---
title: "soren-kiekegaard"
aliases: kierkegaard
tags: 
- person/philosopher
---

Father of existentialism

"Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom"

# Religion
[078-marx-and-kierkegaard-religion](notes/078-marx-and-kierkegaard-religion.md)

The function of religion is to organise a commitment to a particular way of life

Disagreed with [marx](karl-marx)'s opinion that "religion is the opiate of the masses"

Loss of the individual
- lost in infinte
- lost in finite

He thought the best way to avoid these states was to take a "leap of faith" (toward religion), and that the bible was a system for bringing about the highest form of us an an individual


# Anxiety
[079-kierkegaard-anxiety](notes/079-kierkegaard-anxiety.md)

"Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom"

"The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. is bound to be noticed."

"Anxiety may be compared with dizziness he, whose eye happends to look down into the awning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own eyes as in the abyss. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom."

People can be lost in the finite or in the infinite. When we are balancing between the infinite and the finite we experience this anxiety, which imbues a sense of dread. After dread comes despair. Despair is a sickness of the spirit, and is often unnoticable. 

People try to "hide" from this despair by attaching themself to something "earthly". This is similar to Kant idea of outsourcing things from what is enlightenment. 

When we are experiencing anxiety we are coming closer to our true self.

"What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I must know what matters is to find a purpose, to find a truth that is true for me. to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die. That is what my soul thirst for as the african desert thirst for water"