Dean of the College and Philosophy Program Present

Finitude as Interpretive Dependence in Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety

In The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard offers a reading of the biblical story of the Fall that aims to explain the possibility of original sin without presupposing “knowledge of good and evil.” I suggest that Kierkegaard takes up this theological problem to address another: on a Kantian picture of agency, how can an agent determine herself to act under a principle for the first time? His solution identifies an overlooked dimension of our finitude: our dependence on language and shared cultural practice for the intelligibility of anything we might do. Anxiety is the self-awareness of this dependence. It has an affective dimension because it also involves dependence on other people. In childhood, while we do not know the meaning of what we might do, adults do; in adulthood, the significance of our actions remains vulnerable to others’ interpretation. This reading of anxiety as self-awareness of interpretive dependence illuminates the connection between anxiety and authenticity for Kierkegaard and later for Heidegger. 

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For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5

Location: Hegeman 204

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