Who First Used Abyss Mean In Existentialist Writings?

2025-08-29 17:29:27 273

3 Answers

Liam
Liam
2025-08-30 23:04:29
When I try to pin down who first used the 'abyss' in existentialist writings, I think of two springs feeding the motif. On one hand Søren Kierkegaard—earlier and theological—already uses abyssal imagery to describe despair and the distance between the self and the infinite in works like 'Fear and Trembling' and 'The Sickness Unto Death'. On the other hand Friedrich Nietzsche’s concise line in 'Beyond Good and Evil' about gazing into the abyss is the iconic secular version that later thinkers riffed on.

There’s also an older, biblical and classical backdrop—the Latin phrase 'abyssus abyssum invocat' existed long before them—so existentialists were inheriting an image with deep cultural roots. I tend to treat Kierkegaard as the first major existential figure to deploy the abyss as an existential-theological problem, and Nietzsche as the one who repurposed it into the stark, philosophical trope that stuck in 20th-century existentialism.
Paisley
Paisley
2025-09-03 05:44:51
I was chatting with a friend about scary metaphors in philosophy the other day and the 'abyss' came up—who first used it in existentialist thinking? If you press me for one standout moment, Nietzsche’s image from 'Beyond Good and Evil' is the one everyone remembers: the abyss that stares back. It’s compact, cinematic, and you can see why later existentialists and writers latched onto it as a way to talk about confronting meaninglessness or moral disorientation.

Still, if you dig earlier, Søren Kierkegaard used abyss-like language too, but with a different aim. Kierkegaard’s abyss is often theological—a chasm between finite human existence and the infinite, and a source of dread related to faith and selfhood in books like 'Either/Or' and 'The Sickness Unto Death'. So Nietzsche gets the credit for the bite-sized, famous metaphor, while Kierkegaard gave the existential abyss a deeper, religious pedigree. Personally I like reading them together: Kierkegaard gives me the interior spiritual terror, Nietzsche gives me the modern, mirror-like stare. If you’re curious, reading a few select chapters from both feels like comparing two different night skies—same dark, different stars.
Ezra
Ezra
2025-09-03 23:00:43
Late at night I dug through a stack of philosophy books once—coffee gone cold, notes scribbled everywhere—and what struck me was how layered the image of the 'abyss' is in existential thought. If you want a name for the first major thinker who used the idea in a way that feeds into existentialism, I’d point to Søren Kierkegaard. He’s earlier than Nietzsche and frames the abyss in a theological, inward way: the gap between the finite self and the infinite God, the dread and despair of existing as a self. You can see shades of that in 'Fear and Trembling' and more explicitly in 'The Sickness Unto Death', where despair is an existential chasm you have to relate to.

That said, Friedrich Nietzsche's formulation — that famous line from 'Beyond Good and Evil' about gazing into the abyss and the abyss gazing back — is the image that later secular existentialists and artists kept quoting. Nietzsche gives the abyss a more psychological and nihilistic spin, which resonated through 20th-century writers. So historically Kierkegaard planted an abyss-shaped seed in a religious register, and Nietzsche reworked the image into a modern, often frightening, confrontation with meaninglessness. Both of them, in different registers, are crucial to how existentialists later used the motif, and I often find myself switching between their takes whenever I reread passages in 'Being and Time' or 'Being and Nothingness'. I like that this gives the abyss both a theological depth and a cold, staring void — two flavors that keep turning up in novels, films, and games I love.
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