Paul Strathern, in his book (from Pages 57 to 60) on Soren Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard In 90 Minutes, writes about Angst and how important it is to Kierkegaard: “Kierkegaard wrote an entire book about The Concept of Dread. This concept is often translated as ‘anxiety’ or ‘anguish’ but is best conveyed by the German word angst. (I use the word that usually appears in the English title of Kierkegaard’s book.)
The Concept of Dread is one of the most profound pre-Freudian works of psychology. In it Kierkegaard distinguishes between two different types of dread. First is the dread we experience when we are threatened by an external object (such as a roaring lion). The second type of dread results from an inner experience—our confrontation with the limitless possibilities of our own freedom. When we become aware of this freedom we understand its enormity and its irrationality. (As Kierkegaard points out, it is impossible to prove that we have freedom, because this proof would involve logical necessity, which is the opposite of freedom.)”
My response: Stirner studies emotional states to learn about the existent and his role when confronted by Being, and he must decide how to proceed. Both he and Max Stirner (who studies emotional states of the concrete person very little) assert that the existent’s subjective adventures as an individual living his life within his perspective, this adaption to his stimuli, when creatively, spontaneously engaged in, offer the existent such a wide range of possibilities that he is overwhelmed by endless choice, and feels dread—as well he should. Both thinkers see this personal encounter as the potential to enjoy and enjoy tremendous freedom and creative self-application.
As an objective egoist, I would add that the predominant approach to endless personal possibilities is to know the self, have a set of values and a narrative to seek self-fulfillment through, and there is the primary origin of almost limitless freedom and creative potential.
Another blind spot that both thinkers suffer from alike is their over-emphasis on the subjective, irrational perspective as the mode of interaction with the world allowing the existent maximum freedom and originative outlet, This mode is productive, but an even more powerful and liberating and innovative mode of interacting with the world is for the individuator to use his abstractions, his cause, his logic and reason to stay free and in charge of the self.
Logical necessity can be blind determinism if a mob, or a divinity or a dictator rules the existent, but in ordered liberty, the logical maverizer can enjoy his greatest potential for freedom< I believe I am more correct about this prioritization that are these two thinkers, but they still offer a useful mode too.
Strathern continues: “Freedom has nothing to do with philosophy. It is a psychological matter, dependent on our state of mind or attitude. Our state of mind makes us understand our freedom. And we realize our freedom to its fullest extent when we experience the state of mind called dread. In this sense the individual doesn’t exist as ‘being’ at all, he exists only in a state of constant ‘becoming.’ The dread which this induces is the terror that lies at the heart of all normality. To realize this fully plunges us into madness. According to Kierkegaard, the only way out of this is to take the equally irrational leap of faith. The individual is thus ‘saved’ from this madness and disintegration by his subjective inwardness being related to God. (Others may prefer to evade this situation by ‘belief’ in the illusion of everyday reality, where such deranging freedom is cunningly disguised by the demands of normality.)
My response: Both Kierkegaard and Stirner are irrational, subjective epistemologist, skeptical and nominalistic. For these reasons they would agree that freedom can only be understood, enjoyed and applied to meeting one’s ends as a psychological reaction to open-ended possibilities. I disagree, obviously as a mostly objective epistemologist and realist. Not only does the scientific, philosophical, and logical application of our reason to stimuli give us great probably certain knowledge, but our reasoning is creative, not just unimaginative, robotic or deterministic—it is these two for operational efficiency. Our powers of reason make us recognize what will set us free, and how we should apply it, but our reasoning also has its rationally intuitional aspect that connects us to moral and spiritual goodness, where positive freedom of the maverizer doing his thing within a social framework of ordered liberty.
We all have feelings and existing is a challenge each day for us, born depraved and born of very low self-esteem, and inclined to run in packs and non-individuate. It is no wonder that sudden, abrupt and direct meeting endless possibilities, or infinity, pushed us over into panic, dread and madness.
If we refuse to lose our self-control, not bolting or fleeing, then we can use this dreadful interaction to apply our plan of personal maverization so that we can create meaning out of meaninglessness, nothingness and chaos. B studying and choosing solutions by apply both our feelings or hunches and our reason or cognitive apprehension skills, we can make sense of the senseless, even if we create the metaphysical castle to house our unique world view.
Strathern continues: “But is this awareness of our essential freedom really enough to waken in us such an awful feeling of dread? Or are only geniuses like Kierkegaard or Kafka capable of walking around in a constant state of dread at the possibilities of their own existence? Perhaps, but we mediocrities—the sane majority—can also experience this dread. Walking along a cliff path we experience the fear of falling and the vertigo of the abyss. But part of this feeling is also due to a curious impulse that seems at the same time both to attract us toward, and repel us from, the edge. According to Kierkegaard, this comes from our awareness that we could throw ourselves over the edge—the fear of this freedom which lies within our grasp. Here to we experience dread: the madness and terror that lie beneath our normality.”
My response: Kierkegaard and Kafka are geniuses who are perhaps a bit smarter and a bit more sensitive to realizing how intimidating freedom can be. But if the average person maverizes, then her self-actualizing makes her so smart and wise, near genius level, that she can face near pure freedom of possibility, eagerly embraced with relish, not dread.
It is true that terror and madness lie beneath normality, but the self-developing and self-becoming a living angel is a way of existing transmutes that terror and madness into the material with which the developed egoist can develop and introduce new schemas and approaches to the world.
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