Abstract

This is an analysis of the self as understood by Kierkegaard, which is organized according to the succeeding themes of struggle, separation, synthesis, sin and sacrifice. ;It is a commonplace that one struggles with oneself. On examining the struggle of the self with itself, we discover that the self is divided against itself and that the condition for the struggle is the separation of the self from itself, the origin of which we trace to the separation of the self from its origin. This separation results in the dialectical, synthetic constitution of the self, which, while entailing the perilous possibility of despair, is also the condition for the possibility of the resolution of separation in the freedom of faith. ;The condition of the self is struggle. The condition for the struggle of the self is separation. The task of the self is the synthesis of the self in-itself and for-itself and with God. The condition for struggle is the acknowledgement of sin---that one's self's own condition is sin. The condition for the acknowledgement of one's self as a sinner is the recognition of the sacrifice of the savior, which announces one's self to oneself, in love and despair, and establishes and preserves the radical separation between God and creation and heralds the obligation of repentance and the possibility of salvation. ;This ultimate point is the point of "Christian reversal," and in this reverse direction we see an image of Grace and we recognize that it is only in this reverse direction that self-hood is possible; thus we see that this is not analogous to Hegelian circularity, for the directions are not identical: with the recognition of the savior and his sacrifice comes the acknowledgement of oneself and one's self as sin, which is the occasion for the desire for the synthesis of one's self and God, which is to overcome the separation of oneself from Him, and this becomes the task of the self, which, earnestly undertaken, is the struggle of faith