ABSTRACT
At a first consideration, despair and faith seem to be antithetical conditions. But upon a closer view, they prove to be very close to each other. Published by Rubbettino Press in 1999, Disperazione e fede in Søren Kierkegaard. Una lotta di confine, analyzes these issues by, so to speak, listening to the voice of existence rather than approaching these issues speculatively. The subject of the book is one of the most distinctive themes of Kierkegaard's philosophical-religious reflection: the conception of the self as found in Kierkegaard's The Sickness unto Death. In a Kafkian sense, the dialectic between despair and faith is presented by Iiritano as a border struggle where the single individual upbuilds himself in light of being tragically divided between reality and ideality, but free to accept or reject his relationship with God. In Iiritano's essay, despair and faith are placed in an existential-religious dimension, which no metaphysical-transcendental system can solve or ignore in their enigmatic and paradoxical nature.
