Abstract
This paper recognizes that we become bored in our post-modern, consumerist Western world and that boredom is related to this existence and hidden within it. Through Heidegger, it seeks to provide a way to structure our understanding of boredom and suggest ways of acknowledging its cause, and then to allow it to liberate our authentic appreciation of the world of our workplace and what can be learnt through it. Using the approach of focusing on being in a societal workplace environment, and the link to Heidegger’s notion of mood, revealed in Being and Time, boredom’s fundamental role is shown as a complex temporal manifold. Our superficial attempts to deal with things in datable time means that we miss the essential importance of the temporal manifold through which our being is revealed and where the Augenblick, (moment of vision) is the authentic present and temporalises itself of the authentic future (Heidegger in Being and time (trans: J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson). Blackwell, Oxford, 1962, p. 338). For Heidegger this is to be understood as ecstasis (ibid, p. 338) when the resolute Dasein “is carried away to whatever possibilities and circumstances are encountered (ibid, p. 338). Such resoluteness enables the private capabilities to arise in public practice, not, however, in the conformity of what ‘one does’ (Das Man) but as an authentically choosing being. The challenge of an ontological pedagogy, regardless of its place of revelation that this prescribes a possibly be edifying mission for Dasein. Instead of chasing away boredom through busyness, a moment of vision could produce creative and authentic ways of being.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
For example, Albert Camus's Meursault who does not think about anything deeply. Is someone who characterises vividly Heidegger’s notion of profound boredom.
It is in this section of The Fundamental that Heidegger makes reference to Being and Time, Section 65, where he introduces the idea. Also on the following pages (1995, pp. 150–151), he makes reference to Kierkegaard as the identifier of the idea but does not developing it sufficiently. Moreover Heidegger takes a different stance to Kierkegaard whose use of moment of vision causes fundamental restructuring of what is, was and might be-a change such as was experienced by St Paul in his conversion. For Heidegger the moment of vision acts to realign what is present at hand into a different understanding of their potential to be ready-at-hand.
References
Belton, T., & Priyadharshini, E. (2007). Boredom and schooling: a cross-disciplinary exploration. Cambridge Journal of Education, 27(4), 579–595.
Benjamin, W. (2002). The Arcades project. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Biceaga, V. (2006). Temporality and boredom. Continental Philosophy Review, 39(2), 135–153.
Blattner, W. (2006). Heidegger’s being and time. London: Continuum International Publishing Group.
Boss, M. (2009). Metaphysic and the mood of deep boredom. In B. Dalle Pezze (Ed.), Essays on boredom and modernity (pp. 85–109). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Breidenstein, G. (2007). The meaning of boredom in school lessons. Participant observation in the seventh and eighth form. Ethnography and Education, 2(1), 93–108.
Brogan, W. A. (2005). Heidegger and Aristotle: The two foldness of being. New York: SUNY.
Dreyfus, H. (1992). Being-in-the-world. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Dreyfus, H. (2004). What could be more intelligible than everyday intelligibility? Reinterpreting division I of being and time in the light of division II. Bulletin of Science Technology Society, 24(3), 265–274.
Gibbs, P. (2009). Adopting consumer time: potential issues for higher education. London Review of Education, 7(2), 113–124.
Goodstein, E. S. (2005). Experience without qualities: boredom and modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (trans: J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson). Oxford: Blackwell.
Heidegger, M. (1995). The fundamental concepts of metaphysics, world, finitude, solicitude (trans. W. McNeill & N. Walker). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Heidegger, M. (1995a). Aristotle’s metaphysics, Vols. 1–3: on the essence and actuality of Force (Trans. W. Brogan & P. Warnek). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Heidegger, M. (2007a). What is metaphysics? In W. McNeill (Ed.), Martin Heidegger pathways (pp. 82–96). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Heidegger, M. (2007). Plato’s Doctrine of truth (trans. T. Sheehan) In: Pathmarks (Texts in German Philosophy). ed. W. McNeill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Husserl, E. (2008). On the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time (1893–1917). Amsterdam: Springer Publishing.
Kant, I. (2001). Lectures on ethics (trans. P. Heath). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Kierkegaard, S. (2004). Either/or: a fragment of life (trans. A. Hannay). London: Penguin Books.
Mann, S., & Robinson, A. (2009). Boredom in the lecture theatre: an investigation into the contributors, moderators and outcomes of boredom amongst university students. British Educational Research Journal, 35(2), 243–258.
Mansikka, J.-E. (2009). Can boredom educate us? Tracing a mood in Heidegger’s fundamental ontology from an educational point of view. Studies in Philosophy of Education, 28, 255–268.
McDonald, W. (2009). Kierkegaard’s demonic boredom. In B. Dalle Pezze (Ed.), Essays on boredom and modernity (pp. 61–85). Amsterdam: Rodop BV.I.
McNeill, W. (1999). The glance of the eye, Heidegger, Aristotle, and the ends of theory. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Mei, T. S. (2009). Heidegger, work and being. London: Continuum Studies.
Pezze, B. D., & Salzani, C. (2009). Essays on boredom and modernity. Amsterdam: Rodopi B.V.
Rorty, R. (1979). Philosophy and the mirror of nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Rorty, R. (1999). Education as socialization and as individualization. In R. Rorty (Ed.), Philosophy and social hope (pp. 114–127). London: Penguin Books.
Simmel, G. (1991). Schopenhauer and Nietzsche; their place in cultural history. In: Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (trans: H. Loiskandl, D. Weinstein & M. Weinstein, pp. 3–12). Illinois: University of Illinois Press.
Stafford, S. P., & Gregory, W. T. (2006). Heidegger’s phenomenology of boredom, and the scientific investigation of conscious experience. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 5, 155–169.
Svendsen, L. (2005). A philosophy of boredom. London: Reaktion Books.
Thompson, I. (2005). Heidegger on Ontotheology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Witt, C. (2003). Ways of being. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Zimmerman, M. E. (1993). Heidegger, Buddhism and deep ecology. In C. Guignon (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Heidegger (pp. 240–269). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gibbs, P. The Concept of Profound Boredom: Learning from Moments of Vision. Stud Philos Educ 30, 601–613 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-011-9256-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-011-9256-5