Philosophy of Mind

The Concept of Anxiety

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Søren Kierkegaard

1844

Published under the pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis, The Concept of Anxiety offers a psychological-philosophical analysis of anxiety as the condition that makes both sin and freedom possible. Anxiety is not fear of any particular thing but the dizziness of freedom — the vertiginous awareness that one could act otherwise, that every possibility is open and no ground secures the self. The work develops a rigorous account of how inherited anxiety (original sin in its psychological reality) and personal anxiety compound each other, and how anxiety functions as the school through which the spirit must pass on its way to genuine selfhood. It is one of the earliest and most penetrating contributions to the psychology of human freedom.