Long Quote: Putting one's finger on isolation...
How has isolation and this wider pandemic has changed my own 'youthful glance'? I am finding it helpful to ponder this quote from philosopher Martin Heidegger.
'By "dread" we do not mean "anxiety", which is common enough and is akin to nervousness - a mood that comes over us only too easily. Dread differs absolutely from fear. We are always afraid of this or that definite thing, which threatens us in this or that definite way. "Fear of" is generally "fear about" something. Since fear has this characteristic limitation- "of" and "about" - the man who is afraid, the nervous man, is always bound by the thing he is afraid of or by the state in which he finds himself. In his efforts to save himself from this "something" he becomes uncertain in relation to other things; in fact, he "loses his bearings" generally.
In dread, as we say, "one feels something uncanny". What is this "something" and this "one"? We are unable to say what gives "one" that uncanny feeling. "One" just feels it generally. All things, and we with them, sink into a sort of indifference. But not in the sense that everything simply disappears; rather, in the very act of drawing away from us everything turns towards us. This withdrawal of what-is-in-totality, which then crowds round us in dread, this is what oppresses us. There is nothing to hold on to. The only thing that remains and overwhelms us whilst what is slips away, is this "nothing".
Dread reveals Nothing.
In dread we are "in suspense". Or, to put it more precisely, dread holds us in suspense because it makes what-is-in-totality slip away from us. Hence we too, as existents in the midst of what-is, slip away from ourselves along with it. For this reason it is not "you" or "I" that has the uncanny feeling, but "one". In the trepidation of this suspense where there is nothing to hold on to, pure Dasein is all that remains.'
- Martin Heidegger (in What is Metaphysics?)
#MartinHeidegger #isolation #selfreflection #coronavirus #dread #anxiety #thinking
