Abstract. The article analyses the understanding of freedom and its subject in the philosophical views of S. Kierkegaard. In German classical philosophy, the understanding of human freedom was based on an abstract subject and was associated with universality and necessity. In contrast, Kierkegaard considered freedom in terms of human existence. Freedom, according to Kierkegaard, is the root of man’s existence, his “possibility to be”. It is revealed not in a rational way, but in the experience of the irrationality of one’s own life. Kierkegaard connects freedom with the psychological states of a person – fear, guilt, despair, and interprets it as the birth of the spirit, selfconsciousness. A person has two paths – aesthetic and ethical ones. The aesthetic path is associated with pleasures, natural givenness and depends on external circumstances. Although the vast majority of people follow this path, according to Kierkegaard, they do not make an existential choice, and the concept of freedom is inapplicable to their existence. Only the ethical choice gives birth to a personality, and its freedom lies in the ability to unconditionally distinguish between the values of good and evil. Making a choice, a person takes responsibility for any manifestation of his “I” and own spiritual world, acquires an inɰnite value and thus becomes like God. Individual
freedom is self-determination from within through fear and despair.
Keywords: freedom, existential choice, despair, fear, guilt, ethical and aesthetic paths
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