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The Sickness Unto Death
The 'sickness' which Kierkegaard's book refers to as 'unto death' is resistance to this belief. It is the inclination to accept that as far as the individual is concerned, death is indeed the end. Now why should Kierkegaard want to call that a sickness? After all, even in his own time there must have been people strong both in might and body who rejected the Christian teaching of sin and salvation, and who faced what they accepted as total extinction with equanimity. And today, of course, even in societies that once proudly professed Christian principles, the rejection of Christian belief--or
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About this work
The Sickness Unto Death is Soren Kierkegaard's 1849 study of despair, written under a pseudonym. Despair, he argues, is the sickness of a self out of right relation with itself, and nearly everyone has it, often without knowing. Dense and profound, it is a cornerstone of Christian existentialism and a startlingly modern map of inner unease.
About the author — Søren Kierkegaard
Soren Kierkegaard (1813 to 1855) was a Danish philosopher and theologian widely regarded as the first existentialist. He wrote, often under pseudonyms, about anxiety, despair, and the difficult freedom of becoming a genuine self.
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People also ask
What is The Sickness Unto Death about?
Despair, which Kierkegaard treats not as mere sadness but as a deep misrelation of the self to itself. He argues it is nearly universal and analyzes its forms with great precision.
What did Kierkegaard mean by the sickness unto death?
He meant despair: the condition of a self that will not be, or cannot be, fully itself. He calls it a sickness of the spirit deeper than any bodily illness.
Is it hard to read?
It is among Kierkegaard's most demanding works, dense and closely argued, but its insight into the structure of despair rewards the effort.