Please read a book (The Sickness Unto Death) on my Google Playbook and answer the following questions. And here’s my google account. There are various editions of this book, and you should only read the book that I presented.
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Answer any 5 out of 6 questions on the exam. Each answer should be 1 pages long, double-spaced.
1. In sickness unto Death Kierkegaard draws several parallels between physical sickness and despair. How does despair result from neglecting some aspect of our spiritual wellbeing, just as illness is a consequence of neglecting some aspect of our physical wellbeing? Explain two ways of describing despair first as a form of imbalance and then as an escalation in the degrees of consciousness.
2. What is the relationship between these two different ways of understanding despair? Why according to Kierkegaard is despair both a blessing and a curse? Explain why for Kierkegaard despair is a universal condition. What is Kierkegaard’s solution to overcoming despair? How is it intimately connected with heightened self-awareness raised to the urgency of choice?
3. What are the different degrees of self-hood in Sickness Unto Death? How according to Kierkegaard can one be more or less oneself depending on the degree of one’s self-consciousness? How is self-hood constituted as a dialectical synthesis between freedom/necessity, time/eternity, infinite/finite?
4. Explain how both weakness as well as defiance can be the source of despair. Why is defiance the highest form of despair expressed as a rejection of hope, healing and redemption? How does despair become a two-fold form of alienation both from oneself as well as from God? Why is Christianity the paradigm of selfhood for K?
5. According to Kierkegaard “Faith” is a state of being oneself and wanting to be oneself while maintaining a relationship with God. How is sin diametrically opposed to faith? How is Christian notion of sin distinct from the Socratic notion of sin as a form of ignorance? Why is it important from Kierkegaard’s point of view to recognize that we can willfully refuse to do what is right?
6. How are we responsible for our condition of sinfulness? Why does a sinful person refuse to believe in the possibility of forgiveness? Explain why forgiveness and faith require a surrender of one’s free will. Why does Kierkegaard compare faith to passionate love?
