Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
crescendo, from which it is possible to make it productive for philosophical
purposes. The problem from the point of view of psychiatry, however, is
that one might get stuck in anxiety or boredom as destructive, rather than
productive, life experiences. These moods can be so overwhelming that it
becomes impossible to return to homelikeness again. Unhomelikeness is a
necessary ingredient of life that can be rewarding in many ways, when it
makes us see things in novel and more nuanced ways, but it needs to be
balanced by homelikeness, if we should not fall into a bottomless pit of
darkness (Svenaeus 2001: 90ff.).
Time is a key issue here; single or shorter periods of anxiety or boredom
might provide life with greater depth and indeed authenticity, whereas
recurrent anxiety attacks and deep boredom, which refuses to go away,
transform life in an unhomelike way, which appears to be pathological. It
is important to realize, however, that such a focus on time, counting the
hours, days, weeks, months, or even years of anxiety and boredom, is not
yet a phenomenologically developed understanding of time, such as we
fi nd in Heidegger. Phenomenological time is
lived
time, time as our way of
approaching the future from out of the past in the meaning-centered now.
As the person suffering from anxiety or boredom will know, one second can
pass in the blink of an eye, or last for something which feels like an eternity.
The latter is, indeed, the case in both anxiety and boredom, although in
different ways. In anxiety the now is intensifi ed and concentrated in a way
that threatens to implode, whereas in boredom it is infi nitely stretched out
and inert. In both cases the now resists to let go of the person and forces
her back on herself: the now blocks the fl ow of life, the taking part in,
engaging in, the world together with other people. Anxiety and boredom
have a lonesome character to them and this is no doubt what fascinated
Heidegger, as it has fascinated philosophers since the time of the Greeks.
But this non-chosen lonesomeness, which is the result of an attunement that
blocks engagement in a world shared with others, is not only a philosophical
ideal, it might also develop into something pathological.
13
Normality: body and world
To approach and try to understand anxiety and boredom from a
phenomenological point of view consequently means to focus upon everyday
life as a being-in-the-world in which moods play a constitutive role. Being-
in-the-world is also a being in time, or rather a being
as
time, in which time
is understood in the manner of our engaging in different projects in the
world together with other persons. Every thing has its time, since it is a part
of the world where we do things. The characteristic aspect of anxiety and
boredom, however, is that things no longer fi nd their proper time, since
they do not engage us anymore. We become locked into ourselves in an
everlasting meaningless, unhomelike now, instead of approaching the future
as a source of possibilities related to our past.
