we did not inherit the original sin! Kierkegaard on Adam and Eve!

Posted on by maylynno

painting by Albrecht Durer.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is a Danish philosopher who is widely considered to be the founder of existentialism. Believing in free will, Kierkegaard thinks that anguish or angst is what motivates any free action, or as he calls it a “leap”. So, what is the link between angst and the original sin?

Angst, or anguish, is a feeling of suffering when facing emptiness in life or when facing many options. Any action taken would be a leap, good or bad and ugly. Angst is therefore, not fear. One is scared because of a scary object. However, angst has no object. It is the vertigo in front of many possibilities.

Kierkegaard analyses the story of Adam in Eve in terms of angst. God had forbidden them to consume the fruit of knowledge, better known as the apple. Adam and Eve broke the divine law and ate the fruit. This was the first illegal action in history, and they were the first outlaws.

In Kierkegaard’s theory, Adam had an alternative (assuming that Eve was tempted and weak in front of the snake, known as the devil): to do God’s will or to follow Eve’s recommendation. Facing these two options, he acted out of angst and leaped. The rest is history.

To Kierkegaard, we didn’t inherit the original sin; since one cannot inherit the crimes of their ancestors. We, humankind, inherited angst and freedom.

Published by maylynno

Philosophy teacher, PhD. I am a fitness lover and an art enthusiast. I love to write mainly about philosophy and about subjects that matters in our daily life.

8 thoughts on “we did not inherit the original sin! Kierkegaard on Adam and Eve!”

  1. The Genesis tale of “The Fall of Man” is very much entwined with even today’s lifestyles:

    Feminism, for one, is the movement that mirrors or replicates the Genesis tale of “The Fall of Man” just by the movement’s exploitation of guilt. Men and women feel guilt in two separate ways.

    Men feel guilt over what they have done.

    Whereas, women feel guilt over what they haven’t done.

    Feminism exploits a man’s guilt over his actions, while also enticing a woman into doing the things she has never done.

    By making a woman behave exactly like a man, there is almost no way to forgive her based on action. Because with this thirsty global society of greed, we continually believe a woman to be neglecting something, which is her innate instinct. We continually want the mother figure, desire comfort, and that’s where politics gets its share of power, through a populace’s continual dependence on governmental power, that is running on that greed I just mentioned.

    If that’s not enough, many of our past presidents were also Freemasons. Christians, that is, with many secrets, buried in their winding tunnels, alike the many streets and subways in NYC, painted with “graffiti”.

    “The Fall of Man” is linked up with Feminism, just by how Woman, in today’s world, is still deceived by either a politician, a celebrity, a talk-show host, or anyone else who represents raw deception, into thinking she can make a choice beyond the boundaries of either her man (Adam) or God.

    That is how this tale within Genesis was written, right? So, what has changed? The answer is, nothing has changed, and that’s why I believe the Bible to be the book that is the greatest depiction of human psychology.

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  2. Interesting! We are looking at Kierkegaard in a fortnight. I relate to the concept of ‘angst’ and the ‘leap’

    This week (on Thursday at U3A) we are discussing Spinoza. Still trying to get my head around his ideas 🙂

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  4. I always read it as an abundance of choices. That there are too many choices, too many possibilities that are understood intuitively about any given condition. One simply cannot make a choice in that situation because the ramifications of all the possible choices are too much to ponder. Less emptiness and more over abundance, is how I read K angst. It is the emptiness, the sinking feeling of not being able to make a choice, and so Adam makes the choice that is already made for him by eve. And that is the original sin, to not obey God.
    Interesting. The juxtaposition of interpretation.

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