Soren Kierkegaard

The hopelessness of not wanting to be integrityself-importance is, by contrast, the desperation of a self that feels that it is self-established; in such cases there can be only the despair of not wanting to be ones own self, as the falter to move towards an ideal of selfhood is the only reluctance that can conceivably inhabit (44).

In these two authentic forms of despair, it seems that S.K. is attempting to strike a balance, if not a synthesis, between the self and God, the temporal and the consummate(a), the boundedness and the infinitude. In order to make sense of the human self, S.K. is illustrating that the self has two relations, each of which is fully capable of producing despair. The first is a relation of the self to itself, the second, a relation of the self to something else (God). As with freedom and necessity, in which no freedom whitethorn exist without the possibility of ingest, S.K. reminds us that there can be no despair without the "annihilated possibility of the ability to be in it" (45).

Must one be sure of this possibility in order to be in despair, or may one be in despair and yet simultaneously unconscious mind of that despair? In human terms, a sickness "unto end" means the end of manner, in Christian terms, the beginning of life (47); thus, to be sick unto death is, paradoxically, to be unable(p) to lose it, and despair is the "hopelessness of not even being able to die" (48). If this is indeed the case, how might one b

Again, as with sickness, we can grasp that we are unwell without in reality knowing exactly what it is that is wrong. This fact strengthens the point that one need not be aware of despair to be in despair. By emphasizing the fallibility of perception, S.K. notes that an awareness of despair can be misconstrued. Thus, those that would suggest that to be in despair requires that one be conscious of that despair are mistaken; our examineing of despair, alike human understanding in general, is fallible, and therefore to insist that we understand despair accurately in order to experience it would be to reduce the influence of despair considerably.

Too few persons very perceive despair accurately for it to hold the prominent persona that S.K. would prescribe for it. The notion that we need not be conscious of despair in order to experience it sidesteps this problem of misperception.

govern simply, to have a self, it seems, is to be in despair. This idea is exquisite in its simplicity: to despair is ultimately to want to be rid of oneself (50). And this despair is everlasting, as eternity has an indefatigable lease on every individual; "if there were nothing eternal in a man, he would simply be unable to despair" (51). This condition of despair, no matter how perceptible it may or may not be to the individual, is nonetheless monitory of that individual's very condition. In this, unconscious despair offers no protection, and surely no salvation; on the contrary, it is merely a preclusion of an inevitable awareness. Eventually, the unconscious despairer will find that he is in fact in despair, and his "torment will still be that he cannot be rid of his self" (51). If this torment did not formerly plague him, this is only because he had "succeeded in wholly losing his self" (51), but no matter: the self forever comes home to roost. A founder to self is a return to conscious despair, a
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