Angst is the
German word for 'anxiety' or 'dread', used by the philosophers of
existentialism—notably the Danish theologian S0ren Kierkegaard in Begrebet
Angst (The Concept of Dread, 1844)—to denote a state of anguish that we feel as
we are confronted by the burden of our freedom and the accompanying
responsibility to impose values and meanings on an absurd universe.