Anxiety's Ambiguity: via Kierkegaard & Heidegger

This dissertation produces a systematic account of anxiety, and does so by way of interpreting the account of anxiety given to us by Kierkegaard and Heidegger. The methodology of this dissertation is such that it interprets the anxiety in Kierkegaard through Heidegger’s lens, and also interprets the anxiety in Heidegger through Kierkegaard’s lens. By this method this dissertation harmonizes the accounts of anxiety in Kierkegaard and Heidegger, and in this way produces a systematic account of anxiety by way of these two authors. In particular, this dissertation argues that anxiety in both Kierkegaard and Heidegger has a particular structure: that it is ambiguous, which means that it is structurally constituted by an antipathy (a repulsion) and a sympathy (an attraction). In harmonizing Kierkegaard’s and Heidegger’s accounts of anxiety in this way, this dissertation produces a systematic account of ambiguous anxiety.