Gary Cox considers the problematic side of freedom, from the edge of a cliff.
Many of the central themes and concepts of existentialism – freedom, choice, responsibility, bad faith, anxiety, despair, and absurdity – originated in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55), in such ground-breaking works as Either-Or (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), The Concept of Anxiety (1844) and The Sickness Unto Death (1849). Existentialism is undoubtedly as much rooted in Kierkegaard’s militant, idiosyncratic Christianity as it is in the ‘God is dead’ proto-existentialism of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. But his radical views on faith, religious commitment and the individual, and his rejection of a conformist, passive, rationalist, dispassionate, inauthentic approach towards the religious life and the infinite, make him a true existentialist. Here we’re going to briefly look at his concept of anxiety.
Kierkegaard (whose name means ‘churchyard’ in Danish), died in Copenhagen aged just 42, possibly due to a paralysing spinal ailment caused by a fall from a tree in his youth. His funeral was a lively affair, his followers protesting that the established Danish church had no right to take possession of, or to sermonise over, the body of a man who had so vehemently opposed it. Although a Christian and a learned theologian, Kierkegaard was far from being an unquestioningly obedient member of the flock. He was an eccentric maverick who found himself continually at odds with orthodox Christianity generally and the Danish State Church in particular. Kierkegaard was also repulsed by the then dominant philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, with its focus on grand, abstract historical processes rather than on individual, concrete human beings. In opposition, Kierkegaard developed a philosophy of the individual, who does not experience him or herself primarily as a part of the grand sweep of history, but rather as a free, anxious, mortal being struggling to discover any purpose to her absurd, tragic existence. For Kierkegaard, to exist, and therefore to have a relationship with the infinite – with God – is like riding a wild stallion. Unfortunately in his view, most people ‘exist’ on their journey through life as though they’d fallen asleep in a hay wagon.
Crucially, Kierkegaard recognises that anxiety, angst, anguish, or dread (whichever term you prefer) is central to the human condition as it is lived and is suffered by every human being. To understand the true nature of anxiety is therefore to understand a great deal about being human.
Firstly, although it is certainly related to fear in various ways, anxiety must be clearly distinguished from fear. In The Concept of Anxiety Kierkegaard argues that fear is a person’s concern about what threatens him from outside – from a myriad threats to life, limb, livelihood and happiness over which he has limited control. Anxiety, on the other hand, is a person’s concern about what, so to speak, threatens him from inside, from within his own consciousness. An anxious person is concerned about what he might choose to do given his freedom to choose. He is troubled by his own freedom and spontaneity; by the awareness that there is nothing whatsoever preventing him from choosing to perform a foolish, destructive or disreputable act at any moment, other than his choice not to perform it. “Hence,” says Kierkegaard, “anxiety is the dizziness of freedom” (p.61). To be anxious is to be bewildered by one’s own freedom; to be worried and disturbed by the realisation that one always has many options in any situation and must continually choose one option or another. Not choosing is not an option because choosing not to choose, or choosing to do nothing, is still a choice.