The Concept of Anxiety
Begrebet Angest — Kierkegaard's 1844 psychological-theological treatise on anxiety as the dizziness of freedom
Tradition: Danish religious existentialism
Anxiety as "the dizziness of freedom" — the existential-theological analysis of the human condition between possibility and actuality
The Concept of Anxiety is Kierkegaard's most systematic theological-psychological work. Written under the pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis ("watchman of the harbour"), the book presents itself as a simple psychological deliberation on the doctrine of original sin, but it develops into a foundational analysis of anxiety as the central category of human existence. Anxiety is not fear of any particular object; it is "the dizziness of freedom" — the affective response of a being who knows itself as standing before infinite possibility. Kierkegaard distinguishes the anxiety of innocence (pre-Fall Adam), the anxiety of consequence (post-Fall human life), and the anxiety of salvation (faith's engagement with the eternal). The book directly shapes Heidegger's analysis of Angst in Being and Time (1927) and is foundational for twentieth-century existentialism (Sartre's "anguish," Tillich's analysis of anxiety and faith). Auden called it "the most extraordinary psychological treatise ever written."
Author
Editions cited
- The Concept of Anxiety (Reidar Thomte with Albert Anderson, Princeton Kierkegaard's Writings VIII, 1980)
- The Concept of Anxiety (Alastair Hannay, Liveright, 2014)
- Begrebet Angest (Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, Danish critical edition)
School Embodiments
The Concept of Anxiety is the founding text of Christian existentialism. Its analysis of anxiety, freedom, sin, and faith provides the systematic structure for subsequent Christian-existentialist thought (Tillich, the Niebuhrs, Marcel).
"Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis, and freedom looks down into its own possibility." (Concept of Anxiety, ch. III)
Through Heidegger and Sartre, the Concept of Anxiety becomes the founding text of secular existentialism as well. Heidegger's Being and Time §40 (on Angst) and Sartre's analysis of anguish in Being and Nothingness are both developments of Kierkegaard's framework.
"Anxiety is freedom's actuality as the possibility of possibility." (Concept of Anxiety, ch. I)
The book is a tour-de-force of phenomenological description before phenomenology had a name — the detailed analysis of moods, states of consciousness, and existential structures anticipates Husserl and Heidegger.
"Anxiety is altogether different from fear and similar concepts, which relate themselves to something definite." (Concept of Anxiety, ch. I)
Kierkegaard writes as a Lutheran but engages the Reformed doctrine of original sin extensively. His treatment of human bondage and the necessity of grace has substantial overlap with Reformed theology.
"Sin came into the world by a sin." (Concept of Anxiety, the central paradox)
Kierkegaard's Lutheran context is everywhere present — the analysis of sin as a category of the will, the priority of faith over works, the central role of grace.
"Only by faith is the spirit freed from anxiety." (Concept of Anxiety, ch. V)
A complicated relation: the Concept of Anxiety is sharply critical of speculative (Hegelian) liberal theology, yet shapes subsequent liberal-theological treatments of religious experience (Tillich, Niebuhr).
"Hegel's mediation does not understand the concept of sin." (Concept of Anxiety, the recurrent critique)
Kierkegaard's emphasis on personal sin, personal conversion, and the existential appropriation of faith has shaped twentieth-century evangelical-existential theology (Francis Schaeffer, the Niebuhrs' broader reception).
"Personal sin is the qualitative leap of the individual." (Concept of Anxiety, ch. II)
The personalist tradition (Mounier, Maritain, and twentieth-century Catholic personalism) draws extensively on Kierkegaard's analysis of the irreducibly personal-existential structure of human life.
"The individual stands in eternal relation to itself." (Concept of Anxiety, paraphrasing)
Internal Tensions
The Concept of Anxiety is signed by the pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis, and Kierkegaard's scholarly reflection on the relation between his own views and the views of his pseudonyms is a continuing interpretive question. The work's relation to subsequent existentialism — particularly Heidegger's Being and Time, which appropriates and transforms much of the analysis — is itself a major interpretive theme. Whether anxiety's "resolution" in faith is genuinely a resolution (Kierkegaard's view) or a leap that essentially evades the existential situation (the secular-existentialist view) is the central evaluative question.
I. Time
The instant (Øieblikket) as the eternal's breaking into time — the moment of decision in which freedom is actual.
Attributes
II. Space
The existential-personal space of the single individual standing before God; not thematised as physical space.
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III. Matter
Embodied existence — the synthesis of finite and infinite, temporal and eternal, soul and body.
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IV. Observer
The single individual (den Enkelte) as the central category — irreducibly singular, embodied, both active and passive in freedom. Personal-providential God as ultimate framework.
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V. Energy
The energies of the spirit — freedom, anxiety, despair, faith — analysed phenomenologically.
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VI. Information
Personal information of the individual's self-relation before God; preserved through the eternal individuation.
Attributes
Personas that cite this work
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How The Concept of Anxiety resolves each dilemma
51 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 29 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 6 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.
6 mainstream positions
Matter · 7 dilemmas · 4 distinctive
What stuff is — fundamental, relational, or appearance.
3 mainstream positions
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.