What is decisive with regard to the self is consciousness, that is to say, self-consciousness. The more consciousness, the more will; the more will, the more self. Someone who has no will at all is no self. But the more will he has, the more self-consciousness he has too.

Kierkegaard is certainly thought-provoking, if not always coherent. While the overall view has much to recommend it as a phenomenological account of existential despair, it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of a cogent metaphysical theory of the self and its attendant states. It is especially hard to take up his notion of the self if one doubts some of his foundational premises—specifically, his assertion that the self must have been established by God. And if one does not buy this, the rest is hard to swallow. That being said, the text is always engaging and insightful. ( )

A problemática filosófica de Kierkgaard (1813-1855) nutre-se permanentemente de temas religiosos. Ele próprio considerou que sua tarefa central deveria ser a investigação ao que está subentendido no fato de ser um cristão. Nesta obra a dialética do desespero humano é analisada em suas múltiplas facetas. Livro de avassaladora análise da consciência humana.

H1.31.6

A short book that feels like a marathon, Søren Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death looks and is daunting. It is a dense philosophical treatise that goes deep into notions of despair, the self and existence – hardly crowd-pleasers – and also topics that are deeply unfashionable nowadays like faith and the state of Christianity. It is a book that can inflict on us passages like the following, which is by no means the only example:

"If the relation which relates to itself has been established by something else, then of course the relation is the third term, but then this relation, the third term, is a relation which relates in turn to that which has established the whole relation." (pg. 10)

And yet, alongside all this academic wordiness and dry dialectic, Kierkegaard can also deliver lines such as "with despair a fire takes hold in something that cannot burn" (pg. 18). The best example of the headache-inducing yet ultimately nourishing nature of the book, and perhaps of philosophy in general, is when Kierkegaard delivers the maddening line "To understand and to understand; are these then two different things? Certainly" (pg. 111), only to follow this up with a clear and interesting discussion of what he means by this, namely that there is a "distinction between not being able to understand and being unwilling to understand" (pg. 117).

Of course, no one is coming to philosophy, particularly philosophy of the calibre of Kierkegaard, with a view to finding their next beach read. Even so, the dense and gloomy nature of the book can be fatiguing, even though Kierkegaard can turn a phrase occasionally, and is bracingly critical of Christendom the church as opposed to Christianity the creed. Even when the book is uplifting it is hard-earned; you have to follow it closely in order to appreciate the positive, uplifting aspect of what he is writing about. Despair, Kierkegaard argues, is not discouraging but uplifting, "since it views every man with regard to the highest demand that can be made of him: to be spirit." (pp21-22)

For all the toughness of the meat, and the difficulty in hunting down the kill, there is plenty that is nourishing and satisfying for a reader in Kierkegaard. My feelings with regard to The Sickness Unto Death – and largely why I'm open to reading philosophy in general – is encapsulated in something speculative Kierkegaard writes on page 149: "To be a particular human being is [perhaps] to be nothing; just think – and then you are the whole of humanity." ( )

Librería 6. Estante 4