The Sickness Unto Death
E170488
The Sickness Unto Death is a philosophical and theological work by Søren Kierkegaard that explores the nature of despair and the human self in relation to faith and God.
All labels observed (2)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| The Sickness Unto Death canonical | 3 |
| The Sickness unto Death | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T1495233 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: The Sickness Unto Death Context triple: [Søren Kierkegaard, notableWork, The Sickness Unto Death]
-
A.
Fear and Trembling
Fear and Trembling is a philosophical work by Søren Kierkegaard that explores the nature of faith, ethics, and paradox through a meditation on the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac.
-
B.
The Gay Science
The Gay Science is a philosophical work by Friedrich Nietzsche that explores themes such as the death of God, the affirmation of life, and the origins of moral values in a series of aphorisms and poetic reflections.
-
C.
Critique of the Power of Judgment
Critique of the Power of Judgment is Immanuel Kant’s third major Critique, in which he develops his influential theories of aesthetic judgment and teleology to mediate between the realms of nature and freedom.
-
D.
The Freedom of the Will
The Freedom of the Will is an influential 18th-century theological and philosophical treatise by Jonathan Edwards that rigorously defends a compatibilist view of human freedom and divine sovereignty.
-
E.
Pascalian Meditations
Pascalian Meditations is a major theoretical work by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu that deepens his concepts of habitus, field, and symbolic power through a philosophical engagement with Pascal and the history of social thought.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: The Sickness Unto Death Target entity description: The Sickness Unto Death is a philosophical and theological work by Søren Kierkegaard that explores the nature of despair and the human self in relation to faith and God.
-
A.
Fear and Trembling
Fear and Trembling is a philosophical work by Søren Kierkegaard that explores the nature of faith, ethics, and paradox through a meditation on the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac.
-
B.
The Gay Science
The Gay Science is a philosophical work by Friedrich Nietzsche that explores themes such as the death of God, the affirmation of life, and the origins of moral values in a series of aphorisms and poetic reflections.
-
C.
Critique of the Power of Judgment
Critique of the Power of Judgment is Immanuel Kant’s third major Critique, in which he develops his influential theories of aesthetic judgment and teleology to mediate between the realms of nature and freedom.
-
D.
The Freedom of the Will
The Freedom of the Will is an influential 18th-century theological and philosophical treatise by Jonathan Edwards that rigorously defends a compatibilist view of human freedom and divine sovereignty.
-
E.
Pascalian Meditations
Pascalian Meditations is a major theoretical work by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu that deepens his concepts of habitus, field, and symbolic power through a philosophical engagement with Pascal and the history of social thought.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (49)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
philosophical work
ⓘ
theological work ⓘ |
| addressesTopic |
despair as not being conscious of having a self
ⓘ
despair as not willing to be oneself ⓘ despair as willing to be oneself apart from God ⓘ |
| aimedAt | Christian readers concerned with faith and selfhood ⓘ |
| author | Søren Kierkegaard ⓘ |
| centralTheme |
Christian faith
ⓘ
despair ⓘ relationship between the self and God ⓘ the nature of the self ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin | Denmark ⓘ |
| definesSelfAs |
a relation that relates itself to itself
ⓘ
a synthesis of freedom and necessity ⓘ a synthesis of the finite and the infinite ⓘ a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal ⓘ |
| dividesDespairInto |
despair of defiance
ⓘ
despair of weakness ⓘ |
| followedBy | Practice in Christianity ⓘ |
| form | prose treatise ⓘ |
| genre |
Christian existentialist work
ⓘ
religious philosophy ⓘ |
| influenced |
20th-century existentialist theology
ⓘ
Karl Barth ⓘ Paul Tillich ⓘ Reinhold Niebuhr ⓘ modern existentialist philosophy ⓘ |
| keyConcept |
despair as sickness of the spirit
ⓘ
selfhood achieved in relation to God ⓘ sin as intensified despair before God ⓘ |
| notableIdea | despair as a sickness unto death that does not lead to physical death ⓘ |
| originalLanguage | Danish ⓘ |
| originalTitle | Sygdommen til Døden ⓘ |
| philosophicalConcern |
human freedom and necessity
ⓘ
relationship between faith and reason ⓘ subjectivity and inwardness ⓘ |
| philosophicalTradition | existentialism ⓘ |
| precedes | Practice in Christianity ⓘ |
| publicationYear | 1849 ⓘ |
| publishedUnderPseudonym | Anti-Climacus ⓘ |
| relatedWorkByAuthor |
Fear and Trembling
ⓘ
Practice in Christianity ⓘ The Concept of Anxiety ⓘ |
| religiousContext |
Lutheranism
ⓘ
surface form:
Lutheran Christianity
|
| subtitle | A Christian psychological exposition for upbuilding and awakening ⓘ |
| theologicalConcern |
Christian concept of salvation
ⓘ
despair before God ⓘ nature of sin ⓘ |
| workSeries | second authorship of Søren Kierkegaard ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: The Sickness Unto Death Description of subject: The Sickness Unto Death is a philosophical and theological work by Søren Kierkegaard that explores the nature of despair and the human self in relation to faith and God.
Referenced by (4)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
this entity surface form:
The Sickness unto Death