Angst (Anxiety)

Definition

Angst (anxiety) is, for heidegger-martin, the basic state-of-mind (Befindlichkeit) that reveals Dasein's uncanniness (Unheimlichkeit) and individualizes it from the they. "In anxiety one feels 'uncanny'… 'not-being-at-home' [das Nichtzuhause-sein]… Dasein has been individualized, but individualized as Being-in-the-world" (Being and Time, §40, H. 186). Unlike fear, which has a definite object (something within-the-world), anxiety is anxious about "nothing and nowhere"—it reveals the "nothing" of the world and Dasein's thrownness. Anxiety brings Dasein back from its absorption in the they and makes authenticity possible.

Key Thinkers

• heidegger-martin — developed the concept in Being and Time (1927) as the distinctive way Dasein is disclosed; anxiety reveals uncanniness and individualizes.
• vidler-anthony — extends Heidegger's uncanny to architecture; the unhomely as the modern condition of estrangement and homelessness (The Architectural Uncanny, 1992).
• (Søren Kierkegaard — precursor to Heidegger; anxiety as the dizziness of freedom, The Concept of Anxiety (1844). No author page yet — see log.md.)

Related Concepts

• uncanny — the feeling of not-being-at-home that anxiety reveals.
• dasein — the entity that experiences anxiety.
• being-toward-death — anxiety in the face of death individualizes Dasein.
• das-man — the they tranquilizes anxiety and transforms it into fear.
• care — anxiety reveals care as a whole.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss angst:

• source-notes/heidegger-1927-being-and-time — the foundational analysis (§40, §53, §68); anxiety as revealing uncanniness and individualizing.
• source-notes/vidler-1992-architectural-uncanny — the uncanny as the unhomely double of dwelling; homelessness and estrangement.
• source-notes/heynen-1999-architecture-and-modernity — modernity's homelessness and the dialectic of dwelling.
• Inside Fear: Secret Places and Hidden Spaces in Dwellings (Troutman 1997/2006) — the Freudian counterpart, as the essay reports it: "Freud distinguished anxiety from fear (Furcht). Anxiety is a reaction to a perception of danger; fear requires a definite object of which one is afraid. He defined anxiety as an adaptive function – essential in humans and animals to their survival… He considered birth the first experience of anxiety, later the absence of the mother" (p. 358) — the same fear/anxiety divide this page holds in Heidegger's terms (fear's definite object vs. anxiety's objectless ground), reached from the psychoanalytic side, with a different genealogy (birth and separation rather than the "nothing" of the world) and a different yield: where Heidegger's Angst individualizes, Freud's (as reported) is adaptive and designable-against — the house "assimilates unexpressed and unacknowledged anxieties and feelings of loss" (p. 358; see transitional-space, fear). The chapter cites no Freud title; the report is recorded, not sourced.

Open Questions

• Can anxiety be cultivated architecturally, or is it always a pathological condition?
• How does anxiety relate to spectacle and consumerism? Does consumer culture anesthetize anxiety?
• What is the relationship between anxiety and atmosphere? Can spaces evoke anxiety? uncanny individualization authenticity Angst Unheimlichkeit not-at-home Befindlichkeit