Anxiety
A Philosophical Guide
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2.5 • 2개의 평가
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- US$11.99
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How philosophy can teach us to be less anxious about being anxious by understanding that it’s an essential part of being human
Today, anxiety is usually thought of as a pathology, the most diagnosed and medicated of all psychological disorders. But anxiety isn’t always or only a medical condition. Indeed, many philosophers argue that anxiety is a normal, even essential, part of being human, and that coming to terms with this fact is potentially transformative, allowing us to live more meaningful lives by giving us a richer understanding of ourselves. In Anxiety, Samir Chopra explores valuable insights about anxiety offered by ancient and modern philosophies—Buddhism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory. Blending memoir and philosophy, he also tells how serious anxiety has affected his own life—and how philosophy has helped him cope with it.
Chopra shows that many philosophers—including the Buddha, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger—have viewed anxiety as an inevitable human response to existence: to be is to be anxious. Drawing on Karl Marx and Herbert Marcuse, Chopra examines how poverty and other material conditions can make anxiety worse, but he emphasizes that not even the rich can escape it. Nor can the medicated. Inseparable from the human condition, anxiety is indispensable for grasping it. Philosophy may not be able to cure anxiety but, by leading us to greater self-knowledge and self-acceptance, it may be able to make us less anxious about being anxious.
Personal, poignant, and hopeful, Anxiety is a book for anyone who is curious about rethinking anxiety and learning why it might be a source not only of suffering but of insight.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brooklyn College philosophy professor Chopra (Shyam Benegal) surveys philosophical interpretations of anxiety and its root causes in this comprehensive study. After both his parents died young, 26-year-old Chopra slipped into a haze of "doom and gloom" that counseling helped him to identify as anxiety. Real relief, however, came from his doctoral work, as he grappled with philosophical texts that explored what the condition is and why feeling it "is to receive confirmation of our humanity and personhood." He explains that in Buddhist tradition, anxiety is attributed to a sense of isolated individualism and can be remedied through mindfulness, while Kierkegaard and other existentialists framed it as a product of "the ineluctable uncertainty of the future" and "our inability to construct and define its contours with precision." Elsewhere, Chopra discusses how Freudians interpret anxiety as desire repressed in response to society's "associated realistic constraints and moral demands," while Marxism holds that capitalism fosters anxiety by alienating people from "life, from ourselves, from our fellow humans." Readers will appreciate Chopra's lucid explanations and refreshing assertion that anxiety is an inherent part of being human that doesn't necessarily need fixing, even if his occasional skepticism of psychiatric medications can take things off track. This carefully considered assessment of a "universal, perennial human condition" provides plenty of food for thought.
