More documents from Aho, Kevin A.
More documents from Time & Society

Export to your Reference Manger

Please Copy & Paste
Bibtex-Export
Endnote-Export

       

Acceleration and Time Pathologies

[journal article]

Aho, Kevin A.

fulltextDownloadDownload full text

(150 KByte)

Citation Suggestion

Please use the following Persistent Identifier (PID) to cite this document:http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-223392

Further Details
Abstract In his Contributions to Philosophy, Martin Heidegger (1999) introduces ‘acceleration’ as one of the three symptoms – along with ‘calculation’ and the ‘outbreak of massiveness’ – of our technological way of ‘being-in-the-world’. In this article, I unpack the relationship between these symptoms and draw a twofold conclusion. First, interpreting acceleration in terms of time pathologies, I suggest the self is becoming increasingly fragmented and emotionally overwhelmed from chronic sensory arousal and time pressure. This experience makes it difficult for us to qualitatively distinguish what matters to us in our everyday lives, resulting in a pervasive cultural mood of indifference, what Heidegger (1995) calls ‘profound boredom’. Second, by drawing on Heidegger's hermeneutic method, I argue that the practice of mainstream psychology, by adopting the reductive methodology of the empirical sciences, largely ignores our accelerated socio-historical situation, resulting in therapeutic models that have a tendency to construct and perpetuate the very pathologies the psychologist is seeking to treat.
Classification Philosophy, Ethics, Religion
Free Keywords acceleration; boredom; Heidegger; hermeneutics; psychology;
Publication Year 2007
Page/Pages p. 25-42
Journal Time & Society, 16 (2007) 1
DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0961463X07074100
Status Postprint; reviewed
Licence PEER Licence Agreement (applicable only to documents from PEER project)
Document Type journal article
top