ABSTRACT
To begin the discussion concerning “temptation,” Kierkegaard, using his pseudonym, Vigilius Haufniensis, points us to Franz von Baader’s discussion of temptation, which warns against thinking of temptation as “one-sidedly as temptation to evil or as something with the purpose of bringing man to fall, when temptation should rather be viewed as freedom’s ‘necessary other.’ ”2 To this Kierkegaard adds, “Vigilius Haufniensis has quite correctly drawn attention to the concept ‘anxiety’ (Angst) as the middle term in relation to temptation. Actually, it is the dialectic of temptation. If a person could be entirely free of anxiety, temptation would not have access to him.”3 It is our ability to become anxious in the realization of possibility wherefrom temptation arises. Thus, temptation’s power is “in ‘the moment.’ ”4 The individual finds himself captivated by the moment’s intensity, by the anxiousness of the moment as possibility for what may come.5 With this moment of intensity and anxiety, the individual is conquered by the moment, which lends itself to the following moment of impotency.6 Such an individual will then seek to avoid coming into contact with anything or anyone that may give rise to temptation. Thus, the individual exists in a constant state of anxiety, which nothing, humanly speaking, is able to relieve.7 The individual continually flees from every possible avenue from
believes “that it is impossible for him to continue to survive the temptation; if his understanding guarantees that it has found a place where temptation cannot reach him-then he is secure.”9 But what the individual forgets is that temptation’s power is one that is not external to the individual but is rather internal. As a power that rests internally in all of us, temptation awakens freedom’s possibility to the call of actuality.10
