Boredom That Wishes Not To Be

1. Introduction

In his early lectures on Aristotle, Heidegger wanted to penetrate to the core of not what philosophy should be but, on the contrary, what philosophy is, given that it asks what being qua being is.¹ Insofar as being (Seiende) as such is sought, what philosophy seeks is nothing but the Being (Sein) of beings. In other words, what philosophy should be, is precisely what it is. Yet, philosophy is never straightforwardly given. This is not only because Being hides itself but is also due to the fact that Being as an ‘object’ is not pre-given in phenomenological philosophy; on the contrary, we must uncover it.² Being is not given in experience but is co-understood, always and everywhere. Being is only undefinable because it is different from beings.³ Within metaphysics, it is not this or that being that is pre-given, as is the case with other scientific thematisation, but being qua being, Being in its totality. From this, we must seek the question of Being anew. Thus, no philosophy is given without philosophising. Philosophy is a human activity, perhaps a fundamental activity. From the beginning of the Western conceptual and philosophical tradition, namely from Plato and Aristotle, the start of this enigmatic activity rested upon thaumazein, the wonder at that which is as it is.⁴ It is a starting point, and also the end of philosophising constituted beyond the realm of speech. This wondering as pathos, attunement or disposition, is arche, namely ‘whence’ as a starting point of something going out. However, this ‘whence’ is not discarded when the activity of philosophising begins; wonder as arche guides every step of philosophy. Wonder as pathos pervades the entirety of philosophy.⁵

Heidegger points out that the word pathos is usually translated as passion or feeling.⁶ He reminds us, however, that pathos is connected to paschein, meaning to suffer, bear up, or wear out. Through pathos, we become modified, attuned. Something happens to us. Furthermore, we can express the meaning of pathos in connection to hexis, a soul’s composure and also to kinesis, motion. In acquiring some skill, we are changing and becoming different. However, there is also the potential to lose certain hexis, depriving us of matter. Hence, the meaning of pathos is related both to losing a particular disposition of the soul and to preserving, safekeeping the genuine Being of actuality, energeia.⁷ For the latter one is entelecheia, perfection, in which being does not become different but precisely becomes what it is. That is why we cannot understand the pathos of thaumazein as a psychological state, which comes and goes, but as tuning (disposition). Thus, wonder as a disposition is a fundamental mood in which the Being of beings opens up. The Greeks saw this disposition as a fundamental way of philosophising. The mode of safekeeping in this activity is precisely wisdom, sophia.⁸

Insofar as philosophising is the highest human activity, philosophy is a mode of human existence because, for Heidegger, life is not something mystical or wild but a how, a category of Being.⁹ The starting point of ‘philosophising’ in Heidegger’s fundamental ontology is not wondering, but anxiety (Angst), which puts the authentic Self beyond any speech.¹⁰ Through anxiety, the authentic Self reaches an authentic understanding of the truth of the Being of beings. Therefore, philosophy is not primarily a cognitive activity but an activity that must be primordially awakened. It is an activity that happens in a fundamental attunement.¹¹

In contrast, Heidegger insists that anxiety leaves no space for confusion.¹² A peculiar calm prevails. This means we must leave behind modern psychological analyses of anxiety as experience (Erlebnis). Even in his early reinterpretation of Aristotle’s De Anima, Heidegger stated that perception, thinking, wanting, or understanding are not experiences but are connected to the Being of a human being in the world.¹³ Therefore, pathe are not ‘psychic experiences’, are not in consciousness, but are explained based on full being-in-the-world. Moods are existential orientations.¹⁴ They are ‘spiritual states’ in connection with bodily symptoms. Hence, we dismiss the talk about the soul’s ‘inner life’ because I cannot say that the soul hopes, fears or has mercy but rather that the human being is brave, fears and hopes. In this manner, anxiety cannot be viewed as a transitory ‘feeling’ of our thinking and willing comportment since there is no division between ‘psychic’ and ‘bodily’ acts of pathos, but as a fundamental mood, which puts Dasein before nothing.¹⁵ It lacks any determination in the face of this or that being. It is Grundstimmung, an indefinite mood in contrast to other moods that are definite. Precisely because of this, for Heidegger, anxiety represents the totality of Dasein’s Being, while different moods reveal only certain aspects of it.¹⁶

With this, we come full circle, so to speak, because unfolding beings as a whole is named ‘metaphysics’. To go beyond beings only to recover them as such is the essence of metaphysics, which for the Greeks had its arche and the end in philosophising as wondering. To turn away from nothing means to turn toward beings so that the question of being qua being, the Being of beings, is a primordial existential question, not theoretical, not scientific. The question of Being is also the question about the Being of the human being, but what about boredom? As we shall see, for Heidegger, profound boredom enacts the same position as anxiety within the fundamental ontology. Authors such as Ciocan have strived to point out that connection.¹⁷ What is problematic is Heidegger’s questionable sublimation of boredom itself and its experiences. If anxiety is a fear, however, without its object or intentionality, how can we understand profound boredom without the experiences of superficial boredom? Are we not turning the phenomenon into something that it is not? Indeed, fear and anxiety do bear some resemblance, but how can this superficial boredom resemble higher, profound boredom, and vice versa? Elpidorou and Freeman have raised similar concerns regarding the use of Heidegger’s formal indication (Formal Anzeige).¹⁸

As a phenomenon, boredom is difficult to recognise as either an internal or external mood caused by some stimuli.¹⁹ We will see that boredom caused by external stimuli is superficial boredom, whereas two more types of boredom, rising out of ourselves, are more authentic than the first one. Again, Ciocan, comparing Heidegger’s account of boredom and Being and Time, made some interesting points in tracing similarities in both superficial and profound types of boredom, thus closing the gap between inauthentic and authentic modes of existence.²⁰ Nevertheless, I remain unconvinced since this gap remains present: the gap was bridged but not closed. On this front, I agree with Svendsen that Heidegger’s ‘transgression’ in dealing with this phenomenon is a confusion of the ontic level of the phenomenon in favour of the ontological level.²¹ Svendsen sees the sublimation in Heidegger’s unwillingness to accept the commonness of human life. Consequently, the German philosopher is constantly in danger of overlooking beings, the ontic, favouring the ontological side. In other words, transgression comes not from the adequate description of boredom that Heidegger undertakes but from going beyond phenomena by opening new perspectives and, at the same time, obscuring the phenomenon. In my opinion, this is much like the case of phronesis, practical prudence in Being and Time. Furthermore, I also agree with Svendsen and Gibbs that boredom involves the notion of meaning and especially the lack of it in the course of our life.²² Moreover, it is not surprising to think in this manner; when we accomplish some (major) goal, we have already lost it in the sense of some void creeping upon us without realising what the problem is. We experience some lack of purpose or meaning that we must eliminate as quickly as possible. Thus, we became busy in order to make it go away. However, we are still not satisfied; our actions do not feel as if they are meaningful. We run in circles, so to speak. We have undergone/suffered a change; we lost a certain hexis. It does not matter to us anymore. More often than not, this kind of boredom is faceless.²³

If I agree with Svendsen that Heidegger favours the ontological side of the phenomenon over the ontic one, I cannot entirely agree with the cause. Svendsen argues that this confusion stems from the question of the meaning of Being.²⁴ This, in itself, is not problematic. Nevertheless, because of that, Svendsen is compelled to conclude that there is no Being as such.²⁵ In other words, if we abandon the question of the meaning of Being, we are left with a variety of meanings regarding the notion of being. Furthermore, being bored is just another mode of being among others. I disagree with such a conclusion. Svendsen does not consider what we have already hinted at in the introduction, namely the ontological difference. Being is of beings, but Being is never a being, let alone some highest being as traditional metaphysics has understood. For example, I have a Being, but I am not a Being. Thus, I believe that the problem lies elsewhere. I believe that the problem of boredom’s sublimation does not stem merely from the quest for the meaning of Being as such but from equating it with the notion of truth since, for Heidegger, the meaning and the truth of Being are the same.²⁶ I argue that we cannot equate these two notions. Briefly, if truth and falsity consist in giving affirmative and negative judgments, then according to Aristotle in De Interpretatione, every logos points at something and signifies something but not every logos is true or false.²⁷ There is no truth or falsity in every statement. For example, a prayer and a wish are statements about something, but neither is true or false.

To show that there is a boredom`s sublimation, it is first necessary to present metaphysical considerations prior to Heidegger’s description of boredom. These considerations help illuminate Heidegger’s thinking when dealing with the phenomenon at hand. As such, I will also argue in the conclusion of the paper that there are more hidden considerations that can be derived from existing ones. The hidden considerations form the link to the above-stated thesis in dealing with this phenomenon. Finally, as is the case of dealing with a philosopher of Heidegger’s standing, I can honestly say that, despite raised concerns, his analysis of boredom is anything but boring. The foundation for this analysis is Heidegger’s 1929 lecture named The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics.

2. Preliminary considerations of metaphysics

On what grounds can we grasp the question of metaphysics? We said that metaphysics is not an academic discipline, nor scientific research, but a primordial inquiry that opens a path to the beings as such and within fundamental attunement. Hence, metaphysics is not a science or, even worse, philosophy as metaphysics is not a worldview (Weltanschauung). It is before any worldviews.²⁸ Philosophy strives for the possibility of genuine understanding and is thus not searching for any particular sort of knowledge freely circulating. Heidegger declares: ‘It is rather the knowledge that can be obtained only if it is each time sought anew. It is precisely a venture, an inverted world’.²⁹ Philosophy is something that must stand alone, as itself as something ultimate and comparable with nothing else. In other words, if the essence of boredom shows itself as fundamental attunement in which beings reveal themselves in their entirety, then it must be viewed as ultimate and extreme in terms of hexis. Why? Because boredom – profound boredom – is rare. It is eschaton; what is outermost. Moreover, what is outermost is always sought anew.

The question of metaphysics is the question about the human being itself. Within that, several considerations emerge. Heidegger tackles those considerations by invoking German romantic poet Novalis. According to the latter, philosophy is homesickness, an urge to be at home anywhere.³⁰ Since philosophy is an uncertain endeavour, then it precisely cannot be at home anywhere. Thus, it is an urge, an inclination to be anywhere. To be anywhere is a wholeness of the world. The world is the first consideration of inquiry because the world is a place where human being, as Dasein, is driven by homesickness.³¹ A human being is a worldly being and, as such, is already called upon by something in its entirety. Therefore, the world is a place where a human being is driven by homesickness, called upon by something in its wholeness (metaphysics). Since Dasein is already called upon by this whole as its basic constitution (transcendence), he or she is also at the same time torn back from it. The reason for it lies in the finitude, not as a human’s property, but as a fundamental way of our Being. Finitude is a second consideration in which philosophy presents itself as finite because it requires a renewed awakening. This is presented because the world, always a historical one,³² is different from beings themselves because the world is a mode of Being. Beings themselves remain the same, while their world can differ.³³ We come to the third consideration through finitude, namely individuation as solitude.³⁴ The solitariness of a human being means that in becoming finite, it can stand as someone unique in the face of the whole.

Therefore, considerations of metaphysics consist of these above aspects. Disclosing beings as a whole occurs in the world as openness of Being. The world worlds (Welt weltet) all the time, throughout history. This touches upon the finitude of philosophising in Dasein. Moreover, it brings individuation as the solitude of Dasein. Yet, in contrast, the pathos of thaumazein is not a privilege of a few; it is a basic condition of human beings.³⁵ That is precisely the point we have established before: metaphysics is not an academic discipline. Doing academic philosophy does not always mean that we are philosophising. Philosophy lets Dasein be what it can be, not only because it is the highest condition of life, but because it is a fundamental way of Dasein.³⁶

3. The awakening of attunement

We said in the introduction that, for Heidegger, the matter of philosophy is not a cognitive endeavour but quite the opposite: it is a matter of pathos. We must awaken philosophy. However, how is philosophy awakened? Is being awake and not being awake equivalent to being conscious and unconscious? Indeed, there is a substantial similarity between them because an attunement is at the same time there and not there, much like being conscious and not being conscious. However, being awake is the opposite of sleeping so that whatever is sleeping can be conscious. It can be highly conscious because of the activity present in sleeping, namely dreaming. Hence, waking up an attunement cannot mean making an attunement conscious.³⁷ What Heidegger meant by this is that the notion of Dasein’s ontological movement cannot be equated with something present-at-hand (techne).³⁸ For example, the negation of the chair’s secondary properties indicates that these properties are not there, whereas Dasein’s ‘property’ is precisely in being-away.³⁹

Since Dasein is not primarily an animal rationale, the task of awakening an attunement is not a matter of cognitive approach. To awake an attunement means to let it be. Since we cannot make an attunement conscious, we cannot regard attunements as things that appear in the soul. This opens another question. In what way do attunements stand concerning our Being? Heidegger concluded this question via an interpretation of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. I will not go deeper into this analysis. Concerning this paper, we can conclude that what Heidegger found in Rhetoric was totally different from what modern psychology classified under the category of emotions. Based on Heidegger’s interpretation, moods or attunements concern the disposition of human beings in their world.⁴⁰ Because of this, attunements are something that determines our Being with one another in advance. We have already established a certain mood toward something or someone because life has already interpreted itself. Life is already interpreting itself. We may experience different moods as something indifferent, as opposed to what we are occupied with, to what will happen. However, this is never a consequence of our thinking, doing, or acting. The power of will cannot modify moods.⁴¹ They can change, but they cannot be changed by us. It is rather by the occurrences and situations we find ourselves in them. However, we may still think that moods are side-effects of acting or thinking only because moods appear in extreme forms, like joy or grief. For example, grief is a powerful emotion caused by my doing or acting, but that does not mean there was no prior attunement. It was but indifferently. Hence, our highly conscious moods are not the most powerful ones; it is the indifferent ones. Even more, it might be helpful if we could separate moods from emotions. If the latter are powerful and thus we can become conscious of them since they apply to recognisable objects, attunements are not.⁴² Therefore, we must put aside the subject-object relationship when dealing with the phenomena of moods.⁴³ This also applies in the case of profound boredom. How can we approach it? How can we let it be?

Heidegger’s analysis of this phenomenon starts with what is most familiar. The fundamental hermeneutical principle is to go from the known to the unknown. The German word for boredom is Langeweile. The English name does not capture its denotative meaning as German does.⁴⁴ Time becomes long or lang for a while (weile). As such, we are busy making an effort to pass the time. We are experiencing this kind of boredom in time, which is long for us in an attempt to make it go away. We want to get rid of boredom by keeping busy. Moreover, we want boredom to disappear because we are conscious of it. In short, boredom must not be awakened; however, the task is not to make it awake but to let it be awake.⁴⁵

From this, Heidegger makes two sharp distinctions, namely being bored and becoming bored.⁴⁶ Of course, this distinction is needed since boredom as a mood cannot be firmly determined along the Cartesian line of the subject-object schema. Being bored indicates that something bores us while becoming bored means nothing particular bores us. In a situation, everything becomes boring. How is this latter definition connected to time? The answer lies in passing the time (Zeitvetreib) because time becomes long. For example, we are waiting for something to arrive. While we were waiting for that something, we became impatient. In doing so, we are passing the time, not the time itself, but a driving away of boredom that drives time on. However, what is boring? Surely, it is not the time, but waiting is boring. Waiting until something arrives is boring. Waiting can have a character of boringness, but not every waiting is boring. I can wait for something while feeling overwhelmed, yet impatience and waiting arise in connection with boredom without being boredom itself.⁴⁷ Nevertheless, we are not affected by time itself in this boredom, but by passing the time in driving boredom away. Furthermore, we pass the time by shortening it in tarrying a while. We fight against this dragging of time, which becomes too slow for us. A particular time, namely the one present in waiting, oppresses us. It means we are being held in limbo, which is precisely something in which we do not wish to engage. Consequently, we became occupied as such. We seek to be occupied in any way because we do not seek to be left empty.⁴⁸ When boredom grabs us, being left empty occurs so that things, not just any present things, but boring things in a boring situation, leave us empty. Being left empty does not mean things are absent; they are present but not in a familiar way. What does this mean? It means that everything has its time; there would be no boredom without it. Because for things to be useful, we need to come across them at a specific time.⁴⁹ Authors call this kind of boredom a ‘state boredom’, the most superficial one.⁵⁰ In it, we are highly conscious of what bores us since it is a transitory experience. In Being and Time, this superficial boredom corresponds to involvement with things, but not in a meaningful manner.⁵¹

The next phase of Heidegger’s research shows the structural link between being held in limbo by time as it drags and being left empty by things.⁵² Heidegger tells us that we must grasp boredom more originally. This points to the analysis of being bored. If in becoming bored, we felt the oppression of passing the time in waiting, being bored offers no such thing. The reason for this lies in the fact that in a given situation, we felt no boredom. We felt as if nothing was boring us. This strange state of affairs indicates that we were bored without anything boring confronting us. For example, we spent an evening with friends at a party. In this situation, everything was all right. We had fun, but when we came home it struck us: we were bored after all. It seems that there was no passing the time nor that we felt oppressed by time. Even more, in this situation, we have given ourselves time, whereas, in the first case of boredom, we did not wish to lose any time. However, this is only a false appearance. Passing the time occurred albeit in a very hidden manner.

According to Heidegger, passing the time in the second form of boredom was hidden because of socially ideal circumstances.⁵³ Hence, passing the time was present at the party but publicly disguised. Furthermore, it also seems that there was no being held in limbo and being left empty. Again, this is also a false appearance. Indeed, there was a peculiar emptiness in the second form of boredom. We abandon ourselves by going along with the socially accepted norms. It is not the absence of fullness of things that leaves us empty, but emptiness forms itself for the first time.⁵⁴ What about being held in limbo? Since we have taken the time for a party, the fact that we had done so means that the time could keep us in limbo in a profound way. Time holds us in limbo when it stands; it does not flow.⁵⁵ Temporality, in this manner, leaves us standing in a situation (the party).⁵⁶ Temporality temporalises itself based on making present the ‘now’ during the party. Thus, the second form of boredom is more profound because it forms out of Dasein itself.⁵⁷ Elpidoru and Freeman call this boredom a ‘trait boredom.’⁵⁸ It signifies the tendency of a personality to be bored. We felt retrospectively bored not because of the party but because it was not meaningful to us.⁵⁹

The similarity between this and profound boredom lies in the fact that we are totally disinterested in anything and anybody in this boredom. We experience the totality of our world as boring.⁶⁰ However, the second type of boredom is still inauthentic since we are ‘captured’ in a meaningless ‘now’. It does not relate us to the past nor to meaningful future projects. Moreover, if we are bored, this boredom affects an individual frequently, whereas profound boredom should be rare.⁶¹ Because if real Angst is rare⁶², so is a mood as fundamental as profound boredom. Profound boredom as a mode of philosophising is different from comfort and assurance found in philosophy as absolute knowledge.⁶³

Following Being and Time, the second type of boredom is that of Mitsein.⁶⁴ Others within (our) world are not some determinate entities. For the most part, I am not different from the others and vice versa.⁶⁵ The ego, the ‘I’, are not substances understood from the traditional point of view. The phenomenon of Mitsein is elusive or indeterminate since it precisely cannot be viewed as something objective, empirically or numerically present. As such, the second type of boredom is more elusive and indeterminate than the first one. However, there is another thing that is indicative of this boredom: the urge to awaken profound boredom increases. Why? Because peculiar for Dasein is this being-there and yet not being-there. We attended the party, but we really were not there. It is not because of others we were bored, but because we felt bored despite their attendance. This points to what we have already stated: being there and not being there cannot be identified with consciousness or unconsciousness. Subsequently, to awake something is not identifiable with consciousness and unconsciousness.

The growing urge to awake the attunement leads to the final, third type of boredom. Even if the second form of boredom is more profound than the first one, Heidegger seeks to elucidate profound boredom where passing the time is missing. Not passing the time means letting this boredom become overpowering. Heidegger calls this profound boredom ‘it is boring for one’.⁶⁶ ‘One’ means here that it is boring for everyone and no one. For this boredom, there are no examples because there is no connection to a particular situation. The consequences of missing the passing time also show that beings are equally great and equally of little worth. In other words, this boredom has a character of manifesting how things stand concerning us.⁶⁷ We can also see that this indifference, pertaining to beings as such, also meaning to Dasein, characterises not this or that Dasein, but precisely Dasein as such.⁶⁸ Heidegger states: ‘The indifference of beings as a whole manifests itself for Da-sein, but for Da-sein as such. This means that through this boredom Dasein finds itself set in place precisely before beings as a whole, to the extent that in this boredom the beings that surround us offer us no further possibility of acting [...]’.⁶⁹ The denouncement of beings as a whole in their usefulness or having no interest in them has a character of emptiness. In contrast, being held in limbo in this third form of boredom indicates the possibilities left unexploited by beings in their indifference. The calling (Anrufen) of such possibilities sustains the possibilities of Dasein as such.

Hence, if in the first form of boredom, we did not need to listen to it, and if in the second form, we did not want to listen, then the third form compels us to hear the calling in which authentic possibilities of Dasein as such arise.⁷⁰ However, what about temporality in the third form of boredom? It seems there was no dragging and standing the time in the third form. Indeed, that is the case. We feel as if we are timeless, removed from the flow of time. We are removed from time’s flow because beings are worth equally much and equally little. They have no impact on Dasein. In temporal terms, every being in every aspect, futural, present or having been, withdraws.

Nevertheless, time is an underlying condition for beings to manifest themselves. Furthermore, it is the temporal horizon of these three temporal aspects that enables being left empty, and at the same time, being held in limbo. We said that in this boredom, being held in limbo occupies Dasein as such with possibilities. These possibilities are nothing less than the possibilities of Dasein’s freedom. Here, it is not difficult for us to see the guidelines of authentic existence taken from Being and Time because what makes it possible for the possibilities of Dasein as such is precisely the Augenblick of the situation. Based on the moment of vision, the unity of being left empty and being held in limbo in ‘the third form of boredom is determined through and through by the essence of time.’⁷¹ In other words, what bores us are not things or people but temporality as such.⁷²

In this Langeweile, the while of Dasein becomes long.⁷³ The temporal horizon becomes long. It is expanding so that the lengthening also vanishes the shortness of the while. In this disappearing, boredom compels Dasein into the moment of vision as a proper authentic possibility. Profound boredom is also a condition of the first and the second form of boredom.⁷⁴ The attunement of this boredom only awakens if we do not fight against it. Yet, at least on most occasions, we do fight against it, which in turn enables the formation of boredom in the first and the second sense. While it is easy to master boredom by keeping busy and passing the time, it is difficult to oppose profound boredom. Much like anxiety in Being and Time, which discloses the nothing that puts Dasein before being qua being as a whole, profound boredom echoes emptiness regarding beings as a whole. Nevertheless, this being left empty is rejected by contemporary human beings.⁷⁵ Das Man of a contemporary human being reveals the fact that boredom is unpleasant and must be eliminated.

4. Conclusion

The awakening of the fundamental attunement of profound boredom is to let it be awake. However, this task is the most difficult; it is beyond any division of conscious and unconscious acts. We cannot just make it conscious. On the contrary, we are aware of boredom only when trying to remove it. This is the condition of the contemporary human being. Confronted with the age of Technik, the rationality of a contemporary human being seeks to know no boredom. Access to being qua being becomes impossible. ‘Boredom is one significant way of gaining access, in thinking, to the realm of Dasein and its essential meaning. This access to Dasein is probably the only alternative to technological rationality’.⁷⁶ Technological rationality strips the world of its purposiveness because, metaphysically speaking, contemporary technology knows no purpose.⁷⁷ The contemporary human being is hopelessly thrown into an endless cycle of means and ends that make him or her unable to distinguish between them.⁷⁸

However, this is not the end of our research. There is still a need to answer or find a connection between profound boredom and considerations or questions found in the second chapter of this paper. ‘What is the world?’, ‘What is finitude?’ and ‘What is individuation?’ are fundamental metaphysical considerations that arise out of Dasein’s depths. Furthermore, in connection to this, hidden metaphysical considerations evolved from the existing ones will lead to my original thesis.

To Heidegger, these questions stand in relation to Dasein ‘in such a way that in the very process the fundamental attunement of that profound boredom should become ever more acute as possibility’.⁷⁹ We already know that these questions are each connected with temporality. For Heidegger, finitude is, in temporal terms, the most original question.⁸⁰ Thus the question of finitude is connected to the moment of vision, to the true essence of time. A moment of vision opens up within profound boredom, within homesickness. Furthermore, the moment of vision leads us to individuation. From this, we come to the individuation of Dasein as such, and with it, to the direction of being qua being, beings as a whole. This rare occurrence (Ereignis) happens in the world because the world is the manifestness of beings as such and as a whole.⁸¹ For the world is the manifestness of the truth of Being so that human being is essentially delivered over to Being.⁸² Grasping this whole is through profound boredom, an occurrence in which the difference between Being and beings occurs. In other words, explicitly understanding Being in the moment of vision within profound boredom is unpredictable and new, precisely because beings remain the same, while the world, a condition or mode of Being, does not.

Now let us ponder the hidden metaphysical considerations. In the second part of the 1929 lecture, Heidegger spent a great deal of time analysing the biology of life: the animal’s environment versus the conviction that only the human being has access to beings as such. Where does this conviction lie? It lies in the animal not having logos, meaning the ability to grasp beings as such. The animal has no world, only the environment.⁸³ If an animal has no world, it cannot have what Heidegger called a hermeneutical ‘as’ structure. The ‘as’ structure is a pre-predicative form of understanding Being in forming a unity of something that is the condition of the possibility of truth and falsity of the logos in terms of the judgment or propositional statement.⁸⁴ ‘As’ is a fundamental hermeneutical structure of a human’s Being.⁸⁵ Wherever there is a world, there is a human being and vice versa. Because of that, the ‘as’ structure of the logos is always operative in our understanding of the world. Based on that, a human being has access to the Being of beings in a manifold way.

This occupied Heidegger from the beginning of his philosophical path, namely the question of what unifies these various ways that can be said about the Being of beings. Indeed, Aristotle was the first to raise such a notion, but Heidegger felt that what was missing was precisely the answer to that question. Heidegger writes: ‘If being is predicated in manifold meanings, then what is its leading fundamental meaning?’.⁸⁶ Hence, if beings are described in terms of actuality and potentiality, truth and falsity, accidentally and categorically, what is the unifying factor of these meanings? Without a detailed investigation concerning this problem, which deserves careful research, Heidegger’s answer to this question was aletheia, the truth as showing or pointing out, apophainesthai.⁸⁷ If the truth contains any relation, it is a relation of existence as such to its very world. The human Being is shown/uncovered in the world by the mere fact of its existence. Therefore, the propositional assertion or judgment is not a privileged place of the truth but a derivative mode of an original phenomenon that lets beings be exposed in manifold ways. In other words, in this original sense, the truth is a condition of revealing beings as true or false in asserting something as something. Every assertion speaks out of the pre-predicative manifestness of beings themselves. In order to make a statement, true or false, beings must be disclosed as they are. We always speak of beings that are already manifesting themselves in their entirety. What is self-revealing as such is precisely aletheia. Not only that: the essence of truth is freedom.⁸⁸ Freedom is letting beings be in the manner of engaging openness, aletheia, into which beings come to stand. Engaging this openness is a task because the uncoveredness of the world must be wrested from concealment.⁸⁹ There is a struggle to uncover beings as they manifest themselves in the world, and their explicit articulation is connected to uncovering the truth of beings in the highest mode. Therefore, letting beings be as they are is an occurrence of profound boredom, the fundamental attunement in which the Being of beings is explicitly grasped. Hence, we can see that in addition to these three previous questions, there are two more: questions like ‘What is freedom?’ and ‘What is truth?’ are not merely connected themselves but evolved from the previously mentioned ones.

However, the problem with Heidegger’s notion of boredom is not an inconsistency in describing the phenomenon but in accepting experiences of the phenomenon. Metaphysically speaking, it is far removed from ontic-existenziell descriptions of boredom, where the obscurity of beings happens because of our intrinsic, aggressive behaviour toward removing boredom experiences. This is nothing other than the analogy of Das Man in Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, in which the other two notions of boredom are seen as inferior. They are inferior because we deal with things and others. In short, Heidegger’s formulation of the phenomenon, namely profound boredom, is boredom that wishes not to be. It is closer to Greek sophia in the sense of meditative-phenomenological thinking. While two inferior modes of boredom can be described as manifestations of calculative, planned thinking, which never stops and is always busy with new plans, profound boredom echoes Gelassenheit, abandonment, or detachment from calculative, willing thought in order to let beings be as they are. It is non-willing thinking, beyond passivity or activity, rationality, or irrationality, and it is essentially a thanking (Danken) for the gift of Being.⁹⁰

Moreover, if we can recall, Heidegger explicitly states that profound boredom is a condition of two other forms of boredom and not vice versa. This implies that profound boredom is itself unconditioned. How can this be? If profound boredom is not boredom at all, how can it lead to the two other forms? The answer: it cannot unless it resembles the two inferior forms. We saw that it does; being held in limbo and being left empty are present in each form of boredom. Thus, even if Heidegger treats profound boredom as different from ordinary boredom, it still cannot be treated as an entirely alien form of boredom.⁹¹ Otherwise, it would not be boredom at all. Instead, at best, it is boredom that wishes not to be boredom. Hence, this is what was meant when we stated that Heidegger’s mistake was not describing the phenomenon but accepting the experiences.

The philosopher could not accept (all) experiences of boredom even if there were a considerable sublimation at work. In an effort to tie profound boredom to other two forms, Elpidorou and Freeman stated that profound boredom is constituted by a lack of meaning, disengagement from one’s goals, and altered perception of time: all of which can be found in both trait and state boredom.⁹² While I agree with them in good spirit, I cannot agree entirely. In my opinion, questions about altered time and lack of meaning deserve more scrutiny. What kind of time alteration is at work? Since the phenomenon is captivating at its basic core, it is fair to say that boredom knows no future or past since its very nature is recurrence.⁹³ We are ‘stuck’ in a situation or the world in its entirety. In other words, we are ‘stuck’ in time; time moves, but it does not move for us. In third boredom, the matter is not this or that temporal dimension but the horizon of temporality as a whole.⁹⁴ From this, it leads to abandoning one’s goals. Thus, it is not really a temporal repetition that is at stake in profound boredom, unlike in Being and Time, but more of medieval nunc stans, ‘standing now’, or Aristotelian noeseos noesis, ‘thinking of thinking’, manifesting in (eternal) recurrence of boredom as contemplative and meditative thinking. It cannot be a linear form of temporality; or else it would not be ‘standing now’ but moving in both directions: to the future or past. Meditative thinking in profound boredom destroys any temporal and spatial terms. Therefore, any change in meditative thinking of profound boredom would destroy the attunement and fold back to superficial forms of boredom.

To summarise; if metaphysical questioning is motivated by awakening anew our historical Dasein, namely original history as determined by the future in taking over what has been and consequently enduring through the present,⁹⁵ then it is difficult to see, despite the consideration of finitude being alluded to as the most important one along with the temporal horizon emerging in profound boredom, that the finitude can be indeed viewed as the most important consideration, let alone the individuation that accompanies it. In other words, because the future and the past, indeed in their authentic design, are omitted in profound boredom, finitude cannot be a hidden ground of the history of Dasein⁹⁶ and, as such, the main metaphysical consideration for opening new possibilities regarding being qua being. I believe that Heidegger does not sufficiently elaborate on the notion of a temporal horizon in profound boredom; consequently, it leads us back to the temporality of the second form of boredom, namely the more progressive form of nunc stans.

Access to being qua being, beings in their entirety, is something that happens in the world. However, the world is also not the most important metaphysical consideration. Rather, in my opinion, what is uncovered when facing beings ‘as’ such is the most critical metaphysical consideration. Profound boredom is a mode through which we are faced with beings ‘as’ such; however, when authentically facing being qua being, we are delivered the truth of Being because the world is the manifestness of the truth of Being. Engaging in the obscurity of beings that is a primordial Ereignis of profound boredom is precisely the truth of Being of beings. This leads us to the notion of meaning or truth, which, as we said in the introduction, are for Heidegger the same thing.

As reported, Svendsen states that boredom is connected with a loss of personal meaning.⁹⁷ Elpidorou and Freeman also said that there is a loss of meaning in all three forms of boredom. However, can we be certain of this? My point of contention is that while we can underscore the intensified loss of personal meaning in the second type of boredom, in the first and third types, we cannot. There is a feeling of suspended loss of meaning in the first type. For example, we are ‘stuck’ in the airport due to our late plane. Thus, for a short period, the situation in which we are bored is for us meaningless. However, the personal meaning is not lost. Instead, it is retrieved when we finally fly away from the airport. Here, however, it seems there is a contradiction at work; if there is no loss of personal meaning in the first type of boredom but only a suspended one, how can we advocate the retrieved one only when the first type stops? From a logical standpoint, we cannot. The suspended personal meaning only appears when the first boredom ceases to exist. However, from an existential point of view, is it wrong to assume that a world now becomes meaningless? I tend to believe so. Is a situation boring? Yes, certainly, but it does not mean the world and I are meaningless. We cannot talk about retrieved or lost meaning since nothing was lost or retrieved to begin with. The world does not mean to be meaningless if one is bored. We need to remember not to revert to the subject-object scheme when dealing with the phenomenon of boredom. It is only then, when the boredom intensifies, however, not ontically but ontologically, that the meaninglessness appears. In other words, when the feeling of boredom becomes less powerful and acute, meaninglessness emerges. Hence, in my opinion, the second type of boredom can be described as synonymous with the loss of personal meaning. Not only did we give ourselves the time and did not feel any oppression, but we felt no boredom (at the party). In hindsight, however, there was boredom; no matter what we did or would do, we were boring and bored with everything. Hence, our life now becomes meaningless: as if everything we do and feel was the same. Of course, there is a loss of meaning in the third type of boredom but a personal loss of meaning regarding things and other beings, not meaning as such. From the standpoint of the ‘inverted world’, philosophising within profound boredom is a ‘blessed life’, totally different from the ‘hell’ we are facing in the first and second types of boredom. The negation of personal meaning is not a negation of meaning as such. Being, which now becomes identified with nothing, is more original than negation⁹⁸. And what is meaning as such if not a meaning of Being of beings as such?

Meaning as such, or meaning of a meaning, gives beings their ontological status to show themselves as they are. We already hinted at this when we mentioned the problem of analogy. To better understand this, it might be helpful to give an example from Heidegger’s 1915 text, The Concept of Time in the Science of History. In it, Heidegger discussed the importance of the historical time that has nothing to do with the concept of time in natural sciences. What gives meaning to historical dates is their qualitative nature. ‘The number 750, and every other historical date, has meaning and value in the science of history only by considering the content in question that is historically significant’.⁹⁹ The numbers by themselves mean nothing in the historical sciences. Their meaning is given only when applied to a historical context. Hence, meaning as such is what gives meaning to other, ordinary meanings, including personal meaning. There is no truth or meaning without a human being. The meaning of something is given when whatever being is uncovered, namely unconcealed. How can then something become unconcealed? According to Being and Time, it is through understanding.¹⁰⁰ It is not a cognitive ability but Dasein’s Being fundamental manner in grasping the world. Meaning as the truth of Being belongs to Dasein’s existence. The moods are also existential structures in which the world is given to us. Thus, every mood has its understanding. The mood of profound boredom ‘understands’ the meaning or truth of Being as such.

Finally, we can elaborate on why Heidegger’s insistence on the sameness of truth and meaning is erroneous and why this leads to ‘stretching’ the phenomenon of boredom beyond its limits. Let us recall that the third form of boredom is compelling. It compels and overwhelms Dasein in facing being qua being. In other words, we are not free to agree or disagree with what arises out of the depths of Dasein. However, is not this the character of the truth rather than meaning? While both truth and meaning are revealing, the truth is binding, while sense or meaning is not.¹⁰¹ The authentic Dasein is basically powerless in its power that stems from accepting radical finitude. Hence, the truth is in fundamental ontology binding since not only the unconcealment of it is not a matter of willing and deliberation faculties, but also because authentic Dasein lets death become powerful in the powerlessness of its freedom, which brings Dasein to the simplicity of its fate.¹⁰²

Insofar as we are free to make or not sense out of something, the truth rests not on validity as such, but in Heidegger’s case, on primordial indebtedness, on a gift of Being. The quest for the meaning of Being is the quest for the truth of Being because the truth is the truth of Being.¹⁰³ However, thinking as a manner of our existence and not some biological process yields no results; there are no dangerous thoughts, only thinking as such is dangerous because not only does it subvert prejudices or public opinions but also its own results.¹⁰⁴ In this sense, thinking ego is not strictly ‘intentional’, cognitive, that it thinks something, but rather, it thinks about something¹⁰⁵. Questions such as ‘What is death?’, ‘What is God?’, and ‘What is freedom?’ are ultimate questions that do not contain assertions based on truth or falsity; rather, those questions are based on meaning. Moreover, insofar as a human being is a thinking being, he or she is a question-asking being. If human beings could answer all questions, they would cease to be such a being. A human being would go beyond his limitations as a mere mortal. To conclude in Kantian fashion, if the transcendental ideas of our reason bear an obstacle of knowing them through experience, this does not mean that we cannot think about them. In the words of Jean-Luc Nancy:

Thinking is never concerned with anything else. If there is anything like thinking, it’s only because there’s sense, and if there’s anything like sense it’s only in the sense that sense is always given and gives itself as something to be thought.¹⁰⁶