Søren Kierkegaard and The Value of Despair

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[academyofideas]

Sign up with Paypal, Credit Card or Bitcoin. Thank you for the support!

[jamesbotwina]

Kierkegaard really makes you feel like you have a duty to be your best.

[timr]

So much wisdom compressed into almost 13 minutes... Wow. This is the top quality side of YouTube, thank you so much for your work!

[Dan-udhz]

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
― J. Krishnamurti

[mayenn]

It's exciting to read through this comment section and just know that somewhere out there, there are people who are like minded enough to be interested in videos of this nature.
The world feels significantly less wide and lonely.

[TheJester-ctpi]

I go to work and people talk about football, latest television show on Netflix, trending videogames and streamers - everyone consumes and is consumed by entertainment, no one seems to strive towards becoming anything other than a domesticated herd animal. An entire generation under the spell of despair without even realizing it

[jennystone]

"There is no reason to despair, if one is in existential despair." Ha. Nice.

So much of our suffering comes from our reactions to our own feelings.

[ReallyRedPanda]

Today I've made it to the end of my 26th birthday, an emotional wreck. A wild bout of deep depression clocked me round the temples from the moment I woke up and I couldn't shake it off even as family and friends wished me happy birthday and a joyful time. The universe must have some kind of dark humour to have brought me here, in this exact moment, 19th of October - I got the notification for this video after yet another round of crying.

Thank you, Academy of Ideas, for posting this video which, I think, isn't the birthday present I wanted but it is the one I desperately _needed_ .

[gokss]

Always remember. That everyone you meet is going through a battle. Be kind, it might change their life.

[ahmedichou]

"For what will it profit a man if he gains the world, but loses his soul?" -The Book of Matthew

This quote is just awesome 💖

[metamorphosis_]

For Kierkegaard, struggle, despair, and the constant fight with the self was something like a vocation, a full time intellectual job so to speak. Nonetheless, it was his fuel and what transformed him into an intellectual powerhouse. He is a great philosopher because he shows you how despair can shape you instead of enfeeble (weaken) you.

[fisher]

Thank you for these videos. Seriously can’t tell you how much I’ve gained from them all.

[saagarshah]

I have lived with bouts of intermittent severe depression for most of my adult life and know the feeling of despair very well. I just feel that if life ends at death, it is absurd. All the struggle and suffering we go through is for nothing ultimately. This thought brings me so much despair. It hampers my ability to thrive in the world.

[pm]

It's for the duration of your life on this planet that you're a totally vulnerable being. Because you unconsciously recognize this, you unconsciously despair.

[_PL_]

"…[D]espair is the sickness unto death. It is indeed very far from being true that, literally understood, one dies from this sickness, or that this sickness ends with bodily death. On the contrary, the torment of despair is precisely this, 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. When death is the greatest danger, one hopes for life; but when one becomes acquainted with an even more dreadful danger, one hopes for death. So when the danger is so great that death has become one’s hope, despair is the disconsolateness of not being able to die.

"It is in this last sense that despair is the sickness unto death, this agonizing contradiction, this sickness in the self, everlastingly to die, to die and yet not to die, to die the death. For dying means that it is all over, but dying the death means to live to experience death; and if for a single instant this experience is possible, it is tantamount to experiencing it forever.

"If one might die of despair as one dies of a sickness, then the eternal in him, the self, must be capable of dying in the same sense that the body dies of a sickness. But this is an impossibility; the dying of despair transforms itself constantly into a living. The despairing man cannot die; no more than “the dagger can slay thoughts” can despair consume the eternal thing, the self, which is the ground of despair, whose worm dieth not, and whose fire is not quenched. Yet despair is precisely _self_ -consuming, but it is an impotent self-consumption, which is not able to do what it wills; and this impotence is a new form of self-consumption, in which again, however, the despairer is not able to do what he wills, namely, to consume himself… This is despair raised to a higher potency… This is the hot incitement, or the cold fire in despair, the gnawing canker whose movement is constantly inward, deeper and deeper, in impotent self-consumption. The fact that despair does not consume him is so far from being any comfort to the despairing man that it is precisely the opposite, this comfort is precisely the torment, it is precisely this that keeps the gnawing pain alive and keeps life in the pain. This is pre-cisely why he despairs… because he cannot consume himself, cannot get rid of himself, cannot become nothing. …This is the potentiated formula for despair, the rising fever in the sickness of the self.

"To despair over oneself, in despair to will to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair… A despairing man wants despairingly to be himself. But if he despairingly wants to be himself, he will not want to get rid of himself… That self which he despairingly wills to be is a self which he is not (for to will to be that self which one truly is, is indeed the opposite of despair), what one really wills is to tear his self away from the Power which constituted it. But notwithstanding all his despair, this he is unable to do, notwithstanding all the efforts of despair, that Power is the stronger, and it compels him to be the self he does not will to be. …To be _self_ as he wills to be would be his delight (though in another sense it would be equally in despair), but to be compelled to be _self_ as he does not will to be is his torment, namely that he cannot get rid of himself.

"The despairing man is mortally ill. In an entirely different sense than can appropriately be said of any disease, we may say that the sickness has attacked the noblest part; and yet the man cannot die… This is the situation in despair. And however thoroughly it eludes the attention of the despairer, and however thoroughly the despairer may succeed…in losing himself entirely, and losing himself in such a way that it is not noticed in the least, eternity nevertheless will make it manifest that his situation was despair, and it will so nail him to himself that the torment nevertheless remains that he cannot get rid of himself, and it becomes manifest that he was deluded in thinking that he succeeded. And thus it is that eternity must act, because to have a self, to be a self, is the greatest concession made to man, but at the same time it is eternity’s demand upon him."


Kierkegaard -- The Sickness Unto Death (translation by Walter Lowrie)

[dattagrace]

All the words of all languages in the entire world are not enough to express my gratitude for the work you do. Take a bow 🙇‍♂️

[elysianfields]

As someone who has been on both sides, that is, in absolute despair and in absolute serenity and free from real problems, it is possible to develop yourself and learn in both cases. No situation is better or teaches you more. It is on you to know how to absorb the best of what life brings you, regardless your situation.

[NeewVogue]

“That one is in despir is not a rarity; no, it is rare, very rare, that one is ... not is despair. “ 🙏🙏🙏

[thealchemist]

These guys really are a channel, or a portal, or both.
Their timing is always impeccable and this synchronistic theme seems more common amongst the commenters with every new video. Thank you for all that you do, lads. I and the other humans becoming are in your debt.
<3

[pajotrus]

for some reason, excerpts from Kierkegaard always speak to me the most. they hit different.