The following is an extract from Soren Kirekegaard's - 'Sickness unto Death', it is Kierkegaard's attempt to show us the self as a synthesis, constructed from many polarities, and how each polarity has a dialectic opposite. Here he describes finitude's Despair of Lacking its opposite infinitude, and how this can lead to a false makeup of 'the self '.
To lack infinitude is despairing confinement, narrowness.Despairing narrow-mindedness is to lack primitiveness, or to have stripped oneself of one's primitiveness, from a spiritual point of view to have emasculated oneself. for every human being is primitively organized as a self, characteristically determined to become himself
While infinite's despair is ones which leads oneself into the infinite and loses itself in not being ground by the finite, here we have another kind of despair which allows itself to be, so to speak, cheated on its self by 'the others'. by seeing the multitude of people around it, by being busied with all sorts of worldly affairs, by being wise to the ways of the world, such a person forgets himself, dares not to believe in himself, finds being himself to risky, finds it much easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, along with the crowd.
Now this form of despair goes practically unnoticed in the world. Precisely by losing himself in this way, such a person gains all that is required for a flawless performance in everyday life, yes, for making a great success out of life. Far from anyone thinking he is in despair, he is just what a human ought to be. Naturally the world has generally no understanding of what is truely horrifying. The despair that not only dose not cause any inconvenience in life, but in fact makes life convenient and comfortable, is naturally enough in no way regarded as despair. That this is the worldly view is evident, among other things, from early all the proverbs, which are nothing but rules of prudence.
For example, it is said that one rues then times having spoken, for the one time one rues in silence, and why? because the external fact of having spoken can involve one in disagreeable consequences, since it is something actual. But to have kept silent! yet this is the most dangerous of all. for in staying silent a person is thrown wholly upon his own devices, here actuality dose not come to his aid by punishing him, by heaping on him the consequences of his words. but for that very reason the person who knows the true object of dread fears more than anything, any fault, that leaves an inward turn and leaves no trace on the outside world. the world thinks if is dangerous to venture in this way, and why? because one might lose; The prudent thing is not to venture. and yet by not venturing it is so dreadfully easy to lose what would be hard to lose by venturing and which, whatever you lost, you will in any case never lose in this way, so easily, so completely, as thought it where nothing - oneself!
For if i have ventured wrongly, very well, life then helps me with its penalty, but if i haven't ventured at all, who helps me then? and when, in the bargain, by venturing in the highest sense i cravenly gain all earthly advantages - and lose myself!..
And finitude's despair is just so. A man in this kind of despair can very well live on in temporality; indeed he can do so all the more easily, be to all appearances a human being, praised by others, honored and esteemed, occupied with all the goals of temporal life. Yes, what we call worldliness simply consists of such people who pawn themselves to the world. They use the abilities, amass wealth, carry out worldly enterprise, make prudent calculations, etc., and perhaps are mentioned in history, but the are not themselves.
-Soren kierkegaard
