The Sufferings Of A Rational Being Essays - Sren Kierkegaard

The Sufferings of a Rational Being in the mind of Soren Kierkegaard I. Prologue. In what would be characteristically seen as intrinsically manifested throughout the areas of existentialism, this idea of suffering, its components, as well as its distinctiveness on the part of the feebleness of human life becomes a common and usual conception for Kierkegaard, so as not to be considered. The philosopher who has sparked the notion of existentialism, as he had subjugated into the depths of human emotion and pain while attuning to the experience of the obstinate human existence, Kierkegaard would be a philosopher that has indeed rightly come to the connection of what underlies beneath the core of human frailty and suffering. By this so, I have come to regard the notion with what a suffering being in the facticity of existing could portray, and that amidst all the concepts of understanding which would cause this, man would still participate of the misery and despair that are quite partly inept of what his being is. This is quite a vague notion to underlie but understand ing Kierkegaard and his description of angst as a conception that man is indeed trapped into the misery of life; the understanding of the cause of his being would illuminate the ideas presented. In which case, Kierkegaard meaningly construes the agony of despair with the being that man is, which he himself views as being locked into the pressures of his vindictive existence. II. despair, as the sickness unto death. The notion of despair becomes unseemingly the principal lot to which Kierkegaard expresses his outlook on the desolate existence of man. This concept, which manifestly recognizes Kierkegaard as an existentialist, proceeds from a basic understanding that despair is an attribute that is inherent in man, a concept which introduces him to be a predestined being. Literally, the phrase ? Despair is the sickness unto death ? connotes an illness of which outcome would be death, as death is doubtless the last phase in a sickness and yet for Kierkegaard it would not appear to be the last thing' . As, he connotes in the strictest sense, the last things being death itself, but death only the last thing, which makes despair precisely the final thing for man. Hence, despair becomes the sickness unto death. Kierkegaard notes this in bodily sickness, but far from being true, death only succumbs to the end of the body, meaning to say to die from a bodily death. On the contrary, despair is a sickness wherein there is no bodily death but eternal death, since the torment of despair is not being able to die. As such, the sickness unto death becomes an expression of not dying. It is like a terminal sickness where the only hope to get rid of it is to die, and while in despair, gets rid of the only cure, of not being able to die, hence suffering eternal bodily torment. There is no hope of cure, the hopelessness of not being to derived the pleasure of dying is like death being dead itself. The danger of which says Kierkegaard, despair clings to you even more terrible than that of bodily death. For Kierkegaard, dying means that it is all over, but dying the death means to live to experience death; and if for a single instant this experience is possible, it is tantamount to experiencing it forever. Despair becomes an eternal sickness that the self loses its capability of dying in the same sense that the body dies of sickness. An impossibility, wherein what happens is that the dying of despair transforms itself constantly into living thing. It is precisely self-consuming, that you cannot do anything else but to despair itself go deeper and deeper into impotent self-consumation. The fact that despairing cannot consume the body is the reason why the self-gnawing pain is eternal since the comfort of ridding oneself of despair cannot be attained. In contrast, a despairing man can only despair about himself. He hopes to achieve the end of his despair but is powerless to do so since his own anxiety over the despair that consumes him. And the fact that he cannot get rid of the self which causes this despair makes him a hapless being.