Kierkegaard — Despair as a sickness in the self-relation
The question that opens it
If despair is not merely sadness but a failed relation of not willing—or willing by oneself alone—to be oneself, what requires care?
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The pseudonymous Anti-Climacus describes the self as a relation relating to itself—a synthesis of finite/infinite and possibility/necessity—and despair as a misrelation.
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Søren Kierkegaard
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Locator: §5 Religion; The Sickness Unto Death and the self as relation
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Reading despair as another name for depression or physical death confuses existential-religious diagnosis with a clinical category; the pseudonym's elevated Christian standpoint must also be distinguished from Kierkegaard's direct voice.
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This is an evidence-linked editorial account, not a direct quotation.
Søren Kierkegaard
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Locator: §2 Aesthetics of Authorship; §5 Religion and Anti-Climacus
Open source