The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Oriented Deliberation in View of the Dogmatic Problem of Hereditary Sin

Just as Kierkegaard does not see a special significance in Adam as the first man and instead argues Adam is not different from humanity throughout history and in the present day, he also does not see a significant difference between the first sin and all sins. What significance the first sin does have lies not in the fact that it was some kind of special sin. This means Adam’s first sin is essentially no different from every individual human’s first sin. As Kierkegaard writes, “[I]t is true of every subsequent man’s first sin, that through it sin comes into the world” (31). 

Kierkegaard interprets the Genesis story not as stating that Adam caused the first sin, but “that by the first sin, sinfulness came into Adam” (33). In other words, hereditary sin was not a unique act committed by Adam, but something every human— including Adam—has committed on their own.

Kierkegaard partially rejects Hegel’s argument on immediacy, which refers to how people can suddenly have an experience or impression of something without a mediating factor. According to Hegel, immediacy is “annulled” (35) as soon as it is experienced. Kierkegaard believes that immediacy is better understood as something that “at no time exists” (35). At the same time, he argues that immediacy only works as a concept in logic, not ethics.

Instead, Kierkegaard is interested in the concept of innocence from ethics. Innocence is annulled by “guilt” (35). However, the idea of hereditary sin passed on from Adam poses a contradiction in ethical thought, since it makes all people “concerned and interested spectators of guiltiness but not participants in guiltiness” (36). By this, Kierkegaard means that the concept of a hereditary sin originating purely from Adam means no one is ethically culpable. In Christian terms, that would also mean that no one is redeemed by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, contradicting the entire premise of Christianity.

While immediacy is nothing because it is instantly annulled when it is experienced, innocence is “something” because it is a “state” that can be altered. According to Kierkegaard, “Innocence is ignorance” (37). Furthermore, even though guilt or sin changes innocence, it is the mere appearance of guilt that transforms innocence. The amount or “quantitative determination” (38) of guilt does not matter, in that sense.

If the guilt that annuls innocence does not matter quantitatively, then for Kierkegaard it follows that Adam’s sin was not worse or of greater cosmic significance. Kierkegaard argues that the traditional view of hereditary sin— that Adam alone caused the fall of humanity into sin—is used to absolve people in the present day of their own guilt. He asserts instead that “sinfulness is not an epidemic that spreads like cowpox” (38). However, Kierkegaard is not interested in the question of how innocence is lost, “partly because I do not wish to waste the time of others in telling what I myself wasted time in learning, and partly because the whole thing lies outside of history” (39).

Nonetheless, Kierkegaard suggests that psychology can scientifically explain humanity’s loss of innocence. The psychology explaining the free choices that lead to sin is often ignored, because Christians often reflexively use the Bible alone to explain sin. Still, psychology cannot entirely address the issue of “concupiscentia,” meaning “inordinate desire.” Kierkegaard adds, though, that concupiscentia “is a determinant of guilt and sin antecedent to guilt and sin, and yet still is not guilt and sin” (40). Kierkegaard notes that, in the Protestant Christian tradition, men are seen as born with concupiscentia, which is part of what leads them into sin, while still holding Adam as the ultimate origin of all sin.

Kierkegaard views innocence as being “at the same time anxiety” (41). While concupiscentia comes from the body, anxiety is a product of the spirit. Kierkegaard defines spirit as the overlap or “synthesis” (43) of a person’s physical and spiritual selves. Kierkegaard also understands “anxiety is freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility” (42), which means anxiety comes from a person’s desire for the possible and the actuality of that person’s freedom. 

Turning to the story of Adam in the Book of Genesis again, Kierkegaard explains in regard to Adam violating God’s prohibition against eating the fruit from the Tree of Life, “The prohibition induces in him anxiety, for the prohibition awakens in him freedom’s possibility” (44). In Genesis, Adam’s punishment is death, which would have also provoked anxiety even though Adam did not understand the meaning of death. This understanding of Genesis is what Kierkegaard is referring to when he writes, “If the prohibition is regarded as awakening the desire, the punishment must also be regarded as awakening the notion of the deterrent” (45).

Continuing to discuss the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, Kierkegaard explains that he is seeking “to dismiss the fixed idea that it is a myth” (46). While Adam and Eve did not commit a great, unique sin, they did take what Kierkegaard describes as a “qualitative leap” (47) from a state of sinlessness into a state of sinfulness. However, Kierkegaard does admit he struggles to explain the story’s claim that Eve was tempted by a serpent, since the Bible elsewhere states that temptation comes “from without” (48).

Kierkegaard interprets Genesis as tracing the origin of sin to the anxiety created by humanity’s sexuality, specifically the conflict caused in sexuality by humanity’s dual nature as an animal and as a spiritual being. Kierkegaard states that “sinfulness is by no means sensuousness, but without sin there is no sexuality, and without sexuality, no history” (49). 

As for the question of what if Adam had not committed any sin, Kierkegaard dismisses it as a “stupid question” (50) because an individual might as well ask what if they themselves never committed a sin. Psychology is the only science that can be used toward finding an answer, and Kierkegaard says it can only accomplish that a “little” (50).