The Concept of Anxiety
The Concept of Anxiety (): "A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin", is a philosophical work written by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1844. The original 1944 English translation by Walter Lowrie (now out of print), had the title The Concept of Dread. "The Concept of Anxiety" was dedicated "to the late professor Poul Martin Møller". He used the pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis (which, according to Kierkegaard scholar Josiah Thompson, is the Latin transcription for "the Watchman" of Copenhagen) for "The Concept of Anxiety".
The Concept of Anxiety
Kierkegaard focuses on the first anxiety experienced by man: Adam's choice to eat from God's forbidden tree of knowledge or not. Since the concepts of good and evil did not come into existence before Adam ate the fruit, Adam had no concept of good and evil, and did not know that eating from the tree was "evil." What he did know was that God told him not to eat from the tree. The anxiety comes from the fact that God's prohibition itself implies that Adam is free and that he could choose to obey God or not. After Adam ate from the tree, sin was born. So, according to Kierkegaard, anxiety precedes sin. Kierkegaard mentions that anxiety is the presupposition for hereditary sin (which Augustine was the first to call "peccatum originale", "original sin").