ABSTRACT
For Kierkegaard, anxiety is a temptress that “disquiets” and “ensnares” the unwary individual, a “feminine weakness” that “is reflected more in Eve than in Adam” (Kierkegaard 1980: 64). Anxiety is a product of woman’s more “sensuous” nature, the “immediacy” and openness she exhibits to the felt experiences of her bodily being and to her worldly surroundings (1980: 65). And yet, despite, or perhaps because of, its close relation to sex and sexuality, Kierkegaard recognizes anxiety’s essential ambiguity. It presages both the possibility of freedom and of the “fall.” “[T]he greatness of anxiety is a prophecy of the greatness of the perfection,” (1980: 64) but for the finite and bounded individual freedom’s infinite possibilities carry untold risks.
