FREEDOM AND TIME IN KIER.KECAARD'S THE CONCEPT OF ANXIETY

This dissertation is a commentary on one of Spren Kierkegaard's most difficult works, The Concept of Anxiety. Its aim is to show that Kierkegaard does not have a modern existentialist understanding of the self. It is in his treatment of the problems of freedom and time in The Concept of Anxiety that the differences of his thought from the tradition of existentialism can be most clearly seen. The doctrine which is central to existentialism, according to which man makes himself and is therefore the creator of all meaning and value, is often attributed by some commentators to the thought of Kierkegaard. It is my claim that such a doctrine is incompatible with the religious basis of Kierkegaard's view of the self. For Kierkegaard the freedom of the self does not consist in the fact that the possibilities for choice are unlimited. The self becomes free only by acknowledging its dependence on a reality which is external to the self and which eternally defines it. Kierkegaard'