Left wing melancholy. Left wing despair. How is Kierkegaard going to help us with that?, W. wonders. Can he help us with that? He reads out his notes.
Despair comes not from without, but from within, Kierkegaard says. I inflict it on myself. Although despair seems to be about something external to me, it is really over oneself. By the same token, though, I am free not to despair. I am free to hope. But this requires, first of all, that I become aware of my despair. Only then might I understand that the real sickness unto death is the desire to be rid of myself when I cannot be rid of myself.
And to be rid of the world?, W. asks. To be rid of it, the whole of our crisis-ridden world?
Kierkegaard wants us to remain ourselves, only deepening our self-relation. He wants us to choose that inwardness in which I might discover real religious commitment. He wants us to find ourselves, which means not merely to know oneself, as Socrates recommended. 'Know yourself', he wrote, 'and look at yourself in the mirror of the Word in order to know yourself properly'.
The mirror of the Word. It is only when when we stand before the God who, revealed in Jesus the Messiah, came into the world, suffered and died for the sake of the sinner, that despair becomes hope. Only then that I might will to be myself, which means assenting to one's existence as the gift of God, and to the task God sets us. To know one's creaturehood and sinfulness, but to know, too, God as our creator, our judge and our redeemer.
Ah, this is leading us nowhere, W. says. He's too Jewish for Kierkegaard! To identify the Messiah with a person, with Jesus, isn't that the mistake? Messianism is primarily about time, W. says, that's what Kierkegaard seems to miss.
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