Fear (philosophy)

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Anxiety became prominent as a philosophical term through Kierkegaard and subsequently in existential philosophy . However, it has played a role since ancient ethics . While existential philosophy with Kierkegaard strictly differentiates between fear and fear, this is not the case in ancient ethics (and also in theological tradition).

Aristotle

According to Aristotle, not every form of fear is to be rejected as pathological or moral. Rather, fear can lead to considerations that are appropriate to the situation. He regards mechanical fearlessness as dumbness, objectively unfounded fear (e.g. of a mouse) as pathological.

Stoa and Epicureanism

Like the Epicureans, the ancient Stoa saw fear as an artificial emotion that had to be met with serenity ( ataraxia ). The Epicureans strived for a fear-free state by trying to show that death is basically nothing of any human concern because it is not an event in life. The fear of the gods was to be disempowered by arguing that the gods existed in a separate sphere and were not interested in mortals.

Augustine

Augustine defines fear (timor) “fundamentally as the feeling of alienation from God”. He distinguishes between the fear of God ( timor dei ) the timor castus and the timor servilis . Timor castus is literally translated as "chaste fear", but also as "holy fear". While timor castus consists in the fear of separation from the beloved and is motivated by (God's) love, timor servilis (servile fear) is regarded as a mere "fear of punishment", which arises from a servile attitude and is caused by love of the world and not by the " Love of God or for the good ”is motivated. Despite the devaluation of the timor servilis , it is assigned a pedagogical function in the sense of a preparation for love, which is said to have favored the pedagogy of fear in Christianity.

Boehme, Schelling

The subject of fear is only addressed again by Böhme and Schelling.

According to Jakob Böhme “every life arises in fear” and there is no life without fear.

Hegel

According to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , fear is a necessary transition on the path from consciousness to self-confidence. The overcoming of fear is accomplished through work.

Existential philosophy

Following Søren Kierkegaard , the subject of fear becomes a basic theme of existential philosophy . So u. a. with Martin Heidegger , Karl Jaspers , Jean-Paul Sartre and Peter Wust .

Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard , who can be seen in the Augustinian tradition, deals with the subject of fear above all in his book The Concept of Fear from 1844. In this book, the human mind goes through different manifestations. Kierkegaard distinguishes between the states of innocence, sin and redemption. The relationship between fear and nothing is clarified in the state of innocence. The mind is here dreaming present, i.e. H. he has not yet grasped himself as a spirit, but strives to enter into a relationship with himself. This striving is in constant conflict with itself. Fear is given where the mind longs to sit down and at the same time shrinks from it. The mind feels attracted and repelled by its own reality at the same time. At one point the whole of this movement is called fear: "Fear is a sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy." The reality of itself is like nothing for the dreaming mind. The mind is afraid of nothing: "The possibility of the mind shows itself again and again as a figure that (...) entices, but has floated away", as soon as someone "reaches for it and is nothing that can be nothing but fear. “But as directed towards something indefinite, fear is different from fear. Fear is always fear of this or that particular.

The fear further causes the mind to end up failing itself in attempting to seat itself. For Kierkegaard, sin is a failed act of self-determination of the spirit or freedom. Even on the level of the spirit that has fallen into sin, man lives again in fear: "Sin entered with fear, but sin in turn brought fear with it". But fear in the state of sin is fear of redemption from sin as, in turn, "a nothing that the individual loves as much as it fears".

In redemption or in faith, fear and sin are abolished. In order to get there, however, the person must first allow himself to be “formed” by fear (last chapter of the “concept of fear”), i. H. see every possibility of fate and every possibility of guilt / sin as possible for oneself. Those who do not see for themselves that the worst misfortune can happen to them at any time, who do not see that “perdition, destruction lives next door to every human being”, cannot truly overcome fear and sin.

Heidegger

In Being and Time (1927), Martin Heidegger differentiates between three different ways of being-in-the-world: the state of mind, understanding and speech. The state of mind is the mood. Man or existence is always in tune. Fear, however, is referred to as the “basic state of mind”, which relates radically to the experience of the mere “that it is” of existence. It isolates existence to its very own being-in-the-world, d. H. Everyday familiarity collapses and the threat or the eeriness, the not-being-at-home of being-in-the-world, opens up to existence. The "what before" of fear, in contrast to fear, is completely indeterminate, "it is nothing [the threatening] and nowhere". In the fear of death, thrownness into death is revealed; H. death as the most intrinsic, unalterable being of every existence. The ability to be revealed in fear enables, according to Heidegger, an understanding of oneself in one's own being able to be and thus the choice as the decision for a being able to be from one's own self or the determination.

In the lecture What is metaphysics? (1929) what of fear is not being-in-the-world as such, rather fear reveals the world as being as a whole and nothing as something different from the world. Nothing here is simply the indeterminate in the sense of the completely different from being. In doing so, being or nothing is veiled in the opened up of nothingness.

In Being and Time , Dasein is afraid of being thrown out, of facticity, basically of its powerlessness, and then runs “resolutely” ahead of it into death. In What is Metaphysics? on the other hand, existence is afraid of its own design and therefore of existential freedom.

Jaspers

For Jaspers, the fear results from failure in borderline situations, which, through endurance, leads to “an incomprehensible trust in the bottom of all things”.

Junk

The Christian existential philosopher Peter Wust sees a way out of the existential fear crisis for people in search of “security in the unconcerned” in the certainty of God and faith as “homo religiosus”.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Kramer: Fear. II. Theological . In: Walter Kasper (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church . 3. Edition. tape 1 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1993, Sp. 673 .
  2. ^ Otfried Höffe : Lexicon of Ethics. 7th edition. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56810-7 : Fear
  3. ↑ David Ratmoko: On the concept of fear. In: Critical Edition. October 4, 2000 [1]
  4. ↑ Hans Kramer: Fear. II. Theological . In: Walter Kasper (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church . 3. Edition. tape 1 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1993, Sp. 673 .
  5. ↑ David Ratmoko: On the concept of fear. In: Critical Edition. October 4, 2000 [2]
  6. ^ Otfried Höffe : Lexicon of Ethics. 7th edition. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56810-7 : Fear.
  7. ↑ David Ratmoko: On the concept of fear. In: Critical Edition. October 4, 2000 [3]
  8. ↑ Hans Kramer: Fear. II. Theological . In: Walter Kasper (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church . 3. Edition. tape 1 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1993, Sp. 673 .
  9. ↑ Hans Kramer: Fear. II. Theological . In: Walter Kasper (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church . 3. Edition. tape 1 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1993, Sp. 673 .
  10. ↑ So Kurt Flasch , quoted in: David Ratmoko: On the concept of fear. In: Critical Edition. October 4, 2000 [4]
  11. ↑ Alois Halder: Philosophical Dictionary. Herder, Freiburg i. Br. Et al. 2008: fear.
  12. ↑ Böhme: From the Incarnation of Jesus Christ II. 4, § 1, quoted from Regenbogen / Meyer (Ed.): Dictionary of philosophical terms. Meiner, Hamburg 2005: Fear.
  13. ^ Anton Hügli, Poul Lübcke (Ed.): Philosophielexikon. 6th edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-499-55689-0 : Fear
  14. ↑ Sören Kierkegaard: The term fear. In Gesammelte Werke, Düsseldorf / Cologne 1950ff., Vol. 5, p. 40 (Samlede Vaerker, Copenhagen 1901–1906, Vol. 4, p. 313)
  15. ↑ Ibid.
  16. ↑ Ibid.
  17. ↑ Ibid., P. 52 (p. 324).
  18. ↑ Ibid.
  19. ↑ Ibid., P. 162 (p. 422).
  20. ↑ Ibid.
  21. ↑ Martin Heidegger: Being and time. Tübingen 15 1979, ISBN 3-484-70122-6 , p. 134.
  22. ↑ Ibid., P. 135.
  23. ↑ Ibid., P. 187.
  24. ↑ Ibid., P. 189.
  25. ↑ Ibid., P. 188.
  26. ↑ Ibid., P. 186.
  27. ↑ Ibid., P. 251.
  28. ↑ Ibid., P. 287.
  29. ↑ Ibid., P. 268.
  30. ↑ Ibid., P. 297.
  31. ↑ Martin Heidegger: What is metaphysics? Verlag Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 978-3-465-03517-6 , p. 28. Compare the difference between the understanding of fear between "being and time" and "what is metaphysics?" Romano Pocai: Heidegger's theory of state of mind: his thinking between 1927 and 1933 Freiburg (Breisgau), Munich: Alber 1996, ISBN 3-495-47835-3
  32. ↑ Ibid., P. 45.
  33. ↑ Ibid., P. 46.
  34. ↑ Cf. Romano Pocai: Heidegger's theory of sensitivities: his thinking between 1927 and 1933 Freiburg (Breisgau), Munich: Alber 1996, ISBN 3-495-47835-3 .
  35. ↑ Quoted from Alois Halder: Philosophical Dictionary. Herder, Freiburg i. Br. U. a. 2008: fear.
  36. ↑ Peter Wust : Uncertainty and Risk. Man in philosophy . Revised 9th edition. LIT-Verlag, Münster 2002, ISBN 3-8258-6066-3 .