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Anguish
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anguish is a term used in philosophy, often as a translation

from the Latin for angst. It is a paramount feature of
existentialist philosophy, in which anguish is often understood
as the experience of an utterly free being in a world with zero
absolutes (existential despair). In the theology of Kierkegaard, it
refers to a being with total free will who is in a constant state of
spiritual fear that his freedom will lead him to fall short of the
standards that God has laid out for them.
"Waiting On Shore" Rosses
Point, Sligo. The sculpture, by
Niall Breton, reflects the anguish
Overview of seafaring people who watch
for the safe return of loved ones.
Kierkegaard views anguish as the same as suffering. Everyone
wants to find the "truth" but it takes anguish and suffering to
"appropriate" the truth. Kierkegaard put it this way in 1847 and 1850.

All the knowledge allied with inquisitiveness, thirst for knowledge, natural talent, the
self-seeking passion, all the knowledge the natural man promptly understands to be
worth learning is also basically and essentially easy to learn, and aptitude is involved
here from first to last. Therefore people are willing enough to learn when it is a matter of
learning more, but when it is a matter of learning anew through sufferings, then learning
becomes hard and heavy, then aptitude does not help, but on the other hand no one is
excluded even though he is ever so lacking in aptitude. The lowliest, the simplest, the
most forsaken human being, someone whom all teachers give up but heaven has by no
means given up-he can learn obedience fully as well as anyone else.

Sren Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, 1847, Hong

translation, pp. 252253

Is truth the sort of thing one might conceivably appropriate without more ado by
means of another man? Without more ado-that is without being willing to be developed
and tried, to fight and to suffer, just as he did who acquired the truth for himself? Is not
that as impossible as to sleep or dream oneself into the truth. Is it not just as impossible
to appropriate it thus without more ado however wide awake one might be? Or is one
really wide awake, is not this a vain conceit, when one does not understand or will not
understand that with respect to the truth there is no shortcut which dispenses with the
necessity of acquiring it, and with that respect to acquire it from generation to

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Anguish - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anguish

generation there is no essential shortcut, so that every generation and every individual in
the generation must essentially begin again from the start?

Sren Kierkegaard, Training in Christianity, 1850, pp. 181182; Lowrie

translation 1941, 2004

In the teachings of Sartre, anguish is seen when an utterly captured being realizes the
unpredictability of his or her action. For example, when walking along a cliff, you would feel
anguish to know that you have the freedom to throw yourself down to your imminent death.

External links
The dictionary definition of anguish at Wiktionary

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