ABSTRACT
Kierkegaard and Heidegger both place fundamental emphasis on the possibility of personal transformation, that is, a radical change in an individual's commitments and self-understanding. I argue that juxtaposing them can illuminate some key dynamics in post-Hegelian debates over such change, its limits and conditions, and the forms it can and should take. I concentrate on what Kierkegaard calls a “pathos-filled transition”, a transformation in which a specific emotion, broadly construed, plays a central role. Comparing Kierkegaard's 1843 Either/Or and Heidegger's 1927 Being and Time, I examine their treatments of anxiety and depression and the implications for a philosophy of transformation.
