The Torment of Despair Is Not to Be Able to Die

The Quote

"The torment of despair is precisely this, not to be able to die. So to be sick unto death is, not to be able to die — yet not as though there were hope of life; no, the hopelessness in this case is that even the last hope, death, is not available."

— Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death (Hong translation)

Original language: Danish

Historical Context

Søren Kierkegaard wrote The Sickness Unto Death in 1849, in the last years of his short life, under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus — the "Christian" voice in his authorship. The book takes its title from the Gospel of John: the raising of Lazarus, of whom Jesus says the sickness is "not unto death." Kierkegaard reverses the phrase: the sickness unto death is not the sickness that ends in death but the sickness that cannot end in death — the sickness of the self that is despair.

The passage quoted comes from the first part of the book, where Kierkegaard establishes his paradoxical definition. The analysis that follows — of the self, its relation to itself, and its despair — became one of the foundation texts of existentialism, influencing Heidegger, Sartre, and Becker.

Meaning

The passage turns on a reversal of expectation. We think of death as the last resort — the end that is always available, the exit that cannot be closed. Kierkegaard's despair is the condition in which even that exit is closed. The despairing self cannot die: not because it will not die physically, but because its despair is a sickness of the self, and the self cannot be annihilated by its own despair. "So to be sick unto death is, not to be able to die — yet not as though there were hope of life; no, the hopelessness in this case is that even the last hope, death, is not available."

The structure of the thought is exact. The despairing person is beyond hoping for life — they do not want to live. But they also cannot die into peace, because the despair is not a bodily illness that ends with the body; it is the condition of the self. The torment is precisely this double impossibility: no hope of life, no access to death. The sickness unto death is the one sickness from which no one dies.

Interpretation

The passage is often read as the deepest account in modern philosophy of the psychological meaning of death. Kierkegaard distinguishes physical death from the "death of the self" — and shows that the person in despair longs for the second while being unable to achieve it. The despairing self is a self that will not become itself: it flees its own possibility, refuses its own task, and in that refusal experiences the agony of a death that will not come.

The connection to the philosophy of death is direct. For Kierkegaard, as later for Heidegger, the confrontation with death is the confrontation with the self. The person who cannot face their own mortality cannot face their own existence; the person who has despaired has lost the capacity for both. But the book is not a counsel of despair. Kierkegaard's diagnosis is in the service of healing: the sickness is named so that it can be recognized, and recognized so that it can be treated — by the self's becoming itself, in relation to the power that constituted it.

The Relation to Anxiety

The Sickness Unto Death is also a text about anxiety — the subject of Kierkegaard's earlier work The Concept of Anxiety. The torment of despair is the anxiety of the self that cannot die: the dread of a condition that offers neither life nor death. This is why the book speaks to the contemporary philosophy of death anxiety: it shows that the fear of death is not only the fear of extinction but sometimes the fear of the opposite — the fear of being unable to end, of being trapped in a self that will not resolve. The passage is a mirror for anyone who has known the peculiar despair of wanting an end that will not come.

Related Learning

• Read the Kierkegaard thinker page for the life and authorship of the Danish philosopher.
• See Death wisdom for the practice of letting mortality teach us to live.
• Explore Mortality wisdom for the understanding of finitude as the source of meaning.

Sources

1. Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
2. "Søren Kierkegaard." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/
3. "Existentialism." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/