The Concept of Anxiety

An inquiry into original sin, written as psychology, that traces sin to the dizziness freedom feels before its own possibilities.

by Søren Kierkegaard341 passages held

Danish, the original language

Original title: Begrebet Angest
First published: 1844(aged 31)
Original language: Danish

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Overview

Christian doctrine had long taught that Adam's sin passes to every human being by inheritance, as a guilt no one chose. This book appeared on 17 June 1844 under the name Vigilius Haufniensis, the watchman of Copenhagen, and Vigilius asks what that doctrine could mean for an actual person. He answers as a psychologist rather than a theologian. His key term is anxiety, which he separates from fear: fear has an object, while anxiety is the unease a person feels before their own freedom, the way someone looking down from a height feels dizzy at what they might do. Adam in his innocence, told not to eat from one tree, felt that unease for the first time, because the prohibition showed him that he could. Sin, on this account, is not handed down like a family illness. It enters each life the way it entered Adam's, by a leap that no explanation can bridge, so every person is both an individual and the whole human race. Søren Kierkegaard wrote the book in the winter of 1843–44 and meant to sign it himself; shortly before it went to the typesetter, he put the pseudonym on the title page instead. He dedicated it to Poul Martin Møller, the Copenhagen philosophy professor who had died in 1838. Only 250 copies were printed, half his usual run, and 157 had sold by early 1846. Walter Lowrie's 1944 translation called it The Concept of Dread, and in 1950 the American psychologist Rollo May built The Meaning of Anxiety partly on it.

Key concepts

Who is Vigilius Haufniensis?

The pseudonym on the title page, meaning the watchman of Copenhagen. Kierkegaard wrote the book in the winter of 1843–44 intending to sign it himself, and replaced his name shortly before it went to the typesetter. Vigilius writes as a psychologist, not a theologian: he observes how sin becomes possible rather than preaching against it.

What is the difference between fear and anxiety?

Fear has an object; anxiety does not. Fear is directed at some definite danger, while anxiety is the unease a person feels before their own freedom, before what they might do. Vigilius compares it to dizziness at a height: what unsettles is less the drop than the possibility of the leap.

What does Vigilius mean by a leap?

A transition that no explanation can bridge. Sin, he argues, does not grow out of innocence by degrees that psychology could trace; it arrives all at once, as a qualitative change. Psychology can describe the anxious approach to the fall, never the fall itself, which is why each person's sin is their own and not an inheritance.

What is hereditary sin, and what does the book make of it?

The church doctrine that Adam's sin passes to every human being by inheritance, as a guilt no one chose. Vigilius does not simply reject it but asks what it could mean for an actual person, and answers that sin enters each life as it entered Adam's, so that every individual is at once himself and the whole human race.

Why was it once published in English as The Concept of Dread?

Because Walter Lowrie's 1944 translation rendered the Danish Angest as dread. Later translators prefer anxiety, which keeps the link to ordinary experience and to the psychology the book claims to be doing. Whichever English word is used, the point is the same: this is a feeling with no definite object.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Anxiety, the Dizziness of Freedom

Why does a person feel uneasy before a choice nobody is forcing on them? Vigilius Haufniensis answers that anxiety is freedom looking at its own possibility, and that it tells a person what they are.

Fear has an object; anxiety does not. It is the unease a person feels before their own freedom, the way someone looking down from a height feels dizzy not at the drop but at what they might do. Adam in his innocence felt it first, when the prohibition on one tree showed him that he could. Vigilius treats this as psychology rather than doctrine, and the point cuts both ways: anxiety is the condition in which a person can fall, and also the sign that they are spirit, not only a creature of instinct.

anxiety
freedom
possibility
innocence
psychology
spirit
human nature
sensuality
sexuality
the demonic
temporality
time
eternity
genius
fate

Enter a dialogue

Inherited Sin and the Leap

If Adam's sin passes to everyone like a family illness, no one has chosen it. Vigilius asks what inherited sin could mean for an actual person, and answers that it enters each life by a leap.

Church doctrine taught a guilt passed down by inheritance. Vigilius will not treat sin as a trait handed on, because then it would be fate and not guilt. Sin enters each life the way it entered Adam's, by a qualitative leap no explanation can bridge: between innocence and guilt there is no gradual passage psychology could trace, only the anxious approach and then the fall. Every person is therefore both an individual and the whole human race. No one inherits guilt, and no one sins outside the history of the race.

sin
original sin
guilt
ethics
dogmatics
christianity
individuality
qualitative change
logic
faith
inwardness
religion

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 341
distinct concepts: 371
by passages held, corpus-wide: #221

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “anxiety” and “freedom”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 25 pairings. 77 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
anxiety	freedom	33
anxiety	sin	27
anxiety	guilt	18
freedom	sin	18
ethics	sin	16
demonic	freedom	12
psychology	sin	12
anxiety	demonic	11
anxiety	original sin	11
anxiety	psychology	11
freedom	guilt	11
guilt	sin	11
ethics	psychology	9
original sin	psychology	7
original sin	sin	7
demonic	sin	6
ethics	freedom	6
ethics	guilt	5
freedom	psychology	5
guilt	original sin	5
anxiety	ethics	4
ethics	original sin	4
freedom	original sin	4
demonic	psychology	2
guilt	psychology	2

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1841 The Concept of Irony (Om Begrebet Ironi)
Defended in September 1841 — after he had returned Regine Olsen's engagement ring, before the final break with her — this academic dissertation is the last book he signed himself before the pseudonymous books began with Either/Or.
DA
1843 Either/Or (Enten – Eller)
The first of the pseudonymous books: an invented editor presenting two invented authors, whose argument Stages on Life's Way would reopen two years later.
DA
1843 Fear and Trembling (Frygt og Bæven)
Twin of Repetition, published the same October day: both books take up a man who must give up what he loves, one through Abraham and Isaac, the other through an engagement broken off.
DA
1843 Repetition (Gjentagelsen)
A short fiction, subtitled a venture in experimenting psychology: one man's account of a journey back to Berlin, and another man's letters about a love he has fled.
DA
1844 Philosophical Fragments (Philosophiske Smuler)
Johannes Climacus signs his first book here and returns in the far longer Postscript; in its author's lifetime this short thought experiment was little read outside Denmark.
DA
1844 The Concept of Anxiety (Begrebet Angest) you are here DA
1845 Stages on Life's Way (Stadier paa Livets Vei)
Characters from Either/Or and Repetition return here, and the argument moves past the ethical into the religious.
DA
1846 Concluding Unscientific Postscript to "Philosophical Fragments" (Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift)
He meant it to close his authorship and later called it the authorship's turning point; after it, the openly religious writing takes over.
DA
1846 Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review (En literair Anmeldelse)
After the Postscript's farewell, the first book he published was, in form, a review of a contemporary novel, and he signed it with his own name.
DA
1847 Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (Opbyggelige Taler i forskjellig Aand)
Begun in the spring of 1846, while the satirical weekly The Corsair was still caricaturing him, it opens the run of signed religious books that fills the years after the Postscript.
DA
1847 Works of Love (Kjerlighedens Gjerninger)
Two series of deliberations, a form he set apart from the discourse because it is meant to unsettle a reader rather than console one, published six months after the Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits.
DA
1848 Christian Discourses (Christelige Taler)
The first book of 1848, the year he later called the richest of his authorship and the year he wrote The Sickness unto Death.
DA
1849 The Sickness unto Death (Sygdommen til Døden)
The first of two books signed by Anti-Climacus, with Practice in Christianity following in 1850; Kierkegaard later ranked the pair among the most important things he wrote.
DA
1849 Two Ethical-Religious Essays (Tvende ethisk-religieuse Smaa-Afhandlinger)
A slim pamphlet, the only book under the initials H.H., salvaged from a planned cycle of ethical-religious essays that he gave up in the spring of 1849.
DA
1850 Practice in Christianity (Indøvelse i Christendom)
Kierkegaard judged it the truest of all his books; with The Sickness unto Death it makes up the pair signed by Anti-Climacus.
DA
1851 For Self-Examination (Til Selvprøvelse, Samtiden anbefalet)
The last new title he published before three years of public silence, and the book whose planned second series became Judge for Yourselves!
DA
1855 The Moment (Øieblikket Nr. 1–10)
The open, signed form of the criticism that Practice in Christianity had made under a pseudonym, carried in a periodical of his own through the last months of his life.
DA
1876 Judge for Yourselves! (Dømmer selv! Til Selvprøvelse Samtiden anbefalet)
Of the books on this shelf, the only one he finished and then chose not to publish; it stands between the signed discourses of 1851 and the open attack on the church of 1854–55.
DA

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