Despair

 Not mine, but Søren Kierkegaard's.

Up first thing this morning, trying to catch up on the email. I missed the 1:45 bus and did not get home until almost 4 pm. Vespers last night, so I had to catch the bus at 5:15. I was not back here until around 7:30. No writing accomplished of any sort before I turned in at 10:00. I might have a home for the cat, who turned up last night with a hurt paw and has not been seen since last night around 9. 

I started this morning with The Nation's Book Reviews, and Clare Carlisle's review A Cursed Blessing: Søren Kierkegaard’s theory of despair.

Kierkegaard is one of those philosophers I have read about rather than have read. Not that he does not seem worthwhile reading (that's Hegel for me), but just trying to find the time. There is a new translation out and that is the subject of the review. The review points out why I think this book needs to be read, especially with my experience with depression.

Kierkegaard called this loss of the self “despair”: a spiritual sickness that, he believed, afflicts us all. The way he describes it, despair sounds like bad news, and in a way it is. Yet for Kierkegaard, despair reveals the spiritual reality of our being. It is a sign that we are more than just bodies, thoughts, and emotions—since all these things were still there after we’d lost touch with our deeper, truer self.

Kierkegaard was so interested in this phenomenon that he wrote a whole book about it. The Sickness Unto Death—now newly translated by Bruce H. Kirmmse—has a claim to being Kierkegaard’s masterpiece. Here the Danish philosopher argues that despair is neither a medical issue nor a reaction to life’s vicissitudes: It is the human condition, and we are in it all the time. By wrestling with our despair, we can understand what is spiritually lacking not just in secular life but also, Kierkegaard asserted, in conventional Christianity. The Sickness Unto Death addressed its readers on an intimate, individual level, recalling them to their spiritual selves. It was the work of a man still young yet old enough to experience bitter disappointment, who raged against the religious institutions that, he felt, anesthetized the human spirit.

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For Kierkegaard, people who fall into despair are spiritually disconnected from themselves: There is nothing in their lives that holds together that entire composite of relations that makes them who they are. Though he was writing in a Protestant culture, there is nothing specifically Christian, or even biblical, about this notion of godly connection and disconnection. For Kierkegaard, being a self means needing and longing to find yourself, to become yourself—and this means reaching out, across the abyss, in search of God. That search, even in a secular sense, is potent. “God” may mean many different things, even if it only names a mystery, and in Kierkegaard’s work, this concept is seldom nailed down.

I came to the same thinking through reading Despondency - The Spiritual Teaching of Evagrius Ponticus on Acadia. Depression is despondency, and there is a spiritual aspect to it which we fail to account for with our rush to medicine and psychiatry. Not that I will forego my Zoloft. Neither will I give up what I have found, and I am finding, in Orthodox Christianity. Orthodoxy puts an emphasis on mindfulness, on community, on actions, on life, rather than a static salvation/condemnation which does seem to me conducive to depression.

My PO worries now about my reintegrating into society. He has never asked me what my goals are for myself. I will tell you - to finish my work here, to something positively good; atonement, is a good word. Slipping back into the craziness of anger and hate and paranoia and self-destruction is something I fear. All those states are how I recall my depression. I cut out the stress of keeping up with consumerism. CC wants things and has turned her back on me. She said she wants the things that other people want. I see anything that demeans humanity as what is to be avoided. With depression/despondency, it is too easy to slip into the idea that people are bad inherently. Orthodoxy Christianity sees in all of us the image of Christ. We despise other people at the risk of despise Christ. Those who are non-Christians may shift that to your own kind of thinking, but it does not change the process towards self-destruction. Kierkegaard and Evargius point us towards a way out of our despondency. Go read them, please.

Now, I need ot get to work. Perhaps a move today. Certainly I will be back to my writing.

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