A REPOSITORY OF POSSIBILITY AND FREEDOM: READING ARJUNA’S EXISTENTIAL CRISIS THROUGH KIERKEGAARD’S CONCEPT OF ANXIETY
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Abstract
Kierkegaard’s formulations upon anxiety and freedom have profoundly shaped the thought of such existentialist thinkers as Sartre, and Camus, especially their notions of angst and despair. But while these latter writers came to see anxiety as something negative, Kierkegaard had a more positive understanding. It is the gift of possibilities, and a crucial stage of transition or suspension before action or non-action is performed. Kierkegaard called this transitional state a 'dreaming state' or a suspension before action or non-action. This essay will show how the Bhagavad Gita in the Indian tradition illustrates this idea. The existentially anxious Arjuna, epitomizes this state in his dialectical engagement with Kṛṣṇa, and Arjuna’s anxiety can be seen to be ontologically liberating rather than debilitating as it is sometimes understood in the later existentialist tradition.
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