Existential Anxiety

by Haridas Chaudhuri

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Existentialist thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, Paul Tillich and others have written a good deal about anxiety as an existential category. It is not merely an uneasy and fearful feeling caused by the changing circumstances of life. Existential anxiety is a type of anxiety which is rooted in the very existence of man. It is inescapable and unavoidable. The more a person becomes aware of the essential structure of existence, the more this kind of anxiety is stirred up. One can eliminate this anxiety only by denying life itself. Life-denying philosophers have tried to lift man out of existential anxiety in the name of the transcendent and timeless spirit. The spirit has be affirmed as the sublime negation of life with all its chance and change, and its hazard and horror.

But those who wish to accept life with all its hazard and horror, along with its boundless promise and glory, must accept anxiety as an essential ingredient of existence. It cannot be separated from life, but can be made to serve the purpose of life as a source of stimulation and inward strength. One can take anxiety upon oneself and move forward with the creative adventure of life.

There are two essential characteristics of human existence: finitude and freedom. As a finite entity, man emerges out of nothingness, and steadily and inescapably heads toward nothingness. Every step he takes forward in life is also a step towards death. his whole life is like a gay bubble that makes a brief noise on the surface of the swift current of time. It is a brief interval of light between two unfathomable realms of darkness. His life is exposed on all sides to the threat of nonbeing. Contingency is writ large across the face of the world in which he lives. Anything may happen any moment in this world. As he steps out of his home, crosses the street, rides in an automobile or airplane, a sudden accident may strike him down. Political brush fires, ever present around the glove, may at any time erupt into a global catastrophe, reducing civilization to a shambles. Even when a person is peacefully asleep in his own home, nobody can tell what may happen to his sweet nest of security. A sudden earthquake or a wanton act of incendiarism may suddenly reduce his safety to a mockery. Even when one outlasts all such hazards and untoward happenings, the cruel hand of death is sure to snatch him away one day. nothing can stop this ultimate decree of nonbeing. The intensity of existential anxiety is in direct proportion to the awareness of finitude and contingency of life. So Dr. Tillich rightly observed: "Anxiety is finitude, experiences as one's own finitude." It is "the existential awareness of nonbeing."

Anxiety and Freedom

Another essential characteristic of man is his freedom. Of all the living creatures, man is born the most helpless, because he is born with a very flexible nervous system. But in this very helplessness does also lie his glory. He is born with a tremendous potential. He has the ability to make or mar his future. He has the possibility within him to rise to the height of divine glory by creatively expressing such higher values as truth, beauty, justice, freedom, love. But he also has the possibility of descending to the level of the brute, or even lower than the brutish. Senseless cruelty and devilish destruction surpassing that of most ferocious animals may be his. Such brutal possibility is the implication of the freedom that is man's. Anxiety is born of reflection upon the possibilities of freedom . . .

Freedom also produces anxiety as a sequel to the sense of responsibility it generates. When we freely choose a task such as the founding of a family or the serving of a social institution, we feel the responsibility for our chosen action. We may have to fight against odds. We may have to mobilize resources against much enmity and opposition. We have to carefully weigh in the balance how our various actions are going to affect the weal and woe of other people. This constant uneasiness naturally lies upon the head that wears responsibility. Considerable emotional stress is generated. This encourages the tendency to escape from freedom. Such an escape is the line of least resistance. But it reflects emotional immaturity. It is by boldly accepting responsibility and by taking upon oneself the resulting anxiety, that a strong and mature personality emerges.

In escaping from freedom a person turns away from his authentic potentiality of self-existence or Being-in-the-world. In avoiding the anxiety of freedom, he follows the crowd and loses himself in the crowd. He gets lost in the anonymous mass life. He is steeped in the immediacy of inauthentic being. This cannot but produce another kind of anxiety, the anxiety of spiritual death. Man's desire to develop as a unique spiritual entity is too deep-rooted to be ignored. Complete suppression of this desire produces the anxiety of self-alienation . . . But by accepting the anxiety of gradual self-development and creative freedom, one can transform anxiety into the energy of creative self-fulfillment.

Growing spiritual insight can nullify the corrosive influence of anxiety. It can effectively turn the anxiety of freedom into the joy of inward fullness . . .

But the root reason for anxiety is an even deeper kind of "primal ignorance" . . .

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