For existential thinkers,
particularly Kierkegaard, despair is one of the most significant human emotions
that provides the spur to fruitful thought about the nature of the human condition.
Understanding what Kierkegaard wrote on despair is vital not only because it
illuminates his thought as a whole, but because his account of despair in The Sickness unto Death is the
cornerstone of existentialism.

Michael Theunissen in Kierkegaard’s Concept of Despair
articulates Kierkegaard’s theory of despair in a detailed and comprehensible
manner. What makes Theunissen’s study on Kierkegaard’s theory of despair as the
best and the most interesting treatment of the subject is his analytical
approach into The Sickness unto Death.
Such an approach not only contradicts Kierkegaard’s self conception, it also
collides with the currently prevalent way of dealing with him. It may be
assumed that Kierkegaard would have been to concede that philosophy is contained
in his Christian psychology of despair. But he undoubtedly related the
philosophical part of his work to the element subordinated in a whole, which is
of a religious nature. Theunissen seems to deal with Kierkegaard’s analysis of
despair as a piece of philosophy that can be taken out of the whole to a
certain extent. Thus, Theunissen primarily concerns himself primarily in
explicating the issue itself.

Kierkegaard in the Preface to The Sickness unto Death explicitly defines despair as dialectical:
"I would call attention once and for all to the fact that in this whole
book, as the title indeed says, despair is conceived as the cure. So
dialectical is despair" (1970, p. 143). In concordance with Kierkegaard’s
treatment of despair, Theunissen’s Kierkegaard’s
Concept of Despair is also divided into three parts that form relatively
contained units. The first study entitled "The Existential Dialectical
Basic Assumption of Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Despair" exposes the
methodical structure of The Sickness unto
Death and, mainly, from its beginning with the self, explaining the
methodological and anthropological assumptions of Kierkegaard’s analysis of
despair. The second study entitled "On the Transcending Critique of
Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Despair" is formulated on the assumption that
the immediate subject is not despair, but rather the self. Thus, by formulating
despair, in a way, on the basis of the self, the study seeks despair on a basis
that is at the same time removed from the self. In the summarizing conclusion
Theunissen turns his attention once more to the dialectic in The Sickness unto Death. Because as
Kierkegaard himself pointed out in an entry entitled "A Report about The Sickness unto Death" in his
Journal "there is one difficulty about this book: it is too dialectical
and strict to permit of the employment of rhetoric, of revival, of moving
effect…The fact is that before I begin to employ the rhetorical I always must
have the dialectical at my fingertips, must go through it many times. This was
not the case with this subject" (in 1970, p. 135).

Because Kierkegaard designates
his whole concern a dialectic of existence and also because and primarily with
regard to the dialectic of an existence that has refracted relation to its own
structure, Theunissen defines the existential-dialectical principle of
Kierkegaard’s analysis of despair as "we do not will to be directly what
we are" (p. 5). Theunissen argues that for Kierkegaard, the fundamental
characteristic of despair is the desire of the self "not to be what it
is". Kierkegaard himself translates the immediately despaired willing to
be a self into a willing to be of what we are not. Then, Theunissen rightly
points out that "it becomes clear that in despairingly willing to be a
self, we simply want to be what we are not" (p. 11).

With the elucidation of this
fundamental principle, the task set for Theunissen is the reconstruction of
Kierkegaard’s analysis of despair and the determination of its historical
place. According to Theunissen, the reconstruction of the theory outlined in The Sickness unto Death can be oriented toward the proposed
compartmentalization of being, to which we relate negatively, into the
pre-given Dasein, the being human, and the self. Thus, after going through
these three dimensions of being in despair interpreted in terms of an
existential dialectic, Theunissen’s aim is to see whether it holds up by moving
Kierkegaard’s conception of not-being-in-despair into the perspective of his
fundemantal principle" (p. 9). He sorts through the apparently chaotic
text of The Sickness unto Death to explain what Kierkegaard meant by the
"self", how and why individuals want to flee their selves, and how he
believed they could reconnect with their selves. In addition to articulating
and evaluating Kierkegaard’s concept of despair, Theunissen relates
Kierkegaard’s ideas to those of Heidegger, Sartre and other twentieth century
philosophers.

Theunissen argues that
Kierkegaard secretly likes to prove the existence of God by way of the existence
of despair (p. 11). In fact, Kierkegaard in The
Sickness unto Death (in the last word of the book which repeats one of the
first words) gives, if not the prescription for medication of this sickness in
the self, at least the precise formula for health, that is, for the condition
of the self when this sickness is completely eradicated: that the self "by
relating itself to its own self and by willing to be itself is grounded
transparently in the Power which constituted it". And "this", he
says emphatically "is the definition of faith"(1970, p. 262).

Kierkegaard’s Concept of
Despair provides a fresh and innovative analysis of Kierkegaard’s concept
of despair. Contrary to the literature on Kierkegaard that is often content to
paraphrase, Theunissen articulates Kierkegaard’s theory of despair in a
detailed and comprehensible manner and confronts it with alternatives.
Theunissen’s analysis of Kierkegaard’s concept of analysis, besides its being
the best and the most interesting treatment of the subject, also serves to
bridge the gap between the continental and analytic traditions in philosophy. I
believe this book provides an extremely useful framework for philosophers,
theologians and historians who are interested in doing some future analytic
work on Kierkegaard and also in existentialism.

© 2005 Kamuran Godelek

Kamuran
Godelek, Ph.D., Mersin University, Department of Philosophy, Mersin, TURKEY

Categories: Philosophical