Sickness Unto Death, Part I

notes for a talk I gave on Kiergegaard's Sickness Unto Death once.

Despair

Self: "The self is the conscious synthesis of infinitude and finitude that relates itself to itself, whose task is to become itself, which can be done only through the relationship to God... the progress of becoming must be an infinite moving away from itself in the infinitizing of the self, and an infinite coming back to itself in the finitizing process. But if the self does not become itself, it is in despair, whether it knows that or not" (30).
Definition: "Despair is the misrelation in the relation of a synthesis that relates itself to itself" (15).
Universality: "Just as a physician might say that very likely there is not one single living human being who is completely healthy, so anyone who really knows [hu]mankind might say that there is not one single living human being who does not despair a little, who does not secretly harbor an unrest, an inner strife, a disharmony, an anxiety about an unknown something or a something he does not even dare try to know, an anxiety about some possibility in existence or an anxiety about himself..." (22).
Types of Despair

Defined by Consciousness: "The ever increasing intensity of despair depends upon the degree of consciousness or is proportionate to its increase: the greater the degree of consciousness, the more intensive the despair" (42)
Spiritlessness: in despair, not to be conscious of having a self (not despair in the strictest sense)
This is "the despair that is ignorant of being despair, or the despairing ignorance of having a self and an eternal self" (42)
"If a man is presumably happy, imagines himself to be happy, although considered in the light of truth he is unhappy, he is usually far from wanting to be wrenched out of his error. On the contrary, he becomes indignant, he regards anyone who does so as his worst enemy, he regards it as an assault bordering on murder in the sense that, as it is said, it murders his happiness... he is too sensate to have to courage to venture out and to endure being spirit" (43).
"Every human existence that is not conscious of itself... before God as spirit... that does not rest transparently in God but vaguely rests and merges in some abstract universality... or, in the dark about his self, regards his capacities merely as powers to produce without becoming deeply aware of their source... is... despair" (46).
Weakness: in despair, not to will to be oneself, or the will to do away with oneself: typical (though not definitive) feminine despair
immediacy/despairing over the earthly: "He turns away completely from the inward way along which he should have advanced in order to truly become a self. In a deeper sense, the whole question of the self becomes a kind of false door with nothing behind it in the background of his soul. He appropriates what he in his language calls his self, that is, whatever capacities, talents, etc he may have; all these he appropriates but in an outward-bound direction, toward life, as they say, toward the real, the active life" (55-56).
despairing over the eternal or himself: a man who wishes to be Caesar cannot bear to be himself (ex), yet he cannot get rid of himself; he despairs over himself. he "becomes more clearly conscious of his despair, that he despairs of the eternal that he despairs over himself, over being so weak that he attributes such great significance to the earthly, which now becomes for him the despairing sign that he has lost the eternal and himself" (61). this creates inclosing reserve, and can lead to suicide.
Defiance: in despair, to will to be oneself, : typical (though not definitive) masculine despair
"Here the despair is conscious of itself as an act" (67).
"The more consciousness there is in such a sufferer who in despair wills to be himself, the more his despair intensifies and becomes demonic" (71-72).
"And this is the self that a person in despair wills to be, severing the self from any relation to a power that has established it, or severing it from the idea that there is such a power...instead, the self in despair is satisfied with paying attention to itself, which is supposed to bestow infinite interest and significance upon his enterprises..." (68-69).
"The devil's despair is the most intensive despair, for the devil is sheer spirit and hence unqualified consciousness and transparency; there is no obscurity in the devil that could serve as a mitigating excuse. Therefore, his despair is the most absolute defiance" (42).
"Rather than to seek help, he prefers, if necessary, to be himself with all the agonies of hell" (71).
"In so far as the self in its despairing striving to be itself works itself into the very opposite, it really becomes no self... at no moment is it... eternally steadfast" (69).
The Remedy?
Despair as a state of perpetuated continuity: "If a person is truly not to be in despair, he must at every moment destroy the possibility" (15), for "[our despair] does not continue as a matter of course; if the misrelation continues, it is not attributable to the misrelation but to the relation that relates itself to itself" (16). the continuity of sin vs "the essential continuity of the eternal through being before God in faith" (105)
Solution: "The formula that describes the state of the self when despair is completely rooted out is this: in relating itself to itself and in willing to be itself, the self rests transparently in the power that established it." (14)
Inwardness: resting transparently in the power that established you. "If there is, then, something eternal in a man, it must be able to exist and to be grasped within every change... the time never comes when a man has grown away from it, or has become older -- than the Eternal. If there is, then, something eternal in a man the discussion of it must have a different ring. It must be said that there is something that shall always have its time, something that a man shall always do, just as one Apostle says that we should always give thanks to God... The Eternal will not have its time, but will fashion time to its own desire, and then give its consent that the temporal should also be given its time" (36-37).
The Unspeakable in Nature: "And the sea, like a wise man, is sufficient unto itself. Whether it lies like a child and amuses itself with its soft ripples as a child that plays with its mouth, or at noon lies like a drowsy thinker in carefree enjoyment and allows its gaze to wander over all, or in the night ponders deeply over its own being; whether in order to see what is going on, it cunningly conceals itself as though it no longer existed, or whether it rages in its own passion: the sea has a deep ground, it knows well enough what it knows. That which has a deep ground always knows this; but there is no sharing of this knowledge." (48-49) This description of the unspeakable-- it is different with 'one who confesses' -- or who is before God, transparent, who prays ---
The Unspeakable in Man: "For when hate, and anger, and revenge, and despondency, and melancholy, and despair, and fear of the future, and reliance on the world, and trust in oneself, and pride that infuses itself even into sympathy, and envy that even mingles itself with friendship, and that inclination that may have changed but not for the better: when these dwell in a man --- when was it without the deceptive excuse of ignorance? And when a man remained ignorant of them, was it not precisely because he at the same time remained ignorant of the fact that there is an all-knowing One." (51-52)
The way inward, into transparency and rest is silence.

When You Can Endure ~Hafiz
When
The words stop
And you can endure the silence
That reveals your heart's
Pain Of emptiness
Or that great wrenching sweet longing,
That is the time to try and listen
To what the Beloved's
Eyes
Most want
To Say.

A Still Cup ~Hafiz
For
God
To make love,
For the divine alchemy to work,
The Pitcher needs a still cup.
Why
Ask Hafiz to say
Anything more about
Your most
Vital
Requirement?

*All Quotes from Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death, except those noted 'POH', from Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing


The Diary of an Old Soul (excerpts),

by George MacDonald

Sometimes I wake, and, lo! I have forgot,
And drifted out upon an ebbing sea!
My soul that was at rest now resteth not,
For I am with myself and not with thee;
Truth seems a blind moon in a glaring morn,
Where nothing is but sick-heart vanity:
Oh, thou who knowest! save thy child forlorn.

...Thy fishes breathe but where thy waters roll;
Thy birds fly but within thy airy sea;
My soul breathes only in thy infinite soul;
I breathe, I think, I love, I live but thee.
Oh breathe, oh think,--O Love, live into me;
Unworthy is my life till all divine,
Till thou see in me only what is thine.