A Philosophy of Boredom
Language: English
Pages: 192
ISBN: 1861892179
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Lars Svendsen brings together observations from philosophy, literature, psychology, theology, and popular culture, examining boredom's pre-Romantic manifestations in medieval torpor, philosophical musings on boredom from Pascal to Nietzsche, and modern explorations into alienation and transgression by twentieth-century artists from Beckett to Warhol. A witty and entertaining account of our dullest moments and most maddening days, A Philosophy of Boredom will appeal to anyone curious to know what lies beneath the overwhelming inertia of inactivity.
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possibilities withdraw. One is usually unaware of being attuned in a particular way. It is possible to be bored without knowing it. Cioran describes boredom as ‘Pure erosion, the effect of which is imperceptible and which gradually transforms you into a ruin not perceived by others and virtually unperceived by you yourself.’ 16 But moods can be recovered, as when Marcel dips his Madeleine cake into his tea in Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, or when we notice a certain odour, which for
place within a situation – the pastime itself was the situation. That is precisely why this pastime was less visible and why it normally takes place without our noticing that we are mainly dealing with a pastime. The consciousness of boredom that sometimes strikes us afterwards should be understood as a consciousness of an emptiness. Even though the party was pleasant and entertaining, it was completely empty. I did not look at my watch once or long for the party to end. I wholeheartedly
surroundings. Human existence, on the other hand, is constituted as a being-in-the-world, where there is a polarity between human and world. Being-in-the-world contains, or is, such a polarity between subject and object. Over-zealous disciples of Heidegger argue that he went beyond the very subject–object dichotomy, but he of course only overcame a certain conception of such a dichotomy. The point is that the relation between subject and object must be understood as having an in-between, and it
them), and recent times are touched on only briefly. 2 Much of the following information about acedia has been taken from Siegfried Wenzel, The Sin of Sloth: Acedia in Medieval Thought and Literature (Chapel Hill, NC, 1967), and Günter Bader, Melancholie und Metapher (Tübingen, 1990). The only Norwegian literature I am aware of is by Werner Post, ‘Acedia’, Profil, I (1992). 3 Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. H. F. Cary (London, 1814), canto VII. 4 Blaise Pascal, Thoughts, trans. A. J.
Ibid., p. 65. 165 62 Friedrich Hölderlin, ‘Hyperions Jugend’, in Sämtliche Werke und Briefe (Darmstadt, 1998), vol. I, p. 526. 63 Ibid., p. 527. 64 See Friedrich Hölderlin, ‘Hyperion – Vorletzte Fassung’, in Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, vol. I, p. 558. 65 Martin Amis, London Fields (Harmondsworth, 1990), p. 26. 66 Friedrich Hölderlin, ‘Hyperion’, in Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, vol. I, p. 760. 67 Tieck, William Lovell, p. 83. 68 Ibid., p. 160. 69 Ibid., p. 88. 70 Ibid., pp. 131–2. 71 Ibid., p.