The Sickness Unto Death
Front cover of the Princeton University Press edition from 1983.
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| Author | Søren Kierkegaard |
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| Original title | Sygdommen til Døden |
| Country | Denmark |
| Language | Danish |
| Series | Second authorship (Pseudonymous) |
| Genre | Philosophy |
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Publication date
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1849 |
| Pages | 265 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 10672189 |
| Preceded by | Christian Discourses |
| Followed by | Practice in Christianity |
The Sickness Unto Death (Danish: Sygdommen til Døden) is a book written by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1849 under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus. A work of Christian existentialism, the book is about Kierkegaard's concept of despair, which he equates with the Christian concept of sin, particularly original sin.
Anti-Climacus introduces the book with a reference to Gospel of John 11.4: "This sickness is not unto death." This quotation comes from the story of Lazarus, in which Jesus raises a man from the dead. However, Anti-Climacus raises the question: would not this statement still be true even if Jesus had not raised Lazarus from the dead? While the human conception of death is the end, the Christian conception of death is merely another stop along the way of the eternal life. In this way, for the Christian, death is nothing to fear. Instead, the inability to die is what is to be feared. The true "Sickness unto Death," which does not describe physical but spiritual death, which stems from not embracing one's self, is something to fear according to Anti-Climacus.
This sickness unto death is what Kierkegaard calls despair. According to Kierkegaard, an individual is "in despair" if he does not align himself with God or God's plan for the self. In this way he loses his self, which Kierkegaard defines as the "relation's relating itself to itself in the relation." Kierkegaard defines humanity as the tension between the "finite and infinite", and the "possible and the necessary", and is identifiable with the dialectical balancing act between these opposing features, the relation. While humans are inherently reflective and self-conscious beings, to become a true self one must not only be conscious of the self but also be conscious of being grounded in love, viz the source of the self in "the power that created it." When one either denies this self or the power that creates and sustains this self, one is in despair.
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