| Summary: | Søren Kierkegaard is well-known as an original philosophical thinker, but less known is his reliance upon and development of the Christian tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, in particular the vice of <i>acedia</i>, or sloth. As <i>acedia</i> has enjoyed renewed interest in the past century or so, commentators have attempted to pin down one or another Kierkegaardian concept (e.g., despair, heavy-mindedness, boredom, etc.) as the embodiment of the vice, but these attempts have yet to achieve any consensus. In our estimation, the complicated reality is that, in using slightly different but related concepts, Kierkegaard is providing a unique look at <i>acedia</i> as it manifests differently at different stages on life’s way. Thus, on this “perspectival account”, <i>acedia</i> will manifest differently according to whether an individual inhabits the aesthetic, ethical, or religious sphere. We propose two axes for this perspectival account. Such descriptions of how <i>acedia</i> manifests make up the first, phenomenal axis, while the second, evaluative axis, accounts for the various bits of advice and wisdom we read in the diagnoses of <i>acedia</i> from one Kierkegaardian pseudonym to another. Our aim is to show that Kierkegaard was not only familiar with the concept of <i>acedia</i>, but his contributions helped to develop and extend the tradition.
|
|---|