Then you might be confusing this with despair!
Do you think you’re not in despair? Well think otherwise! Kierkegaard would say that you’re in despair.
But you may not look like this:
But you may look like this!
Well internally. But what am I talking about? What is this despair I am claiming that everyone has? Let’s take a step back and talk about what Kierkegaard has to say about what the self is–where all of our despair originates from.
Kierkegaard says that the human being is a spirit–very fitting for spooky season.
Then he says a spirit is self. But, finally he says self isn’t a simple synthesis of two things. He says self is the relation to self relating to itself. What the heck does this mean?? Let’s try to break this down together.
When you think of your “self” it’s an abstract entity of some sort. You can take a snapshot of what you think your “self” is at some moment in time and think about who you are. The self I have formed here, you often ponder: Am I a good person? Did I say the right thing? Am I still socially awkward? (OK that’s just me).
This is the self relating to itself.
But what’s the second relation? The second relation can be thought as a reflection where we can impose a degree of alienation to oneself, where you step back from who you are and evaluate your “self” as you construct it.
Here you decide how to adjust your “self” to be the “self” you want it to be. In the future, I’ll care less about how people perceive of me to become this less socially awkward self! I also won’t say “You too!” when someone says “Bye” when I thought they said “Have a good day!”
But where does despair come into this? Kierkegaard claims that there are two types of despair: (1) to will to be oneself and (2) the inability to arrive or be in equilibrium and rest by itself. What does this mean? Kierkegaard is saying here that there are cases where either have not become our “self” and is in the process of becoming our “self”–this is (2)–or we have realized our “self” but are unsatisfied with it (1).
He claims that despair is universal–everyone has it! He makes this argument by making an analogy to being healthy. Very rarely are there people who are healthy. There are people who profess they are healthy but to be in this healthy state is quite unlikely. Despair is like declaring that you are healthy–you may think you are not in despair but you actually are! There are factors, such as bodily health, that help us determine that we are healthy and profess that we are healthy. However, despair is not an affliction of the body but rather of the spirit, as Kierkegaard says that spirit is the self, and despair is an affliction of the self, the misrelation of the self relating to itself. As a result, we can’t use any external factors to determine if we are in despair as the spirit is something intangible. Kierkegaard claims because of this, everyone is in despair.
With this conception of despair, it seems hopeless! If we are in despair, it’s only a spiral downward to more despair, intensified by those who are conscious of their despair. How can we fix this?
Kierkegaard claims that the only way we can realize our “self” is by strengthening our connection with God and faith. He claims that by getting closer to God are we able to better realize our “self.” And when we better realize our “self” we get closer to God. It’s a positive feedback loop.
Where can we start with this? With the leap of faith. So let’s jump into infinity (and beyond!) but stay in finitude. Don’t be scared, just jump!
