Philosopher and philosophical consultant Samir Chopra invokes anxiety’s long and illustrious lineage in his wisdom in new book
Long before anxiety became a clinical problem, it was an existential dilemma. The medical condition, a disease seeking a cure, emerged in the 19th century; the philosophical orientation has probably existed as long as we have existed, and cannot (and should not) be eradicated.
Unfortunately, in recent years an army of gurus and pathologically positive thinkers have colonized the concept. Along the way, they have forgotten what philosophers have known for centuries: to be human is to care, and, consequently, excellence is to care well. As the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once said: “He who has learned to worry in the right way has learned the most.”
Philosopher and philosophical consultant Samir Chopra invokes the long and illustrious lineage of anxiety in his wise, if sometimes circumlocutory, new book. Anxiety: a philosophical guide (Anxiety: a philosophical guide, in free translation). “My anxiety made me who I am,” he writes in the introduction. “And I couldn’t get rid of my anxieties without ceasing to be myself.”
Although he includes several moving accounts of his traumas and ailments, his slim volume is, for the most part, dedicated to offering a whirlwind tour of the intellectual history of an unfairly vilified emotion.
Clear, Anxiety it is not a comprehensive study. Chopra focuses on four schools of thought that illuminate his subject with particular acuity: Buddhism, existentialism, psychoanalytic theory and critical theory. All of these lore are the subject of tomes in their own right, and Chopra’s summaries can sometimes seem rushed. It is difficult to do justice to such thorny and distinguished thinkers as the vehemently anti-Christian iconoclast Friedrich Nietzsche and the Christian existentialist Paul Tillich in a modestly sized book.
Anyway, Anxiety is a useful introduction to the work of thinkers who confront, rather than shy away from, our most fruitfully unpleasant feelings. Perhaps more importantly, in an era that seeks easy painkillers, Chopra’s book represents an urgent attempt to reclaim anxiety from those who threaten to cure it or make it disappear with advice. He leads by example, providing a rewarding and challenging alternative to the easy self-help that he implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) criticizes.
Indeed, Anxiety begins with a reference to the conventions of the self-help genre that it half-imitates, half-mocks. “Any book on anxiety must, by necessity, begin with a list of broad sociological and statistical observations, each showing how common it is to suffer from anxiety in contemporary society,” Chopra writes.
Even worse, he continues, every book about anxiety must insist that the epidemic it diagnoses is unprecedented. A recent book by Jonathan Haidt declares Gen Z the “anxious generation,” but a little historical awareness is enough to show that several previous generations thought of themselves as the same. Why is our anxiety so persistent, so immune to medication? Perhaps, Chopra proposes, because it is a “universal and perennial human condition”—or at least, his philosophical version of it is.
What distinguishes this elevated type of anxiety from its lower cousin? Clinical anxiety is, paradigmatically, irrational, but many of the traditions investigated by Chopra consider existential anxiety as a lucid response to our condition. However, which aspects of the human condition trigger existential anxiety depends on who you ask.
Buddhists, for example, believe that our suffering is tied to “a true and unshakable understanding of the nature of the world and the place of human existence in it,” Chopra writes. In other words, we despair not because we fear ghosts, but “because we realize that we are limited and mortal, in life, in abilities, in results.” Sigmund Freud and his followers echo Buddhist concerns, suggesting that anxiety is, roughly speaking, a response to a world full of “painful and terrifying losses.” Existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Kierkegaard take a different approach, arguing that anxiety is concomitant with freedom: once we accept that we are not bound to a single path, we are free to worry about which path to take. And left-wing critics like Karl Marx consider anxiety a social evil, a product of inhabiting “a world constructed on someone else’s terms.”
These accounts are not exactly conflicting (we might be anxious because we are mortal, because we are free, and because we exercise little control over the circumstances of our lives), but they are not perfectly congruent either. If we are anxious because we are forced to live in a world designed by the rich, then perhaps we are not as freely burdened as the existentialists propose.
Furthermore, it is unclear whether what Marx called “alienation” – the feeling of estrangement that workers experience when forced to accept the dictates of their bosses – is actually equivalent to anxiety. Chopra does not have the space to fully sustain this dubious identification, nor does she reconcile the differing emphases of his characters, which may point in divergent directions.
After all, whether existential anxiety is, to some extent, treatable depends on what it is. The cure for Marxian alienation would appear to be social and political reform; The cure for the kind of anxiety that Buddhists describe is, in their eyes, the recognition that “there is no enduring entity” other than the self, no being whose finiteness can disturb us. Chopra’s sympathies, however, clearly lie with those who believe that anxiety is – and should be – chronic. “Even if all material gains were assured,” he reflects in his chapter on Marxist theories of alienation, “we would not be free from existential anxiety.”
However, some strategies can alleviate anxiety without eliminating or trivializing it. Chopra himself stopped worrying so painfully when he discovered existentialism, which reassured him that there is no single way of being, no single standard to reach. And philosophy, like psychoanalysis, can reshape our fears. After philosophizing, Chopra writes, “What appears to be a problem is no longer a problem, because in the process of reinterpretation, we change its identity and nature.”
His goal is to demonstrate that, even though we are condemned to anxiety by our very nature, we don’t need to be anxious for the sake of being anxious. Against those who would abolish any form of friction or frustration, he insists that anxiety is a way of honoring who and what we are. It is, in his words, “a fundamental human response to our finitude, mortality, and epistemic limitation.” Who knows what truncated beings we would become without it?
Contemplating the prospect of a life without anxiety, we mercifully find yet another horror to worry about.
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Source: Terra
Ben Stock is a lifestyle journalist and author at Gossipify. He writes about topics such as health, wellness, travel, food and home decor. He provides practical advice and inspiration to improve well-being, keeps readers up to date with latest lifestyle news and trends, known for his engaging writing style, in-depth analysis and unique perspectives.
