The Sickness of the Spirit
A Kierkegaardian Guide to the Ultimate Questions of Existence
Engaging with Søren Kierkegaard can never be a detached intellectual exercise; it is an encounter that often demands a significant personal and philosophical involvement. His work resists easy systematization, standing in stark contrast to the Hegelian philosophy of his time which sought a comprehensive rational understanding. Kierkegaard instead championed the subjective, the passionate, and the paradoxical aspects of existence. He confronts us with fundamental questions. What does it mean to be human? How can one live authentically as an individual when faced with social pressures and internal conflicts? And for Kierkegaard, a question inextricably linked to the others, what does it mean, existentially, to be a Christian? His writings, particularly the intense explorations in Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death, offer no complete, logical systems. Instead, they immerse the reader in paradox, unsettling the ground of both secular reason and complacent religiosity.
In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard, writing under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio, does not merely analyze the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. He reconstructs it through several variations, a method compelling the reader to move beyond observation and grapple with the internal pressure of Abraham’s anxiety. The stark narrative of God’s promise, Isaac’s late birth, and the subsequent command to sacrifice this very son becomes the ground for interrogating the collision between faith and ethics. Abraham is commanded by the absolute authority, God, to perform an act that represents the gravest ethical transgression, the killing of his own child.
From a conventional ethical or secular standpoint, the command appears monstrous and is easily dismissed as divine immorality. But Kierkegaard contends this misses the point, reflecting a modern tendency to judge the divine by human standards. This is a perspective alien to a worldview where God is by definition the highest good. The conflict therefore transcends a simple dichotomy between God and ethics. It becomes the individual’s absolute duty to God tearing against universal ethical norms. Kierkegaard affirms Abraham’s choice to follow his faith, presenting him as the “knight of faith.” This path necessitates what Kierkegaard calls the “teleological suspension of the ethical,” the possibility that an individual’s direct relationship with the Absolute, a higher telos, might demand suspending universal ethical obligations. This suspension is terrifying because it removes the safety of a shared moral understanding, leaving the individual radically alone before God.
Abraham as a result is fundamentally different from the tragic hero. The tragic hero’s sacrifices, while painful, remain intelligible and even commendable within the community’s ethical framework. Their greatness is recognizable. Abraham as the knight of faith stands apart not only from the tragic hero but also from what Kierkegaard calls the “knight of infinite resignation.” The knight of infinite resignation also makes a great movement, renouncing what they hold dearest in the finite world, just as Abraham might renounce Isaac. Through this act of renunciation, they achieve a kind of spiritual peace and self-sufficiency. This is already an immense spiritual achievement. The knight of faith however goes further. After making the movement of infinite resignation and accepting that retaining Isaac is impossible by any finite means, they then make a second movement. They believe “by virtue of the absurd” that they will receive him back. This second movement, grounded not in human possibility but in faith in God’s possibility, is what defines the knight of faith and makes their position a paradox that is unintelligible from a purely human or ethical point of view.
The knight of faith acts on a personal command that is unintelligible to the community. Their justification cannot be translated into the universal language of ethics. Abraham endures his ordeal in absolute isolation, predicated solely on his private relationship with God. This silence, this radical incommunicability, is a central point. It underscores Kierkegaard’s emphasis on subjectivity. The ultimate truths concerning an individual’s relationship with the Absolute cannot be objectively demonstrated or universally mediated; they must be lived inwardly. For Kierkegaard, this very isolation and unintelligibility is what elevates the knight of faith above other spiritual figures. Yet the paradox persists. How can an act that is ethically abhorrent become religiously validated?
Kierkegaard offers no straightforward resolution. He emphasizes instead that faith operates in a sphere beyond rational systematization. As he famously asserts, “faith begins precisely where thinking leaves off.” This is not mere credulity but a passionate subjective commitment, an act of will directed towards the Absolute, even when it defies ethical formalisms and rational justification. The claim that faith begins where reason ends might initially appear untenable, yet Kierkegaard posits it as a profound insight into the human condition. It marks the boundary where our finite understanding yields to an infinite possibility that is grasped through passion. This faith entails the complex double movement mentioned before, which is achieving infinite resignation and then embracing the absurd possibility that faith offers.
Kierkegaard also describes a profound “hiddenness” that characterizes the knight of faith. Unlike figures marked by overt piety, the knight of faith could be indistinguishable from any ordinary person, fully engaged in finite existence. One cannot tell the divinity within by their behavior. Their absolute relationship with the divine leaves no necessary external trace. It remains internal, completely hidden, and yet always accessible. A parallel can be seen in the evolution of Daoism, which moved from a practice requiring retreat from society to one where the “way” could be followed by anyone, anywhere. This hiddenness reinforces the idea that true faith is an inward state, not necessarily correlated with outward religious observance or social standing.
This exploration seems to be not just abstract theology but also deeply biographical, resonating with Kierkegaard’s own life, particularly his decision regarding his engagement to Regine Olsen. Plagued by a deep melancholy and anxiety that made him an outcast, he lived a life of struggle, dying at the relatively young age of 42. While the comparison requires caution, Kierkegaard appeared to interpret his own action, ethically questionable in his social milieu, through a similar framework of an absolute duty overriding conventional morality, rooted in his personal melancholy disposition and perceived authorial vocation. Like Abraham, he faced communal misunderstanding, unable to fully articulate the inner necessity behind his choice. This interplay between the theological and the autobiographical lends a palpable intensity to his philosophical writings.
While Fear and Trembling probes the paradox of faith against the ethical, The Sickness Unto Death, written as Anti-Climacus, explores the structure of the human self and its fundamental susceptibility to despair. The book’s title is taken from the story of Lazarus, whom Christ raised from the dead. It symbolizes the Christian claim that physical death is not the end, but for Kierkegaard, this only opens the door to a deeper, eternal despair that comes from being confronted with God, a confrontation of our sinful existence with the ultimate good.
Despair for Kierkegaard is not simply an emotion but an essential potentiality of human existence, a spiritual problem of being in “misrelation.” He controversially argues that despair is universal whether we are aware of it or not, because the human self is this fragile synthesis. The self is defined as a relation that relates itself to itself, and in relating itself to itself relates itself to another, namely the power that established it. This complex structure means the self is always involved in the task of becoming itself, a task rife with the possibility of failure, which is despair.
Despair signifies an imbalance in this synthesis of infinite and finite, temporal and eternal, freedom and necessity. It can manifest for instance as the despair of infinitude or possibility, where the self gets lost in abstract potential and imagination run wild, unable to commit to concrete reality and becoming fantastical, lacking the grounding of the finite and necessary. Conversely, the despair of finitude or necessity involves being crushed by limitations, overly identifying with one’s circumstances or worldly role, and abandoning the infinite potential of spirit and freedom to become merely a cog, lacking possibility. In either state the individual fails the task of becoming the specific integrated self they are called to be. One might despairingly wish to be someone else to escape one’s own assigned task, or even more profoundly refuse the task of becoming oneself at all in relation to the power that constitutes the self, God.
The most intense form of despair is what he identifies as “defiance,” which involves a conscious, desperate willing to be oneself but strictly on one’s own terms, independent of any grounding power. The defiant self knows it is in despair but wills to remain so, often finding a perverse identity in its own suffering. It asserts its tormented self against existence itself, refusing reconciliation or dependence. It constitutes a rebellion against the fundamental conditions of selfhood and represents a radical refusal of grace. While framed theologically, this analysis of defiance is fascinating and seems an incredibly accurate description of certain forms of existential rebellion or nihilistic resentment where suffering itself becomes the last bastion of asserted autonomy, even providing a chilling lens through which to view the manifestos of those who commit modern atrocities. Kierkegaard terms this state demonic.
The potential intensity of despair increases with consciousness. A pagan, Kierkegaard suggests, experiences despair at a lower level because their standard is merely human. Consciousness of the self as spirit, as possessing an eternal dimension, and awareness of the standard against which the self is measured, God, deepens the possible fall into despair. Ignorance offers a kind of insulation. Consciousness brings responsibility and the acute awareness of the gap between what is actual and what is ideal, the finite self and its infinite task. Because Christianity posits God as the measure, the standard becomes absolute. Its goal is “to make man into something so extraordinary that he cannot grasp the thought.” Confrontation with this absolute standard makes the individual acutely aware of their own inadequacy and sinfulness, opening up the possibility of an eternal despair that transcends physical death, which is the true “sickness unto death.”
However, despair remains a fundamentally internal condition, rooted in the self’s choices and relations. Consequently, the potential resolution also lies within the self, which is faith. Faith is the state wherein the self, by relating rightly to itself, simultaneously rests transparently in the power that established it. This “resting transparently” implies a conscious acceptance of dependence on God, acknowledging that the self does not originate or sustain itself but finds its true grounding in the divine. Faith requires accepting oneself in one’s concrete facticity, which is finite, temporal, necessity, while also actively willing to become the “true” spiritual self, which is infinite, eternal, freedom, in relation to God. It is the ongoing synthesis achieved through this dynamic relationship.
This faith must necessarily transcend purely rational understanding and arise from inwardness, from a subjective leap. This leap need not even be explicitly religious in a mystical sense, but can manifest as a secular faith that things can get better, a small spark of hope against a despair that seems rationally insurmountable. It is this internal commitment, this faith, that allows one to endure. It is indispensable for overcoming despair because within Kierkegaard’s Christian framework it encompasses the possibility of forgiveness. Sin is understood not merely as discrete actions but as a fundamental state, the condition of despair before God, a failure to relate properly to the divine ground of being.
Its root lies not primarily in ignorance, as the Socratic tradition might emphasize, but in the will. Kierkegaard strongly rejects the idea that simply knowing the good guarantees doing the good. One can possess moral understanding but willfully choose otherwise, remaining in sin and despair. He argues that Christianity addresses this very gap between knowledge and action, recognizing that “sin has its roots in willing, not in knowing.” Faith therefore is the active commitment of the will, a continuous striving towards God despite failures, which provides the basis for overcoming the paralysis of despair and the condition of sin.
Kierkegaard’s critique extended sharply beyond the inner life to contemporary society, specifically targeting “Christendom.” He diagnosed nineteenth century European culture as nominally Christian but largely devoid of authentic faith. Christianity he argued had become mere social convention, a cultural inheritance, or an intellectual doctrine. It was something assumed rather than existentially embraced with passion and individual commitment. He saw this reduction of faith to objective knowledge or social habit as a betrayal of its true nature. Perceiving a profound hypocrisy, he felt his task was akin to that of Socrates exposing the sophists. He aimed to reveal the chasm between professed belief and lived reality among the Christians of his age, often using pseudonyms and indirect communication designed to provoke individual reflection.
This insistence on lived subjective truth over abstract doctrine places Kierkegaard as a critical counterpoint to purely rationalistic philosophies and to interpretations of religion focused on objective, verifiable claims. For him, the core truths of Christianity were not primarily factual propositions but were existential realities requiring appropriation through a leap of faith, a leap that moves beyond the limits of reason into the realm of passionate inwardness. This perspective arguably provides an antidote for the modern age, where religion is often dismissed for making scientific or historical claims that may seem false, bypassing the deeper human truths that Kierkegaard insisted must be lived.
To grapple with Kierkegaard is thus to engage with fundamental tensions between faith and reason, the individual and the universal, ethics and absolute duty, the self’s potential and its vulnerability to despair. His analysis of Abraham reveals the paradoxical and isolating demands of absolute faith. His dissection of despair illuminates the self as a fragile synthesis striving for integration. Throughout his work, Kierkegaard persistently redirects our attention inward toward subjective responsibility and the demanding, often unsettling commitment required to become a self before the Absolute.
His philosophy offers few easy resolutions but poses enduring questions about existence, commitment, and the individual’s path toward authenticity in a world that often encourages conformity and evasion. It remains a compelling and challenging body of thought whose diagnostic power regarding the human condition persists, even when its specific religious framework feels distant. For as Kierkegaard suggests, greatness is measured by the magnitude of one’s struggle: “he who struggled with the world became great by conquering the world, and he who struggled with himself became great by conquering himself, but he who struggled with God became the greatest of all.”
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