Only the Christian, according to Anti-Climacus, can understand the significance of the sickness unto death and can be led from despair to be born anew. But what of the non-Christian? Some types of aesthetic despair involve an attempt to overcome despair, to die to it, without this ever being possible. It remains sheer sickness unto death - a dying without terminus. Anti-Climacus gives us a clue to the interpretation of 'Guilty/Not Guilty' – Quidam’s Diary of Stages on Life’s Way: Quidam is wrong to believe his despair springs from his relationship to the young woman; it is just a symptom of a broader despair, a broader misrelation in the self. And one might make an analogous claim about the young man of Repetition (but what should one claim about Frater Taciturnus and Constantin Constantius, whose fictions they are?)
Beabout reminds us of the pseudonym Judge William’s typology of the aesthetic sphere of existence from Either/Or; it involves 1) living for physical beauty, 2) living for wealth, honor, fame, one's beloved, 3) aiming at developing one's talents, 4) living for hedonistic pleasure, 5) living for self-reflective enjoyment, and 6) despair. As Beabout comments, ‘At the first five of the stages, or so the judge seems to say, one is not conscious of being a self. Properly speaking, there is no misrelation in the self in these stages since there is no self’. The sixth variety of aesthetic existence is familiar from Either/Or and Repetition: there is no self yet, only the potentiality to be a self. One is not yet able to be able as a self; nothing is possible for you as a self ...
It is worth recalling Anti-Climacus’s typology of despair. First of all, there is the despair which springs from a sense of infinitude and possibility – a lack of attachment to the world, a lack of definition or finitude; the temptation to fantasy and imagination. Secondly, and conversely, there is the despair of finitude and necessity – too much attachment to the world; one’s existence is defined by tasks and duties; the temptation to join the crowd or the mass; fatalism, determinism. Thirdly, there is also a despair which is as it were ignorant of itself, of its true nature. This seems to be linked, fourthly, to a general weakness, whereby one does not have the strength to become a self. The despair of youth, sighing over a future; the despair of age, sighing over lost youth. Here, one might despair over everything earthly – a despair, here, of one’s incapacity to escape despair. One senses the infinite, the eternal, in as it were its negative aspect (one is suspended between the two sides of the self). This is what Anti-Climacus calls indesluttede, which is translated, somewhat awkwardly, as inclosing reserve, in which the self is as it were shut up in itself. Inclosing reserve admits of degrees – it is possible to do so whilst retaining ordinary relations with the world, but it can also become more severe. Then, fifthly, there is the defiant, demonic despair of one who rejects God.
Presumably, Judge William has already passed through despair and chosen himself. Nevertheless, there is a suggestion that he, too, despairs, since he still does not understand that his will lies in God’s gift. Am I right to think he will not allow himself to be born out of despair – to have done with the sickness unto death? As Anti-Climacus argues, death, for the Christian, is no longer simply opposed to physical life. It is possible to die into a new life: to die through despair and to be born anew. Then Judge William despairs even if this despair does not manifest itself directly (see the third type of despair in the previous paragraph). - I should reread the pages on marriage from Either/Or. Broadly, crudely, I venture that the Judge is not aware of his despair because of his relationship with his wife which in some respect shelters him from God. This, no doubt, is too quick - but Quidam's Diary, placed after the long letter from the Judge in Stages on Life's Way, perhaps attests to a despair of which the Judge is not yet capable.
Ah, the mysteries of Kierkegaard's authorship. It would be pleasant to enter this labyrinth and spend a life wandering its byways. And with what result? True, a life pleasantly spent is already a great deal - and perhaps it is enough. But there is the leap beyond commentary through which one might be able to write, just to write, a 'work of philosophy'. Is this possible? It is a false alternative; remember the great commentaries which are more than commentaries - Heidegger's lectures, for example. But what would it be to start a book in your own name? Perhaps there is a kind of despair, a doubt (fortvivlelse), fostered by academia: one is never able to start, to resolve to start, to bring oneself into the beginning that would allow a work to be born. Having finished my book review, and with only the task of writing an abstract between me and the drafting of my second book, I wonder whether the pleasantness of writing conceals a kind of despair. Isn't academic writing - the apparent proficiency of writing - already a ruse and an alibi?