Kierkegaard's Concept of Despair [Paperback]

The literature on Kierkegaard is often content to paraphrase. By contrast, Michael Theunissen articulates one of Kierkegaard's central ideas, his theory of despair, in a detailed and comprehensible manner and confronts it with alternatives. Understanding what Kierkegaard wrote on despair is vital not only because it illuminates his thought as a whole, but because his account of despair inThe Sickness unto Deathis the cornerstone of existentialism. Theunissen's book, published in German in 1993, is widely regarded as the best treatment of the subject in any language. Kierkegaard'sConcept of Despairis also one of the few works on Kierkegaard that bridge the gap between the Continental and analytic traditions in philosophy.

Theunissen argues that for Kierkegaard, the fundamental characteristic of despair is the desire of the self not to be what it is. He sorts through the apparently chaotic text ofThe Sickness unto Deathto explain what Kierkegaard meant by the self, how and why individuals want to flee their selves, and how he believed they could reconnect with their selves. According to Theunissen, Kierkegaard thought that individuals in despair seek to deny their authentic selves to flee particular aspects of their character, their past, or the world, or in order to deny their mission. In addition to articulating and evaluating Kierkegaard's concept of despair, Theunissen relates Kierkegaard's ideas to those of Heidegger, Sartre, and other twentieth-century philosophers.

Michael Theunissenis Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Freie Universit?t Berlin. He is the author of many books, includingVorentw?rfe von Moderne: Antike Melancholie und die Acedia des MitterlalterandNegative Theologie der Zeit. This is the first book to undertake a sustained, straightforward, analytically rigorous reconstruction of a central pillar of Kierkegaard's thought, his understanding of despair. It provides an extremely usefulls+