The Treatment of Boredom in Heidegger and Insomnia in Levinas

Abstract

Historical temporality of the concept of boredom is counter to Heidegger’s treatment of boredom as essential to his philosophical investigation of temporality/time but without the grounding of boredom in historical or cultural milieu or, for that matter, in psychology or neuroscience. A mood (Stimmung) of boredom does not have a direct intentional object of its own, but it can accompany emotional and/or cognitive experiences by giving them a certain coloring or tonality. Heidegger’s final statements are about contemporary man avoiding or suppressing profound boredom out of concealment and lack of courage to face the question of oppression “in this fundamental attunement.” Levinas, on the other hand, sees insomnia as “primordial opening” to the understanding of “impossibility of hiding in oneself” (Levinas E (1993) God, death, and time. Edited by Jacques Roland. Stanford University Press, Stanford, p 209).

Thus, Heidegger’s investigation of boredom parallels Levinas’s investigation of insomnia as revealing particular states of awareness and consciousness. But, unlike the Being held captive in a particular mood of boredom in Heidegger’s metaphysics and the pessimistic evaluation of profiting from the experience of profound boredom, Levinas’s insomnia reveals “the Other within the Same who does not alienate the Same but who awakens him” (Levinas E (1993) God, death, and time. Edited by Jacques Roland. Stanford University Press, Stanford, p 209).