Beyond the Abyss: Kierkegaard, Lacan & the Anxiety of Modern Life

It is difficult for one to comprehend the anxiety of the Danish philosopher S?ren Kierkegaard (1813–1850) without considering the massive theoretical system built by Hegel in his encompassing efforts to include all manifestations of life throughout the historical development experienced by the spirit through the folds of time. Kierkegaard was overwhelmed by Hegel’s towering intellectual edifice, so he chose to withdraw into a hut that allowed him to preserve his disturbed, haunted, anxious, confused, and questioning self, wandering without guidance. He opposed Hegelian historical doctrine, considering history to be blind and unable to generate the meaning of human existence. Therefore, history cannot judge individual human life in the depth of its atypic being.

?

One of the flaws in Hegel’s ideal dialectical construction is that it negates the individual human being—the existing one—who experiences the throbbing of life within and struggles exhaustively for salvation, burning with fear and trembling. The philosopher of the bewildered self and anxious conscience could not digest the crucible into which Hegel cast the details of existence, inner feelings, the minutiae of sensation, and the elevations of individual consciousness. He opposed the coercive historical totality and countered it with the faith of the individual aspiring for divine redemptive transcendence. There is no salvation for a human being who, having been freed from the burdens of theoretical endeavours, except by embracing the breath of inner faith and surrendering to the tranquillity of divine truth breathed into him by God’s vast mercy.

?

Kierkegaard was born into a devout, conservative, and strict Protestant Christian environment, dominated by the burden of sin that strikes the resilience of the inner being. Initially, he chose the path of theology but soon immersed himself in the pleasures of life, enjoying the delights and amusements provided by his father’s wealth. He was about to marry his fiancée, Regine Olsen, but broke off the engagement in 1840 for mysterious reasons, some of which might be related to the spiritual experiences that consumed his entire existence, with his sole obsession being the attainment of the peace of eternal life. Consequently, he withdrew to his solitude to contemplate the position of the individual human self in its being, isolated in its experiences and unique in its particularity.

?

Man: The Being of Anxiety

However, man remains susceptible to experiencing the deepest existential anxiety arising from the disruption of emotional freedom. Man is anxious and disturbed due to intense fear and trembling, having fainted in consciousness due to the magnitude of the responsibility placed upon him. Man is inherently anxious. However, the existential anxiety Kierkegaard addresses is related to the psychological state preceding the feeling of profound individual sin. There is anxiety in the anticipation of evil, and there is anxiety in the anticipation of good. The anxiety of goodness envisaged in the horizon of existence refines consciousness and corrects behavior. However, it is also the anxiety of self-purification from false illusions and deceptive delusions. Thus, religion, in Kierkegaard’s view, is a sanctuary that safeguards formative anxiety, which drives man to recognize his existential frailty and undertake the responsibility of his life, which is open to infinite and boundless horizons.

?

Unlike Sartre, Kierkegaard does not associate anxiety with freedom but with the disrupted freedom that is controlled by freedom itself: “Anxiety is neither a category of necessity, nor is it to the same extent a category of freedom. It is freedom’s impediment, as it is not free in itself” (The Concept of Anxiety, p. 73). Therefore, anxiety is linked to the experience of dizziness or vertigo that freedom induces in the human self when it gazes upon the infinity depicted in the eternal open expanse. In the anxiety of evil, the believing person experiences the weight of sin in their life and seeks refuge in repentance as a means of purification. In the anxiety of goodness, the believer experiences fear and trembling from eternity and boundless expansiveness.

?

When the repentant person realizes that they can be freed from the power of sin, they must then experience the anxiety of goodness, righteousness, and the beauty of faith in God. Thus, Kierkegaard believes that man can transform anxiety into salvation through free faith, as he is a dual-natured being, in whom both animality and angelic nature coexist. Animals cannot experience anxiety, and angels do not need it. Only the animal-angelic being lives the life of the anxious human who transforms his anxiety into a motivating and corrective force: “Anxiety is the possibility of freedom. Only this anxiety, through faith, creates a human being, as it devours all limitations and exposes all disappointments. What a great inspector like anxiety possesses such a capacity for terrible torments? And what spy knows so much about trickery to attack the accused in their moment of weakness or lure them into a trap that catches them off guard, as anxiety masters the art of seduction?” (The Concept of Anxiety, p. 224). In summary, anxiety is a radiant aspect of authentic human experiences. Kierkegaard does not exclusively regard it as a sign of psychological illness but explores its dimensions in the context of true existential meaning. This is why many philosophical schools, such as Sartre’s existentialism and Heidegger’s ontology, have adopted it, placing it at the core of their interpretative frameworks.

?

Anxiety 2.0

The contemporary self, burdened with the paradoxes of modern existence, faces an anxiety that, while reminiscent of Kierkegaard’s reflections on the human condition, takes on an even more fragmented and elusive character. Lacan’s concept of the Real haunts our collective consciousness, with the ungraspable truth beneath our symbolic structures constantly reminding us that the frameworks we cling to are mere facades, unable to contain the full essence of our being. Heidegger’s Angst, in turn, reveals the nullity at the core of existence, as modern anxiety forces the self to confront the emptiness hidden beneath the seemingly boundless choices and freedoms promised by our age. Jung’s archetypal visions, perhaps, point to this tension as the result of a disconnection between the conscious ego and the deeper Self, while Wittgenstein’s reflections on language mock our futile attempts to articulate our discontent within a system of words that ultimately betrays us.

Yet, these paradigms, though profound in their insights, remain locked in the intellectualization of our shared disillusionment. They distract us from the unnatural rhythms of contemporary life, where abundance and regulation paradoxically amplify our yearning for fulfillment. In this so-called "golden age of human progress and enlightenment,” we are, ironically, paralyzed by the absurdity of it all. Resources, systems, and frameworks—intended to alleviate suffering—have, instead, obscured our vision, driving us to retreat further into solipsistic fantasies of individuality. We yearn for satisfaction, but this yearning is misguided, misdirected by the very narratives we unconsciously inherit—the stories of our lives, shaped not by our authentic being but by the collective illusions we mistake for our own.

Remaining bona-fide (true to oneself) demands the execution of a deliberate and quiet renunciation. One must relinquish the illusion of self-entitlement and forgo the compulsion to assert unwavering confidence in narratives born from psychological residue, meticulously constructed yet misguidedly projected onto the ontological substratum. The very uniqueness we crave is, ironically, what we lack; lost in our incessant need to speak without truly talking, to reach without actually walking.

Anxiety, in its modern form, is no longer simply the existential fear of sin or salvation. It is the absurd dissonance of living in a world too distracted by its own noise to notice its emptiness.