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

Kierkegaard elaborates and gives terms for his two types of anxiety. Subjective anxiety is the anxiety that is present in the individual’s state of innocence and corresponds to that of Adam, but it is nevertheless quantitatively different from that of Adam because of the “quantitative determination of the generation” (56). In other words, it is the anxiety that can exist before sin, but which has worsened because of people’s greater awareness of sin across history. 

Objective anxiety is, according to Kierkegaard, “the reflection of the sinfulness of the generation in the whole world” (57). By this, Kierkegaard is also referring to the tendency of humans to experience a “longing” for a world that is not “in a state of imperfection” (58). Kierkegaard also describes the differences this way: Subjective anxiety exists “in the individual,” and objective anxiety lies “in nature” (60).

Adam’s sin caused the universe to be “placed in an entirely different light” because humanity is a “synthesis” (58) of the animal and the spiritual, but he also quickly admits that this—and other related questions about the nature of the Fall—is purely a subject for dogmatics. Due to this objective anxiety, “sensuousness becomes sinfulness” (58). Kierkegaard clarifies that sensuousness is not sinful in and of itself, but it becomes sinful after an individual takes their qualitative leap into sin.

Subjective anxiety “becomes more and more reflective,” leading to guilt. That guilt is not different from “the same accountability as that of Adam” (60). Kierkegaard then compares anxiety to the “dizziness” that comes when a person looks “into the yawning abyss” (61). Elaborating on this metaphor, Kierkegaard defines anxiety as “the dizziness of freedom” that comes from when a person considers their own nature as a “synthesis” of animal and human and when they realize their own “freedom” (61).

At the start, subjective anxiety will “signify a nothing […] that communicates vigorously with the ignorance of innocence” (62). In other words, this kind of anxiety is a general feeling that is not provoked by, or fixated on, a particular thing. However, this changes after an individual experiences the qualitative leap into sin and guilt.

The Consequence of the Relationship of Generation

Kierkegaard cautions against an overly simplistic attitude toward evil and sin. In particular, he argues against having an attitude toward evil that treats evil as just a break from tradition, which he sarcastically describes as how “a person might become a heretic in his faith by wearing wide pants when everyone else in the village wears tight pants” (63). Furthermore, he rejects the idea that sin can be measured or “calculated” (63) like a mathematical formula.

Kierkegaard’s argument about Adam’s qualitative leap into sin and that Adam’s sin was not greater than those of subsequent generations also applies to Eve. Although Kierkegaard does believe that “woman is more sensuous than men,” he also does not think that Eve’s sin and guilt were greater than Adam’s, despite the Genesis story claiming Eve seduced Adam. Still, Kierkegaard also concludes that women have “more anxiety” (63). 

Kierkegaard argues women are innately more sensuous because their essential traits include beauty and procreation. “Womanly beauty” is different from “manly beauty,” which is different from womanly beauty because it is located mainly in the “face and its expression” (65) while women’s beauty is expressed “as a whole” (66). As for procreation, it is what “woman’s life culminates in,” which also makes her “more sensuous” (66).

Women are spirit like men. He claims that because they are spirit and more sensuous, this makes women “more anxious than man” (66). Kierkegaard explains this by arguing a man does not feel anxiety when a woman looks at him with a “desirous gaze” (66-67), but a woman does when a man looks at her with desire. Men can be naïve about sexuality, but Kierkegaard suggests that losing one’s naivete is not the same as losing one’s innocence. One can feel anxiety over their own modesty. However, Kierkegaard argues, “There is no trace of sensuous lust, and yet there is a sense of shame” (68). It is not an example of anxiety awoken by a sin, but by how someone’s spirit “perceives the sexual as the foreign and as the comic” (69).

Kierkegaard understands sexual desire as a “contradiction” since it is the desire for both something bodily and psychic. In what Kierkegaard considers as expressing a “maturity of spirit,” this contradiction in sexual desire would be expressed as an appreciation for beauty but also a sense of the comical, something shown as “indifference” (69) in the Greek philosopher Socrates. 

Christianity has considered the erotic as “sinful,” which Kierkegaard describes as an “ethical misunderstanding” (70), and has practiced the same indifference toward the erotic as Socrates. However, even when sex takes place in a situation acceptable to Christian morals, anxiety remains as an “accompanying factor.” Kierkegaard explains this is because, while spirit links the mental to the body, “it cannot express itself in the erotic” (71).

Despite this, Kierkegaard also argues there is a “‘more’ of anxiety and sensuousness for every subsequent man in relation to Adam” (72). As sensuousness increases over human generations, the anxiety over sensuousness has also increased. In some cases, Kierkegaard claims that “anxiety about sin produces sin” (73).

The Consequence of the Historical Relationship

The reason humans develop more sensuousness is because over time humanity has developed more knowledge about sensuality and the potential link between sensuousness and sin. Even though people begin as innocent, the knowledge is still “a new possibility” (74) that the individual understands following their qualitative leap. People are exposed to this knowledge—and possibly the anxiety from this knowledge—through moral warnings, jokes, and even silence.

The problem with the anxiety that comes from knowledge is that “the individual, in anxiety not about becoming guilty but about being regarded as guilty, becomes guilty” (75). At the worst, the environment in which an individual grows up may make them believe sensuousness and sin are the same while not offering help in overcoming sin. To demonstrate this, Kierkegaard gives the example of children who become bad or good based on their upbringing or because of the friends they have, although it is most likely that, because of their experiences, they become good and bad or “both guilty and innocent” (76).

Kierkegaard interprets the fruit from the tree of knowledge described in Genesis as explaining the origin of both humanity’s ability to distinguish good and evil as well as its understanding of “sexual difference” (76). This again means that the belief that sensuousness is sin is what leads to sin, even when an individual is still innocent.

Kierkegaard also questions the argument that sin “is selfishness” (77). Since selfishness is different for every individual, who all desire different things, it cannot be synonymous with something as general as sin, nor does the understanding of sin as selfishness acknowledge the distinction between an individual’s sin and hereditary sin. There is also no scientific certainty over what the self is, nor can any science comprehend how each individual understands their own self.

Kierkegaard concludes by comparing the Christian and ancient Greek views. With the rise of Christianity and the decline of Greek paganism, Kierkegaard concedes that a “plaintive, erotic […] cheerfulness” was lost. However, Christianity brought with its understanding of sexuality a “qualification of spirit unknown to Greek culture” (80).