The value of anxiety in Kierkegaard and Simone de Beauvoir

The value of anxiety in Kierkegaard and Simone de Beauvoir. A Talk by Erin Plunkett.

There has been an explosion of anxiety in recent years, both diagnosed anxiety disorders—the most common mental health disorder worldwide—and wider feelings of anxiety, especially acute among young people. Existentialism and phenomenology offer a rich resource for thinking about the meaning of anxiety, one that has contributed to psychotherapeutic discourse but also diverges from it. While most therapeutic approaches and increasingly educational practices aim at the reduction of anxiety, Kierkegaard and Beauvoir argue for anxiety’s value, particularly for its role in forging a meaningful existence. For Kierkegaard, anxiety is a ‘holy hypochondria’ that won’t allow us to forget the spiritual dimension of ourselves.

Dr Erin Plunkett is Joint Head of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire and works on Kierkegaard, phenomenology, existentialism. and philosophy of religion. She is the editor of Kierkegaard and Possibility (2023) and The Selected Writings of Jan Patočka: Care for the Soul (2022), as well as the author of A Philosophy of the Essay (2018).