"Is despair a merit or a defect? Purely dialectically it is both. If one were to think of despair only in the abstract, without reference to some particular despairer, one would have to say that it is an enormous merit. The possibility of this sickness is [humanity's] advantage over the beast, and it is an advantage which characterizes him quite otherwise than the upright posture, for it bespeaks the infinite... loftiness of [the] being spirit...
And yet not only is it the greatest misfortune and misery actually to be in despair; no, it is ruin. Generally the relation between possibility and actuality is not like this; if the ability to be 'such and such' is meritorious, then it is an even greater merit actually to be it. That is to say, in relation to being able, being is an ascent. In the case of despair, however, in relation to being able to be, actually being is one of descent... so what amounts to an ascent in the case of despair is not being in it...
Despair is the imbalance in a relation of synthesis, in a relation which relates to itself."
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