10.13135/2036-542X/7983
In this article I present a close reading of Section 5 in Søren Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety. After an introduction which alludes to the literary fiction of Jonathan Franzen, the article turns directly to Section 5, in which Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Vigilius Haufniensis, unfolds the phenomenon of anxiety as the original experience of existential freedom. In the first step of the argument, I argue that the. transition of the human being from its natural state into an existence of ethically qualified freedom is a process which must be understood as a peculiar self–disturbance at the heart of subjectivity. In a second step, I claim that this self–disturbance is connected to the essential normativity of language that human beings always already find themselves in. In a concluding discussion, I suggest the interpretation that the linguistical self–disturbance of a human self implies an ethical requalification of the possibilities of one’s past as well as of one’s future.
application/pdf
2036-542X
7983
2
it
Kresten Lundsgaard-Leth
Trópos
Anxiety, Freedom, and the Future of the Past
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos
8
Saggi
2015-12-01
2023-07-31
2015-12-01
2023-07-31
155-173
1
Kresten Lundsgaard-Leth
2015/12/01
10.13135/2036-542X/7983
155
University of Aalborg
2036-542X
2
173
Anxiety, Freedom, and the Future of the Past
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos/article/download/7983/6709
8
                                                          trópos • anno VIII • numero 2 • 2015 – ISBN 978-88-548-9061-9
                                                         DOI 10.4399/978885489061910 – pag. 155-173 (dicembre 2015)




             Anxiety, Freedom, and the Future of the Past
                                                             K L–L*



                                               The possible corresponds exactly to the future. For
                                               freedom, the possible is the future, and the future
                                               is for time the possible. To both of these corre-
                                               sponds anxiety in the individual life. An accurate
                                               and correct linguistic usage therefore associates
                                               anxiety and the future. When it is sometimes said
                                               that one is anxious about the past, this seems to be
                                               a contradiction of this usage [. . . ]. The past about
                                               which I am supposed to be anxious must stand in
                                               a relation of possibility to me. If I am anxious about
                                               a past misfortune, then it is not because it is in the
                                               past but because it may be repeated, i.e. become
                                               future.

                                                               K :  (my emphasis)




   : In this article I present a close reading of Section  in Søren Kierkegaard’s
      The Concept of Anxiety. After an introduction which alludes to the literary
      fiction of Jonathan Franzen, the article turns directly to Section , in which
      Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Vigilius Haufniensis, unfolds the phenomenon of
      anxiety as the original experience of existential freedom. In the first step of
      the argument, I argue that the transition of the human being from its natural
      state into an existence of ethically qualified freedom is a process which must
      be understood as a peculiar self–disturbance at the heart of subjectivity. In
      a second step, I claim that this self–disturbance is connected to the essential
      normativity of language that human beings always already find themselves in.
      In a concluding discussion, I suggest the interpretation that the linguistical self–
      disturbance of a human self implies an ethical requalification of the possibilities
      of one’s past as well as of one’s future.

   : S. Kierkegaard, anxiety, temporality, freedom, existence.


The most recent novels of the American author Jonathan Franzen, The
Corrections () and Freedom (), are in many ways two quite distinct
works of literature. Nonetheless, the two books share a couple of essential
   ∗
       Kresten Lundsgaard–Leth, University of Aalborg.


                                                                                                                  
   Kresten Lundsgaard–Leth


characteristics. Firstly, they both tell the story of a disintegrating and mas-
sively dysfunctional family (the Lamberts and the Berglunds, respectively).
Secondly, they both manage to present their dubious protagonists in a con-
spicuously ambivalent tone of genuine sympathy as well as of scathing satire.
Third– and most importantly, both stories turn out to end in a much more
hopeful way than the reader had come to expect throughout the unfolding
of the narrative. As such, the members of the Lambert family in The Cor-
rections actually do come together against all odds for one final Christmas
party before Albert, the family father, will shortly die. In Freedom’s case,
Walter and Patty Berglund decide to give their broken marriage one last
chance, in spite of the fact that virtually nothing which has happened so far
suggests that they will ever manage to mend their unhealthy relationship. (cf.
Franzen a:  ff.; Franzen b:  ff.) One curious aspect of the way
in which the novels end is the way in which the reader surprisingly ends up
expecting a more hopeful future for Franzen’s fictional characters than he
or she had expected to expect prior to the ending. To phrase this point in
temporal categories, Franzen’s concluding alteration — from hopeless to
hopeful — of his novels’ present co–instantaneously implies an alteration —
also from hopeless to hopeful — of the imagined future of the novels. Taken
in isolation, this point is admittedly trivial: coming to expect a brighter fu-
ture is thus surely a non–controversial by–product of coming to experience
one’s current situation as better than one had expected it to be. This is not all,
however. As such, it is not merely the fictitious future of Franzen’s fiction
which is ultimately transformed by the how of its ending(s). It is also its past.
    But what is meant hereby? To begin with, it seems hermeneutically
on–point to argue that we cannot make sense of the whole (e.g. an entire
novel) without taking all of its parts (e.g. the ending) into account. (cf.
Grondin :  ff.) However, we still need to be much more specific
as to how the reciprocal relationship of ending and entirety works in the
case of Franzen’s fiction. On this interpretation, the past of the two novels
is not merely transformed because their endings allow us to contrast the
hopefulness of their envisioned future with the “factual” hopelessness
of what came before. If this were the entire analysis, the effect of the
ending(s) would amount to nothing but the reader’s acquired capability
to contrast one thing (i.e. the past) with another thing (i.e. the future)
totally different from it. However, as I will argue: any such abstract “logic
of contrast” simply does not capture the actual essence of what is at stake
here. What is going on is instead something more complex: the reader who
makes it to the end(s) of The Corrections and Freedom, respectively, cannot
merely look back at the preceding parts of the novels’ plots and conceive
of them as being entirely different from the ending. Rather, a different
interpretational option offers itself: thus, the reader finds him– or herself
                                              Anxiety, Freedom, and the Future of the Past         


capable of carrying through a specific retroactive sense–making according
to which the surprisingly hopeful ending is perceived as the very result of
what came before as opposed to being its complete opposite. An unlikely
and improbable result to be sure, but a result nonetheless. When we look
upon it this way, the analysis suffers a vital displacement of perspective.
Instead of thinking that the hopeful prospects of the ending have somehow
falsified the hopelessness of the past at the level of third–personal content
(i.e. focusing on what [f]actually has happened), the reader can experience a
much more internalized mode of falsification. On this level, it is the reader’s
very own understanding of what he or she took to be the truth of the past
which turns out to be wrong; and not the past in–and–of–itself. One way of
fleshing out this line of argument may be the following: by realizing that
the actual result of the past was something much more encouraging than
the past “itself ” had initially led us to expect, we realize that the real truth
about the past cannot be captured by grasping its mere probability. In other
words, the past of the narrative — by way of its ending — retroactively
reveals itself to the reader as having always comprised more possibility than
he or she had been able to see while it happened. Until the ending made
him or her see the past in a different light; namely: as the past of the future.
In summa: when Franzen ultimately lets his readers experience a different
future for his characters than the readers had thought they would come to
expect he — in the exact same instant — also enables those very readers to
experience everything that led up to this moment as something other than
they had hitherto thought it to be.
    Formally, this weird experience of our past experience turning out to
be a different experience from the one we thought we had already had
(e.g. any given situation leading up to a good rather than a bad outcome)
appears to be structured as a temporal recoil of sorts. Experiencing one’s
future differently thus always implies the co–instantaneous possibility of
experiencing one’s past differently. And this structural feature of human
existence is exactly what Franzen’s novels put on display in such powerful
fashion.
    As I have hinted at in the formulation above, I believe there to be a univer-
sal lesson about human existence to be distilled from the specific experience
made accessible to us by literary fiction, such as Franzen’s. Moreover: in
order to try and figure out this universality with more precision, I will argue
that we would do well to turn to Søren Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxi-
ety. On my reading, The Concept of Anxiety is first and foremost a — both

     . To be sure, a certain Vigilius Haufniensis (i.e. the vigilant Copenhagener) declares himself
the author of The Concept of Anxiety. In the case of The Concept of Anxiety, however–clearly as opposed
to some of the other works of the early s — I do not consider the alleged pseudonymity to be of
      Kresten Lundsgaard–Leth


phenomenologically sensitive and philosophically systematic — attempt at
depicting what it means for human beings to experience themselves as be-
ing ultimately free. (cf. e.g. Grøn :  ff.; Grøn : –; Malantschuk
:  ff.; Kosch : –, Greve :  ff.; Marino :  ff.)
At this early stage, however, being free is not so much the answer we are
looking for as it is the very question we ought to be posing. And as my in-
troductory remarks on Franzen have also already indicated, I am convinced
that working through one vital section of Kierkegaard’s intricate analysis
of anxiety can help us see how experiencing oneself as free — and thus
ethically accountable — essentially has to do with a certain re–experiencing
of one’s own existential temporality, that is: of one’s present and future, as
well as one’s past. We will return to these points later.
    In the following, I wish to approach these questions in a slightly unortho-
dox manner. As such, I intend first and foremost to present a very close
reading of one single section (i.e. § ) of The Concept of Anxiety. Although the
headline of this exact section is homonymous with the title of the very work
which contains it (i.e. “The Concept of Anxiety”), it is obviously not to be
taken for granted that the main analyses presented therein is by implication
representative of the entire work. To be frank, I do not think it is. How could
it possibly be? On the other hand, I also do not believe that the aspiration
towards explaining a whole text is the only possible justification for focusing
particularly on one specific section of a philosophical text. Alternatively, a
highly local interpretation like the one offered here can be justified by the
way in which it ultimately allows us to unfold a number of core concepts
and phenomena that are essential to the problem of existential freedom
central to all of the Kierkegaardian pseudonyms. Briefly put, and very pre-
liminarily, one can think about the experience of anxiety as it is presented
in section  as the existential proto–experience of freedom itself. Obviously,
this bold claim must be vindicated in the following. Without further ado,
let us thus enter section . Kierkegaard himself begins with the following,
rather complex passage:

      Innocence [Uskyldighed] is ignorance [Uvidenhed]. In innocence, man is not qualified
      as spirit [Aand] but is psychically qualified in immediate unity with his natural
      condition [Naturlighed]. The spirit in man is dreaming [. . . ]. In this state there is

special importance to the text.
     . By giving priority to the questioning of freedom rather than freedom as the answer, I
primarily wish to accentuate the point that we cannot allow ourselves to be certain at the outset as to
what it is we are even looking for (i.e. “freedom”). To begin with, “freedom” is thus nothing more
than a word for whatever it might be — if anything at all — which distinguishes human existence
from natural beings (obviously, this manner of beginning draws on Heidegger’s initial claim from
Sein und Zeit regarding “The necessity of an explicit retrieve of the question of Being”. [H
: § ; cf. M : –])
                                               Anxiety, Freedom, and the Future of the Past         


    peace and repose but there is simultaneously something else [. . . ] for there is indeed
    nothing against which to strive. What, then, is it? Nothing [Intet]. But what effect
    does nothing have? It begets anxiety [Angest] [. . . ]. Dreamily, the spirit projects its
    own actuality [Virkelighed], but this actuality is nothing, and innocence always sees
    this nothing outside itself [. . . ]. Fear [. . . ] refer[s] to something definite, whereas
    anxiety is freedom’s [Frihedens] actuality as the possibility of possibility [Mulighed
    for Muligheden]. (Kierkegaard : –)

    Reading these lines, one is reminded why Kierkegaard is oftentimes
depicted as a both “ironic” and “parodic” “writer” (as opposed to a genuine
philosopher, presumably). According to these suspicions, Kierkegaard is
someone who one should be careful not to think of as “edifying” or “seri-
ous” — or differently put: as someone who would never bother to make any
“definite” points. (cf. e.g. Poole : –) At the very least, it triggers a
certain conceptual opaqueness that the opening sentence appears to confuse
a normative, an epistemic, and a biological mode of description by juxtaposing
concepts such as “innocence,” “ignorance,” and “natural state.” Since phi-
losophy ought to be about clarifying concepts rather than obscuring them,
Kierkegaard must surely be kidding? This apparent confusion, however, is
straightforwardly dissolved. It thus vanishes once one realizes two impor-
tant modifications: first, (i) the alleged “innocence” of our natural condition
must be read as a meta–normative rather than a full–fledged normative
qualification to the extent that nature must be thought of as pre– or non–
ethical. As such, what is natural is neither good nor bad. Instead, the natural
condition is simply prior to both good and evil. Second, (ii) the ignorance
addressed here has little if anything to do with epistemic knowledge about
this–or–that fact in the natural world not to mention with logical truths
within the immanent realm of thinking. On the contrary, the “object” of the
peculiar ignorance at hand is precisely the very difference between good and
evil which nature (qua essentially pre–ethical) must necessarily be ignorant
of. Having realized this, one must additionally recognize that the genuine
challenge does not lie in figuring out the asserted innocence–ignorance of
      . Here, it would surely have been more accurate if Thomte had chosen to translate “som
Mulighed for Muligheden” into “as possibility for the possible” rather than “as the possibility of
possibility”. (K : –, my emphasis)
      . As will be made obvious in the following, I completely disagree with Poole’s characterization
of The Concept of Anxiety as “probably the most ironic and certainly the most parodic of all the
aesthetic works.” (P : )
      . Unfortunately, the phonetic semblance of the key concepts of this passage, i.e. “Uskyldighed,”
“Uvidenhed,” and “Naturlighed,” does not translate well into English.
      . For this reason (and a number of others), any talk of a Kierkegaardian return — not to say
advancement — to some beastly nature beyond good and evil is utterly senseless. The occasional talk
of the “lilies of the field” and “the birds of the sky” as “teachers” (Lærermestre) we can learn from is
deliberately opposed to thinking about them as moral ideals we should somehow seek to live up to.
(cf. SKS , –)
     Kresten Lundsgaard–Leth


the natural condition. Rather, the true task is to figure out how human nature
somehow becomes de–naturalized; i.e. knowing of the Ethical Difference
as well as — potentially — “guilty.” The answer to this question has to do
with “spirit” but this only displaces the focus of our questioning. For what,
then, is spirit?
    We are told right away that in the natural condition, the spirit is “dream-
ing.” Unlike what is the case in early Schelling, Kierkegaard’s choice of
metaphor is not meant to suggest that all of nature is somehow dreaming
spirit. (cf. Furhmans : –; Moe Rasmussen and Brock : ) Nature
— for its part — is just nature, whereas the human being is “marked” by
spirit. Although the text explicitly establishes that man in his natural con-
dition is “not qualified as spirit,” we should not be fooled: whether or not
any given human being has yet to actualize his or her spirituality, he or she
is invariably qualified as potential spirit. (cf. Grøn :  ff.) Since actual-
izing one’s spirit largely depends on becoming conscious in a certain way,
the expression dreaming spirit points to specific lack of self–consciousness
(Selv–Bevidsthed). We shall return to this subject matter shortly but first we
must understand the way in which dreaming spirit becomes disturbed in
its “immediate unity.” Both very accurately and eloquently, Kierkegaard
argues that man in his natural condition has nothing “against which to
strive.” Moreover, it is precisely this very nothing which “begets anxiety.”
This sudden transition from a mere nothingness to a curiously efficacious
nothing is crucial. The complexity of the argument is somewhat enhanced
when Kierkegaard moves right on to say that the “effect” — and eo ipso the
efficacy — of Nothing has to do with some kind of agency on the part of
spirit itself. Thus, dreaming spirit — and what is more: the effect of nothing
— is nothing but this very projection of spirit’s own actuality which the both
innocent and ignorantly dreaming spirit can apparently only experience
as something “outside” of itself — or to be even more precise: as nothing
outside of itself. What regards being qualified as spirit it turns out that
anxiety is the very first qualification of spirit qua dreaming. Furthermore,
dreaming spirit is essentially different from awoken spirit in so far as the
latter has explicitly posited its own other whereas the former experiences its
otherness as if it were the effect of an “intimated nothing”. (cf. Kierkegaard
: )
    We must be sure to read and interpret these passages carefully: (i) anxiety
appears to disturb the peace and quiet of spirit as it dwells in its natural
condition; (ii) this disturbance appears to come from an — at this point —
     . Outside the context of the upbuilding discourses (the authority of which is by no means
philosophical but much rather theological), Kierkegaard thus usually refrains from Schellingian
formulations like this one: “Daher ist in jeder Organisation etwas Symbolisches, und jede Pflanze
sozusagen der verschlungene Zug der Seele.” (quoted from F : )
                                              Anxiety, Freedom, and the Future of the Past         


unfathomable nothing outside of the self; but, as Kierkegaard has already
virtually given away, (iii) the apparent disturbance coming from nothing is
in reality an auto–disturbance coming from the spirit’s own other. For this
reason, one cannot make sense of anxiety as a kind of second–order “fear.”
Fear is actually about some concrete other (e.g. a barking pit–bull coming
toward me) whereas the nothing of anxiety is fundamentally a projection
of spirit’s own actuality. (cf. also Mulhall : –)
    In a first step towards fleshing out what the actuality of spirit truly
amounts to, Kierkegaard (in)famously offers the cryptic formula that “anxi-
ety is freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility.” Clearly, this dense
conceptual cluster establishes a close relation between spirit and freedom —
or to be more accurate: it simultaneously posits a relation of identity and of
difference between the two concepts. First, (i) anxiety is freedom — in at
least some form or another. Second, nonetheless, (ii) anxiety is merely free-
dom as the possibility of (i.e. for) possibility. To explicate this differentiated
composition, one is logically compelled to distinguish between freedom
as fully actualized on the one hand and freedom as the mere possibility of
any such actualization on the other. But still: what are we to understand by
the possibility of this latter kind of possibility? Here, we would do well to
bethink that the nothing which triggered anxiety was nothing but a pro-
jection of an otherness immanent to spirit itself. Moreover, the categories
of modality presented in the above formula (i.e. actuality and possibility)
reveal themselves to be very viable “tools” in our attempt to make sense
of this internal otherness. It is namely the curious co–existence of both
actuality and possibility inside spirit itself which explains spirit’s anxious
self –disturbance of its immediate unity in the natural condition. Nature is
what it is, just as non–human beasts simply are what they are. In a crude
sense of the term, nature also becomes what it becomes, but it is nonetheless
the essence of purely natural becoming that the actualizing processes are
entirely pre–determined as to their respective teleology: foxes will become
foxes and nothing else and although some foxes may be better or worse
foxes than others, becoming a fox abides by one standard and one standard
alone: the fox essence. (cf. Kierkegaard : ) In contrast the actuality of
human existence — i.e. being free — is precisely not exhausted by its natural
actuality (i.e. its genetic set–up). Spiritual actuality thus necessarily implies

     . To my mind, many commentators neglect this vital aspect of the argument which Kierkegaard
develops in section . (Cf. e.g. M : –)
     . On a purely formal level of description, this dialectical manner of conceptual determination
is undoubtedly inspired by Hegel’s idea of speculative dialectics. (Cf. e.g. H : –) That
Kierkegaard’s passionate “existentialization” of Hegelian dialectics ultimately makes their positions
as good as philosophically incommensurable is, however, an altogether different story. (cf. e.g. T.
H :  ff.; T : xi)
       Kresten Lundsgaard–Leth


the possibility for a realm of non–natural possibility in the sense that we
cannot ever be sure what it means for the latter kind of nature–transcending
possibility to become actualized. To sum up these last few points: anxiety
is spirit’s experience of itself as something in nature whose full actuality
is co–constituted by having possibilities that are not dictated by nature. As
such, freedom is an open and consequently problematic “task” rather than
a kind of essential property of spirit. (cf. e.g. Sløk :  ff.; Grøn : 
ff.; Liessmann : )
     Still, some crucial points require further clarification: How is spirit
constituted, besides being non–natural in the depicted manner? And how
are we to understand the emergence and functioning of ethics, sociality
and temporality from the perspective of section  of The Concept of Anxiety?
Moving further into the section will show to be profitable in our attempt to
elucidate these matters:

      The anxiety that is posited in innocence is in the first place no guilt [ingen Skyld]
      [. . . ]. In observing children, one will the discover this anxiety more particularly as a
      seeking for the adventurous [Eventyrlige], the monstrous [Uhyre], and the enigmatic
      [. . . ]. He who becomes guilty through anxiety is indeed innocent, for it was not
      he himself but anxiety, a foreign power, that laid hold of him [. . . ]. And yet he is
      guilty, for he sank in anxiety [. . . ]. There is nothing in the world more ambiguous
      [Tvetydigere] [. . . ]. That anxiety makes its appearance is the pivot upon which
      everything turns. Man is a synthesis [Synthese] of the physical and the psychical;
      however, a synthesis is unthinkable if the two are not united in a third. This third is
      spirit. (Kierkegaard : –)

    As much as anxiety disrupts man in his natural condition, the very first
sentence of the above passage explicates that this disruption is not initially
an ethical qualification of spirit. Instead, as an appearance of dreaming spirit,
anxiety is still “no guilt.” A true understanding hereof requires us to realize
that the (self–)experience of the possibility of possibility in anxiety cannot
represent a sufficient condition for actual, ethical self–understanding. If this
were not the case, anxiety would always already automatically posit guilt
(i.e. ethically molded self–experience) without additional requirements.
To illustrate this assessment, Kierkegaard somewhat surprisingly turns
to “observing children.” Although one should surely be cautious not to

    . This interpretation thus finds itself to be in clear disagreement with Günter Figal’s claim
that Kierkegaard entertains “an Aristotelian conception of the relationship between possibility and
actuality.” (Figal : , my translation) Kierkegaard’s understanding of natural processes is surely
an Aristotelian one, but his notion of spiritual actuality is far beyond the scope of Aristotle’s practical
as well as natural philosophy. (Cf. A : b–a; R : –) Along similar lines
of arguing, I think Sartre is massively in the wrong when he describes Kierkegaard as a “Christian
existentialist” who believes « essence » comes before existence, also in the case of humans. (cf. S
: –)
                                             Anxiety, Freedom, and the Future of the Past       


turn The Concept of Anxiety into an exercise in developmental psychology,
I believe this staging to offer a very apt example: inasmuch as children
are rarely thought of as ethically accountable in the same way as adults,
they do nonetheless inhabit a realm of radically non–natural possibility
when they are out playing. From this perspective, being good at playing
is essentially about being good at imagining improbable possibilities such
as being the prince of Persia (i.e. the adventurous), fighting an evil fiend
(i.e. the monstrous), or to devise all sorts of mysterious stories (i.e. the
enigmatic). I will return to this later on. For now, suffice it to say that the
play of children spells out that human beings undoubtedly do fantasize
about both thrilling and anxiety–inducing possibilities long before they have
become ethically self–aware. (cf. e.g. Malantschuk : –; Marino :
)
     Here, allow me to (re)focus on the intricate functioning of anxiety it-
self. Once one experiences anxiety as anxiety (i.e. becomes self–conscious
about having the experience of anxiety [cf. Grøn : ]), something quite
peculiar comes to pass. Simply by inversing the allocation of grammatical
operators, Kierkegaard offers a both stylistically and philosophically mas-
terful depiction of what we might call the ethical recoil effect of anxiety. In
the first movement, (i) anxiety functions as the grammatical subject which
“laid hold” on the human object — or differently put: anxiety is something
that has happened to the anxious subject (i.e. object) from the outside. In
the very same instant, however, a second movement is delineated in which
(ii) the human subject has noticeably appropriated the occupation of the
grammatical subject. Thus, our human agent becomes guilty by virtue of
sinking into anxiety’s “objectivity.” But how are we to understand this
odd inversion which is allegedly the very “dialectics” through which spirit
awakens to its ethical existence? (Cf. Kierkegaard : ). The way I see it,
a coherent interpretation of the simultaneity of the two movements must
apprehend the following: that which is happening to the anxious subject is
in reality the subject happening to itself in the sense that the subject realizes
that it is “something” that can happen to itself — as well as to the world —
in a certain way. On this line of reasoning, anxiety cannot be understood
as just another contingent experience of any given human subject. Rather,
it is the proto–experience of subjectivity itself — or of being a subject. Or
to put it differently: anxiety is neither an actual object happening to me
(as opposed to being run over by a train), nor is it a deliberate “action”

   . I first noticed the grammar of this passage during a very fruitful discussion with Christian
Hjortkjær at Testrup Højskole’s annual Kierkegaard Summer Week Course.
   . This point is conspicuously overlooked by the vast majority of interpreters of The Concept of
Anxiety.
    Kresten Lundsgaard–Leth


of mine in any usual sense of the term. As a psychological intermediate
term (Mellembestemmelse) between external objectivity (i.e. what happens
to me) and subjective action (i.e. how I choose to “happen” to the world),
anxiety accentuates how experiencing that I am potentially free (i.e. under–
determined by my natural condition) is not itself something which I freely
choose to experience. (cf. e.g. Kosch : –; Schultz : ; Sartre
: ; Kierkegaard : )
    Importantly, the ethical self–consciousness proper triggered by anxiety
ought by no means to be equated with anxiety itself. Anxiety is first and fore-
most a passive experience of an enigmatic “nothing” which — as we have
seen — then becomes further conceptually qualified as freedom’s actuality
as the possibility of possibility. On the purely anxious level of dreaming spirit,
however, possibility cannot itself transcend what the Kierkegaardian vocabu-
lary labels the “aesthetic” or — more rarely — the “aesthetic–metaphysical.”
(cf. Kierkegaard : ; SKS ,  & ) We cannot go into detail at
present about the “aesthetical” (cf. e.g. Greve : –; Grøn : –;
Caputo : –) but the following distinction may nonetheless be fruit-
ful to our present purposes: aesthetical possibility and ethical possibility are
not necessarily contradictory (nor even different from one another) at the
level of mere content. The possibility of robbing a bank is thus aesthetically
accessible to the playing of children as much as it is an actual ethical option
to adult decision–making. As it is, being an adult is not even the defining
line of demarcation between the aesthetical and the ethical, respectively.
More to the point, a guilty (i.e. an ethically self–aware) response to the
(passive) experience of anxiety posits the decisive fissure between the two
existential stances.
    In a further clarification of how to comprehend the very possibility of an
ethical response to anxiety (which is essentially what separates the ethical
from the aesthetical way of living), Kierkegaard famously remarks that man
is a « synthesis » between the physical and the psychical, united in spirit.
Instantly, the reader notices that the psychical and the spiritual are presented
as being of separate orders. In–and–of–itself, this differentiation is not a very
complex one: most animals are thus both physical and psychic beings. As
such, we can meaningfully describe a phenomenon like for instance animal
pain from a physiological as well as from a psychical perspective. Inside the
former vocabulary, we try and flesh out the causality of the central nervous
system and the neuro–transmitters. Inside the latter, we might refer to the
qualia of the alleged experience of pain, which we take the animal to suffer
(pace Descartes). In any case, the synthesis–character of human existence

    . As Kierkegaard is obviously well aware, an adult can easily refuse to become ethically
self–aware and thus remain stuck inside the domain of the aesthetical.
                                             Anxiety, Freedom, and the Future of the Past           


is not on par with the animalistic aggregate of a psychical component
combined with a psychic component. On the contrary, anxiety “makes
its appearance” because the horizontal axis of psyche and physicality is
disturbed by the vertical axis of spirit. Here, the metaphor of verticality
seems appropriate in so far as the term spirit designates that the first–order
relationship of psyche and physicality becomes “spiritually” synthesized,
and thus ethically re–qualified, by relating to itself in a second–order relation.
(cf. Grøn : –; Kierkegaard : ) Or to rephrase an earlier point:
whereas animals are what they are, the human condition is constituted by
having to relate to who one wants (or wills) to become.
    However, a purely formal self–relation still cannot be sufficient to ethi-
cally mark the subject as potentially guilty. The existential cynicism of the
Kierkegaardian aesthete is precisely characterized by exercising an ethically
untroubled self–reflectivity in which the “possibility for possibility” experi-
enced by anxiety remains within the domain of entirely noncommittal (i.e.
aesthetical) possibilities (cf. Greve :  ff.). To grasp what is yet missing
in the picture, we must turn to one final, lengthy passage from section :

    Innocence still is, but only a word [Ord] is required and then ignorance is con-
    centrated [. . . ]. Instead of nothing, it now has an enigmatic word [. . . ]. When it
    is assumed [in Genesis, KLL] that the prohibition [Forbudet] awakens the desire,
    one acquires knowledge instead of ignorance [. . . ]. The explanation is therefore
    subsequent. The prohibition induces in him anxiety, for the prohibition awakens in
    him freedom’s possibility [. . . ] the anxious possibility of being able [at kunne] [. . . ].
    Innocence can indeed speak, inasmuch as in language [Sproget] it possesses the
    expression [Udtrykket] for everything spiritual [. . . ]. This applies above all to the
    difference between good and evil [Godt og Ondt], which indeed can by expressed in
    language but nevertheless is only for freedom. (Kierkegaard : –)

   In the opening part of this dense section, Kierkegaard evidently adds some-
thing novel to the explanatory equation of section , namely the idea of an
“enigmatic word.” As will become evident shortly, the ethical qualification of
the realm of possibility experienced in anxiety presupposes the functioning
of words — or to be even more accurate: the already existing practice of a
language game containing prohibiting (i.e. ethically loaded) words. But how
are we to understand this? Here, one must keep in mind that Kierkegaard has
yet to account for the exact relation between two kinds of transition, namely:
the transition from ethical ignorance to knowledge on the one hand and the
transition from innocence to guilt on the other. Intuitively, we seem to have to
choose between two alternatives: either (i) we know about our original sin be-

   . Admittedly, this is arguably a somewhat Wittgensteinian way of making the point. For an
excellent study which compares Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard, respectively, cf. M
: – and  ff.
     Kresten Lundsgaard–Leth


fore we commit it, or (ii) we commit it before we know about it. Surprisingly,
none of these options turn out to capture precisely the tricky processuality
at stake. In order to make sense of this, one must recognize how the text
develops a doubling of the knowledge–component at stake. As such, we both
encounter the (i) knowledge of freedom’s possibility and the (ii) knowledge of
the “difference between good and evil.” (Kierkegaard : ) Whereas the
former kind of knowledge suspends the ignorance of the natural condition,
the latter presupposes the qualitative “leap” from innocence to guilt which
for its part must necessarily transcend a mere gain of “quantitative” knowl-
edge (or consciousness). Interestingly, language — and the words on which
its practicing depends — has a vital function to play concerning both types
of knowledge. To illuminate this point, it is profitable to return to the case of
children’s play. Unquestionably, children are exposed to a normatively qualified
use of language which they can (and will) go on to mimic in their playing. For
instance, kids are told that they ought to refrain from telling lies. Also, they
are very likely to reduplicate these normative rules (e.g. “you ought to do your
homework” or “you ought to protect the princess from the dragon”) in games
even before they have anything like a clear (not to mention self–conscious)
conception of actual, ethical responsibility. In a quite literal way, children thus
encounter words and sentences that are enigmatic to them to the extent that
their meanings seem impossible to exhaust in any kind of concrete practice
(e.g. “throwing the ball”) let alone by an ostensive definition (e.g. “this is a
stone”). Just as literally, children are thus taking part in — and adapting to —
normative language games before they fully realize the complete (and earnest)
implications of the “games” they have been playing all along. Or in Hegelese:
they know not (yet) what they do.
    Quite masterfully, Kierkegaard here turns to the story from Genesis of
Adam and Eve’s original sin. In his retelling, Kierkegaard accentuates how
encountering a (linguistic) prohibition can awaken an anxious knowledge
of simply being able. This knowledge, which ethically speaking presents a

     . Interestingly, this distinction comes very close to the way Heidegger elaborates productively on
the Kantian distinction between transcendental and practical freedom, respectively. Moreover — and
just like his existentialist predecessor — Heidegger insists on thinking about freedom without adopting
the Kantian notion of freedom as being constituted by the necessary laws (and corresponding causality)
of practical reason (cf. H : –; K a:  ff.).
    . As von Eggers has recently — and convincingly — argued, the meaning of very small children’s
babbling of language–like sounds (i.e. “lalangue”) ultimately expresses nothing but the inexplicable desire
that there be a meaning at all. (Cf.  E : –) In structurally analogous fashion, we might
add that older children — as well adult aesthetes — have a just as unknowing relationship to ethical
meaning that blabbering babies have to meaning as such. Furthermore, Kierkegaardian anxiety is not
primarily a way in which the « homeliness » of the social world becomes alien to us. (cf. H
: §§ –; M :  ff.; F : –) More to the point, anxiety is ultimately a
way in which the anxious subject’s own subjectivity becomes alien to him or her. Or differently put: an
experience of self–disturbance as a constitutive feature of subjectivity itself.
                                                 Anxiety, Freedom, and the Future of the Past           


“higher form of ignorance,” is no knowledge of this or that specific possibility.
Instead, it is a final qualification of the possibility of possibility experienced
in anxiety. Still, fully to understand what is at stake in the encounter with
ethical words, anxiety cannot. (cf. Malantschuk : –; Kosch :
–; Ugilt : –)
    Ultimately, real “knowledge” of ethics has little if anything to do with
knowledge of some epistemic let alone ontological fact about the world. In-
stead, ethics is primarily something one does to oneself — or more accurately
put: it is a way of requalifying the relationship to oneself that one is always
already destined to become (qua spirit). (cf. Kierkegaard : ; Grøn :
 ff.) Having realized this, it becomes clear why section  rounds off with
the assertion that the difference between good and evil “can be expressed
in language but nevertheless is only for freedom.” (Kierkegaard : )
To be sure, one cannot act ethically without first encountering freedom’s
possibility in the experience of anxiety. Just as surely, however, one also
cannot know the difference between good and evil without having first
acted ethically. In this sense, the explanation of what really happens when
anxiety happens to the subject is necessarily revealed ex post facto — or to
be even more precise: after the act (rather than the natural fact). In summa:
whereas the meaning of the pure possibility of possibility is immanent to
the rules of the normative language games in which we are always already
embedded, actual freedom’s difficulties and dilemmas in the face of good
and evil require for the subject to requalify and thus transcend the non–
natural possibilities of human sociality as existentially decisive possibilities
for him– or herself to choose.
    A human subject thus cannot understand the ethical without having en-
tered it him– or herself through a “qualitative leap.” (Kierkegaard : )
That being said, how come Kierkegaard coins this existential transition one
in which the individual necessarily becomes guilty? Should not the ethical
qualification of existence (i.e. grasping the difference between good and evil)
present the individual with a real alternative between good and evil rather
than an inevitable guiltiness — or in other words: to what extent does the
transcendence of innocence entail actual freedom rather than necessary guilt?
    To understand the concepts of freedom and ethics in The Concept of
Anxiety, the reader must be willing to consider the possibility that the
aforementioned either–or between actual freedom and necessary guilt
presents us with a false — and ultimately abstract — dichotomy. But what is

    . Clearly, the argument I present here does not pretend to clarify everything that is implied in
actual freedom. To focus on the individual’s anxious passage from innocence to guilt is to focus on the
individual’s relationship to the past rather than to the future. I am fully aware that an exhaustive account
of actual freedom in The Concept of Anxiety would have to move on to talk in (much) more detail about
the individual’s relationship to his or her future.
     Kresten Lundsgaard–Leth


the alternative? Or to rephrase this question from within the Kierkegaardian
vocabulary: How can it both be true that (i) the individual posits his or her
own “sin” and that (ii) “sin presupposes itself, obviously not before it was
posited (which is predestination), but in that it is posited?”. (Kierkegaard
: ; my emphasis; cf. e.g. Ugilt : –; Malantschuk : –)
     In an attempt to offer a coherent interpretation of these matters, I would
like to conclude this article by discussing the intriguing temporal implica-
tions of freedoms actualization (and its guiltiness), which we have hitherto
considered mainly from the point of view of modality.
     First and foremost, the entrance into the ethical realm of freedom’s
actuality is not predestined by our natural not to mention social, past. This
has to be the case, since the ethical requalification of spirit’s self–relationship
is essentially the very (self–)experience that being spirit comes with pos-
sibilities that are exhausted neither by natural nor social predispositions.
(cf. Kierkegaard : –) After we have sunk in anxiety and taken the
qualitative leap, however, time(s) literally change(s): for one, (i) an ethically
free person envisions his or her future in a completely different way than
purely natural beings. Not only has the subject’s future become open to
radical novelty. It also becomes clear that I will be ethically responsible for the
way in which my future actions will — or will not — help promote certain
values and practices. As such, the possibility for radical novelty is not merely
there because it is expected to somehow happen ex nihilo. On the contrary,
it is reexperienced because I experience my free doing as constitutively co–
decisive for what both I myself and the world will come to be. (cf. e.g. Grøn
: ) On the other hand (ii), however, the experience of freedom does
not only open up the future to our responsible — as well as irresponsible —
doing. Simultaneously, freedom retroactively re–opens our past to us. We
can make sense of this claim simply by inversing the temporality of the
preceding argument: just as the future is proto–actively transformed when
we look at as a space of future actions, the past is retroactively re–qualified
in the instant we are enabled to conceive of it as a space of past actions. To
exemplify this, it makes intuitive sense to think of a promise I made in
the past as a past ethical action for which I can — and should — still hold
myself ethically accountable. That being said, is this example not something
quite different from the above claim that we must experience ourselves as
“guilty” in (or after) the very instant our self–relation becomes ethically

   . Here, I will not elaborate further on Kierkegaard’s analogy to the “the dogmatic issue of
hereditary sin.” For present purposes it will suffice to accentuate that it simply does not — for reason
previously presented — make sense to think of sinning as a naturally determined feature of being
human. One sins freely — or one does not sin. (Cf. K : –)
   . Another way of presenting this point would be to stress that non–spiritual animals are
precisely characterized by not relating to their future in toto.
                                              Anxiety, Freedom, and the Future of the Past        


marked? And along the same lines of questioning: is it not simply absurd
to suggest that someone who has just realized the existential implications
of making promises should become prone to think of him– or herself as
having (always) already failed to keep his or her promises? Here, let us have
another look at the text itself. In the dense introduction to the Concept of
Anxiety we encounter the following, complex set of propositions:
    This ethics does not ignore sin, and it does not have its ideality in making ideal
    demands [fordre idealt]; rather, it has its ideality in the penetrating consciousness
    of actuality, of the actuality of sin [Syndens Virkelighed] [. . . ]. It is easy to see the
    difference [. . . ] that the ethics of which we are now speaking belongs to a different
    order of things. The first ethics was shipwrecked on the sinfulness of the single
    individual [. . . ]. At this point, dogmatics came to the rescue with hereditary sin
    [Arvesynden] [. . . ] at the same time it sets ideality as a task, not by a movement from
    above and downward but from below and upward. (Kierkegaard : )

    Initially, the passages above all seem to add to (rather than reduce) the
complexity of our analysis. Nonetheless, I believe we can use it to unlock
the argumentative deadlock in which we find ourselves. To begin with,
Kierkegaard is obviously contrasting his notion of ethics with a different
(and alleged) first ethics. According to the standard notion of (first) ethics,
we are responsible to a number of regulative norms (or ideals) such as “do
not break promises.” On this model of normativity, one becomes ethically
guilty by failing to actualize whichever ideal one is held responsible to; be it
socially or individually sanctioned. As is obvious, Kierkegaard rejects this
understanding of ethics which he believes to shipwreck inevitably on each
individual’s eventual sinfulness. Instead of thinking about ethics in terms
of an ideal normativity which can either be upheld or — more likely —
violated, the text urges us to contemplate what it refers to as the “actuality of
sin.” (cf. Grøn : ; Greve : ) Again, it seems intuitively odd that
a text which tries to explain the actuality of freedom simultaneously thinks
of itself as arguing the case for the actuality of sin. Does not actual freedom
imply the exact opposite, namely the possibility of a sin, the actualization
of which depends on how humans administer their freedom? Yes and no.
On the one hand, the introduction of the dogma of hereditary sin is of
no use to our understanding of freedom if it is meant to imply that all
human beings are sinful by nature. We know this already. On the other hand,
however, there exists a different possible interpretation of what Kierkegaard
means when he contends that sin presupposes itself as soon as it is posited.
(cf. Kierkegaard : ) On this interpretation, hereditary sin must be
taken as an expression of the ability on the part of the ethically self–aware
    . Admittedly, the following, concluding interpretation must be said to be at least as productive
as downright exegetic of character.
     Kresten Lundsgaard–Leth


subject to conceive of its pre–ethical past as if he or she had acted freely
in it. Importantly, the proclaimed sinfulness of the past cannot not be
seen as a result of concrete sins one has actually committed with full ethical
self–awareness. On the contrary, the retroactive positing of one’s sinful past
as if one had always already acted in it is a maximally free and thus truly
ethical way to appropriate one’s past — and everything that happened in it.
Moreover, it is a way to connect experiences that were temporally prior to
one’s ethical self–relation with the ontology of freedom that is constitutive
to the latter’s self– and worldview.
    If we look at it this way, both the temporality and the modality of ethics
are turned inside–out. Instead of conceiving of ethics as a practice in which
we start out in innocence only to slowly become worse (with every violation
of ethical ideality, that is) ethics is now perceived as a practice in which we
are always already in the wrong at the outset but in which we might also
actually move on towards something more hopeful. In first ethics, one can
do nothing but dread how one is single–handedly turning one’s initially
unspoiled subjectivity into a sinful subject who fails to live up to ideality’s
unfulfillable standards. In “second ethics,” on the contrary, one begins by
taking over the responsibility for everything one’s “concrete” and imperfect
subject happens to have become. And whereas the notion of responsibility
implied in first ethics is bound to shipwreck on the “repentance” of its failure
to actualize idealized normative standards “from above,” the responsibility
of the ethics presented in The Concept of Anxiety presupposes the retroactively
posited (but nonetheless instantaneous) ethical failure of the subject as its
very starting point. It is thus Kierkegaard’s fundamental argument that
ideality can only meaningfully be posited as an existential “task” for the
future if the subject has appropriated its pre–ethical past — and not just
its specific ethical failings — as ethically sinful in toto. Only through this
retroactive existential maneuver is it possible for an existing individual (Hiin
Enkelte) to accommodate the entire actuality of the past in an affirmative
action towards future possibilities.
    If this interpretation is sound, Kierkegaard is forcefully arguing that it is
simply existentially misguided to look at the past as well as the present
through an unforgiving lens of abstract future ideals spawned by our
(“aesthetic–metaphysical”) imagination. Instead, we must endeavor to begin
our ethical movements “from below and upward.” Or differently put: ethics
ought to start in the concrete actuality of the present as given over to us by
the past. This is not to say that we should abide by some predestined me-
chanics of natural history (not to mention causality), of course. For human

    . I am not familiar with other interpretations of The Concept of Anxiety that argue the case for
an als ob–structure such as the one I here suggest.
                                                Anxiety, Freedom, and the Future of the Past           


beings qua spiritual, this amounts to an alienating and ultimately absurd
proposal. In contrast — as we began by considering with regard to Jonathan
Franzen’s fiction — the past qua the past of an ethical re–appropriation is
also the past of the future and ultimately the past as re–qualified by ethical
possibility. As it is, the attentiveness to the actuality of sin is thus also a
retroactive encompassment of all the ethical possibilities of the past. For as
we know: there simply cannot be sin without freedom and there cannot be
freedom without (non–natural) possibility. As such, we cannot relate to our
pre–ethical past as if we had acted ethically (i.e. freely and responsibly) in
it without co–instantaneously relating to it as if we could have chosen to
act non–sinfully. Or to be even more accurate: as if the possibilities of our
pre–ethical past were ethically at our disposal before anxiety had triggered
any understanding of freedom’s possibility whatsoever. Otherwise, to be
sure, we could not have acted sinfully. Once this realization has been made,
we also see how ethics’ original sinfulness is first (if not foremost) a way to
re–potentialize past possibility for the sake of existing human beings who
must act into a still radically possible future.
    On this model, it makes complete sense when Kierkegaard asserts that
we can only « be anxious about the past » to the extent that that which we
are anxious about is experienced as being possibly repeated in the future.
(Kierkegaard : ) To complete this picture, however, it is absolutely
crucial to add that one can attach hope to the past in the exact same way. From
this perspective, the past is not merely a history of our many ethical failures. It
is just as much a reservoir of our actual ethical deeds as well as of the infinitely
many non–actualized possibilities for ethical agency that has not yet been acted
into possible — and possibly hopeful — existence. The individual who relates
him– or herself to his or her past in this radical and re–potentializing way has
become a genuine “pupil of possibility” qua the “weightiest of all categories.”
And “whoever has been truly brought up by possibility has grasped the terrible
as well as the joyful. (Kierkegaard : )




   . There is a number of interesting similarities between this interpretation of the freedom of
the past in The Concept of Anxiety and Kant’s attempt at a rational reconstruction of past history as
seen from the perspective of the ideal of practical reason. (K b:  ff.) Despite these similarities,
though, Kant’s notion of freedom as a postulate of practical reason places his position well within
the realm of first ethics in the Kierkegaardian sense of the term.
    Kresten Lundsgaard–Leth


Bibliography

A, : Nikomachische Ethik, Hamburg, Rowohlt Verlag.
C, J.D., : How to read Kierkegaard, London, Granta Books.
F, G., : Martin Heidegger. Phänomenologie der Freiheit, Frankfurt am Main,
   Athenäum Verlag.
F, H., : Einleitung in Schelling, F.W.J.,  []: Über das Wesen der
  menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammenhängenden Gegenstände, Stuttgart,
  Reclam.
F, J., a: Freedom, London, Fourth Estate.
–––––, b []: The Corrections, London, Fourth Estate.
G, W., : Kierkegaards maieutische Ethik, Frankfurt a.M, Suhrkamp.
G, A., : Begrebet Angst hos Søren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen, Gyldendal.
–––––, : Subjektivitet og negativitet, Copenhagen, Gyldendal.
–––––, : “Anden” etik, in Garff, J., Olesen, T.A., Søltoft, P., : Studier i Stadier
   — Søren Kierkegaard Selskabets –års jubilæum, København K, C.A. Reitzel.
G, J., : Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, New Haven, Yale Uni-
  versity Press.
H, M.  []: Being and Time. A Translation of Sein und Zeit, Albany,
  SUNY.
–––––,  []: Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. Einleitung in die Philosophie,
   Frankfurt a.M., Klostermann.
H, T.J., : Logik und Existenz bei Kierkegaard, in Theunissen, M., Greve,
  W., : Materialien zur Philosophie Søren Kierkegaards, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp.
H, S., : An Introduction to Hegel. Freedom, Truth, and History, Oxford,
  Blackwell.
K, I., a []: Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Hamburg, Felix Meiner
  Verlag.
–––––, b []: Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlichen Absicht, in
   Kant, I., b []: Was ist Aufklärung. Ausgewählte kleine Schriften, Hamburg,
   Felix Meiner Verlag.
K, S.  []: Sickness unto Death, London, Penguin Books.
–––––,  []: The Concept of Anxiety. A Simple Psychologically Orienting Delib-
   eration on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin, New Jersey, Princeton University
   Press.
–––––, –: Søren Kierkegaards samlede skrifter, København, G.E.C. Gads For-
   lag.
                                       Anxiety, Freedom, and the Future of the Past   


K, M., : Freedom and Reason in Kant, Schelling, and Kierkegaard, Oxford,
  Oxford University Press.
K P, B., : Begrebet Angest, in Olesen, T.A., Søltoft, P., : Den
   udødelige — Kierkegaard læst værk for værk, København K, C.A. Reitzel.
L, P.K., : Sören Kierkegaard. Zur Einführung, Berlin, Junius Verlag.
M, G., : Friheden Problem i Kierkegaards Begrebet Angest, Køben-
  havn, C.A. Reitzels Forlag.
M R, A., B, S., : Introduktion in Schelling, F.W.J.,  []:
  Filosofiske undersøgelser om den menneskelige friheds væsen og de dermed sammen-
  hængende genstande, Aarhus, Philosophia.
M, G., : Anxiety in “The Concept of Anxiety”, in Hannay, A., Marino, G.D.,
  : The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, New York, Cambridge Univer-
  sity Press.
M, S., : Inheritance & Originality. Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Kierkegaard,
  Oxford, Oxford University Press.
–––––, : Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Heidegger and Being and Time, New
   York, Routledge.
P, R., : The unknown Kierkegaard: Twentieth–century receptions, in Hannay,
  A., Marino, G.D., : The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, New York,
  Cambridge University Press.
U, R., : Gud, betegner, angst in Benjamin Hansen, B., Mads Mau, S., :
   Kierkegaard gentaget, Aarhus, Philosophia.
R, C., : Aristoteles zur Einführung, Berlin, Junius Verlag.
S, J.P.,  []: Eksistentialismen er en humanisme, København, Hans Re-
   itzel.
S, W., : Die Dialektik von Geist und Leib bei Kierkegaard. Bemerkungen zum
  “Begriff Angst”, in Theunissen, M., Greve, W., , Materialien zur Philosophie
   Søren Kierkegaards, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp.
S, J., : Kierkegaard — humanismens tænker, København, Hans Reitzel.
T, R., : Historical introduction in Kierkegaard, S.,  []: The Con-
  cept of Anxiety. A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic
  Issue of Hereditary Sin, New Jersey, Princeton University Press.
 E, N., : Affekt, subjekt, object, in Rasmussen, R., Thambour, T., :
   Drift — Tidsskrift for psykologi nr.  — , Vanløse, Drift.
