The Sickness unto Death

Despair diagnosed as the one illness a person cannot die of, and traced to the way a self relates to itself.

Danish, the original language

Original title: Sygdommen til Døden
First published: 1849(aged 36)
Original language: Danish

Overview

In the Gospel of John, Jesus hears that his friend Lazarus is ill and says that the illness is not unto death; Lazarus dies, and Jesus raises him from the tomb. Anti-Climacus, the pseudonym on this book, takes the phrase and asks which illness truly would be unto death. His answer is despair. He begins with a definition of the self as a relation that relates itself to itself and was established by another: a person holds together the finite and the infinite, the possible and the necessary, and has to go on holding them, and despair is any failure in that balance. Most people, he argues, are in despair without knowing it, because they have never become aware of having a self. Others know, and will not be themselves; the most intense despair wills to be itself in defiance of the power that made it. What makes despair the sickness unto death is that one cannot die of it: it goes on consuming the self without ever finishing it. In the second part despair is renamed sin, and the opposite of sin turns out to be faith, not virtue. Søren Kierkegaard wrote the book in 1848 and then hesitated for months over whether he had the authority to publish it and under whose name. On 4 June 1849 he settled on a new pseudonym, with his own name below it as editor, and the book appeared on 30 July.

Key concepts

Who is Anti-Climacus?

The pseudonym Kierkegaard settled on in June 1849 for this book, with his own name below it as editor; Practice in Christianity appeared under it a year later. The name sets him against Johannes Climacus, the earlier pseudonym who said he was not a Christian: Anti-Climacus writes with a Christian demand Kierkegaard hesitated for months to publish at all.

What does Anti-Climacus mean by the self?

A relation that relates itself to itself and was established by another. A person is a synthesis of opposites, finite and infinite, possible and necessary, and becomes a self by actively holding them together. Because that relation was set up by another power, the self cannot complete itself on its own.

What is despair, in this book?

Any failure in the self's balance, whether a person knows it or not. It is not a mood but a condition: losing oneself in possibility or in necessity, refusing to be oneself, or defiantly insisting on being oneself without the power that made one. It is the sickness unto death because one cannot die of it.

Where does the title come from?

From the Gospel of John, where Jesus hears that his friend Lazarus is ill and says the illness is not unto death; Lazarus dies, and Jesus raises him from the tomb. Anti-Climacus takes the phrase and asks which illness truly would be unto death. His answer is despair.

What is offence, and why does the book keep returning to it?

The possibility of being scandalised by Christianity, of refusing it not from ignorance but because what it claims seems too much or too high. Anti-Climacus treats offence as the shadow of faith: wherever faith is possible, so is offence, and a Christianity that could offend no one would no longer be the real thing.

Themes of the book

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

Despair, the Sickness One Cannot Die Of

Most people, Anti-Climacus argues, are in despair without knowing it, because they have never become aware of having a self. What would it mean to be a self at all, and how does a self fail?

He begins with a definition: the self is a relation that relates itself to itself and was established by another. A person holds together the finite and the infinite, the possible and the necessary, and has to keep holding them; despair is any failure in that balance. Some lose themselves in possibility, some in necessity, and most never notice they have a self to lose. Those who do notice may refuse to be themselves, or, most intensely, will to be themselves in defiance of the power that made them. What makes it the sickness unto death is that one cannot die of it.

selfhood
despair
self-awareness
consciousness
possibility
necessity
spirit
human nature
self-deception
immediacy
defiance
will
self-knowledge
spirituality

Enter a dialogue

Despair Renamed Sin, and Its Opposite, Faith

In the second part despair before God becomes sin, and the opposite of sin turns out to be faith rather than virtue. Why should the cure for a sickness of the self be trust instead of improvement?

Once a person knows they stand before God, despair is no longer only a misfortune of the self but sin. That changes what counts as health. Virtue cannot be the opposite of sin here, because a virtuous person can still refuse, in weakness or defiance, to be the self they were made to be. The opposite is faith: the self resting transparently in the power that established it. Kierkegaard hesitated for months over whether he had the authority to publish the book, and in June 1849 settled on a new pseudonym, with his own name below it as editor.

sin
faith
offense
christianity
god
humility
repentance
faith and reason
paradox
religion
eternity
inwardness
suffering
individuality
ethics
irony

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 269
distinct concepts: 303
by passages held, corpus-wide: #278

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: “despair” and “selfhood”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 26 pairings. 79 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
despair	selfhood	85
despair	sin	20
despair	faith	18
despair	spirituality	16
faith	offense	16
faith	sin	15
christianity	sin	13
selfhood	sin	12
christianity	despair	11
christianity	offense	9
god	selfhood	9
christianity	faith	8
faith	selfhood	8
offense	sin	8
despair	god	6
selfhood	spirituality	6
god	sin	5
christianity	selfhood	4
faith	god	4
faith	spirituality	4
sin	spirituality	4
christianity	spirituality	3
despair	offense	3
christianity	god	1
god	offense	1
god	spirituality	1

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)
Philosophical Fragments had appeared four days earlier under another pseudonym; this is its companion, and it takes a point of church doctrine, inherited sin, and treats it as a problem in psychology.
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) you are here 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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