Sickness unto Death
One of the most remarkable philosophical works of the nineteenth century, The Sickness Unto Death is also famed for the depth and acuity of its modern psychological insights. Writing under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, Kierkegaard explores the concept of 'despair', alerting readers to the diversity of ways in which they may be described as living in this state of bleak abandonment - including some that may seem just the opposite - and offering a much-discussed formula for the eradication of despair. With its penetrating account of the self, this late work by Kierkegaard was hugely influential upon twentieth-century philosophers including Karl Jaspers, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. The Sickness unto Death can be regarded as one of the key works of theistic existentialist thought - a brilliant and revelatory answer to one man's struggle to fill the spiritual void.
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- There's still a lot to figure out but we can phenomenologically and cognitively grasp the structures of consciousness by the use of drugs and modern science, which leaves very little room for the remnants of christian dualism, whether as 'the hard problem', 'panpsychism' or the trans-/consubstantiation of the eucharist.
Maybe there is a demon in my head giving me the illusion of reality being perceived as a projection on the cerebral cortex, and it's reliable malleability under caffeine, MDMA, LSD, cannabis and so on. If so, I find this model of better utility than going with vibes and prayer and belief in eternity and so on that comes with the descendants of christian dualism in liberalism, 'panpsychism', analytic philosophy, &c.
Edit: Kierkegaard wrote quite interesting texts about the structures of consciousness, I'd recommend The Sickness unto Death as a start. It has some of his best jokes.
- Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death.
In many books I have tried to find answers and failed. TSUD stresses the importance of who is asking the questions.
- After the Irish Potato Famine that George Boole lived through, he worked on a paper named "Origin of Evil".
His conclusion was: Absolute evil does not exist and pain is an instrument of good.
I can't find it online, my source is the documentary "The Genius of George Boole" [1].
Kierkegaard's The Sickness unto Death [2] could be a related reading too. I remember that I enjoyed it in a fun way.
Also a dumb theory of mine is: suffering is the proof that you are still alive.
- >Look, I have no horse in this race, but this is clearly a personal attack in the reply above.
in what way is it personal? In that he's attacking his conclusion for all of Kierkegaards' work? Or that he's trying to characterize your actions into a specific motivations?
Being called wrong , even in the softest ways, is now a personal attack?
I think it's fair to say that a 3-5 word sentence is a bit too shallow to characterize Kierkegaards' entire body of work. 'Sickness Unto Death' totally changed my outlook as a teenager reading it at the right time.
Here's the thing that's missing : life is as deep as we give it credit for, and many philosophies seek to enrichen and deepen the experience of life.
In my opinion, someone with the stance 'life isn't very deep' is in the perfect position to try to honestly absorb some of the pasts' philosophers and step away from the mammalian life of eat-sleep-breed.
In other words : our biological life is shallow in reason, philosophy and human thinking itself is what fills the world with reason, objective, and depth.
Anyone with the take-away that 'life isn't very deep' receives my greatest sympathy and sorrow. I remember how I felt when I came to the same conclusions, and i'm glad I have shifted away from that perspective with the help of philosophy and dialogue with others.
Re-imagining the world with the tools that philosophy gives you through practice is a fantastic experience, and I hope that the parent who believes that life isn't as deep as people give it credit for has the chance to undergo that epiphany themselves one day.
- Missing from this post is The Sickness Unto Death, which I think is the most important of anything he wrote. The book is about what a Christian ought to think of what it means to live and what it means to die.
> What if grace doesn’t come as a gift bestowed from beyond, but in moments of self-forgetfulness, moments in which, by whatever means and processes, the Ego simply disappears? Questions about the afterlife are not answered in this kind of thinking, but so what? If one isn’t afraid to live, why should one be afraid to die? And even if one is afraid, again, so what? Our courage and our fear will not change the fact of our dying.
https://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Kierkegaard,Soren/T...
> Oh, but even if Christ had not awakened Lazarus from the dead, is it not true that this sickness, that death itself, was not a sickness unto death? When Christ comes to the grave and cries with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth" (11:43), it is evident enough that "this" sickness is not unto death. But even if Christ had not said these words -- merely the fact that He, who is "the resurrection and the life" (11:25), comes to the grave, is not this a sufficient sign that this sickness is not unto death, does not the fact that Christ exists mean that this sickness is not unto death? And what help would it have been to Lazarus to be awakened from the dead, if the thing must end after all with his dying -- how would that have helped Lazarus, if He did not live who is the resurrection and the life for everyone who believes in Him? No, it is not because Lazarus was awakened from the dead, not for this can one say that this sickness is not unto death; but because He lives, therefore this sickness is not unto death. For, humanly speaking, death is the last thing of all; and, humanly speaking, there is hope only so long as there is life. But Christianly understood death is by no means the last thing of all, hence it is only a little event within that which is all, an eternal life; and Christianly understood there is in death infinitely much more hope than merely humanly speaking there is when there not only is life but this life exhibits the fullest health and vigor.
edit: Not removing the original wording, but it's an overstatement to say that Sickness Unto Death could be regarded as Kierkegaard's most important work. It's definitely not. It's just his writing that is most relevant to what the author of this post is talking about.
- In order:
1. The Technological Society - Jacques Ellul
2. The Sickness Unto Death - Kierkegaard
3. Dubliners - James Joyce
4. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World - Cal Newport
