The Sickness Unto Death

196 Pages·1989·20.528 MB·English

by  Søren Kierkegaard

PENGUIN /X CLASSICS
THE SICKNESS UNTO DEATH
S0REN Aabye Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen in 1813, the
youngest of seven children. His mother, his sisters and two of his
brothers all died before he reached his twenty-first birthday.
Kierkegaard's childhood was an isolated and unhappy one, clouded
by the religious fervour of his father. He was educated at the strict
School ofCivic Virtue and went on to enter the university, where he
read theology but also studied the liberal arts and science. In all, he
spent seven years as a student, gaining a reputation both for his
academic brilliance and for his extravagant social life. Towards the
end of his university career he started to criticize the Christianity
upheld by his father and to look for a new set ofvalues. In 1841 he
broke offhis engagement to Regine Olsen and devoted himselfto his
writing. During the next ten years he produced a flood ofdiscourses
and no fewer than twelve majorphilosophical essays, many ofthem
writtenundernomsdeplume. NotableareEither/Or(1843), Repetition
(1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), Philosophical Fragments (1844),
TheConceptofAnxiety(1844), StagesonLife's Way (1845), Concluding
Unscientific Postscript (1846) and The Sickness unto Death (1849). By
theendofhislifeKierkegaardhadbecomeanobjectofpublicridicule
andscorn, partlybecauseofasustainedfeudthathehadprovokedin
1846 with the satirical Danish weekly The Corsair, partly because of
his repeated attacks on the Danish State Church. Few mourned his
death in November 1855, butduringtheearlytwentieth century his
work enjoyed increasing acclaim and he has done much to inspire
both modern Protestant theology and existentialism.
Alastair Hannay was born in Plymouth, Devon, in 1932 and
educated at Edinburgh Academy, the University of Edinburgh and
UniversityCollege,London. In 1961 hebecamearesidentofNorway,
wherehewasProfessorofPhilosophy attheUniversityofTrondheim
until 1985. He is currently Professor ofPhilosophy at the University
ofOslo, andhasbeenvisitingprofessorattheUniversityofCalifornia,
both atBerkeley andSan Diego, aswell as attheUniversityofStock-
holm. Alastair Hannay has also translated Kierkegaard's Fear and
Trembling and Either/Or for Penguin Classics and his other public-
ations include Mental Images - A Defence, Kierkegaard and Human
Consciousness, as well as many articles in philosophical collections
and journals, and translations of philosophical works from Danish
and Norwegian. He is the editor ofInquiry.
ERKEGAARD
KI
THE SICKNESS
UNTO DEATH
A
Christian Psychological Exposition
and Awakening
for Edification
by
ANTI-CLIMACUS
EDITED BY
KIERKEGAARD
S.
TRANSLATED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY
ALASTAIR HANNAY
PENGUIN BOOKS
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FirsteditionpublishedinDanishasSygdommentilDoden,
Copenhagen,1849
Thistranslationfirstpublished1989
7 9 10 8 6
©
Translation,IntroductionandNotescopyright AlastairHannay, 1989
ADrightsreserved
PrintedinEnglandbyClaysLtd,StIvespic
FilmsetinMeridien(Linotron202)
ExceptintheUnitedStatesofAmerica,thisbookissoldsubject
totheconditionthatitshallnot,bywayoftradeorotherwise,belent,
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CONTENTS
Translator's Note vii
Introduction 1
THE SICKNESS UNTO DEATH 33
Preface 35
Introduction 37
PART ONE 41
The Sickness unto Death is Despair
PART TWO 107
Despair is Sin
Notes 167

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
The translation is based on the third and current edition of
Kierkegaard's Samlede Vxrker (Gyldendal, Copenhagen, 1963)
with minor corrections to be found in the Inter Editions
(Montreal) machine-readable version of the Danish text. The
end-notes are in part based on those ofthe editors ofthe 1963
edition, but contain significant expansions and additions.