Anxiety

Abstract

'Angest' is a loan word from the Middle Low German angest. The Old High German angust is closely related to the Latin 'angustiae' (narrowness, tightness, difficulty). The Danish word may refer to a dangerous or difficult situation, as it frequently does in biblical usage. More generally, though, it describes a feeling of unease brought on by the thought of a real or imagined danger. The 'Ordbog over det danske Sprog adds' that the term denotes a feeling of oppression of spirit distinct from, and stronger than, fear, citing the following passage from Kierkegaard's authorship: "The concept of anxiety ... is altogether different from fear and similar concepts that refer to something definite...." 'Angest', in Kierkegaard's work, is also sometimes translated as 'anguish' or 'dread'. Kierkegaard concerned himself with the concept of anxiety throughout his 'oeuvre', partly because of the intensity of his own feelings of anxiety and partly because of the potential he saw in the concept for articulating a relation between time, freedom, sin, and individual responsibility for becoming a self. While the concept of anxiety had received a considerable amount of philosophical attention from Hamann, Hegel, and Schelling among others-it had not been connected to these other concepts previously. Kierkegaard had a penchant for "ordinary language philosophy," in wanting to plumb the resources of everyday discourse for its conceptual potential, in contrast to the specialized jargon of speculative philosophy. The word 'Angest' was prime material for clarification and rigorous renewal.