The fear of death resists philosophical attempts at reconciliation. Building on theories of emotion, I argue that we can understand our fear as triggered by a de se mode of thinking about death which comes into conflict with our will to live. The discursive mode of philosophy may help us to avoid the de se mode of thinking about death, but it does not satisfactorily address the problem. I focus instead on the voluntary diminishment of one’s will to (...) live. I argue that we can encourage a natural tendency for the will to live to decline as we approach death. I then consider two objections: Is not the will to live too fundamental for us to control? And even if we can control it, would not a declining will to live result in a general despair that it is better to resist? I argue that both of these objections can be overcome. (shrink)

Discusses mental processes, the role of humans in nature, experience, and the connection between myth, religion, and science.

This article questions the effectiveness of “engagement teaching” when dealing with controversial subjects by exploring the role of fear in contemporary education about the Holocaust in the United Kingdom. It begins by assessing a governmental report about education and a series of related press reports and chain emails, whose assumption that secondary school teachers are afraid of teaching controversial subjects (in particular the Holocaust) triggered an international scandal about Holocaust education in the UK in April 2007. The author argues (...) that three forms of respectful fear or deference are undermined in Holocaust teaching: epistemological (towards historical knowledge); political (towards curricula); and intergenerational (towards teachers). The article further demonstrates that the object of fear expressed by journalists and the public was not the Holocaust itself, but the reversal of deferential relations between teachers and pupils in the school classroom and the supposition that we may not learn from history. Whereas history education is held up by policy-makers as a safeguard of social stability and of the transmission of values, the application of “engagement teaching” to controversial subjects may in fact undermine the authority of historical education and the enlightenment principles on which it is founded. (shrink)

What is it like to perceive a feared object? According to a popular neo-Gibsonian theory in psychology, fear biases our perceptions of objects so as to encourage particular kinds of actions: when we are afraid, spiders may be perceived as physically closer than they are in order to promote fleeing. Firestone mounted severe criticisms against this view, arguing that these cases are better explained by non-perceptual biases that operate on accurate perceptions of the external environment. In this paper I (...) will argue that fear might indeed distort our perceptions of the world, but not in the way neo-Gibsonians suppose. In the view I favor, perceptual distortions occur as by-products of fearful attention, a special mode of attention that is part of an orchestrated defensive response that prepares the organism to deal effectively with a threat. To argue for this view I will rely on empirical evidence that fearful attention narrows down the focus of attention and favors processing of local rather than global features of stimuli, which may jointly explain why perceptual distortions might occur in fearful object seeing. This view has consequences not only for empirical investigations in fearful perceptual distortions, but also for an explanation of the intentionality of fear and the phenomenal integration of bodily and intentional elements in fear episodes. (shrink)

This paper focuses on how experiences of trauma can lead to generalized fear of people, objects and places that are similar or contextually or conceptually related to those that produced the initial fear, causing epistemic, affective, and practical harms to those who are unduly feared and those who are intimates of the victim of trauma. We argue that cases of fear generalization that bring harm to other people constitute examples of injustice closely akin to testimonial injustice, specifically, (...) mnemonic injustice. Mnemonic injustice is a label that has been introduced to capture how injustice can occur via the operation of human memory systems when stereotypes shape what is remembered. Here we argue that injustices can also occur via memory systems when trauma leads to a generalized fear. We also argue that this calls for a reformulation of the notion of mnemonic injustice. (shrink)

Relativist and constructivist conceptions of knowledge have become orthodoxy in vast stretches of the academic world in recent times. This book critically examines such views and argues that they are fundamentally flawed. The book focuses on three different ways of reading the claim that knowledge is socially constructed, one about facts and two about justification. All three are rejected. The intuitive, common sense view is that there is a way things are that is independent of human opinion, and that we (...) are capable of arriving at belief about how things are that is objectively reasonable, and is binding on anyone capable of appreciating the relevant evidence, regardless of their social or cultural perspective. Difficult as these notions may be, it is a mistake to think that recent philosophy has uncovered powerful reasons for rejecting them. (shrink)

This book explores the way in which the fear of enemies shapes political groups at their founding and helps to preserve them by consolidating them in times of crisis. It develops a theory of “negative association” that examines the dynamics captured by the maxim “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” and then traces its role in the history of political thought, demonstrating that the fear of external threats is an essential element of the formation and preservation (...) of political groups and that its absence renders political association unsustainable. (shrink)

Fear, anger and hopelessness were the most frequent traumatic emotional responses in the general public during the first stage of outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in the Czech Republic (N = 1,000). The four most frequent categories of fear were determined: (a) fear of the negative impact on household finances, (b) fear of the negative impact on the household finances of significant others, (c) fear of the unavailability of health care, and (d) fear of (...) an insufficient food supply. The pessimistic communications used by the Czech mass media contributed to intensifying traumatic feelings, fears and psychological distress in the general public during the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic. The anxious emotional tone of the messages and the presentation of selectively chosen “bad ending stories” contributed to the psychological traumatization of the Czech population. This form of communication was motivated by an effort to reach the broadest audience possible. Older adults were the most affected part of the population because of their isolation and their very limited opportunity to share their worries and emotions with others. The communication used by the Czech mass media during the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic is a representative example of a traumatizing form of media communication during an epidemic. (shrink)

The paper points to quite a surprising change of the attitude among general public towards science and scientific progress that seems to have happened at the turn of the 20th century, and, to an extent, stays on: from holding scientific enterprise in high esteem to treating scientists and fortune˗tellers on a par, from hopes that science will eventually resolve our problems, both theoretical and practical, to anxiety and fear of what scientific experiments can bring about in nature and human (...) life. After considering, in Part 1, possible reasons for this change, the paper focuses on supposedly real dangers associated with some particular scientific achievements. Part 2, “Physicist’s nightmares”, recalls some historical instances of the progress in physics, from the Manhattan Project to the opening of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in 2008, fears that those experiments raised, and arguments ˗ both convincing and not quite so ˗ that were offered to reassure the public of their safety. Part 3, “Biologist’s dangerous plays”, turns to genetic engineering and certain fears this discipline raises which are captured in the term the “Frankenstein Syndrome”, e.g. the danger of genetically modified organisms getting to an unintended environment, or unexpected results of intended modifications. Here the paper offers some considerations regarding the notions of “intention” and “expectation”, which leads to fundamental doubts about plausibility of the conviction of the dangerous character of the research in question. Final conclusions point to a quite fundamental discrepancy between the power of science and the power of nature as the ultimate argument against exaggerated fears of scientific progress, and the post˗concluding remark offers additional support for it in terms of a brief theological observation for those who share Christian tradition. (shrink)

This survey aimed to illustrate factors that contribute to nurses' fear when faced with a possible human-to-human avian flu pandemic and their willingness to care for patients with avian flu in Taiwan. The participants were nursing students with a lesser nursing credential who were currently enrolled in a bachelor degree program in a private university in southern Taiwan. Nearly 42% of the nurses did not think that, if there were an outbreak of avian flu, their working hospitals would have (...) sufficient infection control measures and equipment to prevent nosocomial infection in their working environment. About 57% of the nurse participants indicated that they were willing to care for patients infected with avian influenza. Nurses' fear about an unknown infectious disease, such as the H5N1 influenza virus, could easily be heightened to levels above those occurring during the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in Taiwan. (shrink)

The article seeks to reclaim a type of fear lost in silent omission in education, yet central to the development of an ethical subject. It distinguishes the fear described by Martin Heidegger through the concept of befindlichkeit and fear for the other as an essential moment for ethics articulated by Emmanuel Levinas. It argues that the latter conception of fear has inverted the traditional assumption of the ideal ethical subject as fearless. It then examines how Levinas’s (...) interpretation of fear might contribute to the discussion on fear and responsibility in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It concludes that fear for the other reveals our tremendous capacity to suffer for the other, which is an aspect of the emotional life that has not been identified in the general educational discourse. This inattention manifests itself as a categorical omission in which the existence of fear for the other is not recognized and impedes the ability of educators to address ethics as it is deeply lived. (shrink)

Offers a detailed critique of the Bush administration's foreign policy, including arguments about the imposition of democracy on foreign nations and hypocritical actions by America.

The ArgumentThis essay examines Freud's construction of a mythical moment during early childhood, in which differences between male and female sexual identities are said to originate. It focuses on the way in which Freud divides fear and envy between the sexes, allocating the emotion of fear to men, and that of envy to women. On the one hand, the problems of this construction are pointed out, but on the other hand, it is shown that even a much-maligned myth (...) may still provide food for thought.Then, four critiques of Freud which have been articulated by prominent feminist psychoanalysts – Karen Horney, Nancy Chodorow, Luce Irigaray, and Jessica Benjamin – are presented, as well as the alternative visions of sexual identities which these thinkers have developed. The basic metaphors or economies guiding these visions of sexual difference are appraised in terms of their breadth and depth, with particular reference to their ability to acknowledge and integrate the presence of fear and envy as passions which are evoked but also repressed in the face of sexual difference.From this angle, the contributions of Nancy Chodorow and Luce Irigaray are found to be more limited than those of Karen Horney and Jessica Benjamin, since the former two theorists allocate fear primarily or exclusively to men, as Freud has done, while they remain completely silent on envy. Differences in the scope or reach of the four feminist approaches are explained as a result of the theorists' differing perceptions of the social, political, and cultural position of women in patriarchal society. (shrink)

Once we perceive a situation as a danger, threat, or shock, the information about a fearful stimulus is immediately sent to the amygdala, which, being a component of the limbic system, is responsible for fear and anxiety processing, and plays an important role in emotion and behaviour. As the research suggests, the message about a potentially frightening situation can reach the amygdala long before we are even consciously aware of it. Then, the amygdala is to trigger a fight-or-flight reaction, (...) marked by our increased heart rate and respiration to prepare for action (cf. LeDoux 2007). The aim of the research is, first, to account for the most prototypical cognitive scenario of fear through the prism of Cognitive Linguistics (cf. Kövecses 1986, 2015) and supply it with this neuroscientific and psychological knowledge of fear. We learn that in addition to the most common human reactions to fear, i.e. the one of a fighter or the one of a runaway, a modern man reacts to fear by denying it as well as by displacing fear from their subconscious mind. Second, by investigating the novel metaphor FEAR IS AN ILLNESS OF THE BRAIN, we aim to propose a novel constructive cognitive scenario of fear, which helps us deal with this unwanted emotion in contemporary situations that generate fear, e.g. in the era of (post)Covid-19 pandemic (WHO 2021, July 15). (shrink)

In parallel with a process that has characterised modern history and in accordance with the constitutive features of utopian literature, utopian discourses have expunged fear – even fear of death or illness – from their theoretical universe. However, while describing in detail ideal places, utopias also reveal, wordlessly, the lengthy list of fears troubling a given historical age. On the contrary, the many-sided universe of negative utopias, embracing dystopian as well as ant-utopian narratives, has brought the attention back (...) on fear, putting it at the centre of human experience. (shrink)

In this article, I provide a philosophical analysis of the nature and role of perceived identity threats in the genesis and maintenance of fanaticism. First, I offer a preliminary definition of fanaticism as the social identity-defining devotion to a sacred value that demands universal recognition and is complemented by a hostile antagonism toward people who dissent from one’s group’s values. The fanatic’s hostility toward dissent thereby takes the threefold form of outgroup hostility, ingroup hostility, and self-hostility. Second, I provide a (...) detailed analysis of the fears of fanaticism, arguing that each of the three aforementioned forms of hostile antagonism corresponds to one form of fear or anxiety: the fanatic’s fear of the outgroup, renegade members of the ingroup, and problematic aspects of themselves. In each of these three forms of fear, the fanatic experiences both their sacred values and their individual and social identity as being threatened. Finally, I turn to a fourth form of fear or anxiety connected to fanaticism, namely the fanatic’s anxiety of and flight from the existential condition of uncertainty itself, which, at least in some cases, ground the fanatic’s fearfulness. (shrink)

Fearful Symmetry brings the incredible discoveries of contemporary physics within everyone's grasp. A. Zee, a distinguished physicist and skillful expositor, tells the exciting story of how today's theoretical physicists are following Einstein in their search for the beauty and simplicity of Nature. Animated by a sense of reverence and whimsy, the book describes the majestic sweep and accomplishments of twentieth-century physics. In the end, we stand in awe before the grand vision of modern physics--one of the greatest chapters in the (...) intellectual history of humankind. (shrink)

A widespread (and often tacit) assumption is that fear is an anticipatory emotion and, as such, inherently future-oriented. Prima facie, such an assumption is threatened by cases where we seem to be afraid of things in the past: if it is possible to fear the past, then fear entertains no special relation with the future—or so some have argued. This seems to force us to choose between an account of fear as an anticipatory emotion (supported by (...) pre-theoretical intuitions as well as empirical research in psychology) and admitting cases of past-oriented fear. In this paper, we argue for a proposal that dissolves this dilemma. Our claim is: with the right account in place, the future-orientation of fear can be made compatible with, and is actually explanatory of, cases where we are genuinely afraid of something in the past. So, there is no need to choose: fear is still future-oriented, even when we are genuinely afraid of things in the past. The key is a correct understanding of what fear’s temporal orientation amounts to, and the framework we offer here provides us with such an understanding. (shrink)

Many have said, and I think some have shown, that it is irrational to fear death. The extinction of what is essential to the self—whether it be biological death or the permanent cessation of consciousness—cannot by definition be experienced by oneself as a loss or as a harm.

This book draws on fields as diverse as biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, psychology, psychiatry, and ethology, to form a fascinating synthesis of information on the nature of fear and of panic and anxiety disorders. Dr. Marks offers both a detailed discussion of the clinical aspects of fear-related syndromes and a broad exploration of the sources and mechanisms of fear and defensive behavior. Dealing first with normal fear, he establishes a firm, scientific basis for understanding it. He then (...) presents a thorough analysis of the development, symptoms and treatment of fear-related syndromes. Phobic and obsessive-compulsive disorders are examined in detail. The book is illustrated with examples of fear and defensive behavior in other living organisms. By drawing provocative analogies between animal and human behavior, it sheds new light on the origins of fears, phobias, and obsessive-compulsive problems, as well as on their treatment by drugs and psychological means. Clinical psychologists, ethologists, and anyone interested in the mechanisms of behavior will be fascinated by this authoritative study. The text is intriguing and informative, and the bibliography of over 2,100 entries makes it an invaluable reference. (shrink)

The 27th February, 2010 an 8.8 Mw earthquake upset Chile. A year after, the writer Juan Villoro published 8.8: El miedo en el espejo, a story by means of a catharsis telling his own experience throughout the earthquake. Villoro’s aim is to demonstrate that people’s psychological guaranties have fallen down together with the buildings’ walls. The Mexican writer describes his staying at the Hotel San Francisco in Santiago de Chile, which held out against the earthquake shocks but entrapped several Latin-American (...) writers as well as Villoro. All the writers were guests at the Congreso Iberoamericano de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil. Villoro book’s purpose is to reflect upon how fear impacts the human beings. (shrink)

What is behind the upsurge of virulent nationalism and intransigent politics across the globe today? In Fear of Breakdown, Noëlle McAfee contends that politics needs something that only psychoanalysis has been able to offer: an understanding of how to work through anxieties, ambiguity, fragility, and loss.

BackgroundReports suggest that some health care personnel fear retaliation from seeking ethics consultation. We therefore examined the prevalence and determinants of fear of retaliation and determined whether this fear is associated with diminished likelihood of consulting an ethics committee.MethodsWe surveyed registered nurses (RNs) and social workers (SWs) in four US states to identify ethical problems they encounter. We developed a retaliation index (1–7 point range) with higher scores indicating a higher perceived likelihood of retaliation. Linear regression analysis (...) was performed to identify socio-demographic and job characteristics associated with fear of retaliation. Logistic regression analysis was performed to determine whether fear of retaliation was associated with less likelihood of seeking consultation. Results Our sample (N = 1215) was primarily female (85%) and Caucasian (83%) with a mean age of 46 years and 17 years of practice. Among the sample, 293 (48.7%) RNs and 309 (51.3%) SWs reported access to an ethics consultation service. Amongst those with access, 2.8% (n = 17) personally experienced retaliation, 9.1% (n = 55) observed colleagues experience retaliation, 30.2% (n = 182) reported no experience with retaliation but considered it a realistic fear, and 50.8% (n = 305) did not perceive retaliation to be a problem. In logistic regression modeling, fear of retaliation was not associated with the likelihood (OR = 0.64; 95% CI = 0.22–1.89) or frequency of requesting ethics consultation (OR = 0.81; 95% CI = 0.27–2.38). Conclusion Fear of retaliation from seeking ethics consultation is common among nurses and social workers, nonetheless this fear is not associated with reduced requests for ethics consultation. (shrink)

Winner, 2020 Body and Embodiment Best Publication Award, given by the American Sociological Association Honorable Mention, 2020 Sociology of Sex and Gender Distinguished Book Award, given by the American Sociological Association How the female body has been racialized for over two hundred years There is an obesity epidemic in this country and poor Black women are particularly stigmatized as “diseased” and a burden on the public health care system. This is only the most recent incarnation of the fear of (...) fat Black women, which Sabrina Strings shows took root more than two hundred years ago. Strings weaves together an eye-opening historical narrative ranging from the Renaissance to the current moment, analyzing important works of art, newspaper and magazine articles, and scientific literature and medical journals—where fat bodies were once praised—showing that fat phobia, as it relates to Black women, did not originate with medical findings, but with the Enlightenment era belief that fatness was evidence of “savagery” and racial inferiority. The author argues that the contemporary ideal of slenderness is, at its very core, racialized and racist. Indeed, it was not until the early twentieth century, when racialized attitudes against fatness were already entrenched in the culture, that the medical establishment began its crusade against obesity. An important and original work, Fearing the Black Body argues convincingly that fat phobia isn’t about health at all, but rather a means of using the body to validate race, class, and gender prejudice. (shrink)

“Passive fear” denotes a certain type of response to a perceived threat; what is distinctive about the state of passive fear is that its behavioral outlook appears to qualify the emotional experience. I distinguish between two cases of passive fear: one is that of freezing in fear; the other is that of fear-involved tonic immobility. I reconstruct the explanatory strategy that is commonly employed in the field of emotion science, and argue that it leaves certain (...) questions about the nature of passive fear unanswered. I subsequently propose an account of passive fear that builds upon a phenomenological theory of emotions, placing emphasis on the interpretation of current research into human tonic immobility. (shrink)

Phenomenology's central insight is that affectivity is not an inconsequential or contingent characteristic of human existence. Emotions, moods, sentiments, and feelings are not accidents of human existence. They do not happen to happen to us. Rather, we exist the way we do because of and through our affective experiences. Phenomenology thus acknowledges the centrality and ubiquity of affectivity by noting the multitude of ways in which our existence is permeated by our various affective experiences. Yet, it also insists that such (...) experiences are both revealing and constitutive of human nature. It is precisely this last point that marks an important distinction between a phenomenological study of affectivity and perhaps all others. For phenomenology, one cannot understand the nature of human existence without coming to terms with the character of affectivity and at the same time, one cannot come to terms with the character of affectivity without understanding the nature of human existence. Practical and social engagements, scientific endeavors, familial and political interactions are all predicted on the fact that we are beings who are capable of being affectively attuned to ourselves, to the world, and to others. In this entry, we discuss Martin Heidegger's and Jean-Paul Sartre's respective accounts of affectivity. In the first section, we present Heidegger's understanding of affective existence. In this context, we discuss the significance of moods and offer an analysis of the affective phenomena of fear, anxiety, and boredom. In the second section, we present an overview of Sartre's account of emotions and advance a Sartrean interpretation of fear and boredom. We conclude by raising some brief concerns with both accounts. (shrink)

In his article, Grossmann argues that, in the context of human cooperative caregiving, heightened fearfulness in children and human sensitivity to fear in others are adaptive traits. I offer and briefly defend a rival hypothesis: Heightened fearfulness among infants and young children is a maladaptive trait that did not get deselected in the process of evolution because human sensitivity to fear in others mitigates its disadvantageous effects to a sufficient extent.

When the tried oldster drew near to his last hour, having fought the good fight and kept the faith, his heart was still young enough not to have forgotten that ...

In this rich and resonant work, Soren Kierkegaard reflects poetically and philosophically on the biblical story of God's command to Abraham, that he sacrifice his son Isaac as a test of faith. Was Abraham's proposed action morally and religiously justified or murder? Is there an absolute duty to God? Was Abraham justified in remaining silent? In pondering these questions, Kierkegaard presents faith as a paradox that cannot be understood by reason and conventional morality, and he challenges the universalist ethics and (...) immanental philosophy of modern German idealism, especially as represented by Kant and Hegel. This volume presents the first new English translation for twenty years, by Sylvia Walsh, together with an introduction by C. Stephen Evans which examines the ethical and religious issues raised by the text. (shrink)

This article reviews contributions to The Volitional Brain, some of which defend a libertarian, contra-causal account of free will, while others take a so-called compatibilist view, in which adequate conceptions of human liberty and moral responsibility are claimed to be compatible with naturalistic causality. Siding with compatibilism, this review finds that defenders of libertarian free will place undue weight on the first person feeling of freedom, while discounting scientific evidence that human choices are fully a function of antecedent causes at (...) various levels of description. It is argued that morality, justice, and personal responsibility and efficacy do not require the assumption that persons are first causes, so that we need not fear mechanism when applied to human agency. (shrink)

The standard view of "believes" and other propositional attitude verbs is that such verbs express relations between agents and propositions. A sentence of the form “S believes that p” is true just in case S stands in the belief-relation to the proposition that p; this proposition is the referent of the complement clause "that p." On this view, we would expect the clausal complements of propositional attitude verbs to be freely intersubstitutable with their corresponding proposition descriptions—e.g., "the proposition that p"—as (...) they are in the case of "believes." In many cases, however, intersubstitution of that-clauses and proposition descriptions fails to preserve truth value or even grammaticality. These substitution failures lead some philosophers to reject the standard view of propositional attitude reports. Others conclude that propositional attitude verbs are systematically ambiguous. I reject both these views. On my view, the that-clause complements of propositional attitude verbs denote propositions, but proposition descriptions do not. (shrink)