Há a mesma atmosfera de Unheimlichkeit, a mesma dissolução de identidades preliminarmente reconhecidas, as mesmas proporções monstruosas de universalidade. Mais importante ainda, a angústia e o tédio têm o mesmo poder de atingir a totalidade dos seres com indeterminação, insignificância, e assim revelar o ser do mundo, enquanto tal. Enquanto a angústia deixa o ser sem voz, corta a fala (“perante a angústia, toda a enunciação do ‘é’ se cala”), o tédio é marcado pelo silêncio desse “nevoeiro”, que é a metáfora da indiferenciação que invade e afoga todas as coisas. Mas a angústia parece manter um privilégio fenomenológico, nem que seja pelo pormenor e extensão das análises que lhe são dedicadas, tanto nesta passagem como, anteriormente, na seção 40 de Ser e Tempo. No entanto, um curso publicado tardiamente, do Semestre de inverno de 1929-1930, não deixa dúvidas quanto à natureza igualmente primordial do tédio para o Dasein. Já não se pode dizer, como fez Bollnow, que “todo o edifício filosófico de Heidegger assenta na base estreita de uma única tonalidade afectiva”. Na sua expansão da citação de What Is Metaphysics? (a que se alude explicitamente várias vezes), o significado ontológico dessa Grundstimmung é analisado em profundidade: mais de 170 páginas sobre o tédio! Só esta quantidade é suficientemente rara na obra de Heidegger – em relação a um único tema – para indicar uma possível inversão de prioridade.
The 1929 lecture What Is Metaphysics? already attributed to boredom the same power of ontological revelation as to anxiety.
Profound boredom, drifting here and there in the abysses of our existence like a muffling fog, removes all things and men and oneself along with it into a remarkable indifference. This boredom reveals beings as a whole.
There is the same atmosphere of Unheimlichkeit, the same dissolution of preliminarily recognized identities, the same monstrous proportions of universality. Most importantly, anxiety and boredom have the same power to strike the totality of beings with indetermination, insignificance, and thus to reveal the being of the world, as such. Whereas anxiety leaves one without a voice, cuts speech short (“in the face of anxiety all utterance of the ‘is’ falls silent”), boredom is marked by the silence of that “fog,” which is the metaphor of the indifferentiation that invades and drowns all things. But anxiety seems to retain a phenomenological privilege, even if only by the detail and length of analyses dedicated to it, both in this passage and, earlier, in section 40 of Being and Time. Yet a belatedly published course from Winter Semester 1929-1930, leaves no doubt as to the equally primordial nature of boredom for Dasein. One can no longer say, as did Bollnow, that “Heidegger’s entire philosophical edifice rests on the narrow base of a single affective tonality.” In his expansion of the citation from What Is Metaphysics? (explicitly alluded to several times), the ontological significance of that Grundstimmung is analyzed at great length: more than 170 pages on boredom! This quantity alone is sufficiently rare in Heidegger’s work— in relation to a single theme — to indicate a possible reversal of priority.
Is not boredom, precisely because of its everydayness, more revealing than anxiety? In boredom (German, Lange-weile, ‘long-while’) isn’t there a more primal and perhaps more fundamental rapport with temporality? And yet, isn’t boredom necessarily inauthentic, alienating, impotent, an evil to be avoided? If, however, we compare Sein und Zeit and the The Basic Problems of Metaphysics, it appears that Heidegger tried to reduce the pejorative or “inauthentic” side of that Stimmung, which has the rare and precious quality of revealing the temporal constitution of Dasein. It is not inept and empty, as common sense would have it. One must not simply flee boredom, repress it, dissipate it with whatever “pastime”
happens along. Paradoxically, it is necessary to know how to welcome it. Then superficial, passing boredom can be understood in its essence, experienced as “profound boredom,” as the resonance of time itself in the depths of Dasein. This happens
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if we are not simply against it, if we don’t immediately react, in order to be safe; if, instead, we give it room. This is what we must first learn: not to immediately stand against (it), but to let (it) oscillate freely.
This patience with the Stimmung, this attitude of listening to a voice (Stimmung is always the flip side of a Stimme), a voice that is in us without belonging to us, already corresponds completely with the availability (Verfügbarkeit) and letting-be of the late Heidegger. Is such a move totally foreign to Sein und Zeit?