On hanosis

Kierkegaard on the move from objectivity to subjectivity in The sin of David

Thomas Burrus

pp. 135-154

in: Bruce Ellis Benson (ed), Evil, fallenness, and finitude, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

According to Søren Kierkegaard, "Sin is: before God, or with the conception of God, in despair not to will to be oneself, or in despair to will to be oneself." With this in view, in this chapter, I shall explore the existential and phenomenological realization of sin—particularly as Kierkegaard analyzes this aspect in the "Sin of David." I shall argue that Kierkegaard holds that a genuine consciousness of sin occurs in the individual only when he or she makes the leap from the objective fact of sin externally to a subjective phenomenological awareness of sin internally, and I shall refer to this movement as hanosis—and I take for it to mean "the subjective apprehension and realization of one's own sin before God." Furthermore, I shall argue that the orthopractic reflection upon the Word of God in the individual is the efficient cause of this existential transition.

Cited authors

Kierkegaard Søren