The Sickness Unto Death

Søren Kierkegaard

The ideas

28 ideas. Scroll sideways for the next one.

• You already know a smaller version of this. A day you cannot stand being the person who has to walk through it. You want out of you, not out of the world. That wish is treated as a sickness of the spirit.

• Christian teaching here has to sound like a doctor talking at a bedside. Strict enough for a trained ear. Close enough that the sick person is never forgotten.

• It is not heroism to be taken in by the pure idea of humanity. The rare thing is to venture wholly to be yourself, this definite person, alone before the face of God.

• Death is not the last thing, if the one who is resurrection comes to the grave. Want, pain, grief, even dying: none of these is the sickness unto death.

• Man is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self.

• You are not a thing you own. You are a relation that has to relate to itself, and that relation was set up by another. Left alone, the self cannot rest.

• Health is this: by relating to yourself and by willing to be yourself, you rest transparently in the Power that posited you. That is also the definition of faith. It returns at the end in the same words.

• Despair has two shapes that look opposite. You do not will to be yourself. Or you do will to be yourself, as if you had made yourself. Both want the same thing underneath.

• Every form of despair wants to be rid of the self you are. Even the defiant form, which looks like a will to be yourself, traces back to that same wish.

• On the contrary, the torment of despair is precisely this, not to be able to die.

• This sickness does not end in the grave. There is no last breath that finishes it. Death is not a way out of it.

• Almost no one is free of it. A disquiet you will not name. A dread of something you will not meet. You can carry it the way a person carries a disease they have not yet felt.

• One form runs out into the infinite and never comes home. Feeling, knowing, willing, all go fantastic. You evaporate into possibility and never become a self.

• The greatest danger, that of losing one’s own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing.

• The other way is to shrink. You become useful, likeable, successful, and somehow smaller. The world may praise you for the shrinking. That is how the loss stays quiet.

• Possibility without necessity is another evaporation. One imagined life, then another, then another. You never land. The self tires itself out on lives it will not choose.

• When necessity has closed the windows, the cry is for possibility. The philistine life is spiritlessness in the literal sense. It sits inside probability and calls that wisdom.

• The mildest despair does not know it is despair. It gets through the day with plans and no drama. Spiritlessness can look like health from the street.

• A sharper form knows something is wrong and blames the world. The talk stays on a lost job, a closed door, a love that ended. The real loss is of the eternal. That loss does not get named.

• Then the self turns inward and keeps the door shut. It would rather sit with its own torment than become a self among others. This can look like pride. It is still a refusal to be the self it is.

• Defiance is the other pole. The self would rather be itself in pain than take itself back from the Power that constituted it. The ambitious man who would be Caesar, and is not, cannot bear to be the man who failed.

• Despair is not a mood you wait out, and willing to be yourself is not the whole cure. The self has to rest in the Power that set it up. Drop that last relation and the diagnosis changes into something else.

• Sin is: before God in despair not to will to be oneself, or before God in despair to will to be oneself.

• Socrates said sin is ignorance: if you knew the good, you would do it. The Christian claim is harder. You can know and still not will. The trouble is in the will.

• Offense is the defense Christianity keeps against being turned into a system. A particular person, existing directly before God, with a sin that concerns God: speculation will not swallow that.

• Sin does not stay in the past as a finished act. Remaining in it is new sin, and so is despairing over your sin, despairing of forgiveness, or calling the whole thing a lie.

• Faith is: that the self in being itself and in willing to be itself is grounded transparently in God.

• Relating to yourself, willing to be yourself, grounded transparently in the Power that constituted you: that rest is faith. It is not a feeling you wait for.

The book in short

In plain words

You can lose an arm, and people notice. Lose a little money, and they notice that too. Lose yourself, and the room stays quiet. The world is not set up to ask whether you are still in there.

Who notices?

That quiet loss is the thing this diagnosis is about. Not a sad mood after a bad week. A sickness in the self. You can carry it the way a person carries a disease they have not felt yet. From the street, it can look like you are fine.

The grave that was not the end

There is a story at the start. A man named Lazarus has been dead four days. His friend stands at the grave. People had heard him say this sickness is not unto death. Then they watched Lazarus die. He calls him out anyway.

Even if he had not, the claim would still stand. If the one who is life itself is there, dying is not the last thing. Hunger, pain, grief, even death: none of these is the sickness unto death. The worse thing is a death you cannot finish. You go on. You cannot get out of being you.

A real doctor talks at a bedside. Strict enough for someone who knows the art. Close enough that the sick person is never forgotten. That is the tone of what follows. Despair is the sickness, not the medicine.

Not a thing you own

You own a bike. It can sit in a shed. It can be sold. You are not a bike.

A self is not a thing sitting inside you like a stone. It is a relation that has to relate to itself. There is a body and a life in time, and there is a life that reaches past this afternoon. Those two have to hold together. When they do not, you are not yet a self. You are the work of becoming one.

You did not set that work up by yourself. Something else set you up. Call it the Power that made you. Left alone, the self cannot rest. Health looks like this: you relate to yourself, you will to be yourself, and you rest in the Power that made you. That rest is called faith.

Two ways of running

Despair has two shapes that look opposite.

In one, you do not will to be yourself. You want out of you. Not out of the world. Out of the person who has to walk through the day.

In the other, you do will to be yourself, as if you had made yourself. You would rather write your own life, even a painful one, than take yourself as given.

Underneath, both want the same thing. To be rid of the self you are.

The man who had to be Caesar

Picture a man whose whole watchword is this: Caesar, or nothing. He does not become Caesar. He despairs.

What he cannot stand is not the missing crown. What he cannot stand is the self that failed. If he had become Caesar, he would have been rid of himself that way. He did not. He still cannot get rid of himself. That is the formula for every shape of this sickness. To despair over yourself is to want to be rid of yourself.

The torment is not that you will die of it. The torment is that you cannot die of it. When death is the biggest danger, you hope for life. When a worse danger shows up, you hope for death. This sickness will not give you even that.

Too big, too small, too many lives

One way of running is to get too big. Feeling, knowing, wanting, all fly up and never come home. Life stays in maybe. The self evaporates and calls the fog a life.

The other way is to get too small. Useful, liked, successful, and somehow smaller. You disappear into the others. The world may praise you for the shrinking. That is how the loss stays quiet.

A third way is too many lives. One imagined future, then another, then another. You never land. You never pick. The self wears itself out on lives it will not choose.

And there is the closed-window life. Probability is as far as it will go. Possibility is locked up like a prisoner. When a person is about to faint, people shout for water. When a person is about to despair, the cry is for possibility. Without it you cannot breathe.

The palace and the kennel

The mildest despair does not know its name. It gets through the day with plans and no drama.

Imagine a huge palace. High rooms. A life big enough for a self. The person who owns it does not live in the rooms. He lives in a barn beside it, or a dog kennel, or at most the porter’s lodge. Say so, and he is offended. He would rather finish the system than notice where he actually sleeps.

Spiritlessness can look like health from the street.

The closed door

A sharper form knows something is wrong and blames the world. The talk stays on a job that ended, a door that closed, a love that stopped. The real loss is of the eternal, and that loss does not get named. He thinks he is in despair over something earthly. Behind him, the larger loss is already done.

Then the self turns inward and shuts the door. It would rather sit with its own torment than come out and be a self among others. This can look like pride. Someone who saw the hidden life and said, you are proud, would not be believed. It is still a refusal to be the self it is.

Defiance is the far end of that road. The self would rather be itself in pain than take itself back from the Power that made it. It would rather be the writer of its own misery than accept itself as given.

Before God it has another name

Up to here the measure has been human. Other people. What a self looks like next to other selves.

Now the measure changes. The self stands before God. A child who has only had parents to measure himself by becomes a self in a new way when the measure is larger than the house. Before God, the self is not smaller. It becomes more real. And despair gets another name.

That name is sin. Not first a list of bad acts. Before God, in despair, not to will to be yourself. Or before God, in despair, to will to be yourself as if you had made yourself.

Socrates said sin is not knowing. If you knew the good, you would do it. That is worth hearing. The harder claim is this. You can know, and still not will. The trouble is in the will.

Not the same as being good

People think the opposite of this sickness is virtue. Being good, as people count good. That is a human measure. It does not know that all of this is before God.

The opposite is faith: relating to yourself, willing to be yourself, resting openly in God.

Sin does not stay in the past as a finished act. Remaining in it is new sin, and so is using your guilt as a fortress, too proud to be forgiven, or refusing forgiveness itself, or calling the whole thing a lie.

Relating to yourself, willing to be yourself, resting in the Power that made you: that rest is faith. It is not a feeling you wait for.

The long read

Christ stands at a grave in Bethany. Lazarus has been dead four days. The disciples heard him say this sickness is not unto death, and then they watched the man die. He calls him out anyway. Even if he had not, the claim would still stand. If the one who is resurrection and life is there, death is not the last thing. Want, pain, grief, even dying: none of these is the sickness unto death. The worse thing is a death you cannot die.

That is the opening move, and everything after it is a diagnosis of that worse thing. The name for it is despair. Not the mood that comes and goes after a loss. A sickness in the self.

A doctor at the bedside. The writer who signs it is Anti-Climacus, a Christian ideality Kierkegaard would not put his own name under. The form of the treatise, he says, will strike some readers as too strict to be edifying and too edifying to be scientific. He will not apologize for the mix. Everything Christian must sound like a physician talking beside a sick-bed: exact enough for someone trained in the art, and never forgetful that a sick person is lying there. Despair is conceived as the sickness, not as the cure. So dialectical is despair. In Christian speech, death names the worst spiritual wretchedness, and yet the cure is to die, to die from. Dying from the world is the opposite of the sickness that cannot die.

The rare heroism is not to be taken in by the pure idea of humanity, or to stand marvelling at world-history. The Christian heroism (and perhaps it is rarely to be seen) is to venture wholly to be oneself, as an individual man, this definite individual man, alone before the face of God.

What a self is. Man is spirit. Spirit is the self. The self is not a thing you have, the way you have a body or a name. The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, the temporal and the eternal, freedom and necessity. A synthesis is a relation between two. So regarded, man is not yet a self. The self begins when the relation relates to itself.

That self-relation does not posit itself. It is constituted by another. If the human self had set itself up, there would be only one despair: not willing to be oneself, wanting to get rid of oneself. Because the self is derived, there are two forms. In despair at not willing to be oneself. In despair at willing to be oneself. The second is still a way of not taking oneself from the Power that constituted the whole relation. Left to itself, the self cannot reach rest.

The formula for health, which is also the formula for faith, is stated before the tour of the sickness even begins. This then is the formula which describes the condition of the self when despair is completely eradicated; by relating itself to its own self and by willing to be itself the self is grounded transparently in the Power which posited it.

An advantage that is also perdition. Is despair an advantage or a drawback? Abstractly, an immense advantage. The possibility of this sickness is man’s advantage over the beast, more essential than walking upright, because it implies the loftiness of being spirit. To be able to despair is an infinite advantage. To be in despair is not only misery. It is perdition. The gap between the possibility and the actuality is the whole Christian distinction: the natural man may not even notice the sickness; the Christian is to be healed of it.

The sickness that cannot die. People imagine despair as something you die of, or as something death would finish. The opposite is true. On the contrary, the torment of despair is precisely this, not to be able to die. It is like the moribund who struggles with death and cannot die. To be sick unto death is not to be able to die, and not as though there were hope of life. The hopelessness is that even the last hope, death, is not available. When death is the greatest danger, one hopes for life. When a still more dreadful danger appears, one hopes for death. Despair is the disconsolateness of not being able to die. Dying means it is all over. Dying the death means to live to experience death. The sickness has attacked the self, and the self cannot be buried.

The ambitious man whose watchword was Either Caesar or nothing does not become Caesar, and he despairs. What he cannot endure is not the missing crown. What he cannot endure is the self that did not become Caesar. If he had become Caesar he would have been rid of himself in desperation. Not becoming Caesar, he still cannot get rid of himself. To despair over oneself, in despair to will to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair. The defiant form, which looks like a will to be oneself, traces back to the first.

Almost no one is well. A physician might say that almost no one is in perfect health. So almost no one is free of despair. In the inmost parts there dwells a disquietude, a perturbation, a discord, an anxious dread of an unknown something, or of something one does not dare to make acquaintance with. A man may go about carrying a sickness of the spirit the way another carries a disease he has not yet felt. Outside of Christendom, no one is not in despair. Inside it, no one is free unless he is a true Christian, and if he is not quite that, he is somewhat in despair after all. This is not a head-count. It is a diagnostic claim: if a self is a relation that must rest in the Power that posited it, then any self not so resting is in despair, whether it knows or not.

Lost in the infinite, lost in the finite. The forms of despair can be read off the synthesis. One pair is infinitude and finitude. The self is the conscious synthesis of both, and its task is to become itself, which can be performed only by a relationship to God. To become oneself is to become concrete: not finite instead of infinite, not infinite instead of finite.

Infinitude’s despair is due to the lack of finitude. Feeling, knowing, willing, all go fantastic. The self infinitizes and does not return. It evaporates into the abstract, the boundless, the merely possible, and calls the fog a life. The God-relationship infinitizes, and that too can be taken in vain: a man knows he exists before God and uses the knowledge to float, not to become a definite person. Such a man can still marry, have children and win honor, and no one may notice that he lacks a self. The greatest danger, that of losing one’s own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing. Every other loss, of an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, is noticed.

Finitude’s despair is due to the lack of infinitude. The self shrinks. It becomes useful, likeable, successful, and somehow smaller. It loses itself not by soaring but by being worn down into a number, a trade, a respectable instance of the others. This form is hardly ever noticed either. The world may praise you for the shrinking. That is how the loss stays quiet.

Too much possibility, too little. The other pair is possibility and necessity. A self with no possibility is in despair. A self with no necessity is in despair. Possibility without necessity is evaporation of another kind. One imagined life, then another, then another. The self becomes an abstract possibility which tires itself out with flitting. It never lands. What it lacks, on inspection, is necessity: the limit that would make one of those lives its own.

Necessity without possibility is the other pole. When a person is about to faint, people shout for water. When a person is about to despair, the cry is: procure me possibility. Possibility is the only saving remedy. Without it a man cannot draw breath. Prayer, in this telling, is to breathe, and possibility is for the self what oxygen is for the lungs. God is that all things are possible. The person who has really had dealings with God is the one who has been helped to possibility when there was none.

Philistinism or triviality also lacks possibility, and in a spiritless way. Determinism and fatalism are spiritual despair. Philistinism is spiritlessness in the literal sense. Probability is as far as it will go, and inside that fence the possible is allowed a tiny range. The philistine thinks possibility is under control, the way a jailer has a prisoner. The life has taken itself captive.

The despair that does not know its name. Consciousness is the decisive criterion of the self. The more consciousness, the more self; the more consciousness, the more will, and the more will the more self. A man who has no will at all is no self. So despair must also be viewed under consciousness: whether the despairer knows.

The minimum of despair is a state which, by a sort of innocence, does not even know that there is such a thing. The mildest despair does not know it is despair. It gets through the day with plans and no drama. Unconsciousness of despair is like unconsciousness of dread: the spiritless sense of security, with dread at the bottom of it. A man may live in an immense high-vaulted palace of spirit and personally inhabit a barn alongside it, or a dog kennel, or at most the porter’s lodge. Call his attention to the fact and he is offended. He has no fear of being under a delusion, if only he can get the system completed by means of the delusion. Spiritlessness can look like health from the street.

Weakness. When despair becomes conscious, the first great form is not willing to be oneself: the despair of weakness. Its commonest shape is despair over the earthly, or over something earthly. The talk stays on a lost job, a closed door, a love that ended. To despair is to lose the eternal, and of this he does not speak, does not dream. The loss of the earthly as such is not the cause of despair, and yet it is of this he speaks. He thinks he is in despair over something earthly. Behind him, unobserved, the eternal is what he has lost.

A deeper weakness is despair of the eternal, or over oneself. The self has now become aware that the earthly thing was not the point. It turns inward. It keeps the door shut. Introversion, in this use, is the opposite of immediacy: a self that loves itself enough to hide, and would rather sit with its own torment than become a self among others. This can look like pride. Someone privy to the hidden life who said, this is pride, you are proud of yourself, would not be believed. It is still a refusal to be the self it is.

Defiance. The other pole is in despair to will to be oneself. The self has a kind of knowledge now, and uses it to construct a self of its own, as if it had posited itself. It would rather be itself in pain than take itself back from the Power that constituted it. This is the maximum of despair. The demonic tyrant who needs to talk to a fellow-man about his torment, and then must destroy the witness, is the extreme picture. Less extreme, and more common: the self that would rather be the author of its own misery than accept itself as given. The poet-existence belongs near here too, a self that relates to the exception, the thorn in the flesh, as its justifying secret, instead of humbling itself under the universal.

Before God, despair has another name. Part Second turns the whole diagnosis around a new qualification: before God. The self is no longer the merely human self, whose measure is man. It is the theological self, the self directly in the sight of God. A herdsman who were a self only in the sight of cows would be a very low self, and so would a ruler who is a self only in the sight of slaves. The child who has had only the parents to measure himself by becomes a self in a new way when the measure is God. And what an infinite reality this self acquires by being before God.

With that qualification, despair is sin. Sin is: before God in despair not to will to be oneself, or before God in despair to will to be oneself. The definition can seem too spiritual, because it does not start with murder, theft, unchastity. It does talk of them. Disobedience is self-assertion against God. But a definition of sin can never be too spiritual, unless it becomes so spiritual that it does away with sin. Sin is a determinant of spirit.

Socrates was not enough. The well-known Socratic definition is that sin is ignorance. If you knew the good, you would do it. The definition is always worthy of attention, and few people can existentially express ignorance about everything even for a month. The Christian claim does not toss Socrates out. It uses him to bring the other out sharply. You can know, and still not will. The trouble is in the will. Socrates does not have the devil, the willful no. Christianity does. That is why going further than Socratic ignorance is so often a way of not staying there, rather than a way of seeing more.

Sin is not a negation, a lack, a weakness that would vanish if you added knowledge. Sin is a position. It posits itself. That is why it cannot be explained as a simple minus in the account. Speculative thought wants to treat sin as a negation that the system can absorb. The Christian claim is that sin is a position before God, and that the system will not swallow it.

Offense. At the bottom of the opposition sin/faith lies the decisive Christian concept, before God, which stands in relation to the absurd, the paradox, the possibility of offense. Offense is Christianity’s defense against all speculation. The offense here is that a particular individual should have such a reality as existing directly in the sight of God, and that a man’s sin should concern God. Speculative philosophy never gets the particular man before God into its head. It can only universalize him fantastically.

Staying in it. Every state in sin is new sin. The state of being in sin is the new sin. The sinner at most recognizes each actual sin as a new one. Eternity, which keeps his accounts, registers the state itself. It has only two rubrics, and everything which is not of faith is sin. Every unrepented sin is a new sin. Most people are spirit once a week for one hour. That is a pretty bestial way of being spirit. Eternity is essential continuity and requires that a man be conscious of himself as spirit and have faith.

Then the continuation climbs. Despairing over one’s sin turns guilt into a fortress. The self would rather be itself in the wreckage than be forgiven. Despairing of the forgiveness of sins is offense at the offer itself, a definite position in the face of God’s pardon. The last form abandons Christianity outright, declares it falsehood, and becomes sin against the Holy Ghost: the highest potentiation, a war that has gone from evasion to attack.

Faith, not virtue. The opposite of sin is not virtue. That is in part a pagan view, content with a merely human measure, which does not know that all sin is before God. The opposite of sin is faith. Faith is: that the self in being itself and in willing to be itself is grounded transparently in God. The first formula returns as the last word. By relating itself to its own self and by willing to be itself, the self is grounded transparently in the Power which constituted it. And this, he says, is the definition of faith.

One real line. “Faith is: that the self in being itself and in willing to be itself is grounded transparently in God.” — Anti-Climacus, The Sickness Unto Death.

What didn’t hold. The formula of the self is translation-dependent. Danish forholde sig was rendered by Lowrie as a relation which relates itself to its own self, by Hong as a relation that relates itself to itself, and by Swenson as a self that is related to. The architecture is the same. Any English wording is a choice, not the original sentence.

That despair is universal is a diagnostic claim, not a prevalence study. It follows from the definition of the self, not from a count of unhappy people. Later psychology that treats despair as a mood, or as depression, is answering a different question.

Existentialism kept the diagnosis of inauthentic selfhood and often dropped the God-relation. That restatement is a reception, not this argument. The health-formula ends in the Power which posited the self. Without that last relation, willing to be oneself becomes a different cure, and in this argument it is one more form of despair.

Anti-Climacus is a pseudonym. Kierkegaard signed as editor, not as author. The later-religious pseudonym is not the ironist of Either/Or. Treating every sentence as Kierkegaard’s private confession, or as a secular manual of authenticity, both miss the form.

For the little ones

This book as stories to read aloud, each with a note for the grown-up.