Kierkegaard's Writings, VIII, Volume 8 Vol. 8: Concept of Anxiety: a Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin

This edition replaces the earlier translation by Walter Lowrie that appeared under the title __The Concept of Dread__. Along with __The Sickness unto Death__, the work reflects from a psychological point of view Søren Kierkegaard's longstanding concern with the Socratic maxim, "Know yourself." His ontological view of the self as a synthesis of body, soul, and spirit has influenced philosophers such as Heidegger and Sartre, theologians such as Jaspers and Tillich, and psychologists such as Rollo May. In __The Concept of Anxiety__, Kierkegaard describes the nature and forms of anxiety, placing the domain of anxiety within the mental-emotional states of human existence that precede the qualitative leap of faith to the spiritual state of Christianity. It is through anxiety that the self becomes aware of its dialectical relation between the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal.

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Anxiety as the Presupposition of Hereditary Sin and as Explaining Hereditary Sin Retrogressively in Terms of Its Origin

§1.

HISTORICAL INTIMATIONS REGARDING THE CONCEPT OF HEREDITARY SIN

Is the concept of hereditary sin identical with the concept of the first sin, Adam's sin, the fall of man? At times it has been understood so, and then the task of explaining hereditary sin has become identical with explaining Adam's sin. When thought met with difficulties, an expedient was seized upon. In order to explain at least something, a fantastic presupposition was introduced, the loss of which constituted the fall as the consequence. The advantage gained thereby was that everyone willingly admitted that a condition such as the one described was not found anywhere in the world, but that they forgot that as a result the doubt became a different one, namely, whether such a condition ever had existed, something that was quite necessary in order to lose it. The history of the human race acquired a fantastic beginning. Adam was fantastically placed outside this history. Pious feeling and fantasy got what they demanded, a godly prelude, but thought got nothing. In a double sense, Adam was held fantastically outside. The presupposition was dialectical-fantastic, especially in Catholicism (Adam lost donum divinitus datum supra-naturale et admirable [a supernatural and wonderful gift bestowed by God]). It was historical-fantastic, especially in the federal theology, which lost itself dramatically in a fantasy view of Adam's appearance as a plenipotentiary for the whole race. Obviously neither explanation explains anything. The one merely explains away what it has fictitiously composed; the other merely composes fiction that explains nothing.

Does the concept of hereditary sin differ from the concept of the first sin in such a way that the particular individual participates in inherited sin only through his relation to Adam and not through his primitive relation to sin? In that case Adam is placed fantastically outside history. Adam's sin is then more than something past (plus quam perfectum [pluperfect]). Hereditary sin is something present; it is sinfulness, and Adam is the only one in whom it was not found, since it came into being through him. Hence one would not try to explain Adam's sin but instead would explain hereditary sin in terms of its consequences. However, the explanation is not suitable for thought. One can therefore readily understand that one of the symbolical books declares the impossibility of an explanation, and that this declaration without contradiction gives the explanation. The Smalcald Articles teach distinctly: peccatum haereditarium tam profunda et tetra est corruptio naturae, ut nullius hominis ratione intelligi possit, sed ex scripturae patefactione agnoscenda et credenda sit [hereditary sin is so profound and detestable a corruption in human nature that it cannot be comprehended by human understanding, but must be known and believed from the revelation of the Scriptures]. This statement is easily reconciled with the explanations, for in these it is not so much rational definitions as such that are brought forth, but a pious feeling (with an ethical tone) that gives vent to its indignation over hereditary sin. This feeling assumes the role of an accuser, who with an almost feminine passion and with the fanaticism of a girl in love is now concerned only with making sinfulness and his own participation in it more and more detestable, and in such a manner that no word can be severe enough to describe the single individual's participation in it. If with this in mind one reviews the different confessions, a gradation appears in which the profound Protestant piety is victorious. The Greek Church speaks of hereditary sin as the sin of the [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [first father]. It does not even have a concept, for the term is only an historical designation, which does not, like the concept, designate what is present, but only what is historically concluded. Vitium originis [vice of origin] (Tertullian) is indeed a concept; nevertheless, its linguistic form allows for the conception of the historical as the predominant factor. Peccatum originale [original sin], because it has been quia originaliter tradatur [transmitted from the origin] (Augustine), designates the concept, which is still more clearly defined by the distinction between peccatum originans and originatum [sin as a cause and as caused]. Protestantism rejects the Scholastic definitions, carentia imaginis dei, defectus justitiae originalis [the absence of the image of God, the loss of original righteousness], as well as the view that hereditary sin is poena [punishment]. Concupiscentiam poenam esse non peccatum, disputant adversarii [our adversaries contend that concupiscence is punishment and not a sin] (Apologia A.C.). And now begins the enthusiastic climax: vitium, peccatum, reatus, culpa [vice, sin, guilt, transgression]. Because the only concern is the eloquence of the contrite soul, a quite contradictory thought (nunc quoque afferens iram dei iis, qui secundum exemplum Adami peccarunt [which now brings the wrath of God upon them that have sinned after the example of Adam)) can occasionally be introduced into the discussion of hereditary sin. Or a rhetorical concern, with no consideration whatever for thought, makes the most terrifying pronouncement about hereditary sin: quo fit, ut omnes propter inobedientiam Adae et Hevae in odio apud deum simus [from which it follows that all of us, because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, arc hated by God]—Formula of Concord. The Formula is nevertheless circumspect enough to protest against thinking this, for if one were to think it, sin would become man's substance. It As soon as the enthusiasm of faith and contrition disappear, one can no longer be helped by such determinations, which only make it easy for cunning prudence to escape the recognition of sin. But to need other determinations is after all a dubious proof of the perfection of our age, quite in the same sense as that of needing other than Draconian laws.

The fantastic presentation that is evident here repeats itself consistently at another point in dogmatics, namely, in the Atonement. It is taught that Christ has made satisfaction for hereditary sin. But what then happens to Adam? Was not he the one who brought hereditary sin into the world? Was not hereditary sin an actual sin in him? Or does hereditary sin signify the same for Adam as for everyone in the race? In that case, the concept is canceled. Or was Adam's whole life hereditary sin? Did not the first sin beget other sins in him, i.e., actual sins? The error in the preceding is here more evident, for as a result of this Adam is now so fantastically placed outside of history that he is the only one who is excluded from the Atonement.

No matter how the problem is raised, as soon as Adam is placed fantastically on the outside, everything is confused. To explain Adam's sin is therefore to explain hereditary sin. And no explanation that explains Adam but not hereditary sin, or explains hereditary sin but not Adam, is of any help. The most profound reason for this is what is essential to human existence: that man is individuum and as such simultaneously himself and the whole race, and in such a way that the whole race participates in the individual and the individual in the whole race. If this is not held fast, one will fall either into the Pelagian, Socinian, and philanthropic singular or into the fantastic. The matter-of-factness of the understanding is that the race is numerically resolved into an einmal ein [one times one]. What is fantastical is that Adam enjoys the well-meant honor of being more than the whole race or the ambiguous honor of standing outside the race.

At every moment, the individual is both himself and the race. This is man's perfection viewed as a state. It is also a contradiction, but a contradiction is always the expression of a task, and a task is movement, but a movement that as a task is the same as that to which the task is directed is an historical movement. Hence the individual has a history. But if the individual has a history, then the race also has a history. Each individual has the same perfection, and precisely because of this individuals do not fall apart from one another numerically any more than the concept of race is a phantom. Every individual is essentially interested in the history of all other individuals, and just as essentially as in his own. Perfection in oneself is therefore the perfect participation in the whole. No individual is indifferent to the history of the race any more than the race is indifferent to the history of the individual. As the history of the race moves on, the individual begins constantly anew, because he is both himself and the race, and by this, in turn, the history of the race.

Adam is the first man. He is at once himself and the race. It is not by virtue of the esthetically beautiful that we hold on to him, nor is it by virtue of a magnanimous feeling that we join ourselves to him in order, as it were, not to leave him in the lurch as the one who was responsible for everything. It is not by virtue of a zealous sympathy and the persuasion of piety that we resolve to share his guilt with him the way a child wishes to be guilty along with the father. It is not by virtue of a forced compassion that teaches us to put up with that which, after all, cannot be otherwise, but it is by virtue of thought that we hold fast to him. Consequently, every attempt to explain Adam's significance for the race as caput generis humani naturale, seminale, foederale [head of the human race by nature, by generation, by covenant], to recall the expression of dogmatics, confuses everything. He is not essentially different from the race, for in that case there is no race at all; he is not the race, for in that case also there would be no race. He is himself and the race. Therefore that which explains Adam also explains the race and vice versa.

§2. THE CONCEPT OF THE FIRST SIN

According to traditional concepts, the difference between Adam's first sin and the first sin of every other man is this:

Adam's sin conditions sinfulness as a consequence, the other first sin presupposes sinfulness as a state. Were this so, Adam would actually stand outside the race, and the race would not have begun with him but would have had a beginning outside itself, something that is contrary to every concept.

That the first sin signifies something different from a sin (i.e., a sin like many others), something different from one sin (i.e., no. 1 in relation to no. 2), is quite obvious. The first sin constitutes the nature of the quality: the first sin is the sin. This is the secret of the first, and is an offense to abstract common sense, which maintains that one time amounts to nothing but that many times amounts to something, which is preposterous, since many times signifies either that each particular time is just as much as the first or that all of the times, when added together, are not nearly as much. It is therefore a superstition when it is maintained in logic that through a continued quantification a new quality is brought forth. It is an unforgivable reticence when one makes no secret of the fact that things indeed do not happen quite that way in the world and yet conceals the consequence of this for the whole of logical immanence by permitting it to drift into logical movement as does Hegel. The new quality appears with the first, with the leap, with the suddeness of the enigmatic.

If the first sin means one sin in the numerical sense, no history can result from it, and sin will have no history, either in the individual or in the race. For the conditionality is the same for both, although the history of the race is not that of the individual any more than the history of the individual is that of the race, except insofar as the contradiction continually expresses the task.

Through the first sin, sin came into the world. Precisely in the same way it is true of every subsequent man's first sin, that through it sin comes into the world. That it was not in the world before Adam's first sin is, in relation to sin itself, something entirely accidental and irrelevant. It is of no significance at all and cannot justify making Adam's sin greater or the first sin of every other man lesser. It is indeed a logical and ethical heresy to wish to give the appearance that sinfulness in a man determines itself quantitatively until at last, through a generatio aequivoca [descent without mating], it brings forth the first sin in a man. But this does not take place any more than Trop, who by being a master in the service of quantitative determination, could thereby attain a degree in jurisprudence. Let mathematicians and astronomers save themselves if they can with infinitely disappearing minute magnitudes, but in life itself this does not help a man to obtain his examination papers, and much less to explain spirit. If every subsequent man's first sin were thus brought about by sinfulness, his first sin would only in a nonessential way be qualified as the first, and be essentially qualified-if this is thinkable—by its serial number in the universal sinking fund of the race. But this is not the case. It is equally foolish, illogical, unethical, and un-Christian to court the honor of being the first inventor and then to shirk one's responsibility by being unwilling to think something, by saying that one has done nothing more than what everyone else has done. The presence of sinfulness in a man, the power of the example, etc.—these are only quantitative determinations that explain nothing, unless it be assumed that one individual is the race, whereas every individual is both himself and the race.

The Genesis story of the first sin, especially in our day, has been regarded somewhat carelessly as a myth. There is a good reason why it has, because what was substituted in its place was precisely a myth, and a poor one at that. When the understanding takes to the mythical, the outcome is seldom more than small talk. The Genesis story presents the only dialectically consistent view. Its whole content is really concentrated in one statement: Sin came into the world by a sin. Were this not so, sin would have come into the world as something accidental, which one would do well not to explain. The difficulty for the understanding is precisely the triumph of the explanation and its profound consequence, namely, that sin presupposes itself, that sin comes into the world in such a way that by the fact that it is, it is presupposed. Thus sin comes into the world as the sudden, i.e., by a leap; but this leap also posits the quality, and since the quality is posited, the leap in that very moment is turned into the quality and is presupposed by the quality and the quality by the leap. To the understanding, this is an offense; ergo it is a myth. As a compensation, the understanding invents its own myth, which denies the leap and explains the circle as a straight line, and now everything proceeds quite naturally. The understanding talks fantastically about man's state prior to the fall, and, in the course of the small talk, the projected innocence is changed little by little into sinfulness, and so there it is. The lecture of the understanding may on this occasion be compared with the counting rhyme in which children delight: one-nis-ball, two-nis-balls, three-nis-balls, etc., up to nine-nis-balls and tennis balls. Here it is, brought about quite naturally by the preceding. Insofar as the myth of the understanding is supposed to contain anything, it would be that sinfulness precedes sin. But if this were true in the sense that sinfulness has come in by something other than sin, the concept would be canceled. But if it comes in by sin, then sin is prior to sinfulness. This contradiction is the only dialectical consequence that accommodates both the leap and the immanence (i.e., the subsequent immanence).

By Adam's first sin, sin came into the world. This statement, which is the common one, nevertheless contains an altogether outward reflection that doubtless has contributed greatly to the rise of vague misunderstanding. That sin came into the world is quite true. But this does not really concern Adam. To express this precisely and accurately, one must say that by the first sin, sinfulness came into Adam. It could not occur to anyone to say about any subsequent man that by his first sin sinfulness came into the world; and yet it comes into the world by him in a similar way (i.e., in a way not essentially different), because, expressed precisely and accurately, sinfulness is in the world only insofar as it comes into the world by Sill.

That this has been expressed differently in the case of Adam is only because the consequence of his fantastic relation to the race should become evident everywhere. His sin is hereditary sin. Apart from this, nothing is known about him. But hereditary sin, as seen in Adam, is only that first sin. Is Adam, then, the only individual who has no history? If so, the race has its beginning with an individual who is not an individual, and thereby the concepts of race and individual are both canceled. If any other individual in the race can by its history have significance in the history of the race, then Adam has it also. If Adam has it only by virtue of that first sin, the concept of history is canceled, i.e., history has come to an end in the very moment it began.
(Continues...) Excerpted from THE CONCEPT OF ANXIETY by Søren Kierkegaard. Copyright © 1980 by Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. This Edition Replaces The Earlier Translation By Walter Lowrie That Appeared Under The Title The Concept Of Dread. Along With The Sickness Unto Death, The Work Reflects From A Psychological Point Of View Søren Kierkegaard's Longstanding Concern With The Socratic Maxim, Know Yourself. His Ontological View Of The Self As A Synthesis Of Body, Soul, And Spirit Has Influenced Philosophers Such As Heidegger And Sartre, Theologians Such As Jaspers And Tillich, And Psychologists Such As Rollo May. In The Concept Of Anxiety, Kierkegaard Describes The Nature And Forms Of Anxiety, Placing The Domain Of Anxiety Within The Mental-emotional States Of Human Existence That Precede The Qualitative Leap Of Faith To The Spiritual State Of Christianity. It Is Through Anxiety That The Self Becomes Aware Of Its Dialectical Relation Between The Finite And The Infinite, The Temporal And The Eternal.--publisher Description. Anxiety As The Presupposition Of Hereditary Sin And As Explaining Hereditary Sin Retrogressively In Terms Of Its Origin -- Anxiety As Explaining Hereditary Sin Progressively -- Anxiety As The Consequence Of That Sin Which Is Absense Of The Consciousness Of Sin -- Anxiety Of Sin Or Anxiety As The Consequence Of Sin In The Single Individual -- Anxiety As Saving Through Faith. By Søren Kierkegaard ; Edited And Translated With Introd. And Notes By Reidar Thomte, In Collaboration With Albert B. Anderson. Translation Of Begrebet Angest. Includes Index. Bibliography: P. [257]

This edition replaces the earlier translation by Walter Lowrie that appeared under the title The Concept of Dread. Along with The Sickness unto Death, the work reflects from a psychological point of view Søren Kierkegaard's longstanding concern with the Socratic maxim, "Know yourself." His ontological view of the self as a synthesis of body, soul, and spirit has influenced philosophers such as Heidegger and Sartre, theologians such as Jaspers and Tillich, and psychologists such as Rollo May.

In The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard describes the nature and forms of anxiety, placing the domain of anxiety within the mental-emotional states of human existence that precede the qualitative leap of faith to the spiritual state of Christianity. It is through anxiety that the self becomes aware of its dialectical relation between the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal.

This book deals with the concept, values, and thinking about original sin. He explores both the psychological and philosophical ramifications of this theological question.