Anguising angst |
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In the spirit of existential
jujitsu the anguish of angst is to be welcomed.
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| Angst - a term introduced into philosophy by existentialist thinkers. It denotes the state of mind produced when a person becomes aware of being finite in a world that is infinite. The source of this feeling of apprehension is ultimately the infinite nature of nothingness (or the void) |
Collins Dictionary of Philosophy, |
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A
Dictionary of Philosophy (Pan), |
Angst - (German for: anxiety, anguish) In existentialist
philosophy, the dread occasioned by man’s realization that his
existence is open towards an undetermined future, the emptiness of
which must be filled by his freely chosen actions.
Anxiety characterises the human state, which entails constant confrontation with possibility and the need for decision, with the concomitant burden of responsibility. (see also ‘bad faith’; ‘existentialism’) |
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| (existential anguish) The horrible feeling the existentialists suppose we have when we are confronted with our own complete and irremovable freedom and responsibility |
Robert
M Martin (1991) |
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Angst -
Variously translated as anxiety, anguish, dread. It was first used
in an existential sense by Soren Kierkegaard in The Concept of
Anxiety (1844), where he describes the terrifying reality of the
state of splitness, indecisiveness and responsibility in front of
choice.
Heidegger, in Being and Time (1927), freely paraphrases Kierkegaard and does not add anything significant to Kierkegaard’s analysis. Sartre, in Being and Nothingness (1943), again follows Kierkegaard but adds an element of determinism by making ‘anguish’ a state of ‘bad faith’ in which the conscious subject tries to renege on his unalienable freedom to choose |
The
New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, |
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The
Oxford Companion to Philosophy, |
Angst - A
recurrent state of disquiet concerning one’s life which
Existentialists interpret as evidence that human life has a
dimension which a purely naturalistic psychology cannot comprehend.
The term was introduced by Kierkegaard, who held that angst (usually translated here as ‘dread’) concerning the contingencies of fortune should show us that we can only gain a secure sense of our identity by taking the leap of faith and entering into a relationship with God. Heidegger uses the same term (here usually translated as ‘Anxiety’) to describe a sense of unease concerning the structure of one’s life which, because it does not arise from any specific threat, is to be diagnosed as a manifestation of our own responsibility for this structure. Sartre uses the term angoisse (usually translated as ‘anguish’) for much the same phenomenon as Heidegger describes |
