ABSTRACT
Soren Kierkegaard lived in golden age Denmark, at the eventide of the early modern period. According to Kierkegaard, meaning in life resides in accepting oneself as the task; but one can only secure meaning through a proper relation to God. Kierkegaard rightly noted that this reduction destroys the need for personal, individual faith, and cheapens the struggle he saw as implicit to being a Christian. The objective truth of Christianity does not produce meaning, and may in fact pose a problem. Kierkegaardian despair is a rejection of the task of becoming oneself, a failure to become what one wants to be, and an unwillingness to hope in God as the source of meaning for one's life. The concept of despair at work is not of a condition resulting from the loss of a good which is necessary for happiness, but instead is a pervasive existential nihilism – a despair over oneself.
