Søren Kierkegaard - The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Oriented Deliberation in View of the Dogmatic Problem of Hereditary Sin

Sren Aabye Kierkegaard, was born on May 5, 1813, to an affluent family in Copenhagen, Denmark. He was educated at the School of Civic Virtue, before entering the University of Copenhagen. Showing no clearly focused academic interests in the seven years he spent there, but reading widely and recording his thoughts in journals, he gained a reputation for both academic brilliance and an extravagant social life. In 1841, after breaking off an engagement with his then fiance, Regine Olsen, Kierkegaard fully devoted himself to writing. Over the next ten years, he would go on to produce numerous discourses and a dozen major philosophical worksincluding Either/Or (1843), Repetition (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), Philosophical Crumbs (1844), The Concept of Anxiety (1844), Stages on Lifes Way (1845), Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), and The Sickness Unto Death (1849)many of which, like these, were written pseudonymously. During this period, however, Kierkegaard had not only begun to openly criticize the Danish State Church but he also provoked a sustained feud with the Corsair, a satirical Danish weekly. As a result, Kierkegaard became an object of public ridicule. While few mourned his death in the autumn of 1855, during the early twentieth century his body of work underwent a renaissance and became a major force in shaping modern Protestant theology and existentialism. Today, Kierkegaard is widely considered to be the father of both existentialism as well as modern psychology and has attracted increased attention from academics in a wide range of disciplines.

Alastair Hannay (b. 1932) is an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Oslo, has been a visiting professor at the University of California (Berkeley and San Diego) and the University of Stockholm, and was for many years editor of Inquiry. He is the author of Mental Images: A Defence (Allen & Unwin 1971; Routledge 2002), Kierkegaard (Routledge 1982, 1999), Human Consciousness (Routledge 1990), Kierkegaard: A Biography (Cambridge 2001), Kierkegaard and Philosophy (Routledge 2003), and On the Public (Routledge 2005). He has already translated several of Kierkegaards works (for Penguin Classics and Cambridge University Press) and is engaged in the ongoing Princeton critical edition of Kierkegaards Papers and Journals. A resident of Norway since 1961, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of the Royal Norwegian Scientific Society of Science and Letters, and of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Kierkegaard translations

Concluding Unscientific Postscript (2009)

Literary Review (2001)

Diary of a Seducer (1999)

Kierkegaard: Journals and Papers: A Selection (1996)

Either/Or (1992)

The Sickness unto Death (1989)

Fear and Trembling (1985)

Translations

On Guilt, Responsibility, and Punishment by Alf Ross (1975)

Four Modern Philosophers: Carnap, Wittgenstein,
Heidegger, Sartre by Arne Naess (1968)

Communication and Argument:
Elements of Applied Semantics by Arne Naess (1966)

Gandhi and the Nuclear Age by Arne Naess (1965)

Other works

On the Public: Thinking in Action (2006)

Kierkegaard and Philosophy: Selected Essays (2003)

Kierkegaard: A Biography (2001)

Human Consciousness: The Problems of Philosophy (1990)

Kierkegaard: The Arguments of the Philosophers (1982)

Mental Images: A Defence (1971)

the happy lover of Greek culture, Homers admirer, Socratess confidant, Aristotles interpreterDenmarks joy in Joy over Denmark, though widely traveled always remembered in the Danish summermy admiration, my loss,

this work is dedicated.

The figures on the right of the columns refer to lines on pages in Volume 4 of Sren Kierkegaards Skrifter (Copenhagen 1997) on which the Danish text of first lines of pages of this translation appear (e.g., 313,1 = page 313, line 1).