Sickness unto DeathSøren Kierkegaard, Alastair Hannay
Sickness unto Death
by Søren Kierkegaard, Alastair Hannay · first published 2004
10mentions
6recommended by
8HN commenters
2019–2024first – last mentioned
75% recommend25% neutral
Why HN recommends it
A reflective work on the structure of the self, despair, and faith. It serves as a starting point for Kierkegaard and for anyone wanting to think about what it means to live and die.
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…Kant - How to orient oneself in thinking Kant - Critique of Pure Reason Kant - Critique of Judgment Hegel - Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel - Logic von Kleist - Marionette Theatre Kierkegaard - The Sickness Unto Death Heidegger - Being and Time Sartre - Being and Nothingness Sartre - Flies Sartre - Nausea Deleuze - Difference and Repetition Kafka - Metamorphosis Kafka - The Castle Lem - Magellan Nebula Lem…
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗In order: 1. The Technological Society - Jacques Ellul 2. The Sickness Unto Death - Kierkegaard 3. Dubliners - James Joyce 4. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World - Cal Newport
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗…of Evil". His conclusion was: Absolute evil does not exist and pain is an instrument of good. I can't find it online, my source is the documentary "The Genius of George Boole" [1]. Kierkegaard's The Sickness unto Death [2] could be a related reading too. I remember that I enjoyed it in a fun way. Also a dumb theory of mine is: suffering is the proof that you are still alive. [1] https://youtu.be/Hljir_TyTEw?t=1855…
on “I'm an addict” ↗Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death. In many books I have tried to find answers and failed. TSUD stresses the importance of who is asking the questions.
on “Ask HN: Which book would you pick to re-read for the rest of your life?” ↗…with the descendants of christian dualism in liberalism, 'panpsychism', analytic philosophy, &c. Edit: Kierkegaard wrote quite interesting texts about the structures of consciousness, I'd recommend The Sickness unto Death as a start. It has some of his best jokes.
on “Is the Sun Conscious? (2021) [pdf]” ↗Missing from this post is The Sickness Unto Death, which I think is the most important of anything he wrote. The book is about what a Christian ought to think of what it means to live and what it means to die. > What if grace doesn’t come as a gift…
on “Kierkegaard’s Leap” ↗…motivations? Being called wrong , even in the softest ways, is now a personal attack? I think it's fair to say that a 3-5 word sentence is a bit too shallow to characterize Kierkegaards' entire body of work. 'Sickness Unto Death' totally changed my outlook as a teenager reading it at the right time. Here's the thing that's missing : life is as deep as we give it credit for, and many philosophies seek to enrichen and deepen the…
on “Difficulties Everywhere: Can Kierkegaard tell us how to live?” ↗…the relation between the psychical and the physical is a relation. If, however, the relation relates itself to itself, this relation is the positive third, and this is the self. -Søren Kierkegaard, "The Sickness Unto Death"
on “An Earth-sized rogue planet discovered in the Milky Way” ↗…picnics. And once that threshold of understanding is passed -- that _choice_ is the one thing that cannot be taken from you -- it is possible to see further into Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling" and "Sickness Unto Death", in which that choice allows one to become not merely a gadfly but "an error, stubbornly and indelibly written into the text of consensual reality... one that refuses to be erased". The harder the system…
on “"How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" – Philip K Dick” ↗…religion: this is not totally fair to what Kierkegaard really argues -- it may be what Camus criticized Kierkegaard for, but it's not the most charitable reading of Kierkegaard. The common theme between Sickness Unto Death and Fear and Trembling is that, while it's possible to imagine the theoretical Knight of Faith (with Abraham as a textual example) or the theoretical person-who-escapes-despair, Kierkegaard is really…
on “Albert Camus” ↗