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PENGUIN /X CLASSICS THE SICKNESS UNTO DEATH S0REN Aabye Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen in 1813, the youngest of seven children. His mother, his sisters and two of his brothers all died before he reached his twenty-first birthday. Kierkegaard's childhood was an isolated and unhappy one, clouded by the religious fervour of his father. He was educated at the strict School ofCivic Virtue and went on to enter the university, where he read theology but also studied the liberal arts and science. In all, he spent seven years as a student, gaining a reputation both for his academic brilliance and for his extravagant social life. Towards the end of his university career he started to criticize the Christianity upheld by his father and to look for a new set ofvalues. In 1841 he broke offhis engagement to Regine Olsen and devoted himselfto his writing. During the next ten years he produced a flood ofdiscourses and no fewer than twelve majorphilosophical essays, many ofthem writtenundernomsdeplume. NotableareEither/Or(1843), Repetition (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), Philosophical Fragments (1844), TheConceptofAnxiety(1844), StagesonLife's Way (1845), Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) and The Sickness unto Death (1849). By theendofhislifeKierkegaardhadbecomeanobjectofpublicridicule andscorn, partlybecauseofasustainedfeudthathehadprovokedin 1846 with the satirical Danish weekly The Corsair, partly because of his repeated attacks on the Danish State Church. Few mourned his death in November 1855, butduringtheearlytwentieth century his work enjoyed increasing acclaim and he has done much to inspire both modern Protestant theology and existentialism. Alastair Hannay was born in Plymouth, Devon, in 1932 and educated at Edinburgh Academy, the University of Edinburgh and UniversityCollege,London. In 1961 hebecamearesidentofNorway, wherehewasProfessorofPhilosophy attheUniversityofTrondheim until 1985. He is currently Professor ofPhilosophy at the University ofOslo, andhasbeenvisitingprofessorattheUniversityofCalifornia, both atBerkeley andSan Diego, aswell as attheUniversityofStock- holm. Alastair Hannay has also translated Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and Either/Or for Penguin Classics and his other public- ations include Mental Images - A Defence, Kierkegaard and Human Consciousness, as well as many articles in philosophical collections and journals, and translations of philosophical works from Danish and Norwegian. He is the editor ofInquiry. ERKEGAARD KI THE SICKNESS UNTO DEATH A Christian Psychological Exposition and Awakening for Edification by ANTI-CLIMACUS EDITED BY KIERKEGAARD S. TRANSLATED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY ALASTAIR HANNAY PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUINBOOKS PublishedbythePenguinGroup PenguinBooksLtd,27WrightsLane,LondonW85TZ,England PenguinBooksUSAInc.,375HudsonStreet,NewYork,NewYork10014,USA PenguinBooksAustraliaLtd,Ringwood,Victoria,Australia PenguinBooksCanadaLtd,10AlcornAvenue,Toronto,Ontario,CanadaM4V3B2 PenguinBooks(NZ)Ltd,182-190WairauRoad,Auckland10,NewZealand PenguinBooksLtd,RegisteredOffices:Harmondsworth,Middlesex,England FirsteditionpublishedinDanishasSygdommentilDoden, Copenhagen,1849 Thistranslationfirstpublished1989 7 9 10 8 6 © Translation,IntroductionandNotescopyright AlastairHannay, 1989 ADrightsreserved PrintedinEnglandbyClaysLtd,StIvespic FilmsetinMeridien(Linotron202) ExceptintheUnitedStatesofAmerica,thisbookissoldsubject totheconditionthatitshallnot,bywayoftradeorotherwise,belent, re-sold,hiredout,orotherwisecirculatedwithoutthepublisher's priorconsentinanyformofbindingorcoverotherthanthatin whichitispublishedandwithoutasimilarconditionincludingthis conditionbeingimposedonthesubsequentpurchaser CONTENTS Translator's Note vii Introduction 1 THE SICKNESS UNTO DEATH 33 Preface 35 Introduction 37 PART ONE 41 The Sickness unto Death is Despair PART TWO 107 Despair is Sin Notes 167 TRANSLATOR'S NOTE The translation is based on the third and current edition of Kierkegaard's Samlede Vxrker (Gyldendal, Copenhagen, 1963) with minor corrections to be found in the Inter Editions (Montreal) machine-readable version of the Danish text. The end-notes are in part based on those ofthe editors ofthe 1963 edition, but contain significant expansions and additions.