The Anguishing Possibility in Kierkegaard

• Grant number: 25/01857-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2025
• End date: April 30, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Alexandre de Oliveira Torres Carrasco
• Grantee: Giovanna Lagila Duarte Oliveira
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Kierkegaard has a Self theory where he develops part of his anthropological conception that the man is a synthesis, which means that it is an amalgam of infinity and finity, of temporal and eternal and of freedom and necessity. Therefore, it is for the reason of being a synthesis that the human being can anguish, because one needs the synthesis to actualize as a spirit and the anguish is like an expression of this incompleteness. Furthermore, the man lives in a state of omission, which is the innocence, where he does not have knowledgement of himself. In that state, there is the nothingness, that makes the anguish arise, which means that part of the innocence is anguish, because when the spirit dreams, it projects its effective reality, but this reality is nothingness and can only anguish. That being said, when dealing with Adam's sin as the cause of the anguish in man, Kierkegaard states that when God announces that Adam must not eat the forbidden fruit, Adam anguishes because the possibility of his freedom is awakened. Thus, to eat or not to eat the fruit is a possibility and that anguishes him, leaving Adam the anguishing feeling of realizing that he is a "being capable of" through this anguish. However, Kierkegaard considers that to learn to feel anguish is a valuable lesson, because the one who was educated through the school of possibility, understands well the one that scares him, as much as the one that makes him smile and when finish it, will praise the anguish and will welcome it every time it knocks on his door.