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     I thank Andre van den Bor for his reply.  He asks whether
anxiety has not a much broader object than death, namely,
freedom, and whether for Kierkegaard anxiety means anxiety of
life as well as anxiety of death?

     I do not disagree. Death is a metaphor that may include not
only the biological cessation of life, the stopping of the heart
beat, the subsidence of respiration, the irreversible degradation
of the proteins that constitute body tissues; but any loss that
appears irretrievable, any injury that seems irreparable, any any
limitation of my activity that is irreversible is a harbinger of
death as the ultimate limitation, injury and loss; so that life
itself may be construed as a process of dying, ein Absterben, as
the Germans would say.  I am reminded of Rilke's poem which
describes death so encompassing that even with laughing lips
(lachenden Munds) we are death's; and when one deems oneself in
the midst of life, death dares to weep in the midst of ones self.

                    Der Tod is grosz,
               wir sind die Seinen
               Lachenden Munds.
               Wenn wir uns mitten im Leben meinen,
               Wagt er zu weinen,
               Mitten in uns.


     I have, moreover, no difficulty with the inclusion of loss
of freedom into the circle of mortal anxiety. If, following
Aristotle, we construe life as the exercise of (vital) functions,
then the curtailment of those functions, from whatever cause, may
be experienced as an anticipation of biological death; I see no
reason why anxiety for loss of freedom should not also be
interpreted as a species of deathanxiety.

     Andre van den Bor asks further:

         Is it possible to say anyting about Kierkegaard's
    concept of anxiety without saying anything about sin?

     I am sure that it is possible, but I am not sure that it is
wise.  To the extent that Kierkegaard's attribution of anxiety to
original sin is valid, one would, in recapitulating Kierkegaard's
account of anxiety merely denominate that sin by another name. So
why not facilitate communication by adhering to Kierkegaard's
terminology?

     I do not presume to redefine Andre van den Bor's argument;
but it seems apposite to note, in a general perspective, that
much effort has been expended in trying to interpret
Kierkegaard's thought independent of its context of religious
dogma. That is a challenging exercise; but to the extent that
such an exercise is meaningful, it will recreate under a
different terminology the same religious experience which its
premises were calculated to exclude. Indeed, the circumstance
that a critic seeks to interpret Kierkegaard's thought
independent of the religious dogma in which that thought is
embedded, implies that the critic presuming to understand
Kierkegaard is unable to understand the religious tradition that
molded his thought: a not very auspicious beginning.

     I wish I were a Kierkegaard scholar. I surely wish not to
masquerade as one. When I read Kierkegaard in English translation
(Swenson and Lowrie) I am embarrassed by the stylistic and
conceptual incongruities of the two languages that the
translation purports to reconcile; when I read Kierkegaard in
German (translated by Emanuel Hirsch), I am haunted by the black
shirt of the Schutzstaffel (SS) which the translator donned
voluntarily, so that notwithstanding the felicity and polish of
the translation, the thing strikes me as a monumental travesty,
and I should be more comfortable in Dogpatch with Li'l Abner and
Daisy Mae than conversing with Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen in
Professor Hirsch's Studierzimmer where the cross and the swastika
hang on the wall, side by side. So I stumble through the Danish
text which I gleaned from the Internet. Grasping the meaning of a
sentence becomes tantamount to memorizing it, and my progression
through the paragraphs is so slow that I despair, in the few
years that are left to me, of ever reaching a conclusion.  I ask
you, if you read my comments, never to lose sight of the
ignorance in which they are conceived.

     Andre van den Bor is, I think, eminently correct in his
reminder that Kierkegaard presents death as a subjective
experience.  He writes:

     >   "... in Concluding Unscientific Postscript as >   well
in his third discourse 'At the graveside' >   in Tre Taler ved
taenkte Lejligheder Kierkegaard >   make his thoughts about death
far from objective >   - I think. He writes something which goes
like this: >   to think about death is something quite different
>   than to think about my death. Is it "uberhaupt possible >   to
think about death without thinking about your own >   death? Out
of existential point of view it isn't, is it?

     What Andre van den Bor describes is obviously very true.
Rilke, in his journal, "Malte Laurids Brigge", gives a very vivid
account of dying "ones own death" (seinen eigenen Tod), which I
construe as referring to the subjective experience of dying,
contrasting this with the apparently impersonal alienated public
dying in the vast Hotel de Dieu of the metropolis.

     Nothing was further from my thoughts than to deny that the
anticipation of dying is individual, personal and subjective.
The point I was trying to make, perhaps erroneously, and
certainly inadequately, is that subjectively the moment of death
does not, cannot exist, because we have no reason to infer that
an individual can be conscious of his death. The classical
paradigm, of course, is sleep. I am tired, I may wish to fall
asleep or struggle not to fall asleep; but when I am asleep I am
unconscious, and therefore I cannot know that I have fallen
asleep. When I awaken from sleep (the resurrection is the
paradigm) my inference that I have slept is purely negative: from
the absence of any memory of mental activity in the interval.

     In order to suffer in death, I must be conscious of being
dead. To the extent that consciousness of being dead is an
impossibility, suffering in death, - or death as suffering is an
impossibility.  When I previously wrote that death is the
apotheosis of objectivity, I meant that 'Todesangst' or 'D/ods-
Angest', are in consequence of looking at death from the outside,
objectively, standing at and looking into the grave, as distinct
from lying in the grave, which we can neither imagine nor
experience. If my interpretation is valid: if the death which is
albeit subjectively contemplated in anxiety or Angest is
objective death; and if subjective death can occasion no such
anxiety, then I have an explanation for Kierkegaard's belief in
immortality as being consistent and consonant with his summons to
the individual to become truly Christian, to become a subject, to
become subjective.  For if in this respect, and particularly in
this respect, subjectivity is the truth, then objective death as
an occasion of fear does not exist; and what more can we demand
of immortality here and now than to be freed irrevocably and
conclusively from the anticipation of death?

     Given my ignorance of Kierkegaard's texts, I must dispel any
illusion that my statement is a summary of his voluminous
writings. The best I can say is that I understand my account as a
conceptual model which seems to me consistent with Kierkegaard's
writings as I have read them, consistent also with my own
observations and experience; but in no sense a "system" that I
could with good conscience commend to any one else.

     Some years ago an acquaintance of mine sent me a poem, which
she said was an epitaph that Kierkegaard composed for himself.  I
question its authenticity, since the words are German, and the
poetry is too melodious for all but the most inspired
translation:

            Nur eine kleine Zeit, dann ist's gewonnen
            Dann ist der ganze Streit in nichts zeronnen.
            Dann darf ich laben mich an Lebensbaechen,
            Und ewig, ewiglich mit Jesus sprechen.

     (Only a little while: all will be won. Then the whole battle
 will be done. Eternal springs will life restore,
 and I will speak with Jesus, then and evermore.)

     It is unclear whether the battle (der Streit) refers to the
conflict with the state church, or more the pervasive ills of
existence. I am reminded of Socrates' expectation that he might,
in death, endlessly converse with Homer and other heros.

     I hope everyone will forgive the translation and someone
more scholarly than I will tell me whether there ever was an
epitaph for Kierkegaard's grave.

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