Introduction
In The Sickness Unto Death, Søren Kierkegaard gives an astonishing psychological account of the phenomenon he calls ‘despair,’ signifying that state wherein the individual lacks faith (in a particular sense of this word) and through such a lack lives in a state of deep self-contradiction. His highly astute analysis makes a fertile starting place for a philosophical conversation about suicide.
What does ‘suicide’ mean? It means killing oneself, presumably preceded by a desire to die. Wanting to die is a very particular and unique mental phenomenon, one characterized by complete hopelessness and despair. It is the conclusion to a spell of unbearable suffering, a choice made when no other choices appear viable. Given the dire reality of pain that frequently ails our existence, it is unsurprising that suicide happens, and for one experiencing excruciating suffering, an understandable, even reasonable path.
Suicide also encompasses one of the most fundamental issues with which philosophy concerns itself: the question of whether, and in what capacity, life is meaningful. The philosophical equivalent of suicidality is a position of total nihilism, a belief that any meaning ascribed to life is illusory and ought not to be entertained, and therefore that choosing to die is just as reasonable or ‘correct’ a choice as any other.
We might give a psychological analysis here that interprets suicidality not as a positive desire to die - that is, to experience the end of one’s life - but rather as a state of distress wherein what is desired is really for the distressing circumstances to cease. Research on persons who have experienced suicidal ideation and attempted to take their own lives gives credence to this interpretation: practically no one ever actually wants to die. Given the choice, they would prefer to live a life they deem livable rather than not live at all. What a person in this situation typically wants is for their suffering to stop so that they can go on living in a tolerable manner. The experience of wanting pain to stop is easily transformed psychologically into a desire for death, but this is only one possible interpretation of the underlying experience. Equally plausible is that one is tormented by one’s engrained desire for life despite being in a state of suffering. The suicidal person is deeply conflicted: they want to live, but not in the manner in which they are living. The choice to cease living appears more appealing than living through the pain in the hopes that things may eventually improve.
Moreover, what might the relationship be between literally wanting to die and the embedded psychological desire for death that Kierkegaard describes in his text? Could it be that literal suicidality is a more self-aware form of the latent condition of self-contradiction that most people live in? An intensification of a singular phenomenon of despair, ending either in death or a renewed desire for life? We will venture answers to these questions after giving an account of despair as presented in Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death.
What is despair?
In the introduction, Kierkegaard explains the title of his text with reference to the Bible. Jesus teaches his disciples that though all humans eventually die in the bodily sense, believing in Him (that he is the son of God) is a way to ensure everlasting life in Heaven. As such, though Lazarus dies of an unnamed sickness in the book of John, this sickness was not truly ‘unto death’. What Kierkegaard aims to lay out is the kind of sickness that really is ‘unto death,’ namely the failure to have faith and thereby to ensure one’s eternal life. This sickness is named despair: it is the acceptance of death as the true end of one’s life, a conflation of the self with the body, and an internal contradiction insofar as one strives to live but in the same moment accepts the certainty of death.
The instinct towards survival is perhaps the single most embedded feature of our nature, which is why suicide is such a devastating thing to consider, a true last resort if ever there was one. However, Kierkegaard asserts that accepting the eventuality of death while one is living is a state of desperation analogous to that of the person considering ending their own life. Indeed, what he argues is that we do not actually have the power to end our own lives since there is an eternal aspect of the self that, by definition, cannot be destroyed. This is why it is a contradiction in terms to desire death. Furthermore, accepting death as the actual end of one’s being is a subverted form of desiring death.
This is also why faith is the sole path out of despair, where ‘faith’ is defined as acknowledging and coming more fully into the eternal aspect of the self rather than running away from and seeking to destroy this aspect. Despair is “exactly man’s unconsciousness of being characterized as spirit” (55). Any attempt to flee the spiritual reality of the self is futile and self-destructive, resulting only in an inner turmoil of accelerating intensity. Both the assumption that killing oneself will constitute a real end to one’s being and therefore also one’s suffering, and the assumption that one’s eventual natural death bears this same meaning, are incorrect because of the reality of the spiritual self. To live in accordance with either of these beliefs is to despair. To believe the opposite is to have faith.
The content of the belief that ending our own being does not rest in our own hands is called faith by Kierkegaard because, quite simply, it means that our lives are in someone or something else’s hands. This makes us subservient to this power as the very condition of our being. It is not up to us whether we live or die - it has already been decided that we live. What we are in a position to choose is only how.
In despair, death is regarded as the end, but “the torment of despair is precisely the inability to die,” Kierkegaard writes (48). So, despair is to be taken as a profound contradiction, a deep state of psychological denial wherein one neglects, ignores, suppresses, or battles against an inextricable element of one’s self in believing that one will actually die in any final sense. It is an “incessantly inward gnawing,” and ever-deepening self-consumption, where the frustration of the despairer, what he is in despair of, is himself, the fact that he cannot be rid of himself (48-49). Despairing is not wanting to be the kind of self that one is, preferring to be no self at all, or to be a self of one’s own construction. Despair is the ‘sickness unto death’ because it is actually what dooms one for all eternity owing to a failure to have faith by affirming the spiritual aspect of the self. Despair is (attempted, but never completed) spiritual suicide, the maximal expression of self-denial and self-hatred.
The way out of despair is through its intensification. Through the intensification of despair, one becomes less and less deeply in despair. We might imagine the lowest level of despair, ‘being unconscious in despair of having a self,’ as being buried beneath several feet of earth. The succeeding two forms of despair are then analogous to digging one’s way through the concealing earth and getting closer and closer to the surface, where the earth’s surface is the location of one’s emergence in faith and also where despair ceases. Kierkegaard describes this culmination of moving through and overcoming despair as follows: “in relating to itself and in wanting to be itself, the self is grounded transparently in the power that established it” (44). An honest relationship to God—having faith—is the path out of despair.
Of note here is the active language used: what is being described is a process of becoming, not a static state that is arrived at in a single moment and persists forever afterwards. In relating to itself and to God, the self exists in a faith-relationship and is engaged in a process of overcoming despair. Moments of faith are typically just that: mere moments that arrive fleetingly, after which one returns to one’s basic state of despair. But the meaning to be valued here is precisely the process of overcoming despair, not an arrival at the destination of faith.
Kierkegaard emphasizes the impossibility of the spiritual suicide that is the mission of the despairer when he states, “having a self, being a self, is the greatest, the infinite, concession that has been made to man, but also eternity’s claim on him” (51). It is not factually determined by the individual human being whether or not he has a spiritual aspect. What individuals determine is the manner in which they relate to this fact. Either they subjectively embrace their spirituality through a positive relationship to their self, or they live in denial and cease striving to understand or relate to themselves as spirit.
Types of despair
Kierkegaard goes into some detail about the different forms that despair may take, organizing them primarily along a continuum from less conscious to more conscious. On this spectrum, four types emerge:
The despair of ignorance
Despair which is ignorant of being in despair is characterized by a total immersion in the sensory and psychological such that there is no room for any heed to be paid to the eternal aspect of the self. The person in this kind of despair is “too sensate to have the courage to risk and endure being spirit” (73). They are vain and conceited about the lowest and most superficial elements of their personhood while totally lacking any awareness of their spiritual nature (73). Further, this individual is indignant against any suggestion of this higher self, preferring the comfort of triviality to the truth (74). Kierkegaard describes this as a “spiritless sense of security” masking the same dread which ails every human being, a dread evident when such a person is shaken out of their deluded superficiality by something like the prospect of death (74).
Despair that is ignorant of being in despair is the deepest form since it is the furthest from getting out of it: Kierkegaard says that “to arrive at the truth one has to pass through every negativity,” and ignorance is one such layer of negativity (Ibid.). This also makes it the most dangerous form in the same way that an illness that goes undetected until a late stage is far more certain to be deadly than one that is realized early on. This despair of ignorance is the form most people inhabit in Kierkegaard’s estimation, reflecting his general distaste for the spiritless triviality of his time.
To emerge out of this despair over the earthly, one must “despair with a vengeance, despair to the full, so that the life of spirit can break through from the ground up” (91). This involves moving through the more conscious forms of despair and eventually breaking through in faith, where consciousness of the eternal self is realized fully. This is an active process, not something passively arrived at with the passage of time, Kierkegaard insists; ‘forgetfulness’ does not heal the past but only covers it up, pushing the journey towards intensified despair and faith farther away (91).
2. conscious despair which does not want to be itself, preferring to hand itself over to the earthly or something earthly, and
3. conscious despair which does not want to be itself and prefers to lament the eternal aspect of the self rather than something earthly about it
Despair which is conscious of being in despair is aware of having an eternal self, and either despairs over this self because it does not want to be it (denial), or despairs over it because it wants to be itself in a false sense (defiance). In this despair, as “in all obscurity and ignorance,” there is “a dialectical interplay of knowledge and will” (79). The individual is ‘conscious’ of being in despair, but this is no simple psychological process of knowing something for a fact, exactly as it is, and then purposefully suppressing it. Rather, the consciousness of being in despair may be present in varying degrees of intensity, ranging perhaps from a faint feeling, a distant call of conscience manifest in any number of ways, to a full-fledged torment over the eternal self that one has not quite dared to recognize.
The process of lifting oneself out of despair is one of increasing consciousness, and with it, increasing torment: analogizing the self-denial of despair to that present in someone who commits suicide, Kierkegaard says, “the more clearly conscious the person who commits suicide is of himself (self-consciousness), the more intense is his despair compared with that of someone whose soul is, compared to his, in a state of darkness and confusion” (79).
In so-called ‘earthly’ despair (2), the individual is absorbed in immediacy, passively adapting to environmental and social pressures with no real agency of their own (81). Any sense of an eternal self that this individual may have is confused and illusory, coming not from inner reflection but from coalescing to the ideas and actions of other people (Ibid.). As such, when something in immediacy (one’s immediate worldly environment) is taken away, the despairer feels that her self is lost too, and in despair no longer wants to be herself (82). This is why Kierkegaard calls this ‘despair over the earthly’: in lamenting totally over something immediate, one loses the eternal aspect of the self, and is thereby shown to have misunderstood this aspect from the start (82-83). This form of despair is not ‘genuine’ despair because it despairs over the wrong object (something earthly) instead of over its lack of acceptance of the eternal self. To be totally at the mercy of circumstance is to be in this weak, confused kind of despair where there is hardly a self at all to speak of. This despairer “knows what it is to have a self…only in externals” and thereby does not know what it is to have a self at all (84).
‘Despair of the eternal or over oneself’ (3) is set apart from the previous form in that it is despair over one’s weakness rather than despair in weakness (92). It is marked by a greater level of consciousness in that in it, one despairs over one’s weakness, aware of oneself as weak, rather than despairing from the perspective of unrecognized weakness. Yet this is still a weak form of despair because it stops its elevation of consciousness there, despairing over itself as weak, not as an eternal self that has not been recognized (92-93). In this despair, the self despairs over its weakness but will not acknowledge itself after demonstrating such weakness, hating itself for this (93). This self-hatred is a form of self-awareness that refuses to humble itself in faith (93). It does not want to be itself after recognizing itself as weak, tries to forget this awareness, and is inwardly tormented because of it (97).
4. the despair of defiance, in which one wants to be oneself in a particular manner which misunderstands the nature of the self
The defiant despairer wants to be him or herself: in it, he or she moves past the previous form of self-hating despair and realizes the reason for this avoidance of being oneself, namely, his/her weakness. Having realized this, one wants to be oneself and now despairs “by means of the eternal” (98). In this form of despair the individual has a concept of the infinite, abstract self and comes to identify predominantly with this. It is conscious of the eternal self in a such a way that it remains a form of despair, not yet approaching faith. It is still despair because, in the face of the eternal, it wants to be itself in a manner independent from the power that established it, meaning to be a self of its own construction rather than of God’s construction (99). Kierkegaard says that this despairer “wants in despair to rule over himself, to create himself, make this self the self he wants to be, determine what he will have and what he will not have in his concrete self” (99).
This kind of despair is called ‘defiance’ because the will to be oneself is active, coming directly from the self and not from external pressures passively received (99). In defiance, the self refuses to recognize any power over it, fancying itself autonomous and completely self-defining (100). Since it does not possess these characteristics in reality, “the despairing self is forever building only castles in the air… it wants to take the credit for for this fictional, masterly project…And yet what it understands itself to be is in the final instance a riddle” (101).
By contrast to the despair that fails to move beyond earthly concerns, this despair overcorrects in becoming fixated on the eternal, leading it to ignore the limitations inherent in being an existing person. This despairer is unwilling to bow his head to necessity, to the temporal, to the finite. He fancies himself an all-powerful being, in some sense, and is thereby quite mistaken in Kierkegaard’s view. To overcome this despair of not being able to be himself in the way of his own choosing, the despairer must let go of the self of his own creation and hand himself over to faith, which requires a recognition of the confines inherent to existence (103). Letting go in this way may constitute a death and rebirth of sorts - a killing of the defiant self and being born into a faithful self.
Sin and despair
Having now outlined the chief kinds of despair, we will now discuss how it is that despair is sin, the question Kierkegaard takes up in Part Two of The Sickness Unto Death.
The critical idea introduced in Part Two is the idea of the self being “directly before God,” meaning the human self has God as its standard and goal; that God is the authority it is answerable to and in the face of which it is a self (111). Moreover, sin is so terrible precisely because of the fact that it is before God and not a lesser being. This is the distinction between the Christian and the ‘pagan’ or ‘natural man’ for Kierkegaard: the fact of knowing that one is a self before God makes sin a greater offence, one of direct defiance rather than ignorance of the fact of being before God (113). For this reason, the despair that is conscious of itself as having an eternal aspect is a more serious offence than the despair of ignorance, though it is closer to emerging out of despair. The gravest sin is committed by the one who in despair wants to be himself, owing to his greater consciousness of having an infinite, eternal aspect — a consciousness very near to recognizing itself as a self before God. So, despair is sin because it is rebellion against a divine standard. In line with this is the idea presented previously, namely that sin increases with the intensity of despair, which in turn is marked by greater consciousness of the self as a self before God.
Despair is sin because it involves the will. This is the crux of Kierkegaard’s philosophy that marks his departure from the ancient Greeks, particularly Socrates. Kierkegaard disagrees with Socrates’ suggestion that a person cannot possibly do what is wrong when they know what is right because this would mean that sin (non-virtuous behaviour in the Greek context) can only occur when one is ignorant of the right. If sin is ignorance, then the essential element of the will is left behind. But, Kierkegaard writes, “sin is precisely consciousness” (121). Christianity begins with the assumption that sin is a phenomenon of the will, and further, through the doctrine of original sin, declares that sin is a primordial phenomenon woven into the fabric of human nature, such that we are always already in sin (Ibid.). As such, “sin does not consist in man’s not having understood what is right, but in his not wanting to understand it, and in its unwillingness to do what is right” (127). Sin is chiefly unwillingness, not ignorance or inability.
Kierkegaard thus departs from ancient Greek philosophers and breaks in favour of Christianity in asserting that human nature is not such that it acts in alignment with what it knows or understands, but rather willfully does other than what is right based on a refusal to understand what is right and to act in accordance with it (127). Layers of willful ignorance cloak the sin of the despairing person, seeming to indicate that greater ignorance is more sinful since one has chosen to ignore the truth to a greater degree; however, Kierkegaard maintains that lesser ignorance is actually more sinful because one is so close to acknowledging the truth (or having faith), yet chooses to look away from what is readily visible. Despair is an affirmation of untruth ‘before God’ and is more sinful the greater one’s awareness of oneself as the kind of being that is necessarily and inextricably ‘before God’ (Ibid.)
Pulling ourselves out of despair
Not everyone experiences suicidal ideation or has any direct experience with suicide (though a very large number of people do). But everyone - every single living person - knows something about despair. Whether it be a quiet discontentedness with waking up in the morning, an engrained malcontent with partaking in one’s daily activities, or an explicit desire to be unconscious when experiencing pain, despair pervades our lives. I do not mean to skirt over the huge difference in degree between background unhappiness and actual contemplation of suicide, but for the purposes of this analysis I am treating them as different points on a continuum of despair.
We are all living and dying at the same time. On the surface, we might even say these words denote the very same activity or state. In typical use, ‘dying’ has the connotation of immanent death, such as when a person has received a fatal diagnosis or is otherwise going to face death in the near future (however we have chosen to define ‘near’). But any definition of the nearness of death that permits us to use ‘dying’ or ‘living’ to describe that which we all are presently doing/ that which each of us most fundamentally is, is arbitrary and therefore permeable. All of us will die within, at most, 115 years of being born. We never know how close this horizon is to us except through assuming some good fortune and that we will be statistically normal in most respects. By this I mean that a female born in Canada in the year 2000 probably expects to live to about 80 years old. But this is more of an implicit assumption than a known fact or actual prediction. Death is a mysterious yet certain boundary towards which we exist at all times. This directional existence is casually called either living or dying depending on how near we perceive it to be.
We might introduce a new meaning to the words ‘living’ and ‘dying’ here, putting them forward as two modalities of the same thing (namely, that which we are). Worry not - I am not about to launch into a sickeningly unoriginal “seize the day because it might be your last” manifesto, though it might sounds like it at first. The meaning I wish to confer upon the term ‘living’ is that of a true voluntarism, the state/way of being that has overcome despair and truly embraces life. In Kierkegaard’s philosophy, this condition would be called faith. Living in this distinctive sense connotes being possessed by joie de vivre or a profound enthusiasm for being alive and having a conscious experience at any given moment. Beyond a simple attitudinal or personality marker, living non-despairingly signifies a profound psychological orientation, consciously chosen, toward life and goodness, and away from death and badness.
Embracing life is no simple or easy feat; it is often extremely difficult, even impossible. The non-despairing manner of being is exceptionally rare and challenging to get even a glimpse of, as Kierkegaard says: most of the time, and for many of us all of the time, we are in despair, unconsciously choosing death/non-being while being a biologically ‘living’ thing. Living is the mode of being which is authentic in that it is the only one which is not a contradiction. By contrast, dying, or despairing, is a contradictory, twisted way of being, and may even be judged in the same light as lying. One is superficially alive and the kind of thing which is, yet also through one’s actions and attitudes expresses a preference for non-being; for death. Life contradicting itself is the meaning of despair; life embracing and celebrating itself is the meaning of faith.
Entrenched suicidality that has not emerged in conscious awareness but lingers beneath the surface at all times is the most dangerous spiritual illness because the person is not even aware that they are sick. This is Kierkegaard’s primary sentiment in The Sickness unto Death. We are all for the most part dying rather than living, fleeing existence in despair rather than confronting it head-on. Living non-despairingly is not the automatic mode of comportment that human beings assume in their daily lives, but is actually a revolutionary choice that goes rather aggressively against the tide of the majority at any point in history.
So, how does one practically strive to overcome despair? To answer this, I will summarize the most influential of Kierkegaard’s ideas: his view on truth. I will connect the Kierkegaardian conception of truth to the simple idea of joie de vivre in exploring what it means to live in an honest, non-despairing, faithful manner.
Kierkegaard and truth
In his Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard offers a seemingly radical account of truth as what he calls ‘Subjectivity,’ something which occurs in the realm of ‘inwardness’ as a phenomenon of individuation. Stemming from a deep disagreement with the Hegelian definition of truth as some kind of subject-object synthesis, Kierkegaard proposes that truth consists in the relation an individual stands in with respect to what he thinks.
Firstly, Kierkegaard qualifies his assertion that the idea of truth as a mediation between subject and object is spurious by saying, “to be in a state of mediation is to be finished, while to exist is to become,” and that it is impossible for an ‘existing individual’ to be in two places at once, namely his subjective experience and objective reality (Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 211). He asserts that when an individual is ostensibly ‘closest’ to being in a state of mediation between subject and object, he is in ‘passion,’ which is “the highest expression of subjectivity” (Ibid.). This mind-reality bridge can never actually be crossed, of course, much to the dismay of anyone who assumes a wholly objectivistic approach to truth. In contrast to such an approach, Kierkegaard emphasizes the central importance of the kind of relation an individual stands in with respect to what he thinks in considering the notion of truth.
Kierkegaard distinguishes the ‘what’ of objectivity from the ‘how’ of subjectivity, writing that “what is in itself [‘objectively’] true may in the mouth of such and such a person become untrue,” and that the ‘how’ characterizing subjectivity “is not to be understood as referring to demeanor, expression, delivery, or the like; rather it refers to the relationship sustained by the existing individual, in his own existence, to the content of his utterance” (214). What we may take to be an objective kind of truth is preoccupied with the content of what is said, while subjectivity is true insofar as the inward relation a person stands in with respect to what they say is characterized by “the passion of the infinite” (Ibid.). One achieves the highest truth possible for an ‘existing individual’ when one holds an objective uncertainty “in an appropriation-process of the most passionate inwardness” (214). Truth is not, then, something which belongs to the content of thought, but rather to the relationship the individual has to these thought-contents. It is the choice to believe something that is objectively uncertain in the recognition that this is the best thing an existing human being can do, since grasping reality as it ‘really is’ from an assumed objective stance is impossible, making it an unfitting ideal to aspire to at the individual level.
The consequence of this argument is that deciding only to commit oneself to what may be ascertained as ‘objectively true’ is to choose to live in a state of untruth, because the standard of truth one holds in this case is quite literally not possible and will never come about (217). Moreover, we can infer that for Kierkegaard, existing in such a manner is sinful because it consists in a purposeful choice not to understand the nature of the human self as having an eternal aspect while also being confined to the conditions of actual existence —confined to the condition of being an existing, subjective individual and not the kind of being that can mediate between subjectivity and objective reality. One must choose instead to exist ‘in the truth’ by absolutely believing in something with the entirety of one’s being, with the ‘passion of the infinite’.
As was discussed with reference to The Sickness unto Death, living in ignorance of the nature of the self is despair, and the only way out of it is to have faith. This allows us to form a bridge between the main ideas of the two texts we have been considering by taking notice of the role of faith in Kierkegaard’s philosophy. Faith is the opposite of despair, and finds expression in the subjective commitment to a proposition. It seems that this cannot be just any proposition, however: Kierkegaard insists that faith’s full expression must take the form of a belief in God and in Jesus Christ, his son, as this is the belief which affirms the reality of the eternal aspect of the self and brings the self into relationship with the power that established it and to which it is accountable. Jesus represents the paradox of truth to the fullest extent because to believe that the eternal came to be in time is absurd from the objective point of view; hence to believe it is to exist in the extreme inwardness that is the hallmark of faith (216).
The truth is a paradox because our assumed objective stance negates the subject, preferring to regard truth as something that transcends what individual human beings believe. But the subject as the existing individual is precisely where truth becomes manifest. It appears paradoxical to our assumed objective stance to posit that there is truth but to be totally unable to find it from this same stance, to be incapable of uncovering the truth in an ‘objective’ manner. Kierkegaard clarifies that “the eternal essential truth is by no means in itself a paradox; it becomes paradoxical by virtue of its relationship to an existing individual” (216). Existence fundamentally alters the relationship we have to truth in that it binds us to a point of view from which the truth appears paradoxical, and so our only hope for accessing it is to commit to something we are unable to determine as true (218). The actual content of this believed ‘something’ is the stuff of Christianity, but its philosophical significance (and we may even argue its whole significance for Kierkegaard) is that one embraces the paradoxical nature of the truth with the passionate inwardness that Kierkegaard speaks of. What is key is that one takes humble notice of the limitations of human understanding and nonetheless chooses to have faith that there is truth, with all of this word’s ultimate, universal, and objective connotations. (God is importantly implicated in the being of truth, but we won’t delve into this here).
We have not yet addressed Kierkegaard’s repeated use of the term ‘existing individual’. What does he mean by ‘existing’? Our condition of existence in the world is intrinsically limiting and is the single most fundamental, defining feature of our lives. A byproduct of this limitedness is that we can only ‘be’ one ‘place’ at one time. As such, our existence is characterized by a certain directedness: a directedness toward one time and place and away from everything else. The choice of what to direct ourselves at is the crippling locus of freedom and what inspires the common trope ‘having an existential crisis’. In the context of Kierkegaard’s work, existence is what makes humans incapable of grasping truth in any complete sense. We are bound to a position in the world, and the perspective associated with this position is necessarily and insurmountably limited. The closest we may come to truth, then, is by embracing exactly this suggestion: that is, the suggestion of our own immense limitation as an existing individual. Accepting such limitation entails that we are free to choose what kind of proposed view of the world we accept. We cannot help that we are oriented toward whatever it is we perceive to be true - that we are oriented toward truth as a category or structure of thought - but the content of this structure is chosen by us. So, it is possible for an individual to regard life as really, truly meaningless and therefore not worth living. Certainly there is no impersonal meaning to life and therefore no ‘objective’ case to be made for its meaningfulness. Meaning is invariably personal and self-made. This is why the despairing person is alone in their ability to either end their despair or persist in it. Each existing individual may choose to embrace or to escape their condition. To exist in despair, however, is to commit to neither path.
In his journals, Kierkegaard wrote: “It is the duty of human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are…The paradox is not a concession but a category, an ontological definition which expresses the relation between an existing cognitive spirit and eternal truth” (Philosophical Fragments, 153) (emphasis mine). This quotation displays the full meaning of what Kierkegaard takes to be the relationship between the human individual and the truth. It is a relationship which actually defines the kind of Being that is characteristic of humans: humanity is ontologically tied up with truth by way of the category of the paradox.
Joie de vivre
Is the preceding argument simply suggesting that the way out of despair, the way we live in order to overcome our basic state of sin and inauthenticity, is to profess the Christian faith and begin living in a manner we deem congruent with such a profession? Simply put: no. To sidestep the land mines of intuitive aversion or passion associated with established religion, I want to consider Kierkegaard’s idea in a purely philosophical sense (yes, I believe that this is both possible and worthwhile). Certainly his writing should not be sanitized with secularity in any way that misrepresents his thought or alters his words in any way. However, the Christian clothing for his thought can serve as a distraction from his true meaning for some. In service of this goal, I would like to explore in more practical terms what overcoming despair in faith can look like for existing individuals.
Joie de vivre is a French term pointing out that attitude one may feel of complete enthusiasm for life, a contentedness with being alive, and excitement for the possibilities of this world. Perhaps the opposite of cold cynicism, joie de vivre (literally ‘joy of living’) describes a non-despairing person. It does not characterize persons who spend their time seeking out hedonically pleasurable or exciting experiences out of some desire to escape a deep discontentment or fear, nor would someone naive to life’s atrocities be deserving of the term to describe them; rather, joie de vivre befits a person who genuinely embraces life for what it is, and does so not just intellectually, but with their whole being. This joy is reflected in their emotional life, their beliefs, and, perhaps most importantly, in their actions. Most of us probably struggle to think of any real person we have met who fits this description. Yet the concept is a coherent and inspiring one, I think. Joyousness at being alive, celebrating life in all its forms, and loving the experience one has in this world—including unpleasantness—may seem impossible. And yet, it is possible, and on top of that may represent the pinnacle of psychological health.
To become possessed by the spirit of joie de vivre is no simple matter of being blessed with a naturally sunny disposition or an ability to look on the bright side. No, an appreciation for life that is not a fundamental misunderstanding must come from a place of deep suffering. The people with the greatest appreciation for life are those who have seen the world from the opposite perspective, and have lived through it. Only one who truly understands the options they are choosing among is capable of really making an intentional choice. We don’t consider an agreement to be based on informed consent unless, as the term clearly implies, the person in question was fully informed and consented on this basis. So, why would we consider the choice to live to be a truly consensual, voluntary one until a person has been on the brink of self-extermination and chosen to remain alive, having stared directly into the beastly face of death and non-being?
Bringing back the theme of suicidality, intense despair to the point of nearly exiting the world of one’s own accord is the psychological place from which a renewed passion for life is most potently possible. As stated previously, not killing oneself is a far greater feat when one was genuinely considering it, as opposed to choosing not to die on an average day not full of torment and desperation. Kierkegaard would agree that the most intense despair is the precondition for an emergence in faith.
Suicide, despair, & faith
Kierkegaard’s terming the opposite of despair ‘faith’ is not necessarily an attempt to proselytize Christianity to his readers, but rather an attempt to name the psychological phenomenon of embracing life from a position of true understanding. Not many words present themselves in attempting to express such an idea; alternatives from closely aligned thinkers include authenticity or existing ‘in the truth’. I have nothing to contribute to the debate over which word or term is optimal; as long as language enables readers to grasp the phenomena beneath, it has done its job. I introduced ‘joie de vivre’ because it came to mind in my own reading of Kierkegaard and considering the ideas he discusses. Faith does justice to the spiritual nature of the phenomena at play, however, in a way that other terms may not. Authenticity evokes the notion of honesty and truthfulness that lends itself to a framework of spiritual clarity versus confusion. Living in the truth or in untruth elevates this to another level entirely, where one’s very being may be in a mode of alignment with or deviation from the enlightened self-recognition that is the spiritual ideal. Heidegger would be an interesting figure to raise here, but I will save this comparison for another time. He offers a more neutral-sounding account of the existential circumstances of human beings that is (I argue) not incongruent with Kierkegaard’s philosophy, but which casts essentially the same idea in a more accepting light.
In all honesty, I’m not sure that there is any practical path toward faith that applies across people, time and place. Certainly, if we listen to Kierkegaard’s formulation, the first step is recognizing that one is in despair, followed by coming to increasing awareness of oneself as a spiritual being, and then accepting and embracing this self in a non-egotistical manner, meaning that something higher than one’s material self is implicated in the process. These steps constitute the types of despair that one must dig oneself out of in order to experience faith, if only fleetingly, according to Kierkegaard’s account. But how one recognizes that one is in despair is another question entirely. I suspect it is not something one consciously chooses, but that arrives in one’s awareness in mysterious ways. Even through an interest in hearing about the ideas presented in this essay, one may come to a recognition of one’s own despair and begin rising out of it. Yet the whole process is certainly not out of one’s hands: as Kierkegaard insists, we are responsible even for our own ignorance. Even our ignorance of the degree or nature of our own ignorance is something which falls on our shoulders in the final analysis.
This displays the complexity, but also genius, of Kierkegaard’s psychology. Conceding much of the despair/faith equation to unconscious processes does not mean moral irresponsibility; it does not mean we are at the mercy of outside forces. Rather, each of us is commanded to embrace life and to ‘have faith’. How we achieve this is left entirely to the domain of subjectivity.
Suicidality, then, is despair of the highest degree. Coming to an awareness of the spiritual aspect of the self, to the idea that one’s life is not entirely in one’s own hands, is what can bring someone out of this despair, if only momentarily. When one’s pain leads one to wish to exit the world, to become unconscious, one is in despair. It is by no means unnatural or ‘wrong’ that this happens; that this is a condition people find themselves in. It is quite understandable, even fundamental to our condition in the world as one in which suffering arises. Accepting one’s existential condition of freedom is how a meaning comes to be chosen; evading this freedom is desperate, futile, and inauthentic in a basic sense. Explicitly desiring death is precisely where the freedom and necessity to choose a meaning for oneself and one’s life is most intense. This meaning is never ‘certain’ in an objective sense, but this does not mean that it is not true.
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