The Sickness Unto Death (Danish Sygdommen til Døden) is a book written by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1849 under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus. It is about Kierkegaard's concept of despair, which he equates with the Christian concept of sin, particularly original sin.
Anti-climacus introduces the book with a reference to Gospel of John 11.4: "This sickness is not unto death." This quotation comes from the story of Lazarus, in which Jesu...
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The Sickness Unto Death (Danish Sygdommen til Døden) is a book written by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1849 under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus. It is about Kierkegaard's concept of despair, which he equates with the Christian concept of sin, particularly original sin.
Anti-climacus introduces the book with a reference to Gospel of John 11.4: "This sickness is not unto death." This quotation comes from the story of Lazarus, in which Jesus raises a man from the dead. However, the question that Anti-climacus raises, would not this statement still be true even if Jesus had not raised Lazarus from the dead? While the human conception of death is the end, the Christian conception of death is merely another stop along the way of the eternal life. In this way, for the Christian, death is nothing to fear. The true "Sickness unto Death," which does not describe physical but spiritual death, is something to fear according to Anti-climacus.
This sickness unto death is what Kierkegaard...
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