Phenomenology of Anxiety (Phaenomenologica, 235)

"This volume offers a thorough description of anxiety from a phenomenological perspective. Building on Bakhtin's insights, the author develops the method of "phenomenological polyphony," which can do justice to the essential ambiguity of anxiety. In this polyphony, the voices of Kierkegaard, Husserl, Freud, Blumenberg, Heidegger, Sartre, Adorno, Derrida and Levinas are particularly recognizable. The book explores new perspectives on the complex relation between anxiety, fear, and trauma with reference to different disciplines, from art history to cultural anthropology, from psychopathology to theology, from literature to political philosophy. When is anxiety justified? When does anxiety cease to function as an effective and reasonable signal preventing imminent threats, and when does it become an invasive projection of our own ghosts? This volume presents a deep philosophical inquiry into the affective phenomenon that can both protect us from danger and be a danger in itself. Moreover, the author explores the relevance of anxiety in the context of philosophical anthropology. In various theoretical frameworks, the difference between anxiety and fear serves as a criterion for distinguishing human beings from animals in particular. Accordingly, research on anxiety is crucial for defining human nature as such. The analysis presented in this volume shows how an alteration of the dimensions of embodiment, time-consciousness, and phantasy takes place in anxiety. Furthermore, the author elaborates on new categories for understanding of anxiety, such as quasi-intentional imaginative anticipation, which eludes the traditional differentiation between perception and imagination. The work culminates in a phenomenological analysis of five essential traits of anxiety: 1. its quasi-intentional imaginative anticipation; 2. its negative inspiration; 3. the recurrence of bodily manifestations; 4. the interlocution with an alien power; 5. its negative teleology."--Page 4 of cover Contents Chapter 1: Introduction 1 The Anthropological Relevance of Anxiety 2 Polyphonic Phenomenology References Chapter 2: Anxiety Between Terror and Fear 1 Terror and Radical Strangeness 2 Insane Terror: Ghosts between Projections and Impressions 3 Blind Terror and the Inhuman Gaze 4 About the Actuality of the Past Trauma 4.1 On Intrusion 4.2 Numbing 4.3 Dissociative Tendencies 4.4 Hypervigilance: On Novelty 5 The Future of Trauma 6 Anxiety as Protection from Trauma: Medusa and Perseus References Chapter 3: Anxiety Between Negative Connotation and Positive Teleology: Sartre, Kierkegaard and Heidegger 1 Freedom’s Vertigo 2 Negative Anthropology 3 Is Anxiety Subordinated to Faith? 4 Nothing and Being: Against Parmenides 5 Heidegger’s Concept of the Nothing in the Context of the Metaphysical Tradition 6 Enchanted Calm 7 The Plurality of the Nothing 8 The Ashes of the Past References Chapter 4: Anxiety, Desire and Imagination 1 On Philosophy Today 2 The Phenomenological Gaze 3 Anxiety-Preparedness and Anxiety Development 4 A Tentative Digression on Ghosts and on Urdoxa 5 Painful Expectation of the Negative 6 Anxiety Between Excess of Desire and Repetition of Trauma 7 Phenomenology of Phantasy 8 Clear and Unclear Phantasies 9 Inner Consciousness 9.1 Inner Consciousness as Impressional Consciousness 9.2 Inner Time-Consciousness in the Light of the Relation Between Primary Impression, Protention and Retention 10 Unclear Phantasy and Affective Life References Chapter 5: Anxiety: A Phenomenological Investigation 1 Trait of Anxiety: Its Quasi-Intentional Imaginative Anticipation 1.1 Supplementary Possibilities 1.2 Imaginative Anticipation: The Doxic Modality of Anxiety 1.3 The Ghosts of Anxiety: The Knight, Death, the Devil (and the Dog) 1.4 Approaching the (Always Postponed) Catastrophe 2 Trait of Anxiety: Its Negative Inspiration 2.1 On Adam 2.2 Presages of the Third Reich 3 Trait of Anxiety: The Alteration of its Bodily Manifestations 3.1 Self-Referentiality and Embodiment: The Recurrence of its Bodily Manifestations 3.2 A Threatening Atmosphere 4 Trait: Interlocution with an Alien Power 4.1 How Does One Become Responsible for One’s Own Anxiety? 4.2 Anxiety as Alien Power 5 Trait of Anxiety: Negative Teleology 5.1 The Ambiguity of the Anxiety-Preparedness 5.2 Complicity 5.3 The Intertwining Between Desire, Anxiety and Prohibition: A Brief Exegesis of a Passage by Proust 5.4 “But Not Now”: Hopes and Anxiety Before the Law (Vor dem Gesetz) 5.5 Involuted Anxiety 5.6 On Self-Disappointment 6 Some Final Remarks 6.1 A Retrospective Look 6.2 Writing for Posterity 6.3 Becoming a Witness of Anxiety References General Bibliography