Modernity and Despair in Kierkegaard: Implications of the Critique of Objectivity for the Task of Becoming a Self

SKC Workshop Autumn 2026 with Maitê Vieira, Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Brazil.

This study investigates the relationship between modernity and despair in Søren A. Kierkegaard’s thought, seeking to understand how certain characteristics of modernity may hinder the task of becoming a self. Drawing on the critique of the primacy of objectivity and the distinction between objective and subjective truth developed in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, it brings this discussion into relation with the understanding of the self and despair presented in The Sickness unto Death.

I argue that the privileging of objectivity as a paradigm for accessing truth may lead individuals to seek objective answers to questions that require decision, commitment, and subjective appropriation, thereby making more difficult the individual’s relation to inwardness and the appropriation of the self. Modernity, therefore, is not understood as a cause of despair, since despair consists in the individual’s misrelation to the self and remains the individual’s responsibility. Rather, certain characteristics of modernity may create conditions that make the task of becoming a self, as well as the individual’s relation to the power that established the self, more difficult.

About the series

This workshop is part of the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre's Autumn Workshops 2026: