Chapter Four

The Third Form of Boredom: Profound Boredom
as 'It Is Boring for One'


§29. Prerequisites for penetrating into the essence of
boredom and of time: questioning the conception of man
as consciousness, and the way in which the essence of boredom
opens itself up in its depth.


Following our vacation, we shall now attempt to give a concise account of the overall context of our investigation. We wish to work our way into a particular philosophizing that moves in the realm of the essential, i.e., necessary questions for us today. We determined philosophizing as comprehensive questioning arising out of Dasein's being gripped in its essence. Such being gripped however is possible only from out of and within a fundamental attunement of Dasein. This fundamental attunement itself cannot be some arbitrary one, but must permeate our Dasein in the ground of its essence. Such a fundamental attunement cannot be ascertained as something present at hand that we can appeal to, or as something firm upon which we might stand, but must be awakened awakened in the sense that we must let it become awake. This fundamental attunement properly attunes us only if we do not oppose it, but rather give it space and freedom. We give it freedom whenever we await it in the correct sense, by letting this attunement arrive and approach us, as it were, just as all proper awaiting, as in a human relationship between two people, is not something remote, but a possibility in which we can be nearer to the other who is awaiting us than if he or she were immediately in our proximity. A fundamental attunement of our Dasein must come nearer to us in this kind of awaiting. For this reason we can only ever encounter such a fundamental attunement of our Dasein in a question, in a questioning attitude. This is why we asked whether perhaps contemporary man has become bored with himself, and whether a profound boredom is a fundamental attunement of contemporary Dasein. To be able to maintain a transparency in this question, and to await in this question that fundamental attunement which does not first need to be produced, we must have the corresponding horizon for being open in this way, i.e., the essence of boredom must be clear to us.

To this end we attempted to bring the essence of boredom nearer to us through an interpretation of two of its forms, which in themselves stand in a relationship of becoming more profound and being more profound. Lastly, with regard to this we noted the distinctions between these two forms of


Martin Heidegger (GA 29/30) The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics

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