Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
SOREN AABYE KIERKEGAARD  Macroknow Library
     

   
The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin.

"Anxiety is neither a category of necessity nor a category of freedom; it is entangled freedom, where freedom is not free in itself but entangled, not by necessity, but in itself."1a

"Woman is more anxious than man. This is . . . because she is more sensuous than man, and yet, like him, is essentially qualified as spirit. . ."1b*

" . . . [T]he individual, in anxiety not about becoming guilty but about being regarded as guilty, becomes guilty."1c*

" . . . [P]recisely because every moment, as well as the sum of the moments, is a process (a passing by), no moment is a present, and accordingly there is in time neither present, nor past, nor future."1d

"The moment signifies the present as that which has no past and no future, and precisely in this lies the imperfection of the sensuous life. The eternal also signifies the present as that which has no past and no future, and this is the perfection of the eternal."1e

" . . . [T]he moment is not properly an atom of time but an atom of eternity."1f

"The possible corresponds exactly to the future. For freedom, the possible is the future, and the future is for time the possible. To both these corresponds anxiety in the individual life."1g BATAILLE

"If we ask more particularly what the object of anxiety is, then the answer . . . must be that it is nothing. Anxiety and nothing always correspond to each other."1h

" . . . [A]nxiety is defined as freedom's disclosure to itself in possibility."1i BATAILLE

"Freedom means to be capable. Good and evil exist nowhere outside freedom, since this very distinction comes into existence through freedom."1j

"Like freedom, truth is the eternal. If the eternal is not, there is neither truth nor freedom."1k

"Eternity is indeed the true repetition in which history comes to an end and all things are explained."1l

"When inwardness is missing, the spirit is finitized -- inwardness is the eternal."1m
     
   

* Italics in the original.

1 Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855). The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin. Edited and Translated with Introduction and Notes by Reider Thomte. In collaboration with Albert B. Anderson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.
 I
 a 6. Anxiety as the Presupposition of Hereditary Sin and as Explaining Hereditary Sin Retrogressively in Terms of Its Origin, at 49.
II
b 2. Subjective Anxiety, at 66.
c Ibid., at 75.
d Ibid., at 85.
e Ibid., at 87.
f Ibid., at 88.
g Ibid., at 91.
III
h 2. Anxiety Defined Dialectically as Fate, at 96.
i 3. Anxiety Defined Dialectically as Guilt, at 111.
Supplement
j Selected Entries from Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers Pertaining to The Concept of Anxiety, at 201.
k Ibid., at 206.
l Ibid., at 207.
m Ibid., at 208.

MK-BOOKS-KIERKEGAARD-20071019.