Kierkegaard on Necessity, Possibility, and Despair

In The Sickness Unto Death, the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard argued at length about despair, the self, and "sin". He argues that humans have "the task of becoming itself in freedom," and both "possibility and necessity are equally essential to becoming" (XI 148). If a person has one but not the other, that individual is in despair. What is meant by these words, and how do they relate?

The necessity of the self refers to what the self already is; the possibility of the self refers to the task one has of becoming oneself. Necessity serves as "the constraint in relation to possibility" (ibid). So, one ought to become oneself(possibility), but one ought not disregard who they already are (necessity). For now, I'm not going to talk about what "the self" actually is; rather, let's talk about what happens if one has an overabundance of possibility or necessity in one's life.

If humans were radically free (as the existentialists, a group I would probably choose not to associate Kierkegaard too closely with), and humans were all possibility with no necessity, "the self becomes an abstract possibility; it flounders in possibility until exhausted but neither moves from the place where it is nor arrives anywhere" (XI 149). This results in possibility seeming "greater and greater to the self; more and more it becomes possible because nothing seems actual. Eventually everything seems possible, but this is exactly the point at which the abyss swallows up the self". After awhile, possibilities "follow one another in such rapid succession that it seems as if everything were possible, and this is exactly the final moment, the point at which the individual himself becomes a mirage" (ibid).

What is missing in a life lived in pure possibility, without necessity or actuality playing a vital role? It is "the power to obey, to submit to the necessity in one's life, to what may be called one's limitations. Therefore, the tragedy is not that such a self did not amount to something in the world; no, the tragedy is that he did not become aware of himself, aware that the self he is is a very definite something and thus the necessary" (ibid). Through this, one loses oneself. There are multiple manifestations of this sort of imbalance, but Kierkegaard identifies the two primary ones as desiring/craving and the melancholy-imaginary. The former involves one chasing possibilities at the expense of who he is, of his necessity. The latter involves one anxiously pursuing a single possibility at a time until he has been led so far away from himself that his is a victim of the anxiety he employed.

The second possibility, that necessity belongs to the self but possibility no longer does, has two possible instantiations: "everything has become necessary" or "everything has become trivial" (XI 152). The former option is held by determinists and fatalists, who Kierkegaard compares with King Midas: he "starved to death because all his food was changed to gold" (ibid). He argues that, "if there is nothing but necessity, man is essentially as inarticulate as the animals" (XI 153). One cannot input or shape themselves, one is as one is, and thus one despairs.

If one has an overabundance of necessity in accordance with the second option, wherein "everything becomes trivial", then one has a "philistine-bourgeois mentality" (ibid). Such a person "lacks every qualification of spirit and is completely wrapped up in probability, within which possibility [which cannot be altogether exterminated] finds its small corner" (ibid). He or she "lives within a certain trivial compendium of experiences as to how things go, what is possible, what usually happens" (ibid). If imagination does not "raise him higher than the miasma of probability", giving him hope and fear, "the philistine-bourgeois mentality thinks that it controls possibility, that it has tricked this prodigious elasticity into the trap or madhouse of probability" (XI 154).

Kierkegaard notes the consequences of each element of the imbalance: "the person who gets lost in possibility soars high with the boldness of despair; he for whom everything becomes necessity overstrains himself in life and is crushed in despair; but the philistine-bourgeois mentality spiritlessly triumphs".

The conclusion? Embrace necessity; you are who you are. You have limits. Know what makes you yourself, and know yourself fully. However, know also who you are (this implies a goal or end for your person), and acknowledge, through hope, faith, and fear, that you can become as you ought to become.

Kiekegaard, Art, and the Aesthete

Greetings,

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher and, perhaps, theologian from the 19th century. I'm going to present a view of art contained in one of his works, "Either/Or". While this view may or may not actually represent Kierkegaard's own view, it is interesting in its own right, and I believe that it can stand on its own, regardless of whether or not its author would actually endorse such a position. Note that, using the Hongs' translation, what I refer to here shall occur within pages 47 and 134. I would cite everything, but I'll be using so many references that it would plague readability; however, I can back up any specifics as requested. So, here goes.

One can refer to the form of art and the subject of art, and neither of these should be overemphasized (as is often done, be believes). Furthermore, the form can permeate the subject matter, and the subject matter can permeate the form. Aesthetically, for a work to be a classic, the form of work must be the same as the subject of that work. What does this mean? When we talk about a work of art, we can talk about its form (such as that of a poem) and its subject (not only the content of the poem, but what is actually communicated about in the poem). In order for a work to be a "classic" its form must be the same as its subject. As an example, Mozart's opera "Don Giovanni" is pointed to. The subject matter of "Don Giovanni" is an individual who lives as if his spirit existed in a state of pure immediacy, which is the form of the music-- the movement of the spirit through immediacy, as music cannot be abstracted outside of the performance or the moment it is heard/imagined/etcetera (entailing immediacy), and yet it serves as a language, which qualifies it in the realm of spirit.

Another distinction made in this work is the relationship between media (the plural of "medium") and ideas. The more abstract an idea is, the more impoverished it becomes. However, such abstraction is inversely correlated with the likelihood of its being repeated. One might talk of abstraction and concreteness as opposites. Keeping in mind the distinction between media and ideas, in some forms of art, the medium has a high degree of abstraction but a high concreteness in terms of idea, such as in architecture. Homer's use of a concrete idea (history) and a concrete form/medium (natural language) thus created an epic (considering the coherency between the two) that could often be repeated (due to the use of a concrete medium and a concrete idea).

According to this account, sculpture, architecture, painting, and music have abstract media (with sculpture being the most abstract), whereas language is the most concrete of media. Mozart, with "Don Giovanni", managed to find a subject matter that was as abstract as his medium, allowing him to generate an epic.

One can thus speak of the "theme proper" of a medium; for an abstract medium one's "theme proper" is an abstract idea, and one's work cannot be truly great-- cannot be a "classic"-- unless one's medium correlates to one's idea in terms of abstraction/concreteness. Sculpture, the most abstract medium, would thus be inadequate for creating a truly great work about language, the most concrete idea.

So, what do you think? Is there merit to this account? Immediately apparent problems? There's obviously a bit more to it, but hopefully this'll work as an introductory post.