Abstract

In the paper above, I argue that the concept of despair throughout The Sickness untoDeath is undeniably linked with successive intensifications of consciousness. Both in the anthropological part of the book ('The sickness unto death is despair') and in the theological part ('Despair is sin'), the intensity of consciousness is interpreted as the measure of despair. Although Kierkegaard, by way of his pseudonym Anti-Climacus, is not always mentioning that perspective of consciousness as such, in every stage or description of despair it is present in some form. In the anthropological part, where Anti-Climacus wants to describe despair only withregard to the constituents of the relational self „without regard to its being conscious or not”, some 'modi' of consciousness come unperceivably to the fore, viz. fantasy, desire, imagination... But also in the theological conception of despair, namely sin, despair is to be understood as a further intensification of the anthropologically described concept of despair, with this complication that in that respect it has to be conceived as 'before God'. I argue that where despair is qualified by the intensity of consciousness, the conception of the criterion of the self (God) is also linked with this intensification of consciousness. This linking of the qualification of sin to an act of consciousness brings sin again under the category of despair. Consciousness connects both the anthropological forms of despair and the theological ones (degrees of sin). Finally, the paper presents a closer look towards the intensification of despair as sin. I state that this intensity of consciousness of sin is measured by the 'offense' which is taken at the divine. The more one takes offense at it, or the more its consciousness is intensified, the deeper is the despair (as sin). Here again, despair (as sin) is embodied by a reflexive act (the category of offense) within which several intensifications are possible. As a conclusion, one can notice both in the anthropological and in the theological part of The Sickness unto Death a transition from a passive attitude towards an active one, respectively from an unconsciously undergoing state to a self-sufficient affirmation of one's own autonomy, and from despairing over one's sin to dismissing Christianity 'modo ponendo' (declaring it to be untruth). In each of these successive stages, consciousness is involved and intensified. In that sense The Sickness unto Death should be read as an interaction between anthropology and theology, maintaining a complementary discontinuity between them. Theologically, Kierkegaard's anthropology is raised above itself, but still the anthropological categories of consciousness remain.