Kierkegaard on the Value of Despair

Kierkegaard's 1849 book The Sickness Unto Death treats despair not as a malady of the spirit but as a force that steers the self from what it actually is toward what it can be. In the text, despair is an imbalance in the self's relation to itself, and the self's attempt to be rid of itself is described as an existential impossibility that deepens despair. The text also presents despair as an aspect of spirit that connects a person to the eternal, which the self cannot escape.