by Ulla Sarja

Created on: June 25, 2008

Anxiety a comparison between Heidegger and Kierkegaard

This essey is written about anxiety. I am going to compare Heideggers and Kierkegaards view concerning the concept anxiety. Further I will present the more common view of anxiety with help of references to Paul Moxnes book "Vardagens ngest". I will begin by presenting the concept anxiety as Moxnes brings it up. Then I am going to presentate Heideggers and Kierkegaards view of anxiety. Finally I will compare those two views.

Anxiety
According to Bonniers lexicon anxiety is "en stark knsla av oro el. fruktan, med kroppsliga yttringar som t. ex. kallsvett". This seems more like a description of the pathological anxiety and not that kind of anxiety the existentialists are talking about. However, I think that it is that kind of anxiety the most people think about when they hear the word. The word anxiety has a label of sickness. But in this essey I am not going to bring up that kind of anxiety but I will talk about the existential anxiety. So then what is anxiety?

What is anxiety?
Paul Moxnes is researcher at the University of Oslo, Department of Psychology.
According to Paul Moxnes, (1989), daily life is the cause of anxiety. The word anxiety itself has been used since Spinoza (Moxnes, 1989) definiated the word to include something spiritual, mental and something that belongs to the mind. Anxiety is an essential part of human life and if you never experience anxiety you are quite a insensitive person. It does not mean that there is no anxiety, it always is there even if you do not want to know anything about it, (Moxnes,1989). Moxnes (1989), makes a distinction between pathological anxiety (which often is based on phobia) and existential anxiety (which is a part of life).
According to Moxnes (1989) loneliness and anxiety are two sides of the same phenomenon.You are missing your sense of security when you experience anxiety. Then, what is security? Moxnes says that feeling safe is to be in connection with your inner life. Anxiety is a result of not accepting ones inner feelings, of breaking the connection with ones inner life. Security is a structure, i.e. to know what to do, how to do it and to be sure of being able to do it, (Moxnes, 1989). Moxnes even says that living with anxiety is like living in hell, the one who says that he has had a sense of security since his childhood can never tell how it is to live with anxiety.
But, often an individual makes a choice to live with anxiety. Then he gets some kind of advantage

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