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"The biggest danger," wrote the 19th century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard,
"that of losing oneself,
can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing;
every other loss, an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.
is bound to be noticed."
As a philosopher, Kierkegaard was extremely interested with ideas such as freedom, anxiety, despair,
and what it means to live as a genuine human being.
His thoughts on these topics were of great interest to the 20th century existentialists
such as Heidegger, Camus and Sartre,
which is why he is now often called the father of existentialism.
According to Kierkegaard, human beings are a synthesis of opposites.
One of these pairs of opposites he called 'The Infinite and Finite', writing:
"For the self is a synthesis in which the finite is the limiting factor and the infinite the expanding factor."
The infinite corresponds to possibility;
to the capacity to envisage new thoughts and ideas,
bring into existence new creations,
change oneself and choose from innumerable potentialities.
The finite corresponds to actuality or necessity;
to the concrete here and now;
to one's reality as a definite something in the world.
There is a compulsion to completely absorb oneself in either the finite or infinite,
for in doing so one abandons the responsibility of being a self.
To lose oneself in the finite is to live a life imprisoned in what one perceives as an inescapable environment
where no alternatives exist.
Such an individual frequently becomes depressed, slavish and dependant on others.
Finding safety and security by assimilating oneself into social, institutional or familial networks,
the individual finds it "too venturesome a thing to be himself,
far easier and safer to be like the others,
to become an imitation, a number,
a cipher in the crowd."
To lose oneself in the infinite is to live as though life is nothing but a series of endless experiments.
Different paths are sampled and personalities tried on for size,
but no enduring choice or commitment ever made.
One who is lost in the infinite
is obsessed with who one can potentially become.
Yet in reality never becomes anything,
let alone a self.
"Now if possibility outruns necessity,
the self runs away from itself...
The self becomes an abstract possibility
which tries itself out with floundering in the possible,
but does not budge from the spot,
not get to any spot,
for precisely the necessary is the spot;
to become oneself is precisely a movement at the spot."
To be a self requires that one balance these opposing tensions.
It requires a recognition that innumerable possibilities lie before one,
but that one must choose a definite course of action appropriate to "the self which one truly is".
This requires vigilance, constant effort and much courage
and thus is the greatest task there is.
"...to have a self, to be a self, is the greatest concession made to man,
but at the same time it is eternity's demand upon him."
The weight of this 'greatest of all tasks', he elicits anxiety.
There are no manuals which guide one in the process of becoming a self
and no external standards of success.
On the path to selfhood one must "walk without meeting one single traveller."
The individual is left alone in this balancing act of human existence,
and a dizziness and disorientation rises up
as he stares into the abyss of possibilities which confront him.
"Anxiety may be compared with dizziness.
He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy.
But what is the reason for this?
It is just as much in his own eyes as in the abyss...
anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.".
Far from signifying a pathological state which one must strive to alleviate,
Kierkegaard posited existential anxiety
as an essential requirement on the path to selfhood.
"...I will say that this is an adventure that every human being must go through -
to learn to be anxious...
Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way
has learned the ultimate.".
Anxiety is a response to the awareness of one's freedom;
of one's power to gaze into the yawning abyss of possibilities
and through an act of choice, actualise one of those potentialities.
It is a response to the recognition that one is ultimately responsible for oneself and one's future.
This awesome sense of freedom and responsibility
is apprehended as simultaneously attractive and repulsive,
an ambivalence Kierkegaard called 'dread'.
"In dread there is the egoistic infinity of possibility,
which does not tempt like a definite choice,
but alarms and fascinates with its sweet anxiety.".
Lacking the strength and courage to endure the continual anxiety required to walk the path of selfhood,
most strive to alleviate their anxiety by choosing,
on some level of awareness,
not to be a self.
Such a choice volts one into a state of despair,
a "Sickness of Spirit",
characterised by the attempt to rid oneself of oneself
and thus do away with the responsibility of being a self.
"To despair over oneself,
in despair to will to be rid of oneself -
this is the formula for all despair."
Despair takes many forms and is not necessarily accompanied
by feelings of hopelessness and depression.
In fact,
Kierkegaard thought one could seem in "the best of help
precisely when the sickness is most dangerous."
Such an individual would be wholly unconscious of their despair
and thus in a most dangerous position,
for a sickness can inflict the most harm when one is unaware that one is even sick.
"The despairing man who is unconscious of being in despair is,
in comparison with him who is conscious of it,
merely a negative step further from the truth and from salvation...
unawareness is so far from removing despair, that, on the contrary,
it may be the most dangerous form of despair.
By unconsciousness the despairing man is in a way secured
(but to his own destruction)
against becoming aware -
that is,
he is securely in the power of despair."
While there are numerous ways in which an individual,
through various forms of self-deception,
hides from his awareness the fact that he lacks a self,
Kierkegaard believed the despair over the earthly to be "the commonest sort of despair".
Despair over the earthly arises when an individual attempts to compensate for their lack of self
by latching their identity on to something external in the world,
for example,
a job, relationship, ones family, wealth or ones looks.
If the individual loses this external good
he thinks his subsequent misery and emptiness is a result of such a loss,
not realising that an inner hollowness was there all along.
He lacked a self and tried to compensate by
projecting his identity onto something external and finite,
an attempt which is bound to fail every time.
"An individual in despair despairs over something.
So it seems for a moment,
but only for a moment;
in the same moment the true despair or despair in its true form shows itself.
In despairing over something,
he really despaired over himself,
and now he wants to get rid of himself.
For example,
when the ambitious man whose slogan is:
"Either Caesar or nothing"
does not get to be Caesar,
he despairs over it.
But this also means something else:
precisely because he did not get to be Caesar,
he now cannot bear to be himself.
Consequently
he does not despair because he did not get to be Caesar
but despairs over himself because he did not get to be Caesar."
If the individual in misery,
over an earthly loss,
has his fortunes reversed,
he will return to his previous health
and his despair will return into the darkness of his unconscious.
"If outward help comes,
then life returns to the despairer,
he begins where he left off;
he had no self, and a self he did not become,
but he continues to live on..."
While Kierkegaard thought to be in despair of "the worst misfortune and misery"
he also maintained that "to be able to despair is an infinite advantage",
for it implies that one potentially has a self.
The key factor is whether one is conscious of their despair or not.
"The more consciousness, the more intense the despair".
But the more consciousness, the closer one is to eradicating despair
and living a genuine existence appropriate for a human being.
As a young man at the age of 22,
Kierkegaard was struggling with the tensions of human existence;
falling into the depths of nihilism and despair.
At this time he wrote in his journal of finding
"...joy and refreshment
in contemplating the great men
who have found that precious stone for which they sell all,
even their lives...
proceeding on their chosen course without vacillating...
absorbed in themselves and in working toward their higher goal."
Finding this "precious stone" or "higher goal"
became, for Kierkegaard, an all-consuming passion
and the pathway to selfhood
which he recognised as absent in the lives of too many.
"What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do,
not what I must know...
What matters is to find a purpose...
to find a truth that is true for me,
to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die...
This is what my soul thirsts for
as the African desert thirsts for water."
The truth which Kierkegaard was thirsting for
was not an abstract truth divorced from his existence
as an individual.
Such objective or conceptual truths
are useful if one strives for detached intellectual or scientific understanding,
but when it comes to what it means to be a human being
and how to successfully navigate the existential tensions of life,
such objective truths are meaningless.
"...what good would it do me" wrote Kierkegaard
"if truth stood before me, cold and naked,
not caring whether I recognised her or not?"
Instead, the truth Kierkegaard was seeking was subjective or existential truth.
A truth embodied in the inwardness of the individual,
expressed through one's passionate commitment to a certain idea or style of living.
"...the inward deepening in and through existing, is truth"
While objective truths are known,
subjective truths are lived and experienced.
With respect to subjective truths,
"If a person does not become what he understands,
then he does not understand it either."
Kierkegaard observed that practically everyone's life
was stricken with some form of despair.
Engaged in styles of living
inadequate for genuine selfhood.
Through his voluminous writings,
he attempted to convince his readers they lacked subjectivity or inwardness,
that their values, attitudes and inner relationship with reality was destitute -
fertile for breeding despair.
Kierkegaard's psychological sense was keen enough to recognise
that this was no easy task.
He could not directly condemn the way of life of his readers
as most react to such attacks with defence mechanisms,
justification tactics and even anger.
Direct communication would be of no help in this project.
Kierkegaard understood a more subtle form of communication was needed.
"No,
an illusion can never be destroyed directly,
and only by indirect means can it be radically removed...
That is,
one must approach from behind the person who is under illusion."
Kierkegaard utilised a technique termed 'Indirect Communication'.
Instead of explicitly condemning faulty ways of life
and imposing his own ideas about how to live on the reader,
he bypassed their difference mechanisms by stimulating them to
think for themselves about their inward relationship with reality
and the alternative life paths available.
In this sense,
if the reader came to see the baroness of his inner motive being
and decided to proceed along a different path
more conducive to a genuine existence,
it would appear as if such an awakening
was initiated solely by the reader himself.
"To stop a man on the street and stand still while talking to him,
is not so difficult as to say something to a passer-by in passing,
without standing still and without delaying the other,
without attempting to persuade him to go the same way,
but giving him instead an impulse to go precisely his own way.
Such is the relation between one existing individual and another,
when the communication concerns the truth as existential inwardness."
Kierkegaard employed indirect communication through the use of pseudonyms.
In the majority of his works he does not write under his own name
but through the guise of various fictional characters
who speak from the perspective of one immersed in a given life view,
often even attempting to justify a way of life
Kierkegaard himself thought inadequate for selfhood.
"In the pseudonymous works there is not a single word which is mine.
I have no opinion about these works except as a third person,
no knowledge of their meaning except as a reader,
not the remotest private relation to them."
Writing as different fictional characters living out certain ways of life
enabled Kierkegaard to force his readers to try on different life views
as one would try on clothes.
Detaching themselves from their own lives
and immersing themselves in different potentialities.
Such a technique,
of becoming objective towards oneself
and subjective towards other styles of life,
Kierkegaard called 'Mastered Irony'.
"Most men are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others,
frightfully objective sometimes -
but the task is precisely to be objective toward oneself
and subjective toward all others."
Armed with indirect communication,
Kierkegaard analysed what he thought to be the three general styles of living,
or 'Spheres of Existence',
possible for the individual.
The Aesthetic,
The Ethical
and The Religious.
These Spheres,
and their appropriateness for the eradication of despair
and cultivation of a self,
will be summarised in the next video.
To conclude this video and bridge into the next
it is crucial to note that Kierkegaard was passionately committed to the idea
that everyone must walk the path
to selfhood as a solitary or single individual.
Yet he recognised that most are too cowardly to endure
the anxiety and dread this elicits
and therefore that most will seek to lose their self and sense of responsibility
by immersing themselves in a crowd of others.
"For every single individual who escapes into the crowd...
flees in cowardice from being a single individual."
As Kierkegaard wrote:
it is far easier to "emasculate oneself, in a spiritual sense"
and cling to the herd "in order to be at least something"
than to stand alone,
heeding the eternal demand "to become oneself".
For one of the greatest fears in the individual
is that ultimately he is alone
and therefore ultimately responsible for his life.
"Deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety
over the possibility of being alone in the world,
forgotten by God,
overlooked among the millions and millions in this enormous household.
A person keeps this anxiety at a distance by looking at the many round about
who are related to him as kin and friends,
but the anxiety is still there."