Anxiety is the “dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis, and freedom now looks down into its own possibility, laying hold of finiteness to support itself.”10 The Sickness unto Death presupposes anxiety but excludes it from consideration, inasmuch as despair is a more advanced stage: “in all despair there is an interplay of finitude and infinitude, of the divine and the human, of freedom and necessity.”11 Anxiety is touched upon very briefly in The Sickness unto Death by way of the analogy of dizziness,12 but the exclusion of a consideration of anxiety in the advance to an analysis of despair is emphasized by the removal of allusions to anxiety and its related concept of hereditary sin.13 The relation between anxiety, despair, and sin is signaled, however, in “the dialectic of sin,”14 because “sin presupposes itself”15 through anxiety.

The resolution of the dialectic of despair/healed despair is also foreshadowed in a nonpseudonymous discourse published to accompany The Concept of Anxiety: “To Need God Is a Human Being’s Highest Perfection.”16 A condensation is given in the Papirer: “If man did not have absolute need of God, he could not (1) know himself—self-knowledge, (2) be immortal.”17 This is reformulated in the very compact summation in The Sickness unto Death: “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.”18 In the journals from the period before the publication of The Sickness unto Death there are entries that develop this theme,19 themselves reaching a climax in the profound and moving entry on forgiveness and becoming spirit,20 which was written shortly before Kierkegaard began intensive work on the manuscript of The Sickness unto Death.

In the context of the prolonged concern with the nature and possible forms of anxiety, sin, and despair, the crystallized idea of The Sickness unto Death first appeared in the journals of 1847. An entry surrounded by datable entries referring to pericope texts and to newspaper items between April 5 and 26 reads: “At first perhaps a person sins out of weakness, yields to weakness (alas, for your weakness is the strength of lust, inclination, passion, and sin); but then he becomes so despondent over his sin that he perhaps sins again and sins out of despair.”21 This is echoed in subsequent entries,22 and an entry presumably from February 1848 contains the lines:

A new book ought to be written entitled: Thoughts that Cure Radically, Christian Healing.… It will have two parts, perhaps it is better to have three.

(1) First comes: Thoughts that wound from behind23—for upbuilding….24

(1) [changed from: (2)] On the consciousness of sin,
The Sickness unto Death
Christian Discourses

(2) [changed from: (3)] Radical Cure
[changed from: Thoughts that Cure Radically]

Christian Healing
The Atonement25

Given the long incubation period, the idea of The Sickness unto Death readily found its form and development. The form is algebraic,26 along the lines of its earlier counterpart, The Concept of Anxiety; and of all the works, this one most clearly and compactly develops a single theme.

In substance, The Sickness unto Death (1849) is related to The Concept of Anxiety (1844) in the sense that despair is an advanced stage beyond anxiety. Philosophical Fragments (1844) is a hypothesis: If an advance is to be made upon Socrates, then what follows? Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) presents the universally human (the Socratic) and Christianity in a positive ascent. The Sickness unto Death presents the Socratic and Christianity in a correlation of complementary discontinuity. Practice in Christianity (1850), developed as a separate work, is an expressive, indicative ethic, in contrast to the hidden inwardness of The Sickness unto Death.

Having completed the draft of The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard considered recasting it as a lyrical discourse in a more rhetorical form. In a journal entry from May 13, 1848, with the heading “Report on ‘The Sickness unto Death,’” he wrote:

There is one difficulty with this book: it is too dialectical and stringent for the proper use of the rhetorical, the soul-stirring, the gripping. The title itself seems to indicate that it should be discourses—the title is lyrical.

Perhaps it cannot be used at all, but in any case it is enriched with an excellent plan which always can be used, but less explicitly, in discourses.

The point is that before I really can begin using the rhetorical I always must have the dialectical thoroughly fluent, must have gone through it many times. That was not the case here.27

In the margin he added:

If it is to be structured rhetorically, it must be structured rhetorically under certain main points, each of which would become one discourse…. No. 1. Its hiddenness…. No. 2. Its universality…. No. 3. Its continuance…. No. 4. Where is it situated? In the self….

But the point is that the task is much too great for a rhetorical arrangement, since in that case every single individual figure would also have to be depicted poetically. The dialectical algebra [Bogstavregning] works better.28

Although Kierkegaard gave some further consideration to a possible recasting of the work,29 he held to his judgment that “the dialectical algebra works better.” Furthermore, in addition to work on what eventually was called Practice in Christianity, he became immersed in prolix deliberations about giving up writing, about publishing works at hand, about pseudonymity in writing and publishing, and about a possible appointment to a rural pastorate.

The external occasion of the extended agonizing deliberation was the publication of the second edition of Either/Or,30 which appeared on May 14, 1849. Consideration was given to adding a retraction of the work in the new edition.31 Although this was not done, Kierkegaard thought that it “will never do to let the second edition of Either/Or be published without something accompanying it. Somehow the accent must be that I have made up my mind about being a religious author. …”

Furthermore, the other books (“The Sickness unto Death,” “Come Here,” “Blessed Is He Who Is Not Offended”)32 are extremely valuable. In one of them in particular33 it was granted to me to illuminate Christianity on a scale greater than I had ever dreamed possible; crucial categories are directly disclosed there. Consequently, it must be published….

But the second edition of Either/Or is a critical point (as I did in fact regard it originally and wrote “The Point of View” to be published simultaneously with it and otherwise would scarcely have been in earnest about publishing the second edition)—it will never come again. If this opportunity is not utilized, everything I have written, viewed as a totality, will be dragged down into the esthetic.34

“My intention was to publish all the completed manuscripts [The Sickness unto Death, parts of Practice in Christianity, The Point of View, Armed Neutrality, Two Ethical-Religious Essays] in one volume, all under my name—and then to make a clean break.”35 At the same time, Kierkegaard was giving serious consideration to the possibility of an appointment to a rural pastorate, but finally it became clear to him that it was beyond his ability “to undertake both at once.”36

At bottom, however, the reflective predicament centered in the complex of issues involved in pseudonymity, in the tension between poetic ideality and personal actuality, in the concept and practice of the “religious poet.” On the one hand, Kierkegaard thought that what was needed was “a detachment of poets; almost sinking under the demands of the ideal, with the glow of a certain unhappy love they set forth the ideal…. These religious poets must have the particular ability to do the kind of writing which helps people out into the current.”37 On the other hand, the “wrong way is much too close: wanting to reform, to arouse the whole world—instead of oneself, and this certainly is the wrong way for hotheads with a lot of imagination.”38 Kierkegaard did finally come to a decision, but the transmuted poignancy and radicality of this complex of issues appear even in the opening pages of Part Two of The Sickness unto Death.39

After Kierkegaard had determined “to lay aside everything I had finished writing,” he decided again “that it might be unjustifiable for me to let these writings just lie there….”40 “Perhaps it would be best to publish all the last four books (‘The Sickness unto Death,’ ‘Come to Me,’ ‘Blessed Is He Who Is Not Offended,’ ‘Armed Neutrality’) in one volume under the title

Collected Works of Consummation

with ‘The Sickness unto Death’ as Part I.”41

A little later he widened the sphere, saying that perhaps “all the writings that lie finished (the most valuable I have produced) can also be used, but, for God’s sake, in such a way as to guarantee that they are kept poetic as poetic awakening.”42 The penultimate decision with regard to publication, therefore, was to maintain pseudonymity and to restrict the number of works so as to exclude all those with a direct personal reference.

Just as the Guadalquibir River at some place plunges underground and then comes out again, so I must now plunge into pseudonymity, but I also understand now how I will emerge again under my own name. The important thing left is to do something about seeking an appointment and then to travel.

(1) The three small ethical-religious essays will be anonymous; this was the earlier stipulation.