I stick my finger into existence -- it smells of nothing. Where am I? What is this thing called the world? Who is it who has lured me into the thing, and now leaves me here? Who am I? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted?
That's Kierkegaard. Soren Kierkegaard, one of the fathers of existentialism. He was not a lot of fun at parties; I can tell you that. Human life is not designed for pleasure, Kierkegaard tells us, yet in the time given to each of us for our own existence, we strive for happiness in order to escape anxiety and the deep, hopeless depression which is despair. But there is no escape -- no matter how pleasurable and comfortable we make our lives in order to hide from the truth. For the truth is, Kierkegaard insists, that all of us live in anxiety and despair. This is the universal human condition. We suffer from anxiety even when we are not aware of it, and even when there is nothing to fear, nothing in the objective world to feel anxious about. This is because at bottom, says Kierkegaard, our anxiety is not objective at all, it is subjective anxiety -- it is the universal fear of something that is nothing, it is the fear of the nothingness of human existence.
Wow! And they call economics the dismal science!!
No, Kierkegaard was fun at parties, it's just when he goes home:
ReplyDeleteI have just come back from a party where I was the life and soul. Witticisms flowed from my lips. Everyone laughed and admired me—but, I left, yes, that dash should be as long as the radii of the earth's orbit ——— and wanted to shoot myself (I A 161).