The Dizziness of Freedom

I am amazed that some people can be so lacking in anxiety as to imagine that they have grasped the truth of their art on the first try. —Henri Matisse In his 1844 work, The Concept of Anxiety, Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote, “anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” (In some translations, the word “dread” is used instead of “dizziness.”) Freedom is the capacity to make your own choices. The more freedom one has (to make choices, some of which may be fraught with danger or uncertainty), the more anxious one feels. Unlike fear, which has a specific object—a known undesirable outcome—anxiety is a general unease about unforeseen outcomes. The greater the mystery one faces, the more unknown, unpredictable, and consequential the outcome of a choice may be, the greater the anxiety one may feel when called to choose, and the greater the temptation to opt for easy, safe, and predictable options rather than riskier and less certain ones. Kierkegaard compared the feeling of facing a…