Temporal Depth and the Breakdown of the Generative Self: Multiscale Predictive Hierarchy (Friston/Varela) vs. Kierkegaardian Temporality (1844)

This paper formalizes Søren Kierkegaard’s proto-phenomenological psychology in Begrebet Angest (1844) through the biophysical lens of the Free Energy Principle (FEP) and multiscale predictive processing (Friston, Varela). We demonstrate that Kierkegaard’s ontological definition of the self—a synthesis of psyche and body mediated and sustained by spirit—operates as a hierarchical generative model characterized by cross-scale temporal depth. While enactive health entails a vertically integrated cascade from synaptic inference (Øieblikket) to narrative openness (det Evige), pathological collapse—formalized by Vigilius Haufniensis as the demonic (det Dæmoniske)—manifests as a catastrophic failure of precision weighting, marked by sensorimotor petrification (Indesluttethed) and sudden paroxysmal discharges (det Pludselige). By translating existential dread into the breakdown of deep generative policies under unresolvable epistemic uncertainty, we provide a unified neurocomputational and phenomenological framework for somatic resistance to digital and existential entropy.