Introduction to Kierkegaard: The Existential Problem

Søren Kierkegaard’s core warning is that the greatest danger in human life is losing oneself—either by surrendering to the finite (what seems fixed and inescapable) or by dissolving into endless possibility without committing. Human beings are a “synthesis of opposites,” with the infinite side pulling toward possibility and self-transformation, and the finite side grounding life in necessity and concrete reality. The self becomes real only when those tensions are balanced: innumerable options must be seen, yet a definite choice must be made that fits the actual person one is. When possibility outruns necessity, the self runs away from itself into abstraction—floundering in the possible while never arriving anywhere.

Kierkegaard treats this balancing act as the central task of selfhood, and he insists it cannot be outsourced to institutions, social roles, or external standards. There are “no manuals” for becoming a self, and no universal measure of success. That isolation produces anxiety, which he compares to dizziness: it arises not because freedom is a disease, but because freedom is terrifying. Anxiety is the dizziness of looking into “the yawning abyss” of possibilities—an ambivalent experience that is both attractive and repulsive. The reason it matters is that anxiety is tied to responsibility: through an act of choice, one actualizes a potentiality and recognizes that one is ultimately responsible for oneself and one’s future.

Yet Kierkegaard also describes how people try to escape anxiety. Many choose, at some level, not to be a self. That escape vaults them into despair, which he calls a “sickness of spirit”—not necessarily accompanied by visible hopelessness or depression. The most dangerous despair can be unconscious: someone may appear healthy while being unaware that they are trapped in a refusal of responsibility. Kierkegaard argues despair takes many forms, but its structure is consistent: an attempt to rid oneself of oneself.

A key mechanism is self-deception through external identity. When despair is “over the earthly,” a person compensates for inner hollowness by attaching identity to something finite—job, relationships, family wealth, or looks. If the external good is lost, the person interprets the resulting misery as caused by the loss, missing the deeper fact that the self was never there. Even when fortunes reverse and life seems to return to normal, the despair returns to its hidden starting point.

Kierkegaard’s alternative is not a detached theory of truth but “subjective” or existential truth: truth embodied in inwardness and lived through passionate commitment. He contrasts objective truth—useful for detached understanding—with the kind of truth that answers what it means to be a human being. His own youthful struggle with nihilism and despair led him to seek a “precious stone”: a purpose and idea worth living and dying for, clarity about what to do rather than what to know.

Because direct moralizing triggers defenses, Kierkegaard relies on indirect communication. He uses pseudonyms and fictional voices to let readers try on life-views as if trying clothes, forcing them to become objective toward themselves and subjective toward others. Still, the existential demand remains solitary: everyone must walk the path to selfhood alone, even though most flee into the crowd to avoid dread and responsibility. Beneath social busyness, Kierkegaard says, anxiety about being alone—and therefore responsible—persists, even when it is kept at a distance by the web of kin and friends.