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"A Philosophy of Boredom" by Lars Svendsen, translated by John Irons, Reaktion Books, 176 pp, $24.95
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If you've never been bored, please don't get in the mood now.
Any concept that attracted comment from Kant, Goethe, and other giants accomplished enough to be identifiable by one name must be complex, profound, and worthy of attention even in a sweltering August.
(If you immediately think, "Wait, there's probably some other concept that's drawn attention from other single-named giants such as Beyonce, Madonna and Brittany - like "bling - that's utterly simpleminded," then you possess a genuine philosophical aptitude and should continue reading.)
"Very few people," writes the witty Norwegian philosopher Lars Svendsen, "have any well-thought-out concept of boredom." That hasn't stopped folks from trying to capture it in a phrase or tossed-off digression.
Kierkegaard declared it "the root of all evil," following on Church fathers who condemned its forerunner, the sin of acedia. Svendsen, a professor at the University of Bergen, cleverly updates that, noting that boredom has been accused of causing such modern ills as "drug abuse, alcohol abuse, smoking, eating disorders, promiscuity, vandalism ..."
Schopenhauer thought boredom "a tame longing without any particular object." For Kafka, it was "as if everything I owned had left me, and as if it would scarcely be sufficient if all of it returned." Theodor Adorno blamed boredom on alienation at work. Russian poet Joseph Brodsky suggested boredom taught us "life's most important lesson ... that you are completely insignificant."
Svendsen's modest, self-assigned task is to make these one-liners and fragments cohere. His smart, essayish observations on what he calls a "vague, diverse" notion consistently entertain and edify.
"Boredom cannot simply be understood as a personal idiosyncracy ..." Svendsen writes. "Boredom is not just an inner state of mind: it is also a characteristic of the world, for we participate in practices that are saturated with boredom."
As both word and recognizable concept, Svendsen contends, "boredom arose in the 18th century, fueled by Romanticism's demand that life be interesting, and the self's aspirations satisfied. That requires life to possess meaning, supplied by God, tradition or us. Romantic boredom "is characterized by not knowing what one is searching for, other than an unspecified, boundless fullness." All boredom, Svendsen argues, involves "loss of meaning" in one's life.
Think of it as a supply-and-demand problem. God works for true believers - Hezbollah guerrillas and other devout souls presumably don't suffer from existential boredom. "Tradition" works for those happy to be relieved of choice. The rest of us, existential head-scratchers by circumstance, must provide our own meaning.
Any wonder that boredom's on the upswing?
Metaphorically, Svendsen explains, it's tantamount to "meaning withdrawal." Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa made the point bluntly: "Tedium is not the disease of being bored because there's nothing to do, but the more serious disease of feeling that there's nothing worth doing."
As Svendsen explores his territory, he excels at astute line-drawing: "Boredom lacks the charm of melancholy - a charm that is connected to melancholy's traditional link to wisdom, sensitivity and beauty. ... it also lacks the obvious seriousness of depression, so it is less interesting to psychologists and psychiatrists." Fond of boredom's logical conundrums, Svendsen retails them through his grab bag of collected aphorisms. (Give some thought to La Rochefoucauld's fine dart, "We are almost always bored by people to whom we ourselves are boring.")
Unlike Scandinavian philosophers known for sterile prose styles, Svendsen combines droll dismissal of statistical research (he reports "no completely reliable studies of how large a percentage of the population is bored"), incisive readings of boredom art from Beckett to Warhol to Bret Easton Ellis to Iggy Pop ("I'm bored / I'm bored / I'm chairman of the bored"), and etymological ponderings of the nuances among "boredom, "Langeweile (German), "noia (Italian), "ennui (French) and "kjedsomhet (Norwegian).
(If you immediately think, "Isn't he really writing about "kjedsomhet most of the time?," OK, we know you're a smarty-pants.)
Finally, a tip of the hat to Svendsen for his casual candor. "I am bored when I hear a lecture for the fourth time," he remarks, "and I am bored when "I give a lecture for the fourth time."
You will not be bored reading him for the first time.
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(c) 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.
