Fear in Existentialism

You will find discussion of the significance and nature of fear in Kierkegaard, but by far the most compelling account is to be found in the work of Heidegger. He represents fear by a feeling that 'it is coming close.' Fear takes many forms, but we can live with these because they are most often 'at a distance.' Real fear is when the potential threat, whatever form that takes, has broken through-"In fearing as such, what we have thus characterised as threatening is freed and allowed to matter to us." Fear is a source of both insight and illusion: it makes things matter.