The Sickness unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’d like to give this 3.5 stars, but I guess since that’s not possible, let’s go with 3 stars, since the ending fell flat.
Kierkegaard follows the Hegelian dialectic through the realization of spirit from self. Different from other readings, but not incompatible, Kierkegaard notes that it is through God as man as the mediator that self is realized as spirit, that like Hegel, Jesus is the bridge for the insurmountable gap between man and God. What’s particularly compelling about this work is that Kierkegaard defines despair and sin as conditions of separation from God. For Kierkegaard there can be no other understanding than a relation grounded in God since God is all there is, from start to finish. We may question what it means to stand before God and accept God but with this reading, there can only be faith in acceptance since any other posturing is deceptive and a sin — since such deployments would seek to separate us from God.
So in this sense, all separation and struggle is immanent to the self, as the self is the only other position for which there can be any deception or posturing. On the one hand, this seems incredibly boring since it’s a basic dialectic form. But Kierkegaard is able to walk through a Christian conceptualization based on the work by an already very Christian philosopher.
I suppose in a way, he is detailing out his own situation in abstract, outlining for others, what he finds to be vanities of humanity. We would like to be seen a certain way, understood a certain way, and often this even before us in the eyes of God, a posture we would like to hold to be genuine, never realizing that our own wishes for a particular understanding belie our unacknowledged desires for self acknowledgement and self acceptance. In that sense, complete acknowledgement and truthfulness about who we are is only possible in the face of an all knowing, all seeing deity who is witness to even the dark depths of our soul. I suppose this is perhaps, a great function of bringing God into our lives, that we cannot lie to ourselves and must come to realize our own imperfections so that we can be better people.
This last part may not be in Kierkegaards book. I am not Christian though, nor do I seek to be Christian, but Kierkegaard makes no promises about what sickness unto death can lead us to; the absolute defiance of not-believing in God despite the option being there constantly. Instead, he leaves this off, not mentioning what comes after, perhaps because he is not there either, although for him, such despair is an all consuming struggle from which the only reprieve can be to leave it be and move on to better things.
I think if you are struggling in your life and need to find a resolve, this book could work for you in the sense that you may come to some kind peace, knowing your despair is not alone and that it is, in a very universe sense, a mode, a choice that you made for yourself. Although the solution in this book may not be one you find useful, as I did not, you may not want to read it as it kind of doesn’t really speak to you. But you wouldn’t know if it did or not though, unless you read it.
So it’s probably worth reading if you are depressed or need some guidance at least for a while. All in all, it’s not a thick book, so why not?
