight of this greatest of all tasks elicits anxiety.
There are no manuals which guide one in the process of becoming a self, and no external
standards of success.
On the path to selfhood one must walk without meeting one single traveler.
The individual is left alone in this balancing act of human existence, and a dizziness and
disorientation rises up as he stares into the abyss of possibilities which confront
him.
Anxiety may be compared with dizziness.
He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy.
But what is the reason for this?
It is just as much in his own eyes as in the abyss.
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Apart from signifying a pathological state which one must strive to alleviate, Kierkegaard
posited existential anxiety as an essential requirement on the path to selfhood.
I will say that this is an adventure that every human being must go through, to learn
to be anxious.
Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.
Anxiety is a response to the awareness of one’s freedom, of one’s power to gaze
into the yawning abyss of possibilities and through an act of choice actualize one of
those potentialities.
It is a response to the recognition that one is ultimately responsible for oneself and
one’s future.
This awesome sense of freedom and responsibility is apprehended as simultaneously attractive
and repulsive, an ambivalence Kierkegaard called dread.
In dread there is the egoistic infinity of possibility, which does not tempt like a definite
choice, but alarms and fascinates with its sweet anxiety.
Lacking the strength and courage to endure the continual anxiety required to walk the
path of selfhood, most strive to alleviate their anxiety by choosing, on some level of
awareness, not to be a self.
Such a choice vaults one into a state of despair, a sickness of spirit, characterized by the
attempt to rid oneself of oneself, and thus do away with the responsibility of being a
self.
To despair over oneself, in despair to will to be rid of oneself.
This is the formula for all despair.
Despair takes many forms and is not necessarily accompanied by feelings of hopelessness and
depression. In fact, Kierkegaard thought one could seem in the best of health precisely
when the sickness is most dangerous. Such an individual would be wholly unconscious
of their despair, and thus in a most dangerous position. For a sickness can inflict the most
harm when one is unaware that one is even sick. The despairing man who is unconscious
of being in despair is, in comparison with him who is conscious of it, merely a negative
step further from the truth and from salvation. Unawareness is so far from removing despair
that on the contrary, it may be the most dangerous form of despair.
By unconsciousness, the despairing man is in a way secured, but to his own destruction,
against becoming aware, that is, he is securely in the power of despair.
While there are numerous ways in which an individual, through various forms of self-deception,
hides from his awareness the fact that he lacks a self, Kierkegaard believed despair
over the earthly to be the commonest sort of despair.
Despair over the earthly arises when an individual attempts to compensate for their lack of self
by latching their identity onto something external in the world,
for example, a job, relationship, one’s family wealth, or one’s looks.
If the individual loses this external good, he thinks his subsequent misery and
emptiness is a result of such a loss, not realizing that an inner hollowness was
there all along.
He lacked a self and tried to compensate by projecting his identity onto
something external and finite,
an attempt which is bound to fail every time. An individual in despair despairs
over something. So it seems for a moment, but only for a moment.
In the same moment, the true despair, or despair in its true form, shows itself.
In despairing over something, he really despaired over himself,
and now he wants to get rid of himself. For example, when the ambitious man whose
slogan is
either Caesar or nothing does not get to be Caesar, he despairs over it.
But this also means something else. Precisely because he did not get to be
Caesar,
he now cannot bear to be himself. Consequently,
He does not despair because he did not get to be Caesar, but despairs over himself because he did not get to be Caesar.
If the individual in misery over an earthly loss has his fortunes reversed, he will return to his previous health,
and his despair will return into the darkness of his unconscious.
If outward help comes, then life returns to the despairer.
He begins where he left off. He had no self and a self he did not become, but he continues to live on.
While Kierkegaard thought to be in despair the worst misfortune and misery,
He also maintained that to be able to despair is an infinite advantage, for it implies that one potentially has a self.
The key factor is whether one is conscious of their despair or not.
The more consciousness, the more intense the despair, but the more consciousness, the closer one is to eradicating despair and living a genuine existence appropriate for a human being.
As a young man at the age of 22, Kierkegaard was struggling with the tensions of human existence, falling into the depths of nihilism and despair.
At this time he wrote in his journal of finding joy and refreshment in contemplating the great men who have found that precious stone for which they sell all, even their lives, proceeding on their chosen course without vacillating, absorbed in themselves and in working toward their higher goal.
Finding this precious stone or higher goal became for Kierkegaard an all-consuming passion and the pathway to selfhood which he recognized as absent in the lives of too many.
The truth which Kierkegaard was thirsting for was not an abstract truth divorced from his existence as an individual.
Such objective or conceptual truths are useful if one strives for detached intellectual or scientific understanding.
But when it comes to what it means to be a human being, and how to successfully navigate the existential tensions of life, such objective truths are meaningless.
What good would it do me, wrote Kierkegaard, if truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I recognized her or not?
Instead, the truth Kierkegaard was seeking was subjective or existential truth, a truth embodied in the inwardness of the individual, expressed through one’s passionate commitment to a certain idea or style of living.
The inward deepening in and through existing is truth.
While objective truths are known, subjective truths are lived and experienced.
With respect to subjective truths, if a person does not become what he understands, then he does not understand it either.
Kierkegaard observed that practically everyone’s life was stricken with some form of despair,
engaged in styles of living inadequate for genuine selfhood.
Through his voluminous writings, he attempted to convince his readers they lacked subjectivity or inwardness,
that their values, attitudes, and inner relationship with reality was destitute, fertile for breeding despair.
Kierkegaard’s psychological sense was keen enough to recognize that this was no easy task.
He could not directly condemn the way of life of his readers,
as most react to such attacks with defense mechanisms, justification tactics, and even anger.
Direct communication would be of no help in this project.
Kierkegaard understood a more subtle form of communication was needed.
No, an illusion can never be destroyed directly,
and only by indirect means can it be radically removed.
That is, one must approach from behind the person who was under an illusion.
Kierkegaard utilized a technique termed indirect communication.
Instead of explicitly condemning faulty ways of life
and imposing his own ideas about how to live on the reader,
he bypassed their defense mechanisms by stimulating them to think for themselves
about their inward relationship with reality and the alternative life paths available.
In this sense, if the reader came to see the barrenness of his inner mode of being
and decided to proceed along a different path more conducive to a genuine existence,
it would appear as if such an awakening was initiated solely by the reader himself.
To stop a man on the street and stand still while talking to him
is not so difficult as to say something to a passerby in passing,
without standing still and without delaying the other,
without attempting to persuade him to go the same way,
but giving him instead an impulse to go precisely his own way.
Such is the relation between one existing individual and another
when the communication concerns the truth as existential inwardness.
Kierkegaard employed indirect communication through the use of pseudonyms.
In the majority of his works, he does not write under his own name, but through the guise of various fictional characters
who speak from the perspective of one immersed in a given life view.
Often even attempting to justify a way of life, Kierkegaard himself thought inadequate for selfhood.
In the pseudonymous works, there is not a single word which is mine.
I have no opinion about these works except as a third person,
no knowledge of their meaning except as a reader, not the remotest private relation to them.
Writing as different fictional characters living out certain ways of life
enabled Kierkegaard to force his readers to try on different life views as one would try on clothes,
detaching themselves from their own lives and immersing themselves in different potentialities.
Such a technique of becoming objective towards oneself
and subjective towards other styles of life, Kierkegaard called mastered irony.
Most men are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others,
frightfully objective sometimes, but the task is precisely to be objective toward
oneself
and subjective toward all others. Armed with indirect communication,
Kierkegaard analyzed what he thought to be the three general styles of living
or spheres of existence possible for the individual, the aesthetic,
the ethical, and the religious. These spheres and their appropriateness for
the eradication of despair
and cultivation of a self will be summarized in the next video.
To conclude this video and bridge into the next, it is crucial to note that
that Kierkegaard was passionately committed to the idea that everyone must walk the path
to selfhood as a solitary or single individual. Yet he recognized that most are too cowardly
to endure the anxiety and dread this elicits, and therefore that most will seek to lose
their self and sense of responsibility by immersing themselves in a crowd of others.
For every single individual who escapes into the crowd flees in cowardice from being a
single individual. As Kierkegaard wrote, it is far easier to emasculate oneself in a spiritual
sense and cling to the herd in order to be at least something than to stand alone, heeding
the eternal demand to become oneself.
For one of the greatest fears in the individual is that ultimately he is alone, and therefore
ultimately responsible for his life.
Deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety over the possibility of
being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the millions and millions
in this enormous household.
A person keeps this anxiety at a distance by looking at the many roundabout who are
related to him as kin and friends, but the anxiety is still there.
Source: Academy of Ideas