The Anxious Human Being

This book highlights the different ways in which anxiety occurs, and, at the same time, sheds light on the importance of anxiety and in what ways it can be meaningful. The book proposes a distinction between three basic manifestations of anxiety: affective fear, felt anxieties, and mental anxiety. Each represents a specific form of vital danger management, encompassing not only physical protection functions but also the mental anticipation of possible risks and threats.

Anxiety accompanies us whenever and wherever we are. It is part of being human. Humans are creatures of anxiety, and this shapes their relationship to the world, to others, and to themselves. Anxiety can become imbalanced, be experienced as distressing, and even become pathological. This book offers a nuanced perspective on the topic, incorporating relevant theories from biology, psychology, sociology, and philosophy, as well as social, political, and ideological-worldview applications, as such demonstrating the relevance as well as the pitfalls of various manifestations of anxiety.

Comprehensive classification of the various fundamental components of the anxiety phenomenon (fear, anxieties, anxiety) Reconstruction of the biological, cultural, and intellectual-historical development of anxiety theories Demonstration of the productive, meaningful, and anthropologically constitutive functions of anxiety as a whole

Autorentext

Bärbel Frischmann is a Professor of the History of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Erfurt. Her main areas of research include: classical German philosophy and early Romanticism, Existential Philosophy, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Cassirer, Postmodern Philosophy and Deconstruction, philosophy of culture, political philosophy, social philosophy and theories of anxiety.

Inhalt

1 Introduction: The conceptual distinction between affective fear, felt anxieties, and mental anxiety.- 2 How humans became beings of anxiety: Evolution and culture.- 3 Biology and psychology on fear, anxieties, and anxiety.- 4 Fear, anxieties, and anxiety in European theoretical history.- 5 The concept of anxiety in existential philosophy.- 6 Anxieties and anxiety as a social phenomenon.- 7 Political anxieties, power, totalitarianism, terror.- 8 Religions, ideologies, and conspiracy theories.- 9 Final reflections: The human as a being of anxiety and the power of the human mind.