From Anxiety to Boredom: Heidegger, Freud, and the Emotional History of Secularization

301 Pages·2016·1.61 MB·English

FROM ANXIETY TO BOREDOM: HEIDEGGER, FREUD, AND THE EMOTIONAL
HISTORY OF SECULARIZATION

by
Avraham Rot

A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Baltimore, Maryland

October 2016
Abstract
While anxiety has been chiefly researched in the field of psychopathology, the
phenomenon of boredom has been explored more extensively by positive and existential
psychologists, behaviorists, literary critics and historians, sociologists, anthropologists,
and philosophers. This disciplinary separation is both an expression of the difference
between anxiety and boredom and a hindrance to the systematic study of this difference.
This dissertation is an initial assessment of the significance and scope of this structural
lacuna, conducted through the study of the intellectual history of the difference between
anxiety and boredom. In particular, I show that Freud never worked out a theory of
boredom because anxiety had been the implicit presupposition of his psychoanalytic
psychology. I also demonstrate that due to the same rationale of mutual exclusion,
Heidegger, who discussed both phenomena extensively, never considered them in
juxtaposition. To explain the development of Freud’s and Heidegger’s thought, I draw a
distinction between anxiety and boredom that is analogous to the distinction between fear
and anxiety. While anxiety is fear without the perception of actual danger, boredom is
anxiety without the experience of actual fear; and since there is no fear in boredom, there
is no guilt in boredom. On the basis of these essential distinctions, I propose the historical
hypothesis that there has been a transition from anxiety to boredom in late modernity and
that this transition is the emotional aspect of the history of secularization. Thus the oft-
observed and -commented upon phenomenon of the expansion of boredom is the direct
product of the secularization of anxiety; and while boredom has expanded as a
secularized, guiltless, and inherently non-pathological form of what used to be religious
anxiety, anxiety has proliferated in the form of a diagnostic category in
ii
psychopathological discourse. This latter process complements the former and is but
another aspect of the history of secularization, which, in antithesis to the expansion of
boredom, shows how guilt and the belief in the possibility of sin have persisted in secular
forms.

Readers: Dr. Hent de Vries, Dr. Ruth Leys, Dr. Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Dr. Michael
Williams, Dr. Samuel Moyn
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Acknowledgments
For their generous guidance and unwavering support, I thank my advisors, Hent
de Vries and Ruth Leys. Hent de Vries has inspired me to examine the religious origins
of modern discursive and literary practices and it is by his example that I aspire in my
work to the highest standards of precision, rigor, and sensitivity. Ruth Leys has shaped
my thinking about the history of emotions. Through constant advice and feedback, she
instilled in me the confidence to pursue this project from beginning to end. Her work on
the history of the concepts of trauma and survivor guilt first drew me to apply to the
Humanities Center, and her book From Guilt to Shame directly inspired this dissertation.
Both have been devoted and encouraging mentors and their continuous involvement in
my research played a pivotal role in bringing this project to fruition.

The Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins University is a unique enclave of
negative entropy—aptly described as an “anomaly”—in the academic world where
interdisciplinary research is made possible. Commitment to interdisciplinarity does not
mean ignoring or dismissing disciplinary boundaries, but rather appreciating their
significance, their historical and practical necessity, while nevertheless systematically
prioritizing the demands of the subject matter and the research question over the demands
that ensue from the arrangement of the sciences and the path-dependent nature of the
institutional evolution of the modern educational system. Without such an appreciation,
the notion of interdisciplinarity is empty, just like the freedom of indifference or whim. I
am thus grateful to the Humanities Center for its true commitment to the values of
interdisciplinarity and intellectual freedom; to Richard Macksey, its cofounder and
longtime director; and again to Hent de Vries, its current director, who has fostered this
institutional commitment, as well as an incredibly vibrant and stimulating scholarly
atmosphere, making the Humanities Center what it is called and what it is. Without such
a commitment, it would have been impossible to conduct this research, which engages
with hermeneutic phenomenology, the history of psychiatry, and the sociology of religion
and secularization. This work is therefore indebted, perhaps above all, to this institution.

I owe thanks to other faculty members of the Humanities Center who supported
me and gave me valuable advice at crucial junctures of my research: Orna Ophir, Yi-Ping
Ong, Leonardo Lisi, Anne Eakin Moss, and Paola Marrati. I am also grateful to Yitzhak
Melamed from the Philosophy Department for his ongoing support and guidance in
understanding the place of the affects in Spinoza’s metaphysics. To Marva Philip, the
administrative coordinator of the Humanities Center, I give special thanks for her much
more than technical help, patience, and kindness. This research was facilitated by the
Milton S. Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins University.

I thank Oded Fluss, my chavruta for the study of Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Deleuze,
Freud, and others. The intellectual impetus of his friendship has influenced not only this
work but also my entire intellectual development. I also thank Elena Fabietti, Martijn
Buijs, and Tarek Dika for their friendship and generous comments on various draft
chapters of this work, as well as Bahareh Moazen and Omid Mehrgan for their friendship,
hospitality, and magnanimity.
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For the enjoyable and often long and intense conversations about the meaning of
boredom, anxiety, and secularization, I thank my sister Bat-Sheva and my brother
Yekutiel. For the no-less-insightful and pertinent conversations about language and
identity and the intellectual atmosphere of the Weimar Republic, I thank my friend Marc
Volovici. I am also grateful to Miguel Caballero Vázquez, Rubén Gallo, and the other
members of the Psychoanalysis Reading Group at Princeton University for inspiring
discussions and helpful feedback.

Finally, I thank my family and especially my mother, who taught me that
boredom is not a disease, as well as her mother, who taught her the same thing. Aviva,
my love, I thank for her inspiration, criticism, and encouragement. I thank my father, who
died almost two decades ago. As he lived his life as an orthodox Jew, I am not sure how
he would appreciate the nature of this work, which is nonetheless dedicated to him.

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Table of Contents

Abstract .............................................................................................................................. ii
Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................ iv
Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. vi
Abbreviations .................................................................................................................. vii
Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1
Part I: The Secularization of Kierkegaard’s Concept of Anxiety and the Transition
from Anxiety to Boredom in Heidegger’s Thought ..................................................... 41
Chapter 1: The Hypothesis ..................................................................................................... 41
Chapter 2: The Secularization of Theological Concepts ...................................................... 57
(a) Secularization and Appropriation .................................................................................... 58
(b) From Sin to Guilt ............................................................................................................ 63
(c) From Guilt to Anxiety ..................................................................................................... 70
(d) From Anxiety to Boredom .............................................................................................. 78
Chapter 3: The Double Movement of Being and Time ......................................................... 94
(a) The Senses of Stimmung ................................................................................................. 95
(b) The Direction of Becoming More Profound (Richtung des Tieferwerdens): Mood
(Stimmung), Determination (Bestimmung), and Affectedness (Befindlichkeit) ............ 105
(c) Between Indifference and Boredom .............................................................................. 111
(d) The Suspension of Temporality in Being and Time and the Ensuing Authentic-
Inauthentic Oscillation .................................................................................................. 120
(e) The Univocity of Authenticity and the “Who” of Being and Time ............................... 134
(f) Repetition, Repetition ................................................................................................... 143
(g) Repetition by Way of Secularization ............................................................................ 153
(h) Anxiety Authentically Repeated ................................................................................... 160
Part II: The Postulate of Anxiety in Freudian Theory .............................................. 166
Chapter 4: Anxiety as a General Psychoanalytic Presupposition ..................................... 166
(a) Normal, Neurotic, and Psychotic Repetitions ............................................................... 177
(b) The Intentionality of Repression ................................................................................... 194
(c) The Assumption of an Inverse Relation between Remembering and Forgetting and
Deleuze’s Critique of Freud in Difference and Repetition ............................................ 201
(d) The Discovery of the Primacy of Anxiety over Repression in Inhibitions, Symptoms and
Anxiety ........................................................................................................................... 212
Chapter 5: Anxiety as a Specific Psychoanalytic Presupposition ...................................... 221
(a) The Assumption of Repression ..................................................................................... 223
(b) The Assumption of Primal Repression .......................................................................... 226
(c) The Assumption of Anticathexis ................................................................................... 233
(d) Anxiety, Passion, Pain ................................................................................................... 238
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 251
Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 268
Curriculum Vitae ........................................................................................................... 293

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Abbreviations

In references to Heidegger’s texts, the pagination of the published English
translation is followed by the pagination of the original German work; the two are
separated by a slash. The same order applies to texts by Kierkegaard and Freud when the
pagination of the original work is given.

BPP Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, vol. 18 of Standard Edition, 1-
64 (London: Hogarth, 1955); translation by James Strachey of Jenseits des
Lustprinzips, vol. 13 of Gesammelte Werke, 3-59 (London: Imago, 1998).

BT Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001); translation by
John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson of Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer,
1967).

CA Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically
Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1980); translation by Reidar Thomte of Begrebet
Angest: En simpel psychologisk-paapegende Overveielse i Retning af det
dogmatiske Problem om Arvesynden, vol. 4 of Søren Kierkegaards skrifter,
309-461 (Copenhagen: Søren Kierkegaard Research Center, 1994-2012).

DR Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2001); translation by Paul Patton of Différence et répétition (Paris:
Presses universitaires de France, 1968).

DSM 4 American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders: DSM-IV (Washington: American Psychiatric Association,
1994).

DSM 5 American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders: Fifth Edition (Washington: American Psychiatric
Publishing, 2013).

E Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics, in A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other
Works, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1994), 85-265. Further abbreviations: 1-5 (part number); d (definition; if
positioned directly after digit); a (axiom); p (proposition); s (scholium); d
(demonstration; if not positioned directly after digit); app (appendix); original
language references are to Carl Gebhardt (ed.), Spinoza Opera, vol. 2.
(Heidelberg: Carl Winters, 1925).

vii
FCM Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World,
Finitude, Solitude (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995); translation
by William McNeill and Nicholas Walker of Die Grundbegriffe der
Metaphysik: Welt—Endlichkeit—Einsamkeit, vol. 29/30 of Gesamtausgabe
(Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2010).

GA Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1975ff.), 102
vols.

GW Sigmund Freud, Gesammelte Werke (London: Imago, 1940-1952), 17 vols.

HCT Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985); translation by Theodore Kisiel
of Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, vol. 20 of Gesamtausgabe
(Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1994).

PT Martin Heidegger, “Phenomenology and Theology,” in Pathmarks, 39-54
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); translation by James Hart and
John Maraldo of “Phänomenologie und Theologie,” in Wegmarken, vol. 9 of
Gesamtausgabe, 45-78 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2013).

SE The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud
(London: Hogarth, 1956-1974), 24 vols.

SKS Søren Kierkegaards skrifter (Copenhagen: Søren Kierkegaard Research
Center, 1994-2012), 28 vols.

WM Martin Heidegger, “What Is Metaphysics?” in Pathmarks, 82-96 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998); translation by David Krell of “Was ist
Metaphysik?” in Wegmarken, vol. 9 of Gesamtausgabe, 103-22 (Frankfurt:
Klostermann, 2013).

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Introduction
Anxiety and boredom appear to have little in common apart from the fact that
they are both usually regarded as negative affects. When one thinks of anxiety, boredom
does not necessarily come to mind, and when boredom is under consideration, anxiety
does not necessarily present itself in its immediate semantic proximity. Indeed, these
emotions have mostly been studied separately. While anxiety has been chiefly researched
in the field of psychopathology, the phenomenon of boredom has been explored more
extensively by literary critics and historians, positive and existential psychologists,
behaviorists, sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers.1 This conceptual,
theoretical, and disciplinary separation between anxiety and boredom creates the
impression that these emotions belong to different realms of experience and discourse,
and that they accordingly present us with different practical and theoretical problems.
Those who are interested in anxiety have had to consider in which manner and to what
extent it differs from such closely related mental states as fear, shock, trauma, panic,
stress, worry, and apprehension; those interested in boredom have been primarily

1 Elizabeth Goodstein, Experience Without Qualities: Boredom and Modernity (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2005); Patricia Spacks, Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1995); Sean Healy, Boredom, Self, and Culture (London: Associated
University Press, 1984); Reinhard Kuhn, The Demon of Noontide: Ennui in Western Literature (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1976); Martina Kessel, Langeweile: Zum Umgang mit Zeit und Gefühlen in
Deutschland vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2001); Peter Toohey, Boredom: A
Lively History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011); Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning:
An introduction to Logotherapy (New York: Pocket Books, 1984); Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Beyond
Boredom and Anxiety: The Experience of Play in Work and Games (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1975); D.
E. Berlyne, Conflict, Arousal and Curiosity (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2014 [1960]); Orrin E. Klapp,
Overload and Boredom: Essays on the Quality of Life in the Information Society (Westport: Greenwood
Publishing Group, 1986); Anton Zijderveld, On Clichés: The Supersedure of Meaning by Function in
Modernity (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979); Yasmine Musharbash, “Boredom, Time, and
Modernity: An Example from Aboriginal Australia,” American Anthropologist 109, no. 2 (2007): 307-317;
Michael Raposa, Boredom and the Religious Imagination (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press,
1999); Lars Svendsen, A Philosophy of Boredom, trans. John Iron (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2005); Jürgen Große, Philosophie der Langeweile (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2008); Philipp Wüschner, Die
Entdeckung der Langeweile: Über eine subversive Laune der Philosophie (Vienna: Turia und Kant, 2011).
1
concerned with the ways in which it is distinguishable from indifference, apathy,
laziness, and depression. Since anxiety and boredom appear to have little in common, and
since difference, as Gilles Deleuze argues, is commonly subordinated to similarity or
identity, there has been little interest in the difference between these emotions.2
In this dissertation, I plan to show that nevertheless the difference between
anxiety and boredom becomes interesting when examined from a broad interdisciplinary
perspective. In particular, I argue that anxiety, which has gained wide currency as both a
diagnostic category and a form of patient complaint in the field of mental health, and
boredom, which has become increasingly prevalent in ordinary speech and everyday
experience, are complementary phenomena, or, what amounts to the same thing, two
aspects of a single phenomenon, namely, secularization. Much like production and
consumption, the two economic aspects of capitalism, which differ so greatly both
psychologically and phenomenologically that observers focusing on one have tended to
overlook the other,3 anxiety and boredom are the two apparently contrasting aspects of
the process of secularization, which is indissolubly related to the emergence of the
capitalist economy and the ensuing differentiation between work and leisure, the

2 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press,
2001).
3 With the famous exception of Thorstein Veblen’s 1899 Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Penguin
Books, 1994), classical sociological accounts of capitalism such as those offered by Karl Marx and Max
Weber focused mainly on production. The shift of focus to consumption is a relatively recent trend in
sociology. Notable studies in this field include Don Slater, Consumer Culture and Modernity (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1997); George Ritzer, Enchanting a Disenchanted World: Revolutionizing the Means of
Consumption (Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge, 2005); Mike Featherstone, Consumer Culture and
Postmodernism (London: Sage, 1991); and, in the field of literary criticism, Rachel Bowlby, Carried Away:
The Invention of Modern Shopping (London: Faber and Faber, 2000). The significance of boredom in this
context has been recognized by sociologist of emotions Eva Illouz, who, drawing on Martha Nussbaum’s
philosophy of emotions, has identified boredom as a “background emotion” that is “structurally embedded
in the culture of consumption.” See Eva Illouz, “Emotions, Imagination and Consumption: A New
Research Agenda,” Journal of Consumer Culture 9, vol. 3 (2009): 389.
2