This volume offers a thorough description of anxiety from a phenomenologicalperspective. Building on Bakhtins insights, the author develops the method ofphenomenological polyphony, which can do justice to the essential ambiguity ofanxiety. In this polyphony, the voices of Kierkegaard, Husserl, Freud, Blumenberg,Heidegger, Sartre, Adorno, Derrida and Levinas are particularly recognizable. The bookexplores new perspectives on the complex relation between anxiety, fear, and traumawith reference to different disciplines, from art history to cultural anthropology, frompsychopathology to theology, from literature to political philosophy.
When is anxiety justified? When does anxiety cease to function as an effective andreasonable signal preventing imminent threats, and when does it become an invasiveprojection of our own ghosts? This volume presents a deep philosophical inquiry intothe affective phenomenon that can both protect us from danger and be a danger in itself.
Moreover, the author explores the relevance of anxiety in the context of philosophicalanthropology. In various theoretical frameworks, the difference between anxiety andfear serves as a criterion for distinguishing human beings from animals in particular.Accordingly, research on anxiety is crucial for defining human nature as such.
The analysis presented in this volume shows how an alteration of the dimensions ofembodiment, time-consciousness, and phantasy takes place in anxiety. Furthermore,the author elaborates on new categories for understanding of anxiety, such asquasi-intentional imaginative anticipation, which eludes the traditional differentiationbetween perception and imagination. The work culminates in a phenomenologicalanalysis of five essential traits of anxiety: 1. its quasi-intentional imaginative anticipation;2. its negative inspiration; 3. the recurrence of bodily manifestations; 4. the interlocutionwith an alien power; 5. its negative teleology.