Journal of Boredom
Studies (ISSN 2990-2525)
Issue 3, 2025, pp. 1–21
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17608194
https://www.boredomsociety.com/jbs
Philosophy and
Anthropology of Boredom in
Hans Blumenberg
Josefa Ros
Velasco
Complutense
University of Madrid, Spain
https://orcid.org/0009-0005-7799-4212
How to cite
this paper: Ros Velasco, J. (2025). Philosophy and Anthropology of Boredom in
Hans Blumenberg. Journal of Boredom Studies, 3. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17608194
Translation of Ros Velasco, J. (2025). Filosofía y antropología
del aburrimiento en Hans Blumenberg. In J. Ros Velasco, E. J. Torregroza Lara,
and O. A. Quintero Ocampo (Eds.), Hans Blumenberg. Preguntas contra el miedo (pp. 215–248). Nexofia. Reproduced with permission
of publisher.
1. Introduction.
Never Say Never
For some time now, I’ve
been trying to disconnect from Hans Blumenberg (1920–1996), though I’ve never
quite managed to do so. I devoted all my reading hours during the last two
years of my degree to his philosophy, wrote a Master’s thesis—focused on his
metaphorology—and even a doctoral dissertation (2017a), which
required me to spend an entire year of my life in Marbach am Neckar (Stuttgart,
Germany), translating, studying, and systematizing hundreds of the Lübeck-born
philosopher’s unpublished manuscripts. From those years of tireless work came
some of the writings I cherish most: a couple devoted to metaphorology, another
two to philosophical anthropology (see, e.g., 2012), two
more to issues related to feminism (see, e.g., 2016a),
several to prehistory and paleoanthropology (see, e.g., 2016b), and even one in which I had the Hanseatic thinker engage in dialogue
with Schopenhauer (2016c). I have also made an effort to
understand how his work has been received by Blumenberian scholars (see, e.g., 2014, 2017b). I always think I’ve reached my
limit with this thinker, yet I never completely let him go. Although I often
promise myself to leave him behind, I end up returning to him at the slightest
opportunity: a small request to discuss his relationship with Johann Sebastian
Bach (2021), a brief translation of an unpublished text,
or an invitation to a specialized conference. To be honest, I always carry
Blumenberg on my back; I end up quoting passages from his writings in my own
almost automatically; I turn to his teachings to reflect on subjects as diverse
as illness, eternal life, fear of death, animal empathy, weakness, COVID-19,
capitalism, old age, or suicide. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve
publicly declared that this or that would be the last time I wrote or spoke
about Blumenberg. False, always false. Here I am again.
It’s only fair: through Blumenberg I discovered my
passion for philosophical and paleoanthropological study and, as is well known,
for the study of the phenomenon of boredom —my field of specialization. It’s
curious, really, because although I always bring up Blumenberg when I talk
about boredom—and even shoehorn him into the work of other colleagues
researching the subject—I have published almost nothing on Blumenberg’s
philosophy and anthropology of boredom, apart from what appeared in my doctoral
dissertation (2017a). I have never set down in writing a
synthesis of the German philosopher’s view on the experience to which I devote
every hour of my life, even though I ultimately owe him everything I have
achieved in boredom research. In this paper, I want to repay my debt to the
philosopher who has brought me to this point. In the pages that follow, I not
only aim to present the key ideas in Blumenberg’s philosophy and philosophical
anthropology of boredom, but also to put an end to that absurd flight from
Blumenberg’s thought that I tried to undertake at the end of my doctoral years,
but which I never managed to carry out—for obvious reasons. I will never say
never to Blumenberg again.
The ideas I will present below are drawn, in addition to
my doctoral dissertation (2017a), from the chapter “Hans
Blumenberg’s Philosophical Anthropology of Boredom,” published in the
collective volume I co-edited with Alberto Fragio and Martina Philippi in 2020 for Karl Alber Verlag, titled Metaphorologie, Anthropologie,
Phänomenologie. These ideas were first presented in outline at the 2017
conference Hans Blumenberg. Legacies and Research Programs at the
University of Leipzig, organized by the same editors of the volume, and later
at the II Congreso Internacional Blumenberg: Retórica y antropogénesis,
held in 2023 at the Complutense University of Madrid, organized by Enver
Torregroza and Oscar Quintero. This is not a mere adaptation of that earlier
chapter, but rather a revised exposition that reconsiders those notes in light
of a theoretical framework on the experience of boredom developed over the
years since its publication and presented in my first book, The Disease of Boredom
(2026). Before beginning, I would like to thank my
colleagues for inviting me to take part in the 2023 event, which once again—and
certainly not for the last time—compelled me to return to Blumenberg’s
philosophy. I am also grateful to Professor Antonio Lastra, who offered us his
publishing house, Nexofia, for the publication of the conference proceedings in
which this paper was published in its Spanish version (2025a), thus giving me yet another opportunity to recant my ill-fated
intention to bury Blumenberg at the bottom of my heart.
2. History of the
Philosophy and Anthropology of Boredom[1]
Boredom is a state of
discomfort that we experience when the environment in which we find ourselves,
or the activity with which we try to engage, fails to stimulate us adequately
in accordance with our initial expectations, resulting in the painful experience
of a lack of meaning. We all suffer from it to a greater or lesser extent, at
all times and in all places, depending both on exogenous factors—stemming from
the possibilities offered by the context—and endogenous ones, related to one’s
own personality. The person who is bored feels that their relationship with the
present reality is damaged and that they must do whatever is within their reach
to return to the optimal level of arousal that translates into a sense of
well-being.
The study of boredom has awakened the curiosity of
countless thinkers throughout the history of the West. We moderns are not the
first to be doomed to suffer this painful state that is boredom, nor are we the
only ones to have left a record of our suffering. Homer was probably the first
to do so when, in Book 24 of the Iliad, he referred to the excessive
idle time endured by the Achaeans as they waited to begin their battle against
the city of Troy. The poet also created several characters—most notably
Odysseus and Calypso—who embodied the boredom inherent in moments of waiting,
and he wondered, at the end of Book 12 of the Odyssey, what could be
more boring than a story told twice. Later, in the Classical period, figures
such as Pindar and Isocrates complained about the boredom provoked by overly
long and repetitive speeches lacking originality. The old Dicaeopolis, from
Aristophanes’ Acharnians, was bored while waiting for the Athenian
assembly to begin. Euripides’ soldiers in Iphigenia in Aulis shared
the same fate as Homer’s Achaeans, and the husbands in Medea grew
bored with their families. Plato admitted in the Laws that he nearly
died of boredom listening to wealthy men and merchants talk about their
business affairs, while in the Gorgias he confessed his fear of boring
others—something that, he noted, occasionally happened to his teacher Socrates
as well. The early philosophers understood boredom as a shameful emotion, since
it reflected a lack of interest in the cultivation of virtue—the supreme ideal
of the Greek people. During the Hellenistic period, Metrodorus of Lampsacus
lamented how boring the symposia, or drinking parties, could be.
Later, during the Roman Empire, Lucretius referred in De
Rerum Natura to the boredom that afflicted wealthy Romans, disgusted by
remaining always in the same place (horror loci). Horace, in his Epistles,
described boredom as the result of a strenua inertia, the cure for which
lay in the practice of philosophy and hard work. Seneca, for his part,
frequently discussed taedium in his Letters to Lucilius and in
dialogues such as On the Tranquility of the Soul, considering it an
affliction capable of driving men to suicide. In the Middle Ages, numerous
debates arose around the phenomenon of boredom, when theologians conceived of
it as a vice that distracted the faithful from their contemplative duties. The
term acedia, signifying tedium, appeared in the Septuagint—the
Greek translation of the Old Testament—as well as later in St. Jerome’s Vulgate.
Even earlier, Origen had addressed boredom in his Homilies on the Gospel of
Luke. Throughout the first millennium, St. Augustine reflected extensively
on boredom in the Confessions and in The Catechesis of Beginners.
Evagrius Ponticus and John Cassian did the same in the Praktikos and the
Institutes of the Coenobia, respectively. The Patrologia Latina
is filled with references to boredom—sometimes equated with sadness—from the
writings of Columbanus of Luxeuil to those of St. Bernard, including those of
St. Benedict, St. Pirminius, John of Orléans, Rabanus Maurus, Theodore the
Studite, Theodulf of Orléans, Alcuin of York, John of Damascus, Peter Damian,
Hugh of St. Victor, Adam Scotus, Richard of St. Victor, and Gilbert of Nogent,
among others. Within scholastic philosophy, St. Thomas Aquinas also wrote about
boredom in his Summa Theologica.
In the Renaissance, boredom—which had until then been
regarded at times as a contextual problem and at others as a spiritual
ailment—became linked to the old Hippocratic disease of melancholy and came to
be seen as a failure of the organism. This transformation was discussed by
theologians such as Ignatius of Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises and
autobiography, and John of the Cross, in Dark Night of the Soul; by
writers of the stature of Dante, in The Divine Comedy, and Petrarch,
especially in My Secret; and by figures more inclined toward medicine,
such as Marsilio Ficino and Robert Burton, who explored boredom in works like Three
Books on Life and The Anatomy of Melancholy. Philosophical
reflections on the topic can also be found in Blaise Pascal’s Pensées,
already in the 17th century.
From the beginning of the Modern Age, boredom came to
represent the negation of the capitalist work ethic, even attaining the status
of a disease, plague, or epidemic. Lyricists such as Novalis, Hölderlin, and
Heine; playwrights like Schiller, von Kleist, and Büchner; and novelists such
as Hoffmann, Tieck, and Goethe made boredom the central theme of many of their
works, in a kind of critique of the society of their time. Meanwhile, a
philosopher like Kant defined it as the cancer of practical pure reason, devoting
an entire section to it in his Anthropology in a Pragmatic Sense;
Schopenhauer analyzed it through the lens of the concept of will in The
World as Will and Representation; and Nietzsche associated it with the
organized character of societies in On the Genealogy of Morality. A bit
further north, Kierkegaard delved into the concept of existential tedium in
works such as Either/Or. Further south, from the French intellectual
sphere, boredom embodied the mal du siècle, its decay chronicled by
writers such as Senancour, Chateaubriand, Madame de Staël, Stendhal, George
Sand, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Verlaine, and Rimbaud, to name a few.
Finally, physiology turned its attention to boredom through the work of
physicians such as de Sauvages, Vitet, Hallé, Thillaye, Esquirol, de Tours,
Jousset, Roubaud-Luce, Bricheteau, Michéa, and de Boismont.
In contemporary times, the experience of boredom is
understood as a symptom of life rationalized in the service of the logic of
productivity under the capitalist imperative. In the classical period of our
era, thinkers such as Simmel, in his essay The Metropolis and Mental Life;
Lefebvre, in From Rural to Urban; Kracauer, in The Mass Ornament;
and Benjamin, in The Arcades Project, among many others, spoke of the
profound sense of boredom caused by the ever-repetitive, entirely redundant,
which affects not only the satiated and wealthy, as Tardieu would say, but also
the proletariat, weary of the unbearable rhythms of factory life. These
philosophers also observed the rise of the mass entertainment industry, which
emerged to alleviate boredom, only to operate as a simple extension of work
under the premises of the rational capitalist system—aiming to break the
vicious cycle of production and diversion to counteract the alienation from
which such boredom arises. Similarly, some Germanic schools of psychology follow
this line of thought, incorporating boredom, as in Freudian psychoanalysis,
into a moral problem of society, as a ‘disease of culture’ that drives the Self
toward the pursuit and liberation of pleasures.
However, the rise of studies on consciousness,
personality disorders, and the physiological substrate of mental processes and
human behavior has, in recent times, gradually shifted efforts to understand
boredom toward the individual—the person who experiences it—and their
particular characteristics, leaving aside the social component. In other words,
while philosophers once saw social structure as the disease and boredom as its
symptom, the focus later shifted to psychic and physiological factors, which
were understood to require treatment within the framework of psychopathology.
Throughout the second half of the twentieth century and the first two decades
of the twenty-first, the analysis of boredom has been handled almost
exclusively by psychologists and psychiatrists. Other disciplines, such as
anthropology, philosophy, and sociology, were sidelined in the study of boredom
and have only relatively recently regained their role as observers of the
multifactorial reality inherent in its experience.
The humanities are reclaiming their indispensable role in
the study of boredom after several decades in which it was addressed almost
exclusively from the perspective of mental health sciences. This shift was
largely driven by the publication of The Philosophy of Boredom by the Norwegian
philosopher Lars Svendsen. Other works from the late twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries have also moved away from the previously dominant
psychological approach, adopting perspectives from cultural or literary studies,
historiography, anthropology, or sociology. Examples include The Demon of
Noontide by Reinhard Kuhn; Boredom: The Literary History of a State of
Mind by Patricia Meyer Spacks; Boredom and the Religious Imagination
by Michael Raposa; Boredom: A Lively History by Peter Toohey; and Experience
Without Qualities by Elizabeth Goodstein, one of the strongest advocates
for multidisciplinary work within Boredom Studies. More recently, works such as
The Art of Being Bored by Sandi Mann; Out of My Skull by John Eastwood
and James Danckert; Propelled by Andreas Elpidorou; Boredom and
Capitalism by Daniel Lesmes; The Sociology of Boredom by Mariusz
Finkielsztein; essays by Byung-Chul Han; and even my own book, The Disease
of Boredom, have continued this trend.
In any case, the approach to the experience of boredom in
these works remains largely historical and cultural; proper philosophical
reflection on boredom is often conspicuously absent. In none of these
books—except my own—is Blumenberg mentioned, unlike other philosophers such as
Heidegger or Schopenhauer, even though the Lübeck-born thinker developed an
entirely original thesis on the experience of boredom, which, in many cases, my
colleagues reproduce without realizing that what they are discussing is part of
Blumenberg’s intellectual legacy. My efforts to disseminate his philosophy of
boredom in English, often at the expense of his interested Spanish-speaking
readers, usually fall on deaf ears. No one cites Blumenberg when talking about
boredom.
3. Blumenbergian
Philosophy and Anthropology of Boredom
It will be impossible
for me to unpack Hans Blumenberg’s thoughts on the experience of boredom
without constantly making references to my own work. His conception of boredom
is entirely new. I have embraced it, but as a starting point to develop my own
philosophy of boredom—one that ultimately becomes, in part, contradictory to
some of the assumptions underlying Blumenbergian approaches. He did not study
this experience in a specialized way. He was unaware of what was being said
about boredom in his time from disciplines other than philosophy, nor could he
know what would be said after his death. With the knowledge I possess, for
these reasons, I often have no choice but to contend with Blumenberg on the
subject of boredom. Nonetheless, I will do my utmost to clearly distinguish my
philosophy from his. First, I wish to begin by noting certain procedural
difficulties we will encounter in attempting to systematize his theory of
boredom. After this warning, I would like to present my synthesis of his ideas.
Finally, I will share his reflections on the role boredom has played in two
historical periods as distant as prehistory and our contemporary era.
It is tremendously difficult to trace everything
Blumenberg wrote about boredom. Almost all the notions we have at hand are
found in Description of Man (2011). Scattered references also appear
in works such as Time of Life and Time of the World (2007) or Concepts in History (2003). We can
also find some remarks on melancholy in Work on Myth (1988). From these texts, one can infer the philosopher’s thoughts on
boredom. However, a complete reconstruction necessarily leads us to his Nachlass,
housed at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach (DLA). There, we do not find a
single unpublished text devoted entirely to boredom, but dozens of small
writings dispersed across countless folders. Some are immediately apparent
simply by typing the word Langeweile into the DLA’s Katalog Kallías
search engine. Others are discovered thanks to the brief index Blumenberg
himself created listing several unpublished notes on boredom. Yet many remain
hidden under the most baffling labels, giving no hint that they contain key
passages for understanding his philosophy of boredom. I had only one year to
work on the unpublished Blumenbergian material, so it is highly likely that
much of it remained unexamined. It is not my intention here to dissect all that
I did manage to consult—that is fully included in my doctoral dissertation,
which I encourage the reader to consult if they want a more thorough account.
Almost none of these writings are dated. We know that the section of Description
of Man dealing with boredom is based on manuscripts developed from lectures
he gave during the winter semester of 1976–1977 at the University of Munich.
Several of the unpublished notes are in folders dated between 1968–1988 and
1992–1993. When he wrote the rest remains a mystery.
Blumenberg
describes boredom as a painful emotion that we experience whenever we are
exposed to overly familiar situations or contexts that no longer pose a
challenge to us—that is, situations in which we are over-adapted. This
definition is quite similar to that proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in his Flow
Theory. Here I encounter my first disagreement with Blumenberg. For me,
boredom arises from the imbalance we feel between our need for stimulation and
the possibilities we perceive the environment as offering. This imbalance does
not occur every time we encounter a familiar situation, since many experiences
to which we are accustomed—even if they no longer represent a challenge—can
still stimulate us adequately. In any case, for Blumenberg, the essential point
is not so much to analyze why boredom arises, but rather for what purpose.
The philosopher argues that boredom functions to signal what is failing—those
situations that provide no added value or hold no meaning for us—forcing us,
through our desire to escape pain, to introduce change into the present.
Blumenberg’s approach is a true precursor to what some contemporary
philosophers have called the Theory of the Functionality of Boredom, with
Andreas Elpidorou as one of its main representatives (a friend, as far as I
know, who has never read the Lübeck philosopher).
I
appreciate that Blumenberg places such strong emphasis on how painful boredom
is. In Description of Man, he writes that the experience of boredom brings
with it an unpleasant sense of lack of meaning, making us feel irritated
because, while bored, our self-awareness becomes uncomfortable; it is as if we
are at a standstill, as if nothing speaks to us, and as if we cannot make any
assertion about anything. In the unpublished text “Langeweile, Kurzweil” (1992–1993) he explains that boredom can even be
experienced as a stillness akin to death, hence expressions like ‘dying of
boredom’ or references to tödliche Langeweile (mortal boredom). Indeed,
boredom is unpleasant. Yet many contemporary discourses seem to ignore this
detail when they absurdly extol the desirability of having time to be bored;
that is why I like that Blumenberg does not romanticize it. Boredom is always
painful because it results from dissatisfaction. No sane person wishes to feel
bad; what we desire is to have time of power—another Blumenbergian
expression (2007)—for freely chosen activities or to
do absolutely nothing at all. But we do not expect boredom, of all things, to
occupy that time. Everyday expressions like ‘I’ll spend the whole weekend bored’
or ‘I wish I had time to be bored’ stem from a misunderstanding of the meaning
we attach to the word ‘boredom,’ associating it exclusively with leisure time.
We only need to recall a moment when we were truly bored and relive that
discomfort to realize we would not wish to repeat it—or for it to last
longer—and that desiring boredom is an oxymoron. What we truly desire is to be
in ‘goblin mode’[2]
occasionally, but this is not equivalent to boredom, since it brings us
pleasure and encourages us to continue in that state.
Boredom
must hurt in order to fulfill its function, which is none other than to make us
react and escape from situations that hold insufficient value for us. In Description
of Man, Blumenberg states that the experience of boredom is so powerful
that it cannot be ignored. He explains that boredom “belongs to the strongest
motivating passions of man,” initially acting as a paralyzing force and later
triggering “a violent repulsion” toward the situation that causes it.[3]
It cannot be otherwise if the aim is to make us react. Ultimately, boredom is
nothing more than the result of “poverty of stimulus and [the] prohibition of
[...] falling asleep” (2011, p. 530). In this sense, the
philosopher identifies two moments of reaction. The first, outlined in Description
of Man, is merely a state of awareness regarding a situation that has
become obsolete. It is a moment of recognizing the present context and oneself
situated within it. Later, the reaction involves the implementation or
materialization of some strategy of escape, enacting a change that frees us
from boredom. Blumenberg describes boredom as “a condition in which one does
‘something’ only to escape it” (1992–1993, Langeweile,
Kurzweil). Regarding all this, I have several things to say.
First
of all, I agree that when we are bored, we are all aware of the pain; we
feel it. For me, functional boredom is one in which we move through the
following dimensions without major difficulty: 1) a sense of discomfort caused
by an environment that fails to stimulate us adequately because it does not
meet our expectations; 2) the formulation of a strategy to escape the situation
causing the discomfort; and 3) the implementation of that strategy. However, I
am not so sure about the role of consciousness in this process. Many
philosophers of boredom argue that in that first reactive moment, beyond a mere
expression of profound dissatisfaction, there is a critical element—a principle
of introspection, a drive toward cognitive reevaluation, or epistemic inquiry.
It has been suggested that boredom represents an opportunity to learn about
oneself and one’s environment. But the process of developing a strategy to end
boredom does not necessarily require consciousness; it does not have to involve
a reflective or, if you will, meta-representational moment. Throughout our
lives, we build a mental catalog of responses to boredom that have proven
successful—these are not fixed, but adjustable and flexible. The brain
frequently relies on these responses without engaging in any reflective
process, aiming to avoid the energetic cost of accessing this catalog
consciously to analyze each option or create new ones every time we need to
escape boredom. Of course, if the options included in this catalog were derived
from prior reflection and awareness, they are more likely to endure over time.
However, today our ‘mental hard drive’ is supplemented with pre-set options
provided by the mass entertainment industry, which we use when bored without
any prior conscious awareness. Furthermore, algorithms now do the work for us,
so the brain does not even need to access the catalog unconsciously, as they
suggest how to fill our time based on what we have previously shown provides
satisfaction. Aside from all this, I am not even sure that Blumenberg always
presupposes this conscious moment prior to implementing a strategy of escape,
since in Description of Man he also notes that, faced with the poverty
of stimulus that boredom represents, an “internal compensation is generated as
an invisible movement” (2011, p. 530). Yes, some internal
compensation must occur; the question is whether it happens as a visible
(conscious) or invisible (unconscious) movement, or whether both are possible.
It seems to me that the key lies in the latter. Both are possible, though we
tend to respond to boredom through an invisible movement, without any conscious
or reflective process, in order to conserve energy.
This
seriously calls into question the widespread belief that boredom makes us more
creative—a notion that, fortunately, Blumenberg never embraced. Escaping
boredom does involve a moment of creativity in the sense that we must bring
something into play where previously there was nothing, or where what existed
no longer stimulates us. However, the myth tells us that boredom will
make us more creative, understood as imaginative or inventive, which is a big
assumption. On one hand, the change that materializes in response to boredom
does not necessarily involve introducing something novel or original into the context.
In fact, most of the time the design of a strategy to escape boredom not only
occurs unconsciously, but even on the rare occasions when we become aware that
something must be done to avoid boredom and attempt to think through how to do
it, we repeatedly fall back on the same familiar options from our mental
catalog. Blumenberg never claims that the change prompted by boredom must be
unprecedented; it is sufficient that the movement occurs. On the other hand,
the belief that boredom makes us more creative is overly optimistic. Not only
are we encouraged to think that something original will emerge from boredom,
but also that this resulting creation will be positive. We forget that a
large proportion of our responses—whether conscious or unconscious—to boredom
are maladaptive and far from admirable, something Blumenberg was well aware of.
Secondly,
Blumenberg seems not to take into account that not all experiences of boredom,
no matter how painful, are reactive or allow one to move through all the
dimensions of the reaction process that make the experience functionally
meaningful. For Heidegger, the reactivity of boredom increased as the
experience became deeper. In the lectures he delivered during the 1929–1930
academic year at the University of Freiburg, later compiled in The
Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, he explained that profound boredom (es
ist einem langweilig) was a fundamental mood or disposition, an existential
orientation, or a background structure of experience: a way of
being-in-the-world (in-der-Welt-sein) and of adopting stances toward
oneself and reality. However, Heidegger acknowledged that not all boredom is
deep or endowed with this capacity for reaction. Other forms of boredom only
allow one to recognize the situation from which they arise, without prompting
any action for change—for example, when we are bored by something (das
Gelangweiltwerden von etwas) or when we are bored with something (das
Sichlangweilen bei etwas). In these cases, boredom is not fully reactive,
and thus not entirely functional, because it does not facilitate escape from
its source. In my book (2026), I argue against Heidegger because
I believe the opposite occurs: we react more readily to boredom when it is not
deep, whereas existential boredom is less functional because it makes designing
an escape strategy extremely difficult. But that is another matter—though I
will later provide reasons for why I think this is the case.
My
thesis follows a different line. Like any negative emotion—fear, for
example—boredom can occur in a functional or dysfunctional way. Throughout the
reactive process I described earlier, many failures can arise related to
perceptual or attentional processes, as well as executive, volitional, and
emotional functions, which may prevent the individual from designing an escape
strategy to alleviate the discomfort, even while experiencing it. This is the
case of what is known as chronic boredom. People who suffer from chronic
boredom are aware of their pain and even know what causes it, yet they are
unable to deploy—consciously or unconsciously—their catalog of options to
effect change; that is, to imagine a scenario more desirable than the one they
are immersed in or to design a completely new option to fill their time
meaningfully. This constitutes a dysfunctional experience of boredom, whose
root lies exclusively within the individual experiencing it and is purely
endogenous, although the endogenous causes that produce it remain largely
unknown. In such cases, one does not move beyond the paralysis moment
Blumenberg describes; the process is never completed, so the functionality of
this type of boredom is, in my view, questionable.
Another
way to experience boredom dysfunctionally is when an external, exogenous agent
prevents movement through the different dimensions I outlined. In this case,
the bored individual is fully capable of accessing their catalog of options and
even adding new ones to change the present situation—that is, they can design
an escape strategy or know exactly how they would like to occupy their time
meaningfully—but the very context in which the boredom arises prevents the
chosen course of action from being implemented. In my book, I call this situation-dependent
and chronic boredom (2026). The outcome is similar to the
previous case, as it entails being trapped indefinitely in discomfort until
either the context itself changes, expectations are readjusted to match the
environment, or an explosive reaction occurs to eliminate the discomfort. It is
worth emphasizing that the pathological element here is the context, which
makes a reaction to the source of boredom impossible. Again, the reactive chain
through which boredom could be considered functional is not completed;
therefore, it is also dysfunctional. If the pain persists for too long, in
either of these two dysfunctional experiences of boredom, there is a risk of
falling into what has been called deep or profound boredom—but not in
the sense Heidegger describes, where greater pain supposedly correlates with a
greater potential for reaction. Rather, it is in the sense understood by many
other thinkers, defining it as the sensation in which life seems stripped of
all meaning, and we can no longer even trace the origin of the boredom itself,
becoming incapable of escaping the discomfort.
Flaubert
described it perfectly, for the first time in history, in a letter addressed to
the jurist Louis Marie de la Haye, Viscount of Cormenin, on June 7, 1844, in
which he wrote: “Do you know what tedium is? I do not mean the banal tedium
that comes from idleness […], but that tedium […] which consumes the entrails
of men and turns an intelligent being into a walking shadow, a thinking ghost”
(1997, p. 101). Later, the poet Paul Valéry further
clarified this experience of deep boredom that immobilizes people in Dance
and the Soul:
Do you not
know among so many active and efficient substances, among all these magisterial
preparations […], in the arsenal of the pharmacopeia […], some specific remedy,
some exact antidote for that evil among evils, that poison of poisons, that
venom which is opposed to all nature […] [which] is called: the tedium of
living? I mean, understand me, not the passing ennui, the tedium that comes of
fatigue, or the tedium of which we can see the germ or of which we know the
limits; but that perfect tedium, that pure tedium that is not caused by
misfortune or infirmity […] that tedium, in short, the stuff of which is
nothing else than life itself […]. This absolute tedium is essentially nothing
but life in its nakedness (1950, p. 193).
Profound
boredom is the ultimate consequence of any dysfunctional experience of boredom
that persists indefinitely over time. Hardly, being this deep boredom the
result of an inability to react to individual-dependent and chronic boredom or situation-dependent
and chronic boredom, will it serve as a starting point for change for most
people—although I acknowledge that, at times, it may lead to an extreme
movement, as extreme as the pain from which one seeks to escape.
The
experience of boredom is always the same: that discomfort resulting from a
relationship with the present that fails to stimulate us adequately and that we
try to address. What determines its ultimate expression, in one way or another,
is the interaction between variables that set the possibilities for response,
such as the characteristics of the environment and the individual, or the
duration of the experience (transient or chronic). Following this reasoning, in
my theoretical framework I distinguish four forms of the boredom experience,
taking into account its functionality or dysfunctionality, insofar as we are—or
are not—able (due to endogenous or exogenous reasons) to react to it by
designing (consciously or unconsciously) a strategy to cope: situation-dependent
and transient boredom, situation-dependent and chronic boredom, individual-dependent
and chronic boredom, and profound boredom. In my view, if, despite feeling the
pain and even reflecting on it, it is not possible to complete the reactive cycle
Blumenberg describes, that boredom cannot be called functional, for the simple
reason that it fails to fulfill its presumed function: to compel us to
introduce change into the context. Strictly speaking, only situation-dependent
and transient boredom would be functional—but this is by no means the only way
in which we experience boredom. This will become clearer in what follows.
Blumenberg
goes so far as to argue that boredom is functional in an adaptive sense. Kant,
in his Anthropology, noted that creatures naturally tend to seek comfort
and an optimal state of adaptation. However, as Blumenberg explains in Description
of Man, an excess of adaptation is also undesirable, as it results in a
stagnation that diminishes our capacity to react and prevents us from adjusting
to unforeseen changes. The task of boredom is precisely to prevent stagnation,
to counter excessive stillness. For Blumenberg, it is necessary that we cannot
remain in a situation we already know too well—that is, that we become
bored—because only then are we compelled to introduce change, maintaining the
constant movement that hones our capacity to adapt to the unknown that may lie
ahead. Pain pushes us to escape and change position (1968–1988,
019434); it allows us to reject situations that have become too comfortable and
motivates the search for different experiences, thereby avoiding stagnation and
the erosion of our adaptive capacities in the face of unexpected circumstances.
Boredom is what remains when we encounter experiences that fall short of our
expectations because they are too familiar, preventing us from enjoying them
indefinitely. It is what makes it difficult for us to remain forever in the
comfort zone—which would entail dangerous stagnation, a rusting of our adaptive
mechanisms—urging us instead to occupy different spaces.
Agreed,
boredom is functional and adaptive. But if we cannot free ourselves from
it—either because something fails within us when imagining an alternative
situation (individual-dependent and chronic boredom) or because the
environmental conditions prevent the imagined alternative from being enacted
(situation-dependent and chronic boredom)—then it is purely dysfunctional,
since the necessary change to escape supposed over-adaptation does not
occur. For the Hanseatic philosopher, it is inconceivable that boredom could be
dysfunctional, since, in the long run, all boredom ultimately triggers some
reaction. However, in my view, the mere fact that one cannot move smoothly
through the dimensions previously described in some cases already represents a
problem, as it hinders boredom from fulfilling its intended function. Moreover,
from my perspective, if the response to boredom ends up being explosive—an
outburst—in any of these cases of dysfunctional boredom, as a consequence of
having endured discomfort for too long (something Blumenberg himself
acknowledges), resulting in a harmful episode for the individual or those
around them, the original functionality of the mechanism seems questionable. I
would even call into question the functionality of boredom in some cases
considered functional, when individuals move through the dimensions without
difficulty but end up creating—consciously or unconsciously—and enacting escape
strategies or responses that may be maladaptive—for example, habitual drug use.
Nevertheless, I understand that for Blumenberg, the key is maintaining
movement, whatever the direction, even if it leads to suicide. In cases of
dysfunctional boredom, the reactions—if they occur at all, which is not
guaranteed, contrary to what Blumenberg would argue—do not necessarily
translate into negative, maladaptive, or harmful responses. Yet, the simple
fact that one cannot easily pass through the various dimensions outlined seems
to me more than sufficient reason to consider these experiences of boredom as
distinct from those in which the reactive cycle is successfully completed
without difficulty.
Blumenberg
himself was well aware that the cases in which boredom ends up being the
starting point of disaster are numerous. He simply considers
preferable—functional—the chaos that may arise as a consequence of the attempt
to escape boredom, rather than the chaos we would face if we never experienced
boredom at all. He is clear that lacking the mechanism underlying boredom would
lead to a true catastrophe, of much greater magnitude than those historically
triggered by boredom itself. He knows that boredom will not always guide us
toward constructive change, and that in many cases the outcome will be
destructive, yet immobility seems even more destructive to him. Without boredom
in the face of the familiar, we would become so comfortable and over-adapted
that we would perish at the slightest unexpected variation. For this very
reason, Blumenberg celebrates that boredom awakens “the spirit of adventure” (1992–1993, 019297–019298), that it represents “a kind of
willingness to be prepared to do anything” (n.d., 820–821),
and that it is “the gateway to what does not conform to order, to what is
contrary to the system” (2011, p. 536).
Blumenberg
witnessed many derailments in his time caused by attempts to escape boredom—a
“tedious boredom” (2007, p. 534)—which I am inclined to
interpret as the extreme consequences of dysfunctional forms of situation-dependent
and chronic boredom as a result of the rationalist-capitalist logic of early 20th-century
society. The boredom of the classical contemporary period is a deep boredom
that evolves from a chronic situational boredom shared by many, resulting from
certain sociocultural structures or constructs that were both tedious and
constrictive, limiting human movement in responding to the tedium they exuded,
making the collective enactment of escape strategies practically impossible
(Ros Velasco, 2025b). The society from which Blumenberg
emerged constituted a mass bored by an apparently immutable situation that,
over time, cast doubt on the meaning of everything, threatening the optimism
inspired by the idea of progress and science—concepts on which people had
placed their hope and trust a century ago. Boredom in Blumenberg’s time, in his
own words, was the offspring of the “new asceticism” and its ideal of progress,
of a moralia that leads to “living without living” (2003, p. 32), constantly seeking novelty as a way to cope with tedium (n.d., 0219685).
This
was a society in which natural time had gradually been replaced by the division
of the day into equal units. Weeks and days were structured into hours for work
and hours for leisure, marked by the repetitive cycles of clocks; a society in
which the polarization between the individual and the external world was
intensified, and punctuality, precision, and calculation became the norm, as
Simmel noted in his essay “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” A standardized
lifestyle was imposed to ensure the development of means of production and
consumption, the accumulation of capital, and the prosperity of markets. Again,
following Simmel, this was a moment in which the struggle with nature for
survival had transformed into a struggle among humans for profit, leading to an
individualistic mode of life in a rationalized world, a way of experiencing the
world disconnected from the natural environment, dominated by habit and the
sequence of daily practices. What remained in this time was, as Benjamin
announced in The Origin of German Tragic Drama, a disenchanted reality,
a bland life, an empty world, a field of ruins which, following Max Weber in The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, prevented the enjoyment of
feeling, of unexpected adventure, and of beauty. The experience of boredom was
the symptom of rationalized life, one from which escape was imperative at any
cost.
Blumenberg
observed that the struggle against boredom in this period reinforced tastes for
the repulsive, for sickness, animalism, primitivism, infantilism, brutality,
extreme violence, morbidity, and lust (n.d.,
019424). Mass boredom fostered compulsive and excessive action typical of
“actionism” (n.d., 019297–019298), as a form of
compensation through amplification (1992–1993, Unbehagen),
which often exposed “the most intimate desires for death” (2011, p. 539). In many cases, Blumenberg noted, “the aesthetic nature of
revolts against boredom” revealed, for example, a macabre taste for the warlike
(2011, p. 537). He was not surprised that Valéry and
Gide exchanged letters expressing a longing for battle. Both even felt a
certain envy for soldiers who, on May 1, 1891, killed ten demonstrators against
the last European war of the 19th century, as a way to escape
boredom. Valéry wrote to Gide on the night of May 8, 1891: “I almost wish for a
monstrous war to flee [...]. The days are a yawn of boredom [...]. Does this
barbaric surprise you?” Gide replied on the morning of May 12, 1891: “Is this
you, this warrior? Ah! [...] You too dream of the tremors of weapons and blood”
(1955, pp. 82–83). Blumenberg was also unsurprised
that the dramatist Friedrich Hebbel wondered, “Why can’t a person commit a
murder merely to escape boredom?” (n.d.,
373–375) nor by the confession of the decorated World War I soldier Berthold
Feuchtwanger, who admitted that many of his exploits were motivated solely by
bets with his superior officer to kill boredom (n.d., 2348). At that time, the “apocalyptic desire
for the great war” was fully normalized (2011, p. 538).
Blumenberg stated that the widespread repulsion against boredom “was beginning
to claim more victims than hatred” (n.d., 2348),
although, in some cases, both factors went hand in hand, as in the figure of
Adolf Hitler, whom his doctor Theo Morell classified as a type-A patient
suffering from profound and severe boredom (n.d.,
1835–1839). For Blumenberg (2011), boredom was probably behind not
only the Nazi genocide but also any act of terrorism. He understood that, in
his time, boredom had reached the status of a plague—like “cholera, leprosy and
smallpox” (n.d., 166–167)—for which the only cure
was extravagance, deviation, and illness. Yet all this frenzy was preferable to
boredom: “A ‘little hysteria’ makes the world more colorful than pedantic
boredom” (n.d., Hysterie) he exclaimed in
another unpublished note.
Does
boredom fail to fulfill its primordial function in these extreme cases?
Blumenberg states in Description on Man that “boredom can be the
metaphysical principle of the world” (2011, p. 529), of creation, while he
also acknowledges, in the unpublished text “Umkehrung eines Mythos,” that “the
end of the world may have the same motivation: boredom” (n.d., 2461). If it is boredom itself that
ultimately leads us to self-destruction—when it was supposed to prevent it
through over-adaptation—has it not become dysfunctional? Perhaps we have begun
to inhabit a time in which it is more likely that boredom is experienced
dysfunctionally rather than functionally. But this was not always the case.
Blumenberg is convinced that boredom played an essential role in the past, in
our evolution as a species, and that the capacity to become bored represented a
genuine opportunity for growth, even an evolutionary advantage, in our most
remote ancestors, at times when they found themselves over-adapted. The very
desire to escape the pain of what was overly familiar encouraged them to
introduce changes into their environment—without which we would not be where we
are today. Boredom was the prelude to culture. Let us pause on this point for a
moment.
Blumenberg
explains that boredom is not an essential emotion of human beings, but rather
one that was acquired at some point in our evolution because it favored
self-preservation by preventing stagnation. It is “a unitary form of
anticipatory behavior adapted to initial anthropological situations” (2011, p. 524). Contemporary thinkers such as Peter Toohey have understood
boredom in these terms, as an adaptive emotion “in the Darwinian sense” (2011, p. 7) that has been performing an indispensable function since time
immemorial—Toohey, by the way, has also not read Blumenberg. However, the
majority consider that boredom can only exist in social structures that
generate enormous amounts of free time and that, consequently, in the past our
predecessors were too busy with their own survival to have time to be bored.
This is sheer nonsense. It demonstrates little understanding of the phenomenon
of boredom. First, because having free time is not necessary to experience
boredom. We become bored much more during duty time—the time we dedicate
to fulfilling our obligations, often repetitive, monotonous, or unstimulating,
and to satisfying our most basic needs—than during power time. It cannot
be assumed that merely being busy will prevent boredom, nor that having leisure
time is the source of boredom. In any case, even if this were true, some
anthropologists, such as Richard B. Lee or Alan Barnard (2016, p. 47), have argued that proto-societies of the past did indeed have
free time because they spent much less time on work-related activities than we
do today, that their needs “were easily satisfied [and] they valued free time
above the accumulation of property.”
Blumenberg
has no doubt that our prehistoric relatives experienced boredom, and although
this is something that cannot be proven—since boredom does not fossilize—he
would agree with Barnard that the absence of evidence is not evidence of
absence. Blumenberg applies here the principle of insufficient reason
and has no problem embracing “the rationality of the lack of foundation” to
“allow certain degrees of indeterminacy” (2013, pp. 98,
13). He believes that boredom was born in the cave, when our ancestors sought
shelter in terrestrial cavities to remain unnoticed by predators. According to
one of his notes, “the cave became a crucial alternative to the jungle” (n.d., 020141). It was the place that ensured “the priceless advantage of
reproduction without disturbances” (n.d., 019682) and the “dwelling for safe
sleep” (1968–1988, 022198). “In the firm control of
the homely cave” (1968–1988, 017829), he writes, our forebears
found themselves protected from threats, constant vigilance ceased to be
necessary, and they could enjoy states that would have been impossible to
experience during life in the open air, such as deep sleep, relaxation, or
boredom (not because an excess of leisure time but of adaptation). The cave, as
well as other types of shelters, brought tranquility and greater adaptation to
the environment for our ancestors, to the point that they could begin to
experience some degree of boredom. Blumenberg takes this for granted when, in
his narratives about the everyday scenes of our antecessors, he explains that,
sheltered in the caves, they began to tell stories and sing songs to alleviate
“the boredom of the nights” (n.d., 021606). But who were these
people?
According
to Blumenberg, those most prone to boredom were precisely those who spent the
most time sheltered in refuges—that is, mothers, children, the elderly, and the
wounded—those who, having been excluded from hunting duties for being
considered the weakest, led a more monotonous and less stimulating life (n.d., 021606). Visits to these caves would have helped them survive, but at
the same time, they would have fostered the emergence of the annoying
experience of boredom so that they would not become too complacent. At a time
when they did not have to face as many problems and conflicts as in the past,
and when survival was not a constant necessity, boredom could make its presence
felt. The use of fire in these camps would not have been a minor detail for
Blumenberg. It would have allowed them to leave behind “the lack of light in
which humanity had spent most of its history” (2002, p. 110)
and to overcome the tragedy of the nights, whose “length exceeded the organic
need for sleep” (n.d., 963). But then, the new hours of
light also had to be spent on something. It has been widely postulated in the
literature that this activity must have been socialization. Nights would have
been longer, waking hours would increase, and there would be opportunity to
engage in other activities, such as, for example, storytelling to ward off
boredom (n.d., 2271).
Blumenberg
maintains that the weak carried out activities like these to remedy boredom,
sowing the seeds of a proto-culture. But, moreover, he explains, boredom would
have led the weakest to do what “the others had neither the time nor the desire
for, turning life into something more valuable than mere survival” (n.d., 021606). Tales and songs against boredom brought “a powerful joy” (n.d., 021606) to the camps, with which the weak also compensated for their
weakness and reshaped the social structure known up to that point. The division
of the group into weak and strong had been “the basic problem of human history”
(n.d., 021606). “Through hunting, the strong and
clever exploited their position in the group in order to gain advantages over
the other members” (1968–1988, 019592). However, in the situation
of the weak, “the great deadly boredom spread, driving the new ‘madness,’
making the position of the elite random and suspect” (n.d., 320–322). Determined to break free from the
boredom produced by “a stable form of life” (n.d.,
320–322), they assumed the risk of stepping out on their own and of being
called crazy by the others. “They began to sing and dance around [the strong]”
(n.d., 021606). In the end, Blumenberg says, the
weak turned out to be “the essence and substrate of every culture” (n.d., 021606), the ones who gave rise to the creation of abstract systems of
thought and even to art. Thus, some were able to participate in the
evolutionary trajectory because they possessed certain characteristics “that
made them preferable for success” (n.d., 0219685) compared to those who
tried to impose strength. From then on, the tables would turn: members of the
elite would have to compete with those previously marginalized for the favor of
the females, who would value rational qualities over muscle. Henceforth, those
capable of maintaining better conversations, telling better stories, and,
ultimately, providing better company to alleviate boredom, would be the most
valued members of the clans.
In
short, those ancestors “avoided boredom and increased the powers of the mind” (1968–1988, 021851); “they were elevated” (n.d., 472–476), thanks to boredom, toward a way of life that strove to
transcend, that went beyond mere survival. Boredom—or, more precisely, the
reaction to boredom—may have pushed them toward a rupture in the perfectly
regulated relationship with their environment, without which, perhaps, “human
beings would not exist” (2013, p. 67) as we are today. The
philosopher’s notes suggest that boredom was present in our prehistory, at a
time of great stability, and that in our ancestors’ effort to find relief from
it, a response emerged that led to a paradigm shift. Nietzsche wrote in The
Antichrist that all myths, chants, dances, and inventions created since the
beginnings of human history are a response to boredom. This may be true, but it
is also possible that these cultural manifestations arose to transmit group
wisdom across generations, or that, initially, they existed merely as
entertainment, and only later did their potential for cohesion, prosperity, and
survival become evident. We cannot know for sure. The same applies to other
proto-cultural manifestations that, unlike the previous ones, endured over
time. For example, it is plausible that prehistoric artistic production was
simply a way to occupy time for those ancestors who had reached greater
cognitive development and higher levels of adaptation. Who knows.[4]
If
Blumenberg is right—if the experience of boredom is a state of abnormality that
becomes an advantage in certain contexts, allowing one to benefit from the
experimentation of new niches; if it acts as a key equalizer in life in
adaptive terms because, paradoxically, it maintains a necessary degree of
maladaptation to keep us alert to future dangers; if it is a failure that
permits the emergence of other arrangements through which the species improves;
if it is functionally positive despite being emotionally negative; if it has
fulfilled this function since ancestral times—then what has happened for its
functionality to be so diminished in our era, even to the point of endangering
our survival through the desire for war or terrorism? Perhaps the dysfunctional
forms of boredom, related to an individual’s inability to imagine more
desirable scenarios to overcome moments of tedium, are in communion with the
belief that no new niches remain to explore, that everything that could be
tried to combat boredom has already moved from potentiality to actuality.
Perhaps our capacity to imagine alternatives has been destroyed because we have
filled our catalogs of responses with predetermined options. Or perhaps these
catalogs have been blocked because we have been discouraged from developing
them on our own, or because the logic of our contemporary society has dissuaded
us from materializing our personal choices.
I
don’t know. I don’t know whether today we suffer from more dysfunctional
boredom than in other eras; I’m unsure whether, despite the endless
predetermined opportunities we have to fill our time, it is now harder for us
to react to boredom than in the past. I would have to travel back to check
whether the peasant had a large catalog of options to escape boredom or a
narrow but effective one to fill the days with meaning. I have the sense that,
in every historical period, we must have felt that there was nothing more to
draw from, that the peak had been reached. Also, that in every period social
pressures must have stifled human creativity when it came to responding to
boredom or implementing specific strategies to escape it, causing profound
frustration among people. My impression is that the experience of boredom today
remains similar to what it was at the turn of the last century. We continue to
live through transient, functional boredom, but we are also still immersed in a
deep boredom derived from the inability to break free from the capitalist logic
that condemns us to live a life without long-term projects, full of meaningless
experiences repeating ad infinitum, in a dizzying time, charged with
uncertainty, where the rhythms of production and consumption are even more
aggressive than in Blumenberg’s era. This is evident in rising stress levels,
the unstoppable anxiety of our society, the countless diagnoses of depression,
the shocking figures of suicide, and even in the imperative need to experience
everything at once and, moreover, to show it instantly to the whole world. We
increasingly need more stimuli to satisfy our appetite; we increasingly rely on
algorithms to decide how to fill our time, in any way, without thinking,
because we are truly exhausted. Our catalogs of options for occupying ourselves
are increasingly saturated with predetermined choices, mediated by the mass
entertainment industry, rather than personalized options consciously chosen
after a process of reflection and self-knowledge. It seems that little remains
of the Socratic know thyself, and even less of the Kantian sapere
aude.
All
of these are issues on which Blumenberg, obviously, has not commented, although
he did place great emphasis on the importance of learning to tolerate boredom
(n.d., 935–937). This means, quite simply, that we
should not try to eliminate boredom by taking the quick route, but rather
become interested observers of what it has to tell us. I translate this as:
consciously build your catalog of options, paying attention to what boredom is
signaling, instead of blindly consuming whatever comes your way. Only in this
way will boredom be more likely to fulfill its function—and, in some cases,
even then, it may fail. The casuistry of boredom is far more convoluted than we
would like, and certainly more than Blumenberg ever considered. But this does
not mean that we have to regard it as a disease every time we struggle
to escape it.
Blumenberg
was opposed to labeling boredom in this way. He wrote in Description of Man
that the WHO had turned everything into pathology with its definition of health
as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, promoting the
idea that anything “becomes illness and [...] [that] the need for treatment
potentially becomes a permanent state” (2011, p. 516).
Blumenberg did not want boredom to turn into a nuisance from which health
professionals could profit by imposing their “therapeutic pretensions” (2011, p. 516). Perhaps this is why he was so reluctant to view some
experiences of boredom as dysfunctional, because he did not want them to be
transformed into what he called “a diagnosis with great future” (2011, p. 527) to which “an extremely harsh therapy” (2011, p. 551)
would have to be applied, forever overlooking the role that context plays in
its experience. Today, boredom has already become a business. Advertisers and
the media constantly exploit it as a lure, whereas in the 19th century
no serious journalist spoke of it, he says (n.d., 166–167).
Blumenberg feared that it was only a matter of time before the most licentious
and authoritarian forms of medicine—the kind that would make Foucault’s hair
stand on end—took advantage of the more complex experiences of boredom. So far,
this has not happened. Even chronic boredom dependent on the individual does
not appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM). Without being as drastic as Blumenberg, I think that, as I have tried to
show, dysfunctional boredom does exist, although I always tend to think that
its dysfunctionality is caused, at least in most cases, by the context itself,
not by an unknown endogenous cause. I would like to believe that if Blumenberg
could have read my arguments, he would have agreed with much of what I present.
He always said that boredom was by no means a trivial matter, but rather a
weapon charged with as much life as lethality.
4. Farewell?
Blumenberg; always Blumenberg
This concludes my brief
exposition of Hans Blumenberg’s philosophy and anthropology of boredom. Short,
but dense. After so many years, the Lübeck-born philosopher still helps me
think, to bring clarity to my ideas about boredom. What he says about this painful
state I understand fairly well, but what I have to say about what he says is
not always neatly organized in my mind. Sometimes I fear misinterpreting him,
of twisting his words to make them fit—or clash—with my own. I suppose any
researcher of this philosopher’s work knows exactly what I mean. I hope I have
at least managed to separate the wheat from the chaff so that you, the reader,
can close this paper with an overview of what boredom can be: for Blumenberg, a
functional, adaptive emotion, even when it involves death; for me, a question
mark that I cannot stop turning over in my mind, for over a decade now—because
of him! I have time to keep thinking about it, because “the world will always
be boring” (1992–1993, Die Langeweile der Zukunft);
always with Blumenberg.[5]
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Sociology, 8, 1183875. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2023.1183875
Ros Velasco, J. (2025b). The Experience of
Boredom in Classical Contemporaneity. In A. Elpidorou and J. Ros Velasco
(Eds.), The History and Philosophy of Boredom (pp. 208–227).
Routledge.
Ros
Velasco, J. (2026). The Disease of Boredom. Princeton University Press.
Toohey,
P. (2011). Boredom: A Lively History. Yale University Press.
Valéry,
P. (1950). Selected Writings. New Directions.
[1] The historical
overview presented in this section is developed in greater detail in The
Disease of Boredom (2026, especially chapters 1–6), as well as in several other texts I have
authored on the subject (see, e.g., 2022, 2023, 2024). In these sources, the reader
can find a comprehensive bibliography of the works cited.
[2] ‘Goblin mode’
refers to The Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the 2022, meaning a type of
behavior that is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy,
typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations in an
increasingly goal-oriented world.
[3] These quotations
come from an untitled and unnumbered card located in box Zettelkasten 26
U-Welt at the DLA.
[4] A detailed account
of Blumenberg’s imaginary conception of the origin of boredom in prehistory can
be found in both my doctoral dissertation (2017a) and my book (2026).
[5] This work received
funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation
Programme under a Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 847635 for the
execution of the project PRE-BORED. Well-being and prevention of boredom in
Spanish nursing homes; with the support of the research projects
PID2020-113413RB-C31, PID2020-117413GA-I00, PID2019-108988GB-I00, and
FFI2016-75978-R, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and
the research group History and Ontology of the Present of the Faculty of
Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid.