In The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, Heidegger describes three types of boredom. In fact the section on boredom is the longest of the book - and well - you guessed it. Parts are quite boring. But what I want to suggest is that boredom is a good thing. In fact, today, it might be the greatest thing if we can become attuned towards it, to use Heidegger's language.
The kind of boredom that Heidegger discusses that is relevant here is when you actually enjoy your time out among the crowd, but when you come back home you realize that you were actually bored. The key is that you were having a good time. The easiest example I can think of is the alcoholic that realizes one day that he's wasted the last ten years of his life - that he was in fact fighting boredom the whole time. (This is an ontological claim - not a moral claim. That's fundamental to my argument.)
And so coming back from New York a while ago I was reading The Atlantic and the article was about my generation - I'm 30- suffering from a weird, in my opinion terrifying, kind of depression. The issue was that they had none of the classic causes. These were people who had happy childhoods, good jobs, little debt and so forth. But they felt empty. The article more or less argued that the problem was in fact psychological - my generation was trained to have self-esteem and feel good about themselves no matter what. Basically they were taught that they had a metaphysical center that was worthwhile no matter what they did or didn't accomplish.
It seems then, that my generation is revealing the terror of the breakdown of the self. I mean on one hand the deconstruction of the classical idea of "self" that took place with people like Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida and so forth was inevitable. But even if we are not a coherently-self-contained entity, we are still singular. I live my life; I die my death. And nothing makes one feel more like a self than being bored or sad or depressed. Happiness seems to be shared in a way loneliness never is.
Okay so the logical place to place blame is on the very device I'm using right now. According to Hubert Dreyfus' book "On the Internet" people who spend large amounts of time online claim to feel lonelier.
Recently while teaching two chapters from Dreyfus book to my technology and society class I had a rather scary realization. I had been more-or-less joking that my terms of discourse were "interesting" and "pleasurable." I would no longer judge things morally or even involve myself with those conversations. I would seek out that which is interesting or that which is pleasurable. I guess what most would call a hedonist - though that word doesn't seem correct exactly.
And then Dreyfus brings up Kierkegaard and his spheres or existence: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. My choice of terms placed me neatly and without question in the aesthetic sphere. And the issue that Dreyfus points out, correctly, is that it necessarily leads to boredom. In fact as I understand the spheres, they all lead to boredom until one throws oneself into a project - and becomes that which he is.
This sounds wonderful. I love Kierkegaard and he's without question my favorite religious thinker. But there are a couple issues with the way Dreyfus deploys him - at least I think there are. One is that the technological framework that a child grows up in today might make his or her project to be one which jumps from here to there and back. What if that just starts feeling normal? Does this mean we're all bored and despairing. And worse then that in ways that we can't articulate or are basically unaware of?
See I just don't know. I know that a certain group of my friends that I talk to are incredibly smart and not happier because of it. We have discussed this for years, but the effects seem to be becoming more obvious.
Since I started with Heidegger, I'll pull a Heideggerian move and quote Holderlin: in the danger, there too lies the saving grace. The internet will be where we locate the solution. Where else can it come from? So how do we use things like Facebook without turning it into a glorified Hallmark? Can the internet, or better yet, how can the internet lead to the kind of total commitment that Kierkegaard believes is required for living a meaningful life?
So why is boredom good? Well, as I see it it's the mood that reveals these problems. In fact, it's the only mood that does. So if we can be sensitive to this particular kind of boredom - a rather profound boredom - we at least have a start - a way to start examining this problem, which feels huge, at least to me, at 2 in the morning.
Thank you for referring to your article on Boredom. I personally find Heidegger to be extremely difficult to understand (like most people do) yet I think that once one grasps his glorious ideas, one feels as if all her questions have been answered and all the problems in the world have been solved. If only others have great professors who know Heidegger and can teach him in a way that lets the students learn how to think through the thoughts of Heidegger!
ReplyDeleteHonestly speaking, I haven’t read Heidegger’s book on boredom but thinking through his other work, Being and Time, I think I understand the general notion of Heidegger’s boredom. If I remember correctly (It has been 2 semesters since I’ve read Being and Time) Heidegger talks about authentic and inauthentic moods. After reading your article, I am guessing that what he means by boredom is that it is an inauthentic mood that conceals Being, but such inauthenticity experienced in boredom is not something negative. Boredom instead, like other inauthentic moods, is something positive in that it gives a chance for authenticity to take boredom’s place. An example I can think of right now is one of Karl Marx (I think so, if it wasn’t Marx, then please correct me) in that he posed the view that only after the capitalist stage, would the proletariat rise to rebel against the Bourgeoisie. In other words, only by experiencing inauthenticity can we understand the value of authenticity. Since in boredom we as human beings fail to enagage in a task that would let us unconceal Being, nor does boredom lets is be-in-the-world, therefore in boredom since we don’t do anything, we conceal Being. But it is only through concealment that we understand unconcealment (the notion of Aletheia!) and therefore boredom can be transformed into something positive, i.e. unconcealment.
These are my thoughts on Heidegger’s boredom. Am I right in thinking what he thinks about boredom? Or at least is it something close to what you suggest in your article?
I would really appreciate it if you could write something on Heidegger’s What is Metaphysics. I had a hard time understanding the concept of “null basis of a nullity,” that he tries to explain in the first chapter. It sounds like a negation of a negation to me, but I would really like to know what other Heideggerians think of this notion.
ReplyDelete@Aleithia - I have no idea how to make my typeface go greek - but I do enjoy your name as it relates to Heidegger.
ReplyDeleteI would say most of what you said on your first post is basically what I'd say. I honestly haven't read that section on Boredom in a while - but it's always stuck with me.
In terms of What is Metaphysics, I'd be happy to write on that. There is that work and one called Introduction to Metaphysics. I know the latter much better - perhaps, I'd be more useful just giving you my take on Heidegger's metaphysics.
In terms of the quotation - which I will have to look up - I would simply say that I think Nothing for Heidegger is very similar to what differance is to Derrida. Well shit. That's not exactly right either. But Nothing is not negative. It's an active force - it's what allows for Difference within the Same - or something like that. Let me do some reading - I'll try to give a more coherent answer.