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acedia (W3)
Engl. "acedia" (1607) geht zurück auf griech. "acedia" und setzt sich zusammen aus griech. "a-" = dt. "nicht-", "un-" und griech. "kedos" = dt. "Gram", "Kummer", "Leid", "Problem", "Schmerz", "Sorge". Es könnte also durchaus etwas positives beschreiben, die "Abwesenheit von Kummer und Leid". Aber es fehlt der positive Antrieb und bezeichnet eine "mittägliche Lustlosigkeit. Es scheint ein Gefühl zu sein, das viele Menschen in der aktuellen Corona-Zeit befällt - vielleicht angesiedelt zwischen Müßiggang und Depression.
(E?)(L?) http://agora.qc.ca/documents/tristesse--lacedia_par_jacques_dufresne
L'acedia
JACQUES DUFRESNE
On sait la fréquence et la gravité de la maladie appelée dépression dans le monde contemporain, on sait avec quelle rapidité, chez les jeunes surtout, elle peut conduire au suicide. On sait d’autre part l’importance que les plus fins psychologues parmi les philosophes, Nietzsche, Scheler, Klages, Thibon ont attaché à la notion de ressentiment: cette vengeance différée accompagnée de tristesse qui incite à dénigrer les plus haute valeurs et à transformer les causes d’admiration en causes de dégoût ou de mépris. Les psychiatres s’intéressent aussi désormais à une nouvelle variante de la dépression: le désarroi.
Voilà autant de raisons de redécouvrir cette morosité voleuse de vie (life-robbing dreariness, comme dit J. Novone), cette tristesse que dans la spiritualité chrétienne classique on appelait l’"acedia", laquelle fait partie de la liste des sept péchés capitaux de Saint Grégoire le Grand (c. 540-604).
Le théologien Michel Labourdette regrette que, dans la liste révisée des péchés capitaux, elle ait été remplacée par la notion beaucoup plus faible de paresse. Il voit dans cette substitution le signe d’une chute du plan théologal au plan moral.
On peut dire du ressentiment qu’il est engendré par le dépit de ne pouvoir s’élever jusqu’à l’être ou au principe supérieurs proposés à notre admiration. L’"acedia" est engendrée par le même dépit mais à propos de Dieu lui-même, source de la force qui permet de s’élever jusqu’à lui. (Vu sous cet angle, le ressentiment apparaît comme l’"acedia" s’appliquant aux grandes valeurs ayant survécu à la mort de Dieu.)
«Tristesse ou dégoût des choses divines dans nos rapports avec elles», dit Michel Labourdette. «C'est, ajoute-t-il, un vice subtil, de soi grave, mortel, quoique se prêtant spécialement à des mouvements imparfaits qui ne dépassent pas le véniel.»
Voici les principaux passages consacrés à l’acedia dans la Somme théologique de saint Thomas d’Aquin, Question 35:
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(E?)(L?) http://www.beyars.com/kunstlexikon/lexikon_91.html
"Acedia", lateinisch, "Trägheit", Bezeichnung für die Personifikation der Trägheit, eine der sieben Todsünden (* Tugenden und Laster).
(E?)(L?) https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/acedia-the-lost-name-for-the-emotion-were-all-feeling-right-now
"Acedia": The Lost Name for the Emotion We're All Feeling Right Now
Are you bored, listless, afraid, and uncertain? Monks in the 5th century were too, and they had a name for it.
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With some communities in rebooted lockdown conditions and movement restricted everywhere else, no one is posting pictures of their sourdough. Zoom cocktail parties have lost their novelty, Netflix can only release so many new series. The news seems worse every day, yet we compulsively scroll through it.
We get distracted by social media, yet have a pile of books unread. We keep meaning to go outside but somehow never find the time. We’re bored, listless, afraid and uncertain.
What is this feeling?
John Cassian, a monk and theologian wrote in the early 5th century about an ancient Greek emotion called "acedia". A mind “seized” by this emotion is “horrified at where he is, disgusted with his room … It does not allow him to stay still in his cell or to devote any effort to reading”. He feels:
such bodily listlessness and yawning hunger as though he were worn by a long journey or a prolonged fast … Next he glances about and sighs that no one is coming to see him. Constantly in and out of his cell, he looks at the sun as if it were too slow in setting.
This sounds eerily familiar. Yet, the name that so aptly describes our current state was lost to time and translation.
Noonday demon
Etymologically, "acedia" joins the negative prefix "a-" to the Greek noun "kedos", which means "care", "concern", or "grief". It sounds like "apathy", but Cassian’s description shows that "acedia" is much more daunting and complex than that.
Cassian and other early Christians called acedia “the noonday demon”, and sometimes described it as a “train of thought”. But they did not think it affected city-dwellers or even monks in communities.
Rather, "acedia" arose directly out the spatial and social constrictions that a solitary monastic life necessitates. These conditions generate a strange combination of listlessness, undirected anxiety, and inability to concentrate. Together these make up the paradoxical emotion of "acedia".
Evagrius of Pontus included "acedia" among the eight trains of thought that needed to be overcome by devout Christians. Among these, "acedia" was considered the most insidious. It attacked only after monks had conquered the sins of gluttony, fornication, avarice, sadness, anger, vainglory, and pride.
Cassian, a student of Evagrius, translated the list of sins into Latin. A later 6th century Latin edit gave us the Seven Deadly Sins. In this list, "acedia" was subsumed into "sloth", a word we now associate with laziness.
"Acedia" appears throughout monastic and other literature of the Middle Ages. It was a key part of the emotional vocabulary of the Byzantine Empire, and can be found in all sorts of lists of “passions” (or, emotions) in medical literature and lexicons, as well as theological treatises and sermons.
It first appeared in English in print in 1607 to describe a state of spiritual listlessness. But it’s barely used today.
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(E?)(L?) https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000051815270/stolze-leistung
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Der Benediktinerpater Anselm Grün bezeichnet die sieben Haupt- oder Todsünden als "Grundgefährdungen des Menschen", die weitere menschliche Verfehlungen beziehungsweise Schwächen (Sünden) nach sich ziehen:...
- "Stolz" ("Hochmut", "superbia"/"hybris"),
- "Geiz" ("Habgier", "avaritia"),
- "Neid" ("Missgunst", "invidia"),
- "Zorn" ("Rachsucht", "ira"),
- "Wollust" ("Unkeuschheit", "luxuria"),
- "Völlerei" ("Unmäßigkeit", "gula"),
- "Faulheit" ("Trägheit", "acedia").
(E?)(L?) https://www.dictionary.com/browse/acedia
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ORIGIN OF "ACEDIA"
1600–10; Late Latin "acedia" - Greek "akedeia", equivalent to "akedes", "a-" + "kedes" adj. derivative of "kêdos" = "care", "anxiety") + "-ia-ia"
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(E?)(L?) https://www.dtv.de/_files_media/title_pdf/leseprobe-28121.pdf
TIFFANY WATT SMITH: DAS BUCH DER GEFÜHLE
Aus dem Englischen von Birgit Brandau
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ACEDIA 31
(E?)(L?) http://www.oedilf.com/db/Lim.php?Word=acedia
Limericks on "acedia"
(E?)(L?) https://theconversation.com/acedia-the-lost-name-for-the-emotion-were-all-feeling-right-now-144058
Acedia: the lost name for the emotion we’re all feeling right now
(E?)(L?) https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/acedia
Definitions of "acedia":
apathy and inactivity in the practice of virtue (personified as one of the deadly sins)
Synonyms: laziness, sloth
(E?)(L?) https://wordcraft.infopop.cc/Archives/2003-10-Oct.htm
"acedia" – spiritual torpor and apathy; ennui.
"Acedia" in Latin means sorrow, deliberately self-directed, turned away from God, a loss of spiritual determination that then feeds back on in to the process, soon enough producing what are currently known as guilt and depression ...
– Thomas Pynchon, Nearer, my Couch, to Thee, New York Times Book Review, June 6,1993
It was in the 1970s, when America ... contended at home, with a widespread demoralization that sprang from the psychological acedia of Woodstock, the military defeat in Vietnam and political corruption of Watergate.
– William F. Buckley Jr., baccalaureate address at Cornell University, May 28, 2000
(E?)(L?) http://www.wordsmith.org/words/acedia.html
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ETYMOLOGY: From Latin "acedia", from Greek "akedia", from "a-" ("not") + "kedos" ("care"). Earliest documented use: 1607.
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(E?)(L?) http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/archives/0700
"acedia" noun
Spiritual torpor and apathy; ennui.
(E1)(L1) http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?corpus=0&content=acedia
Abfrage im Google-Corpus mit 15Mio. eingescannter Bücher von 1500 bis heute.
Engl. "acedia" taucht in der Literatur um das Jahr 1750 auf.
Erstellt: 2021-01