Abstract

In this article I intend to relate the structures of care and despair, according to Kierkegaard. Firstly, I will analyse the structure of care. Three fundamental aspects will be identified: the need to consider self-existence from a global point of view; the need for an axis for that life-view; the need for correspondence between self-existence and life-view. Apparently, this structure is formal and arbitrary. Secondly, I will analyse the structure of despair. Three fundamental aspects will be analysed: the requirement for a life-view which can be applied to the totality of subjective existence; the requirement for an unconditioned instance of meaning; the requirement for the exclusion of the possibility of failure. Finally, I intend to discuss the conclusions of the previous analyses, namely, that the possibility of despair reveals that the structure of care is not arbitrary.