Impotent Despair (The Pain That Cannot End Itself)

[Totenkindly]

From Kierkegaard, "The Sickness unto Death" :

Despair is exactly a consumption of the self, but an impotent self-consumption not capable of doing what it wants. But what it wants is to consume itself, which it cannot do, and this impotence is a new form of self-consumption, but in which despair is once again incapable of doing what it wants, to consume itself.

This is a heightening of despair, or the law for the heightening of despair. This is the hot incitement or the cold fire in despair, this incessantly inward gnawing, deeper and deeper in impotent self-consumption.

Far from its being any comfort to the despairer that the despair doesn't consume him, on the contrary this comfort is just what torments him; this is the very thing that keeps the sore alive and the life in the sore.

For what he -- not despaired but -- despairs over is precisely this: That he cannot consume himself, cannot be rid of himself, cannot become nothing.

Agree/Disagree? Expansions of Soren's ideas?

Examples from your own life that support or refute his idea here?

 

[Cerpin_Taxt]

Should I be concerned at how much my own internal thoughts sympathize with an INFP, I suppose not -- we do share similar approaches to the world, in a general sense.

I often fear -- and tremble at -- my self-destructive streak, yet I often stop, unconsciously, before that precipice of destruction, which curiously, as the Kierkegaard excerpt alludes to, leaves me in a more heightened state of despair; I can neither destroy my self, nor entirely overcome this often debilitating despair, and embrace the 'Transcedent'...I need to read more Kierkegaard.

 

[dloaded]

I was just reflecting on how I am feeling despair today. All I want to do is disappear for a while, be completely isolated, in silence. And while the realization that it's not possible for that to happen makes me sad, I don't think that is the cause of the continuation of my despair. It sure doesn't help though!

(I feel a little unsure of my understanding of what Kierkegaard was saying and I've always had a difficult time interpreting philosophy correctly, so if I'm completely off-base, please let me know! )

 

[Istbkleta]

Sounds legit.

Despair signifies the tiredness of oneself and the force that prevents one of becoming / being born into a new one, who experiences the whole process again with the passage of time.

So despair would be a valuable asset for oneself. Like existential despair?

I like the silver lining. One realizes One is the force stopping One from being reborn. Thus despair is having to suffer the presence of oneself LOL