Anxiety

Being and Time pt. 5

“there is one mood in particular that reveals the self in stark profile for the first time. This is the function of anxiety (Angst), which Heidegger calls a basic or fundamental mood (Grundstimmung”

“Anxiety makes its appearance in Division 1, Chapter 6, where Heidegger is seeking to define the being of Dasein as what he calls “care” (Sorge). I”

“Heidegger’s claim is that being-in-the-world as a whole is disclosed in anxiety and is then defined as care. As such, anxiety has an important methodological function in the argument of Being and Time.”

“Matters are very different with anxiety. If fear is fearful of something particular and determinate, then anxiety is anxious about nothing in particular and is indeterminate.”

“If fear is directed towards some distinct thing in the world, spiders or whatever, then anxiety is anxious about being-in-the-world as such. Anxiety is experienced in the face of something completely indefinite. It is, Heidegger insists, “nothing and nowhere”.”

“But let’s back up for a moment here. Heidegger’s claim earlier in Division 1 of Being and Time (discussed in blog 3), is that the human being finds itself in a world that is richly meaningful and with which it is fascinated. In other words, the world is homely (heimlich), cosy even.”

“In anxiety, all of this changes. Suddenly, I am overtaken by the mood of anxiety that renders the world meaningless. It appears to me as an inauthentic spectacle, a kind of tranquilised and pointless bustle of activity. In anxiety, the everyday world slips away and my home becomes uncanny (unheimlich) and strange to me. From being a player in the game of life that I loved, I become an observer of a game that I no longer see the point in playing.”

“Anxiety is that basic mood when the self first distinguishes itself from the world and becomes self-aware.”

“Anxiety is the first experience of our freedom, as a freedom from things and other people. It is a freedom to begin to become myself.”