The Sickness Unto Death

The central argument is that despair is not an exceptional psychological state but a universal sickness of the self, and that it is often unconscious. The self is defined relationally: it is a relation that relates itself to itself, and despair is the misrelation within that structure . Anti-Climacus rejects the view that despair is simply a feeling of hopelessness or a clinical condition; it is a structural failure of the self to be itself, whether through weakness (not willing to be oneself) or defiance (willing to be oneself on one's own terms). The book's theological claim is that this sickness is 'unto death' because it is a sickness of the spirit, and its only cure is faith—the self's transparent resting in the power that established it.

Anti-Climacus is a distinct pseudonym from Johannes Climacus, the author of Philosophical Fragments and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Where Climacus writes as a thinker who is not himself a Christian, exploring the conditions of faith from the outside, Anti-Climacus writes from within the Christian standpoint, presenting the demands of faith with uncompromising rigor. The prefix 'Anti-' does not mean 'against' but rather 'in place of' or 'before'—Anti-Climacus stands before Climacus, as it were, in the intensity of his Christian requirement. Kierkegaard himself remarked that he had never been able to follow Anti-Climacus entirely, suggesting that the pseudonym represents an ideal he could not fully embody.

The book is divided into two parts: 'The Sickness Unto Death' and 'Despair is Sin.' Part One offers a philosophical anthropology of despair, analyzing its forms without explicit reference to Christian dogma—despair as weakness, as defiance, and as unconsciousness . Part Two reinterprets the same phenomenon theologically, identifying despair with sin on the presupposition of divine revelation. Jeffrey Hanson and Sharon Krishek note that Part Two is relatively neglected, yet it is essential: sin represents an unwillingness to be oneself before God that involves self-deception, and overcoming it requires an unconditional will to be oneself before God . The two-part structure enacts the book's method: first diagnose the human condition, then reveal what the diagnosis looks like in the light of faith.

The most persistent misreading takes 'despair is universal' to mean that everyone feels despair, or that despair is a constant emotional state. But Anti-Climacus explicitly argues that most people are in despair without knowing it—they are unconscious of their condition. The person who is 'busy' with life, who never confronts the question of who they are before God, is in despair precisely because they have never willed to be a self at all. A related error treats the book as a work of pessimism or pathology, as if its purpose were to convince readers that they are sick. The diagnosis is in service of a cure: the book is a 'Christian psychological exposition for edification and awakening,' and its aim is to make the reader aware of the sickness so that faith becomes possible.

The first English translation was by Walter Lowrie, published by Princeton University Press in 1941. The standard modern translation is by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, published by Princeton University Press in 1980 as part of Kierkegaard's Writings . Alastair Hannay's translation for Penguin, first published in 1989 and reissued in 2004, is also widely used and is often praised for its readability . A significant difference between the Hongs and Hannay concerns the key formula for the self: the Hongs render the Danish 'grunder' as 'rests,' while Hannay translates it as 'grounded,' which is closer to the original . A new translation was published in 2023, described as the first in a generation .

The book extends the psychological analysis begun in The Concept of Anxiety (1844), but it shifts the focus from anxiety to despair. Where anxiety is the dizziness of freedom confronted with possibility, despair is the misrelation of the self to itself and to the power that established it. The Sickness Unto Death is also closely related to Philosophical Fragments and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, which establish the paradox of the eternal entering time and the subjective conditions of faith. The later book presupposes those arguments and turns them inward, analyzing the psychological and spiritual state of the individual who confronts the Christian demand. Together, these works form the core of Kierkegaard's exploration of the religious stage of existence.