A Discussion of Heidegger's Concept of Mood
Kiekegaard's Theory of Anxiety
We need to notice how odd a conception Heidegger's primordial anxiety is. It is odd that it has the fundamental explanatory role it has. Why should anxiety be the primordial mood?{1} Heidegger did not explain why. Anxiety was the primordial mood simply because he assumed it is. Where did he get this idea?
Heidegger cited three sources for the concept of anxiety--Augustine's "doctrine of the timor castus and servilis, which is discussed in his exegetical writings and his letters"; Luther's "commentary on the Book of Genesis"; and Kierkegaard's book, The Concept of Anxiety.{2}
Kierkegaard's treatment of anxiety impressed Heidegger greatly. He said that Kierkegaard was the "man who has gone farthest in analysing the phenomenon of anxiety--and again in the theological context of a 'psychological' exposition of the problem of original sin ..." {3} Let us, therefore, turn to Kierkegaard.
We begin by noting that Soren Kierkegaard was a Christian (but not a cleric), within the Lutheran tradition. The Evangelical Lutheran church, the state church of Denmark, provided the Protestant religious context in which Kierkegaard developed his critique of contemporary Christianity. In the mid-nineteenth century, the state religion had become ritualistic and formal. It served the needs of wealthy landowners and the bourgeoisie, who dominated it. In reaction, a Christian revival movement erupted in Denmark. Kierkegaard was largely situated within that revival movement, attacking both the formalism and orthodoxy of the church, which centered around natural theology.
The Concept of Anxiety is conceived within Christian religious doctrine and the Christian view of human nature. Kierkegaard desired to make Christianity a powerful and living faith. He focussed directly on the Lutheran issues of the Christian's search for salvation through faith alone and the inability to know with certainty whether salvation shall be granted.
For Kierkegaard, anxiety was unique to humans. Anxiety is a product of spirit. It represents the presence of spirit, along with mind and body, in human nature. He wrote: "That anxiety makes its appearance is the pivot upon which everything turns."{4} By everything, Kierkegaard referred to the entire Christian drama, beginning with Adam and Eve, of loss and redemption. That drama emerged out of Adam and Eve's primordial anxiety. The presence of anxiety in all humans represents our participation today in the Christian story.
Anxiety is spirit relating to itself. Why should spirit be anxious? Spirit's anxiety springs from its awareness of God's prohibition not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Before spirit has so eaten of knowledge, it is ignorant, of course, of specific matters of knowledge. But the existence of the divine injunction makes spirit aware of the possibility of knowledge. Anxiety is, therefore, the spirit's awareness of the possibility of knowledge and the possibility of being able to be something other what it is. Briefly put, anxiety is awareness of our freedom to know and to be able.{5}
From Kierkegaard's Christian perspective, spirit's awareness of its own freedom led to sin. Here is Kierkegaard's explanation. Adam's anxiety preceded Adam's sin. If God had not prohibited Adam from eating the fruit of knowledge, Adam would not have been anxious, because he would not have known that knowledge existed which was forbidden. Knowing God's prohibition meant that Adam knew knowledge existed which was forbidden, even though Adam did not yet possess that knowledge. He also knew that he had the freedom and capability to obtain such knowledge. If he had neither, God would not have found it necessary to prohibit the knowledge. {6}
Subsequent to God's prohibition, but prior to the first sin, Adam's anxiety was innocent (the sin had not yet been committed). And the anxiety existed in Adam as a substantive mood; it was "freedom's actuality as the possibility of possibility."{7}
Adam then chose, uncaused, unbidden, without deliberation, to acquire the prohibited knowledge. In Kierkegaard's famous language, Adam leapt into the future possibilities of himself and thereby posited sin. "...sin constantly enters by the qualitative leap of the individual."{8}
With sin, comes guilt. Guilt is always present as an unknown possibility. Imagine that we stand with Adam in ignorance and anxiety, looking toward our future of freedom of unknown possibilities for ourselves. The consequences of the act we are about to undertake, but which we do not know we are to undertake, unfold before us like a script. To use the terminology of movies, our anxiety is the foreshadowing of our guilt.
What have we learned, in conclusion, about anxiety from Kierkegaard?
We have learned that anxiety is not fear. Fear is a psychological state of mind that results from a specific threat. Anxiety is not a response to a threat. Adam has possesses no knowledge of sin or its consequences; they do not yet exist and cannot threaten him. And anxiety is not fear of nothing; it is not pathological fear.
We have learned that anxiety is an awareness of something--that we have the possibility of being other than we are. We are the awareness of possibility of possibilities.
We have learned that anxiety is how we experience our freedom. Our freedom includes our awareness of our capability to choose our possibilities. Awareness of our possibility for possibilities is simply another way to say we are aware of our freedom to be.
We have learned that anxiety is a mood that does not exist in humans as natural beings, only as spiritual beings. Anxiety is not part of human psychology, but of humanity's spiritual history. Before God's prohibition, Adam and Eve did not have moods.
Anxiety is the primordial mood because it was the first mood. It is ontological mood, rather than psychological mood, because it is the fundamental mood of awareness of ourselves as spiritual beings. It is the mood that originates our journey as spiritual beings.
It is important to observe again that Kierkegaardian anxiety is a Christian religious philosophy. In Kierkegaard's view, release from the primordial mood of anxiety comes only with salvation through Jesus Christ. The concept of the primordial mood of anxiety has no meaning outside of the Christian religious doctrine.{9}
Heidegger certainly was aware that Kierkegaard's concepts of mood and anxiety were Christian through and through. Being and Time originated in Heidegger's religious crisis as a Catholic in World War I. Theodore Kisiel has demonstrated that the genesis of Heidegger's great phenomenological insights lay in his working through the religious issue of the actualization of Christian life. When it came time to write up his insights as philosophy, the Christian context was omitted. Being and Time appears as a secular work. But it was a disguised Christian work, just as the primordial mood of anxiety in Being and Time is a disguised Christian concept.{10}
Notes
1. Why should not the primordial mood be awe? Joy? Gratitude? Love? Or nothing? Or simply potentiality? Why should there be a primordial mood at all?
2. Macquarrie and Robinson, trans., Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 235, Author's Note iv (p. 492). {H. 190}.
3. Macquarrie and Robinson, trans., Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 235, Author's Note iv (p. 492). {H. 190}.
4. Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, p. 43.
5. Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, pp. 44-45, 49.
6. Kierkegaard is at pains to make clear that God's prohibition did not itself create Adam's sin. Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, p. 39. For the point that prohibition induces anxiety; see p. 44.
7. Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, p. 42.
8. Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, p. 47.
9. Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, p. 53.
10. Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time, passim.
References
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. [Sein und Zeit, 1927; Seventh edition, Neomarius Verlag, Tübingen.] Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1962. The original pagination in the German edition is cited in curly braces, e.g., H. standing for Heidegger, {H. 15}.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time: A Translation of Sein und Zeit. [Sein und Zeit, 1927; originally published by Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen.] Translated by Joan Stambaugh. [Albany, N.Y.] State University of New York, 1996. The original pagination in the German edition is cited in curly braces, e.g., H. standing for Heidegger, {H. 15}.
Kierkegaard, Soren. The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin. Reidar Thomte, editor and translator in collaboration with Albert B. Anderson. First Danish language edition, 1844, English translation 1980, reprint edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
Kisiel, Theodore. The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Contents
Kierkegaard's treatment of anxiety impressed me too.
Your post was very useful for me.
Posted by: steven davies | November 12, 2007 at 12:13 PM