Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
The Sickness Unto Death
Despair is the sickness unto death — the self in misrelation to itself before God
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | The Sickness Unto Death (Late) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Both |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Finite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Finite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Immediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Scripture |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Finite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
The Sickness Unto Death
Time is the medium of selfhood as task. The eternal in the self is given; the temporal self must become itself across time. Death is the genuine philosophical horizon.
Space
The Sickness Unto Death
Lived space of the individual before God. Substantival.
Matter
The Sickness Unto Death
Created good but subordinate to spiritual reality.
Observer
The Sickness Unto Death
Kierkegaard's observer is the single individual, embodied, active in self-relating, fundamentally plural at the empirical level. Metaphysical agency is unambiguously personal.
Energy
The Sickness Unto Death
Not engaged.
Information
The Sickness Unto Death
God's knowledge is total. Personal information conserved across death.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The Anti-Climacus pseudonym signals an explicitly Christian standpoint Kierkegaard claimed not to occupy himself. Whether the work is genuine Christian philosophy or a literary fiction has been disputed.