Sickness Unto Death Notes, First Part I.

That Despair is the sickness unto death.

"Man is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short it is a synthesis."

Man has an eternal aspect, his intellect, through which he knows the eternal aspect of being. He has a temporal aspect, including his senses, through which he knows the temporal aspect of being in its changing, material nature. Man is a union, a "synthesis", of these two elements, of body and soul. But this is not the deepest account of man, for man is not merely the union of body and soul, for he knows of that union and has the freedom to take a stand with respect to it. Man has the freedom to submit or rebel against the truth of his own nature. Yet this possibility of rebellion is itself a reflection of the nature of man. Man's nature is such that he has the capacity to accept or reject himself. "The self is a relation which relates itself to itself." It is a relation of body and soul (among others) that takes a stand (relates itself) to that very relation.

Now did man create himself or was he created by another? This means more than we generally think it does. For the creation of man not only involves creating body and soul, for animals also have body and soul. It means creating the specific difference of man, which is the peculiar ability to relate himself to himself, to take a stand with respect to himself. A bear does not grow anxious about the fact of being a bear, and sometimes wish he were some other bear or another animal altogether. Even less does the bear wonder if it would be better if he were never born. The bearness of the bear is something about which he is altogether unconcerned. But man is very concerned about his own humanity; he may sometimes wish he were another man or another sort of being altogether. It is this peculiar fact, that he relates himself to himself, that is the specific difference of man.

Kierkegaard acknowledges but two possibilities: The relation that constitutes man was constituted by man himself, or the relation was constituted by another, who Kierkegaard takes to be God. What about the possibility that man was constituted not by himself or by God, but by nature? Such a possibility is, well, not possible. For the relation that relates itself to itself transcends nature altogether. Nature may provide the elements of a relation, as she grounds essences, but she is powerless to provide the relation itself; for a relation is not another essence but transcends the order of essences; just as the relation force equals mass times acceleration transcends force, mass, and acceleration, the elements of the relation. This, by the way, is the short answer why science will never fully explain man. For man is constituted in part by the relation he takes to the science he conducts, and in that relation he necessarily transcends science. (For to any science that attempted to account for the relation man takes to science, man will further relate himself to that "last science," in a way not possibly accounted for by that science.) 

So man either constituted the relation that is himself by himself, or that relation was constituted by God. If man created himself ("constituted itself"), then the problem of life for man is merely to fulfill the meaning that he has created for himself. The problem of life becomes the problem of being "authentic" or of being "true to yourself", whatever one takes that truth to be. It finally doesn't matter what you think the truth about yourself to be, for you have constituted yourself in your own truth. The truth about yourself is what you think that truth to be. This seems to be the prevailing opinion in elite American culture.

But suppose that man is not the creator of his own truth, that he is a relation constituted, not by himself, but by another Power? Then the problem of life for man becomes relating himself to the power that constituted him. No longer is life about being "authentic" for whatever truth or authenticity a man has cannot be found in himself, but only in the power that constituted him.

The vulgar version of the opinion that man constitutes his own self is found in the exhortation to "follow your dreams." Dreams are of subjective origin and bear no necessary relation to objective reality; "following your dreams" means imposing your own self-created meaning on reality. The vulgar version of the opinion that man's self is constituted by a higher Power is the counsel that "God has a plan for you." (By the way, vulgar does not mean false. It only means common opinion as opposed to sophisticated opinion.) What your dreams are doesn't matter; what matters are the "dreams" of the Power that holds the secret of your being.

On my main blog, the post about Lee and McClellan is relevant. McClellan was a man who "followed his dreams" and thought that his own self constituted its own meaning; in his case, the meaning of "savior of the Union." Lee was a man who knew himself to be constituted by a higher power, and the meaning of his life was to be found in dedicating himself in service to that higher power.

Kierkegaard finishes by showing that despair (the sickness unto death) is not just a "problem" like any other. It is a disruption of the very self; the self has no uncontaminated resources from which it can fix itself. The self cannot "stand outside itself" and repair itself. The hardier it tries to do this, the worse it makes the situation. In fact, this is the pattern for the deepening of despair.