Tuesday 07 July 2009
Heidegger and anxiety
The latest Guardian blog article by Simon Critchley on Heidegger concerns itself with anxiety. Rhys has all the links to this and the other previous articles in the series. Of course, anxiety can't be understood if you don't understand the centrality of mood to Heidegger's thought, something Simon tackled nicely in the preceding article:
Furthermore, I am always found in a mood, a Stimmung. This is mood is the strong Aristotelian sense of pathos, a passion of the soul or an affect, something befalls us and in which we find ourselves. The passions are not, for Heidegger, psychological colouring for an essentially rational agent. They are rather the fundamental ways in which we are attuned to the world. Indeed, musicologically, Stimmung is linked to tuning and pitch: one is attuned to the world firstly and mostly through moods. One of the compelling aspects of Heidegger's work is his attempt to provide a phenomenology of moods, of the affects that make up our everyday life in the world. (More...)
Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: philosophy
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