Soren Kierkegaard is one of the ultimate individualists in the world of philosophy. But even that it is really not quite precise enough because it is also true that Kierkegaard is unmistakably and irrefutably a Christian. The Sickness Unto Death was written almost a century before existentialism became the defining new philosophical school of the 20th century. Despite this, it can and must be asserted that Kierkegaard’s work is one of the foundational texts of existentialism.
But not the existentialism associated with its titanic figures Sartre and Camus. Kierkegaard’s devotion as a Christian and his commitment to the vitality of the self implicates him comfortably within the 20th century purview as a Christian existentialist. His intensity toward the significance of the self grew in response to the prevailing ideology of the church in native Denmark at the time. Over the course of the previous centuries, Danish theology had continued to move further toward an ideal in which the domination of the self would be replaced by the dominion of the collective. The ultimate result of this movement from a theological perspective was that the church had become primarily a means of delivering codified standards of ethics and morality. The problem is that it is ethical considerations delivered to a collective with no standard bearing on the nature of the individual’s angst regarding issues of faith.
Sickness unto death is essentially a term which applies to the feeling of despair one feels regarding their relationship to the infinite. Despair is equitable to existential dread; that feeling of meaningless within an infinite absent God. But, of course, this does not apply to Kierkegaard because he very much believed in God, therefore the sickness unto death which drives his portrait of an existential crisis is entirely dependent upon discovering the means to a satisfying one-on-one relationship with God. And therein lies the fundamental difference between Christian existential and atheistic existentialism.
So if “sickness unto death” is existential despair, what is the path to overcoming that angst? Some might call this the easy part of Christian existentialism while others would argue it is the obstruction which cannot be overcome. Kierkegaard paves the way very early on in the text: “we must not despair over despairing about our sins, nor must we abandon faith and instead substitute indifference.” The answer is contained all right there in that single line. Not only is the answer found there, but the divergence between the existentialism of Sartre and Camus and Christian existentialism. One cannot simply try to find a meaning to existence within themselves by rejecting God. In fact, in order to overcome the despair which is a sickness unto death, one must find a way to move closer to faith. For that is ultimately the path to reconciliation and overcoming despair: finding faith in God at the level of the individual self, untethered to the doctrinal demands of organized faith manufactured for the collective.
