Roni Xu

What is the Significance of Anxiety for Faith?

Introduction

Throughout Kierkegaard’s work he addresses problems he sees arising in contemporary Christendom from a faulty definition of the concept of ‘original sin’ . I’m going to post my elucidation of this as a background piece for my theology/existential psychology thesis.

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As Kierkegaard saw it, original sin had arisen in two phases. First, under the influence of Hegelian ‘ontological logic’, a qualitative distinction had arisen in the popular imagination between Adam and the rest of humanity: unlike the first man, the descendents of Adam were considered innately corrupt and therefore unable to respond to the fact of sin in their lives. Second, under the influence of this logic, the Genesis account had begun to find itself deconstructed, such that it no longer presented a situation that was ‘actual’ for the contemporary reader. The result of this was that the concept of Arvesynd was taken not to require a personal, Christian reaction.

This is the broad context within which Kierkegaard, via his pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis, introduces the concept of ‘anxiety’ (Angest). Anxiety is something real and really present in every human individual. And not only is it present, but is ‘absolutely educative’ (155) for every human individual; it serves a vital role in the dialectic of the self’s development. In this way, the concept of anxiety represents a corrective to the faulty definition of Arvesynd that was prevalent in Kierkegaard’s contemporary context, designed to jolt the reader into a right understanding of sin and faith, ‘the mood that properly corresponds to the correct concept’ (14).

In this essay, I will first of all outline the method by which anxiety is considered in this book (section 1); this is important, for Haufniensis himself takes care to define the limits of his method, and without this the critic runs the risk of exceeding the conclusions the book itself permits. In the main part of my essay, I will first describe (section 2) and then analyse (section 3) the concept of anxiety in relation to faith. Finally, I will conclude that the relation between the two is ‘coterminous’: anxiety in this book not only explains the need for faith, but also provides the condition of faith. In this way, The Concept of Anxiety provides an account not just of the Fall, but of salvation. 1. Method

First, then, what is the method Haufniensis adopts in order to consider the significance of anxiety for faith?

It should be noted that for some critics the book hardly presents any method at all! Roger Poole, for example, has suggested that it may have been intended by Kierkegaard as nothing more than a kind of ‘gay spoof of an academic textbook’.2 According to this reading, the literary playfulness with which it is undoubtedly written is deliberately confusing; the effect of the whole is that serious philosophical meaning cannot be extracted from the text in a linear or analytical way, nor was it ever intended thus. To take one example; he suggests that many of the fine distinctions drawn by the text (such as those between ‘sin’ and ‘sinfulness’, Synd and Syndighed) are really pseudo-qualifications, drawn only in order to provoke and stimulate the reader. Or to take another example, he notes the unusual number of sibilant terms in the Danish, and concludes that (especially when read aloud) the text mischievously suggests the hissing of the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve in the garden.3 The style of the book, then, evokes the very ‘dizziness’ that characterizes the experience of anxiety, and in this way, for Poole, it is intended to ‘refuse instruction and disseminate doubt’ in the mind of the reader.4

However, this sort of interpretation does not take into account the painstaking effort that Haufniensis himself makes throughout the book to delineate his own approach. Haufniensis claims to have control over the method by which he is advancing his thesis about anxiety and assures the reader on numerous occasions that he will not transgress the limits of that method by straying into the territory of any other ‘science’.

1 Literarily ‘inherited sin’; this is translated throughout by Thomte as ‘hereditary sin’, rather than the more vernacular ‘original sin’ of Lowrie; cf. discussion in Poole (1993), p.92.

2 Poole (1993), p.84.

3 Ibid, p.107

4 Ibid, p.98

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So what is the method that Haufniensis utilises? It is revealed in the subtitle of the book: The Concept of Anxiety is presented as ‘a simple deliberation in the form of psychological observations directed towards the dogmatic problem of original sin’. So the method, even we might say the genre, that is adopted by Haufniensis in this book is that of psychology.

At this point, the original reader would have been reminded that, at that time, psychology (along with so many other ‘sciences’ of course) had been self-consciously appropriated as a Hegelian discipline. For Hegel, psychology constituted part of his all-embracing science of man as emerging self-conscious spirit.

The prompts a stinging attack by Haufniensis. The problem he identifies is that this results in the dangerous and unwarranted conclusion that ‘actuality’ was a valid subject matter for logic; or, to put in other another way, that the demand of personal agency in matters of faith could be ‘safely ignored’ (10). The reader considering faith in terms of ‘Hegelian psychology’, then, will find himself ‘duped’ in matters of faith (11).

Haufniensis rejects this Hegelian definition, then. But he does not reject the psychological approach entirely. For him, when the psychological method was appropriated correctly, there was much it could do to explain the significance of faith. Thus he writes: ‘that which can be the concern of psychology and with which it can occupy itself is not the fact that sin comes into existence, but rather how it can come into existence’ (22, original italics).

In this way, The Concept of Anxiety can be considered as an attempt to re-appropriate the psychological method in the service of an explanation of sin and faith, via the concept of anxiety.

2. Description

Having established this method, how does Haufniensis go about using it to describe faith via the concept of anxiety?

I will suggest there are three entry points by which we can understand how he does so. First, in a general sense, the psychological method that Haufniensis uses presupposes that anxiety is significant for faith. Second, he shows this is the case via means of an exposition of the Genesis narrative. Third, he demonstrates that this continues to be the case in the life of all those who follow Adam, albeit in a subtly altered form.

2.1 General

In one sense, the relationship between anxiety and faith is straightforward. For anxiety is the state in which the individual (constituted as he is of a mind/body synthesis) begins to confront his own growing awareness that something is lacking qua this synthesis. In this case of every human individual, this confrontation results in one or two reactions. Either the individual decides to cling to his familiar nature, thereby failing to respond to anxiety; Haufniensis calls this the unhappy condition of ‘spiritlessness’, in which ‘[…] there is no anxiety, because the individual is too happy, too content, too spiritless to allow it’ (95).5 Or, alternatively, the individual responds to the anxiety he feels by discovering the nature of his ‘eternal qualification’ (61). This enables him to find by faith the God-relation. And this in turn results in a transformation of the individual from a mere mind/body synthesis into something new: he ‘becomes spirit’ (42).

However, because the process of finding the God-relation by faith goes against human nature, it is naturally accompanied by anxiety and reluctance. Or, to use a term that is frequently employed by Haufniensis, it is ‘personally strenuous’ (28, 69, 71, etc).

The process of anxiety leading to faith for a human individual is contrasted with the ‘natural’ processes that can be observed in the life of something ‘determined’ or mechanistic. The example Haufniensis gives is that of a plant (22). It is the nature of a plant to grow in a certain way; its physical state is a result of inevitable processes

5 Haufniensis does however nuance this by suggesting that, even though there is no ‘anxiety’ in this condition of spiritlessness, nevertheless anxiety ‘is waiting in the background’ (96), and this constitutes a kind of restlessness that is constantly inviting the subject to reconsider his decision.

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involving sunlight, chemicals, water, and so on. In this way, its existence is a necessary unfolding of its own potentiality; or, as Haufniensis describes it, it grows according to ‘quantitative determinations’ (33). But for faith to ‘grow’ within a human individual, the conditions are very different. In this case, the individual must be conscious of an infinite disparity between his familiar, ‘necessary’ nature and a (perhaps as yet unspecified) infinite aspiration that has been prompted by anxiety. Thus, for faith to arrive, the individual must participate in it by a ‘qualitative leap’ (32), not according to something already internal to himself.

The process that is in question, then, is not comparable to a plant (becoming what it is by nature); rather it is something distinctively psychological (becoming conscious of something that is not already in you). Thus, within the method employed in the book, psychology when properly understood demands a concept of anxiety.

2.2 Historical

The general observation given above is further supported by Haufniensis’ exegesis of the story of creation and the Fall of Adam.

The essence of Haufniensis’ question in regards to Adam is as follows: how can it be that this first man went from a state of ‘innocence’ to the state of sin in one leap? (37) Or, why was it that ‘guilt broke forth in his case via the qualitative leap?’ (41)

Prior to the Fall, Haufniensis argues that Adam was ignorant of the difference between good and evil: ‘in innocence, man was not qualified as spirit, but was psychically qualified in immediate unity with his natural condition’ (41). Adam’s condition was a form of ‘sleep’ in regards to the external world: ‘the spirit in man was dreaming, and in this state there was peace and repose’ (41).

However, this condition was not entirely as it seemed, for there was something else present that caused the state of innocence to be disrupted in Adam. Whatever it was, this other thing caused the otherwise innocent man to ‘beget anxiety’ (41).

This cannot be attributed to something external to Adam, for ‘there was nothing in existence or in his own self against which he could strive’ (43).

Rather, that which caused anxiety to intrude into Adam’s state of innocence was the presentiment of the freedom that would follow if his consciousness was fully awakened. This is spoken of by Haufniensis as ‘freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility’ (42) or as ‘entangled freedom, where freedom is not free in itself but is entangled, not by necessity, but in itself’ (49).

Under the influence of this condition, eventually Adam moves out of the state of innocence into the condition of sin. This can only be posited by means of the ‘qualitative leap’ (112). This is of great significance to the concept of faith that Haufniensis will outline later in the book. To postulate anything external to Adam that provoked or caused him to sin is to be dismissed: ‘if the object of anxiety is something, we have no leap, but only a quantitative transition’ (77). Rather, it was something internal to Adam that caused him to make the ‘leap’: his sin comes literally ‘out of nothing’. This sets up what Haufniensis will describe as ‘the dialectic of faith’, which in the same way presents its self as a ‘qualitative leap’ that must be made by the individual by himself.

Having argued that it was the concept of anxiety that provided the conditions for Adam to sin (via the ‘qualitative leap’) it is important to note that Haufniensis does not concede that his state of innocence was therefore flawed or incomplete. To show this, he offers an illustration regarding the experience of children. He notes that in children there is something like this experience of anxiety: ‘in observing children, one will discover this anxiety intimated as a seeking for the adventurous, the monstrous, and the enigmatic’ (42). And yet, he asks, does this prove that children don’t live in a state of innocence? ‘Not at all’, he answers: just because children experience this does not mean that their childhood is corrupted; rather, ‘anxiety belongs essentially to the child,

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such that he cannot do without it’ (42).6 The child experiences anxiety, but it also captivates him, paradoxically, as a sort of ‘pleasing anxiousness’ that he cannot do without [Beoengstelse] (43). The same must have been true for Adam in his original state, Haufniensis suggests.

To summarise, then: in his state of innocence Adam was invaded by anxiety, not as an external aggressor, but as a condition of his own freedom and being. And it was this concept of anxiety that provided the condition by which he ultimately sinned in disobeying the command of God, as documented in Genesis 2-3.

2.3 Contemporary

The experience of Adam shows points of both similarity and dissimilarity to our own.

On the one hand, the same movement that afflicted Adam (innocence interrupted by anxiety, leading to the ‘qualitative leap’ into sin) is exactly the same movement that afflicts all who follow him. Thus, Haufniensis writes: ‘that which explains Adam also explains the human race, and vice versa’ (29). To ignore this, to ‘place Adam fantastically outside the history of the human race’ (25), is a logical fallacy and an abandonment of our duty to face up to the requirement of the ‘qualitative leap’. This is because it allows us to situate Adam as an outlier to the human race and therefore denudes him of the existential challenge he places on each and every one of us to face up to and confront our own sin. This, says Haufniensis, is akin to a ‘legal loophole’ that ‘allows us to escape the recognition of sin’ (27).7

And yet, on the other hand, the application of Adam’s experience also shows points of dissimilarity to our own. Although in its main form it is the same, he suggests that the state of sin has become more ‘reflective’ as generations have passed by, so that there is a slightly different ‘quantitative determination’ (57) now than there was for Adam.8 This is the consequence of time passing, and a certain residue of ‘historical’ knowledge of sin (or, as Haufniensis puts it, it is the ‘consequence of the relation of generation’, heading of chapter III).

However, the key point to note is that the ‘qualitative leap’ still applies to every individual that follows Adam: ‘this more is never of such a kind that one becomes essentially different from him’ (64, original italics).

3. Analysis

In this final section of my essay, I will offer analysis of three aspects of Haufniensis’ account of anxiety and faith, in each case suggesting their significance within the broader purview of Kierkegaard’s religious writing.

First, Haufniensis’ account provides a rationale for the human condition that is situated entirely within the horizon of human psychology. That is to say, in attempting to explain how man moved from a state of innocence to a state of sin, his account resists the temptation to bring in any third, or mediating, factor. The concession of anything external to Adam that can be accused of ‘provoking’ sin is consistently dismissed.

To take just one example, Haufniensis considers the possibility that God’s command in Genesis 2:17 might be taken as a ‘prohibition awakening the desire’ (45ff.). And yet, he throws out this possibility. Why? Because for Adam to have ‘desired’ anything, he must have ‘had a knowledge of the object given as a possibility, and a desire to achieve it or to use it’ (44). For an individual residing in the state of innocence, a ‘desire’ like this

6 In fact, he even suggests that ‘higher’ the culture, the more this is respected and nurtured in children by the adult world that is responsible for them (42).

7 As an aside, Haufniensis (provocatively) suggests this holds up a mirror to the practionners of higher criticism of his day. By claiming the Genesis story to be myth, they evade its existential application to their own lives. But in doing so, ironically ‘what they have substituted in its place’ is, in turn, ‘a myth’ – and ‘a poor one at that’ (32). In this way, ‘no age has been more skilful than our own at producing myths and yet also desiring to eradicate them’ (46).

8 Haufniensis offers the interesting suggestion that this is even evident in the very first ‘generational relation’, that is, Eve. He suggests that

‘anxiety is reflected more in her than in Adam’ (64). This is because, created second, she had a greater disparity in the synthesis of her own self (for example, as reflected in her quality of ‘sensuousness’), and therefore, like a pendulum, she swung over ‘more’ in anxiety than Adam, who was created first. This does not indicate that in some rudimentary way she is ‘more guilty’ than Adam; only that she started from a different ‘relation’, and so the effect of her sin was subtly altered compared to him.

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cannot have been triggered by an external agent (in this case, the voice of God). In its place, Haufniensis offers a psychological explanation that maintains the personal agency of the individual (namely, Adam was guilty of disobeying the command) without undermining the state of pristine innocence (namely, Adam was not determined to disobey the command by something outside the range of his own freedom). The explanation for sin can only come via the concept of anxiety, since anxiety does arise as a mediating agent from the outside, but literally ‘out of nothing’. It is as if ‘Adam talked to himself’ in causing himself to yield to temptation (44).

This aspect to Haufniensis’ account is noted by Philip Quinn, who suggests that the significance of

Kierkegaard’s account of the Fall over and against his predecessors (in particular Kant) is located precisely here: he is able to provide Adam with a ‘logical motivation’ for his sin.9 That this was one of the objectives of the work is indicated by Kierkegaard himself in his Journals, where he notes the need to carefully define what this ‘middle term’ really was: ‘he who becomes guilty through anxiety is indeed innocent, for it was not he himself but anxiety, a foreign power that laid hold of him, a power that he did not love but about which he was anxious […] and yet he is guilty for he sank in anxiety, which he nevertheless loved even as he feared it’.10 My suggestion is that The Concept of Anxiety is ultimately successful in locating and describing this ‘middle term’, such that ‘innocence is not guilty, and yet there is anxiety as though it were lost’ (45). In this way, Haufniensis’ account can lay claim to success in providing a dialectical break-through against the Hegelianism narrative of the religious significance of man.

Second, Haufniensis’ account provides an explanation for the absence of faith that has characterised ‘pagans’ (to use his own term) since the time of Adam.

For Haufniensis, the primary mechanism by which the ‘pagan’ enters into a state of ‘un-faith’ is by positing anxiety as something other then what it really is. The Kierkegaardian hero,11 of course, rejects all mediating excuses and entirely owns his sinful nature; this is the process that leads to faith. But the ‘pagan’, faced by the anxiety of his condition, shifts the blame away from himself and onto something else; this is the process that leads to ‘un-faith’.

The ‘pagan’ does this by ‘dialectically defining anxiety’ as ‘fate’ (96). That is, as anxiety begins to present the possibility of radical freedom before his very eyes, the pagan decides to close down and, as it were, disown that possibility by attributing it something outside of his own self, namely, ‘fate’. The Kierkegaardian hero, on the other hand, does not do this: he defines anxiety as ‘guilt’ rather than ‘fate’. This is because ‘guilt’ is a concept which presupposes some agency, and therefore some responsibility, on the behalf of the subject. By ascribing his state of sinfulness to ‘guilt’, the individual ‘refuses to side-step the primitive decision, refuses to seek the decision outside himself with Tom, Dick or Harry, and refuses to remain content with the usual bargaining’ (109).

At this point, it seems to me that Haufniensis’ argument is at its most tenuous, for it would seem feasible (at least, we might say, according to the assumptions of ‘modern psychology’) to ascribe guilt to something external to the human self. If this is true, then the concept of guilt would provide no ground of evidence that the individual has ‘eo ipso turned toward God in faith’ (107).

Third and finally, Haufniensis’ account does not just chart how anxiety leads to sin, but also how anxiety provides the condition of faith. The concept of anxiety, he argues, culminates in a dichotomy. Either it prompts the self-destruction of the subject, by provoking him to continue in sin ad infinitum. Or it enables the subject to ‘renounce anxiety without anxiety’ (154) and thereby enter into the state of faith.

So just like the hero of one of Grimm’s fairy-tales (155), this is the crucial journey that the reader is invited to commence: ‘to learn to be anxious in order that he might not perish either by never having been in anxiety or by succumbing in anxiety; for whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate’ (155). And, faithful to his promise not allow dogmatics to ‘intrude’ upon his psychological examination (23), it is only

9 Quinn (1993), p.356.

10 JP I 41; Pap. X2A 22.

11 Or ‘genius’, which is the term frequently used in this book.

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in the penultimate sentence of the book that Haufniensis allows a hint of dogma to surface, with the tantalizing suggestion that: ‘he who in relation to guilt is educated by anxiety will rest only in the Atonement’ (162). Any explication of the Atonement of course lies in the realm of the non-psychologically-orientated (that is, in Christian doctrine), and therefore lies outside the remit that Haufniensis has set himself in The Concept of

Anxiety. However, reflecting its formal placement as the penultimate sentence in the book, we can conclude that Haufniensis’ portrayal of anxiety in relation to faith has brought us, as it were, to the threshold of this discovery, and we are left to ourselves, as the individual face to face with the Infinite, to lift our hands, push the door and walk through.

Conclusion

In these three ways, then, the relationship between anxiety and faith is ultimately presented as ‘coterminous’ in this book. The concept of anxiety explains the need for faith (since it is the condition of the Fall). But it also explains how we come into faith (since it is the prompt that causes the individual to turn in faith to the God-relation). And it is precisely in this two-way trajectory that the originality, and the challenge, of Haufniensis’ account resides, both for his contemporary readership, and for ourselves.

Bibliography

Kierkegaard, Soren, The Concept of Anxiety (1844, edited and translated by Reidar Thomte, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980)

Dupré, L., ‘The Constitution of the Self in Kierkegaard’s Philosophy’ in International Philosophical Quarterly

3 (1963), pp. 506-526

Morino, Gordon D., ‘Anxiety in The Concept of Anxiety’ in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 308-328

Poole, Roger, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication (Virginia: Virginia University Press, 1993)

Quinn, Philip, ‘Kierkegaard’s Christian Ethics’ in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 349-376