When facing uncertainty, one might reach out to a friend, who might ask ‘what is the worst that could happen.’ It can be very difficult to come up with an answer that justifies the immense concern. If the concern is more like a generalized anxiety, it might be hard to come up with an answer at all. Instead of worry about some specific outcomes, there is just worry.
This condition is quite difficult to explain, and even harder to justify. To an unsympathetic listener, it sounds like an irrationality that sound observation and common sense could root out. Certainly it is not a feeling that anyone can dwell upon indefinitely, but neither is it a disorder to be eradicated.
Kierkegaard, in The Concept of Anxiety, takes this form of anxiety, with no specific object, very seriously. The book’s subtitle is “A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin.” It starts as an inquiry into the theological issue better known as original sin. Psychologically, sin appears as anxiety. It is not all that remarkable, especially for anyone raised Catholic, that sin would be a source of anxiety. Anyone who believes in the torments of eternal damnation would be anxious to prevent this outcome. But Kierkegaard does not trace the feeling of anxiety to any expectation of punishment. Instead, Anxiety emerges with human freedom itself. As he says, anxiety is “freedom’s disclosure to itself in possibility”[111].
We could understand his topic secularly as guilt. How do humans, concerned just like animals for their own preservation and the preservation of their offspring, suddenly become guilty. Where does this negative state come from, even without external threats? Humans are aware that they are free, that they are the author of their actions. In the same moment, they recognize that they are potentially guilty. This is the anxiety of sin.
Anxiety appears in the same moment as freedom: “To the degree he discovers freedom, to that same degree the anxiety of sin is upon him in the state of possibility. He fears only guilt, for guilt alone can deprive him of freedom”[108]. Freedom immediately posits guilt as its opposite, as a way to lose freedom. A confusion arises because the standard interpretation of freedom (to be free to follow one’s own desires) is typically opposed to necessity. Kierkegaard says that under such an interpretation: “freedom is confused in a clever way with something entirely different, with force.”[108] Kierkegaard makes it clear that he is not describing a selfish freedom or defiance, which would be limited by constraints.
Kierkegaard’s freedom involve some constraints and pursues self-realization (which will become clearer when we examine Frankfurt’s The Reasons of Love). Constraints do not impair our freedom, like how a dam deprives water of the freedom to move. Only guilt threatens freedom. So what does Kierkegaard mean by guilt? It is clear that, for Kierkegaard, guilt also holds a deeper, non-standard meaning.
Guilt, in the usual sense, arises after doing something wrong. An innocent person holds no guilt — worrying about possible guilt seems pointless. However, Kierkegaard suggests that anxiety over possible guilt is much deeper and more severe. The final section of the book elaborates upon such “anxiety of the possible”[157] as an edifying trial. He says, “The terrible things of life…always become weak by comparison with those of possibility”[157]. The common view that possibility is so light has in mind a spurious version of possibility [156]. An idle hopefulness for how things might have been conjures a phantasm of possibility: a light, almost consoling realm of dreams. To dwell in such airy possibility would be to forfeit risk. The realm of true possibility, however, holds the greatest risks: “whoever took possibility’s course in misfortune lost all, all, as no one in actuality ever lost it”[158].
How can we understand ‘possibility’s course?’ It sounds paradoxical. Possibility’s course would lead to nothing; perhaps it involves consideration of everything that might be done. What could it mean to lose everything on this course?
We will not understand much of what Kierkegaard says if we hold onto the everyday meaning of terms like possibility. As he said, the everyday sense is a spurious version of possibility: a set of possible outcomes following upon free choice. He is not fully clear about the true sense of possibility. I see it as a radically open form of possibility. It deals not just with a set of potential outcomes. It considers how this set of possible outcomes are possibly otherwise. For example, I might wish that I had become a film director; I could lament that I had not started filming side projects earlier, or not attended NYU. I probably will not consider the possibility that film itself had never existed, or that it might someday be outlawed by a despotic state. Only some possibilities appear worthy of concern, yet there are many more layers of possibilities to consider.
Historical instances of cultural collapse bring to light these deeper levels of possibility. They also hint at what Kierkegaard might have imagined when he spoke of losing all on the course of possibility. Jonathan Lear analyzes one well-documented example of cultural collapse: the Crow tribe. The haunting words of Crow leader Plenty Coups serve as a touchpoint throughout Lear’s philosophical work on the subject: Radical Hope. In an interview with Frank Linderman, Plenty Coups became reticent about his tribe’s recent history. He said that after the buffalo were hunted, nothing happened. Lear wants to understand what this could mean, that after a certain moment nothing happened.
Of course in a literal sense, things did keep happening. The Crow tribe had a life in the reservation. The book even describes some notable uprisings; young members of the Crow Tribe attempted to continue their way of life by stealing the horses of their enemies. However, this act could no longer be heroic on the reservation. The United States declared it a crime. Plenty Coups perceived that none of the noble acts of Crow people, the very things that were worth remembering as history, could continue to occur.
The most illuminating example is the planting of a coup stick. The bravest or most ambitious warrior carried a coup stick into battle to plant it before the enemy. Planting the coup stick signaled to the enemy that it was impossible to pass that point without killing the warrior who had planted it. The warrior staked his life on holding the ground marked by his coup stick. In a certain sense, planting the coup stick made it impossible to let the enemy pass.
It was still possible for the enemy to kill the Crow warrior and overtake the coup stick. The coup stick was not a charm that eliminated negative outcomes. It symbolized a certain limit in the field of battle: ‘either I hold this ground, or I die.’ It made certain outcomes, such as abandoning the coup stick, impossible. For many, death is the ultimate impossibility: the point beyond which, truly, nothing happens. Through this symbol of the coup stick, the Crow recognized a fate worse than death. Forfeiting the marked position out of cowardice became profoundly impossible.
Lear paints a compelling picture of the coup stick as much more than an abstract or ceremonial symbol. It is a symbol, but it works concretely on the realm of possibilities. By acknowledging this symbol, both the Crow and their enemies saw that it was no longer possible to pass the marked point while the Crow warrior lived. They also recognized counting coups, or hitting the enemy with the coup-stick then escaping unscathed, to be a humiliation for the enemy. These symbols shaped a world of possibilities, of fears and aspirations. By recognizing these symbols, the world took on greater stakes. There was a fate worse than death, but there were also deeds that commanded respect. A warrior who defended his coup or counted a coup could expect a reward of higher status or, if he died, of remembrance in historical narratives.
Of course there was much more to Crow culture than the coup stick, but it is the most illuminating detail for Lear’s question. Lear asks what exactly Plenty Coups meant when he said: “after that, nothing happened.” Plenty Coups’ involvement in advocacy for his tribe, and other dialogues with the U.S., would seem to belie a literal reading of this statement. Certainly things happened for Plenty Coups and his tribe, even if the U.S. limited their freedom. For Crow culture, however, his statement holds a deeper meaning. Nothing happened, because all the activities that had once mattered became impossible. Their symbols no longer structured the world in the same way.
It is not that the Crow simply lost faith in these symbols. A superficial observation of the Coup stick might dismiss it as a charm that, after total disaster, no longer inspired hope. Lear shows that the Coup stick was not a magical charm; it had a real symbolic function that revealed a world of possibilities. These possibilities disappeared when settlers came who did not recognize these cultural symbols. The rebellion led by Sword Bearer from the Crow reservation is a perfect demonstration of this shift. Sword Bearer chose to engage in a coup, against the chief’s wishes, by stealing a horse from the enemy Blackfoot tribe. Sword Bearer was holding to the Crow culture, in which such an accomplishment would bring honor. The United States considered this action theft.
After the Crow lost their ancestral lands and moved onto reservations, their ceremonies and activities ceased to carry the same meaning. Their culture underwent an ontological collapse. The United States refused to acknowledge Crow symbols that conflicted with their own ideals of lawfulness or due process. The Crow could no longer freely occupy the world of their symbols. Even if the United States had granted equal freedoms and a fair apportionment of lands to the Crow people (and they had not), the Crow could never be free to pursue their traditional way of life. That would require everyone around them to actually acknowledge those symbols, and the United States could not.
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This ontological collapse of the Crow culture sheds light on what Kierkegaard might have meant by comparing the losses in actuality to the far more profound losses in possibility. The Crow had plenty of actual fears before the encroachment of the United States settlers. Their ancestral enemies, whom they called the Sioux, were expanding rapidly throughout surrounding territories. Their alliance with the United States partly arose because they feared immanent conquest by the Sioux. They could have lost everything, their material goods, hunting grounds, families, and lives, to the Sioux. In an unforeseen and more profound sense, they lost everything after conquest by the United States. The whole world shifted and slipped out beneath them.
To lose things in actuality is to see a possibility come up in our disfavor. To lose things in possibility is to see those possibilities fall away, to lose what made them possible. We might not have considered what made these possibilities possible. In our day-to-day life, we are worried enough about actual risks, the known possibilities that are not fully guaranteed. We take these possibilities themselves for granted. Kierkegaard’s sense of anxiety is a confrontation with this underlying risk. Even before an actual bad outcome (in his theological context, a concrete sin), there is anxiety in the very experience of freedom. That anxiety is first directed towards guilt, or the possibility of being guilty. The Crow could risk their own lives for an arbitrary stick because the alternative was worse than death. The guilt, of failing to be a great Crow warrior, was simply unthinkable.
This symbolic creation of possibilities underlies the emergence of history (which is why Kierkegaard situates anxiety at the start of human history in Adam and Eve). Instead of a field of reflexes, or systems of power vying for more materials, there is an imaginative field of heroic contest. It becomes possible to love, and not just desire, another person. Loving the other person becomes a profound commitment, such that betraying them would be another fate worse than death. Sexuality takes the place of sensuous desires. Anxiety, guilt, history and sexuality are all concomitant in Adam and Eve’s original sin.
The highest achievement is to endure a collapse of these fundamental frameworks of meaning, to discover new possibilities after an ontological catastrophe. The knight of faith can somehow follow commitments that are impossible for their culture. Lear makes a compelling case that Plenty Coups also saw a viable way beyond ontological collapse, but as a poet for Crow culture in the modern world.
These heroic individuals (the knight of faith or the poet) transcend our categories of possible existence. They live out new forms of meaning. Lear imagines a poet giving expression to radical hope: an openness to new possibilities after ontological disaster. The culture that endures such a catastrophe can look to the poet’s deeds and expressions for a viable new path.
Abraham, under Johannes de Silentio’s interpretation, would be practically the opposite of such a poet. Abraham cannot serve as a model for how to live. De Silentio confesses that, even after so many years, he can still not make sense of Abraham. It still does not seem possible to go through life as he does — to still hope, and believe in his God, despite his duty to sacrifice Isaac. There is an abject horror in the story of Isaac’s sacrifice, duly considered. As he explains, we should be thankful that nobody emulates Abraham’s life in our current culture. So why, he asks, is he praised as the father of faith?
Kierkegaard wanted to contrast Abraham’s faith with Hegel’s idea of heroism. Hegel does reference many heroic figures who transcend the ethical categories of their age. The difference is that, for Hegel, history proves them to be right. Figures like Socrates were misunderstood in their day but became foundational for subsequent generations. Socrates was the first champion of an inevitable (that is, dialectical) historical development, out of myth into reason. Johannes de Silentio finds nothing reasonable about Abraham’s actions, yet we call Abraham the father of faith. In Fear and Trembling, he shows that faith cannot become a template for an ethical life. Abraham’s actions were, and remain, a paradox.
Vigilius Haufniensis shows that such a paradox is not confined to those rare instances of heroism. In anxiety, every individual confronts an abyss, a groundlessness in the question of how to live. There is an unavoidable concern for living a good life, even though nobody knows exactly how. In the knowledge of our freedom, we simultaneously posit guilt as its dialectical opposite. In guilt, we see the possibility of a fate worse than death: the possibility of sin. Kierkegaard calls despair, a closely related concept, the sickness onto death, referencing what Jesus said about Lazarus’s fatal illness: “this sickness is not unto death”[John 11:4]. Worse than dying is the failure to be oneself. That is the truest cause of guilt. Lear showed, through an analysis of crow culture, that guilt is foundational for shared meaning and culture. Because forfeiting the coup stick was worse than death, the coup stick symbolically restricted the realm of possibilities. The coup stick had a definite meaning in that way of life. Similarly, Kierkegaard interprets the meaning of good and evil, that forbidden knowledge, as what came to be through the positing of sin. Only humans understand evil, because they understand possibilities worse than death. Anyone who is fully human, who loves life and their neighbors, fears becoming evil more than dying.
Kierkegaard’s account of sin, like his interpretation of Abraham, also frustrates Hegelians who would assimilate everything into the historical dialectic. Kierkegaard argues that the doctrine of original sin only makes sense though the qualitative leap: sin came into the world by sin. It is a starkly non-dialectical thought. There is no mediation of opposites to explain this concept, which is so foundational for culture and history. Freedom simply posits sin. Faith and sin fall outside of Hegel’s system, and yet they confront everyone in the most important task: to resolve guilt through faith.
Harry Frankfurt makes a related point in The Reasons of Love, where he philosophically defends love, and even self-love, as a necessary condition for a virtuous life. He goes against a long tradition of ethical philosophy that grants rational disinterest exclusive claim to ethical validity. He does not try to invalidate all rational, ethical deliberation (and neither would Kierkegaard for that matter — the ethical life can be a fulfilling commitment, preferable to the aesthetic life). However, Frankfurt does not see ethical reasoning as a sufficient foundation. Even if we accept Kant’s categorical imperative and identify principles in conformity to reason as our duty, we have still not established what why we ought to care about that duty. Ethics does not address why ethical behavior is innately valuable.
Frankfurt identifies love as an experience that inherently confers value. When we love certain things, we identify our own interests with the interests of what we love. Unlike duty, it is inherently motivating (although many people, and definitely Kant, love duty). We do not reason that parents have a responsibility to care for kids and then decide to protect our children’s interests. Perhaps this love for our kids could be justified as a universal maxim, but in actual life we never perform such a justification. We simply love our children, and do everything to preserve their interests. Love is not a belief structure. Frankfurt describes it as a configuration of the will.
Frankfurt closes the book with his surprising apology for self-love. For him, self-love is a way to nurture one’s own interests, to free oneself from the wanton claims of desire. Paradoxically, love is a constraint on the will (a direction to love certain things wholeheartedly and limit distractions) that constitutes freedom. This formula, a constraint that constitutes freedom and immanently justifies, can help illuminate why Kierkegaard thought anxiety could save through faith. There is an inherent risk to caring about things. We are anxious about guilt, about failing loved ones, about an abundance of possibilities that are worse than death. And yet, against this background of guilt, we understand freedom. Anxiety can save through faith, which redeems us for genuine freedom. Faith is not an acceptance of dogma. It does not pertain to any belief structures. It does not console us with the belief that good things are still possible. It is a constitution of the will that does not waiver even before impossibility. It is a leap, inexplicable and immanently justified.
Both faith and love begin in a leap and constitute a structure of the will, but Kierkegaard does not see salvation in all forms of love. Only Christian love of one’s neighbor would be commensurate to the knight of faith. The love about which Frankfurt writes would be suitable to Kierkegaard’s ethical life (as would the hope offered by Lear’s poet). The second author of Either/Or champions the ethical life, in which he loves his family and devotes himself to his duties. It is not clear that he loves his neighbor beyond a civil form of respect. Kierkegaard accepts this way of life as sufficient for many. It might be motivated by love, but it does not endure like the religious life, resting in faith and Christian love (agape). Kierkegaard recognized that an ontological collapse, such as what occurred to the Crow people, hangs over any ethical way of life. The possibilities that we have chosen to love and pursue could suddenly lose their foundation: a way of life can fall apart. Only faith can secure a meaningful life in any circumstance. Even when all known possibilities become impossible, when traditional activities cease to be meaningful, faith offers rebirth into freedom and possibility.
Bibliography
Frankfurt, Harry G. The Reasons of Love. Princeton University Press, 2004.
Kierkegaard, Søren. The Concept of Anxiety. Trans. Reidar Thomte and Albert B. Anderson. Princeton University Press, 1980.
Kierkegaard, Søren. Either/Or. Trans. Alistair Hannay. Penguin Books, 1992.
Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling. Trans. Alistair Hannay. Penguin Books, 1985.
Kierkegaard, Søren. Works of Love. Trans. Howard and Edna Hong. Harper-Collins Publishers, 2009.
Lear, Jonathan. Radical Hope. Harvard University Press, 2006.
