Sören Kierkegaard

[Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1941]

Preface

Despair is the sickness, not the cure. In Christian terminology death is

the expression for the greatest spiritual sickness, and the cure is simply

to die, to “die from” despair.

Introduction

Only the Christian knows what is meant by the sickness unto death. As

a Christian he acquires a courage which the natural man does not

know. This courage he acquires by learning to fear the still more

dreadful.

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Part 1: The Sickness Unto Death is Despair

Chapter 1: That Despair is the Sickness Unto Death

The three forms of despair: not being conscious of having a self, not

willing to be oneself, but also despair at willing to be oneself. Despair

is “sickness unto death.”

Chapter 2: The Universality of This Sickness (Despair)

A man’s life is wasted when he lives on, so deceived by the joys of life

or by its sorrows, that he never becomes decisively conscious of himself

as spirit, as self, that is, he never is aware in the deepest sense that

there is a God.

Chapter 3 The Forms of This Sickness, i.e. of Despair

In every instant a self exists and is in the process of becoming. The self

does not actually “exist,” but is only that which it is to become. In so

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far as the self does not become itself, it is not its own self, and not to

be one’s own self is despair.

Part 2: Despair is Sin

Chapter 1: Despair is Sin

Sin means to be in despair at not willing to be oneself, or to be in

despair at willing to be oneself. The lives of most men, being

determined by a dialectic of indifference, are so remote from the good (that is, faith) that they are almost too spiritless to be called sinners,

almost too spiritless to be called despairers.Please help me to write about 5 sentences journal entry.
· Reading: The Sickness unto Death, pp. 9-27( only highlighted part)
·Is despair an advantage or a drawback? (Kierkegaard, p.11). What do you think? Give some examples of situations of despair, of their possibly positive or negative effects on peoples psychology and existence.