Abstract
This article offers a schematic description of two models for mindfulness, a Stoic and a Heideggerian one, focusing on the different ways they theorize well-being, emotions, and the role of unhomelikeness and homelikeness. It shows that Stoic mindfulness would have to aim at well-being qua oikeiōsis through a form of attention, which would involve the extirpation of passions. On the contrary, Heideggerian mindfulness would have to aim at well-being as an interplay of unhomelikeness and homelikeness, through anticipatory resoluteness. Heideggerian mindfulness would not only not aim at the extirpation of passions but would rather be motivated by a passion (angst) and embrace the passion. Heideggerian mindfulness is shown to involve not the sovereign prevalence of unhomelikeness (and angst) but rather a reconnection that involves a certain rehabilitation of homelikeness, expressed through “unshakable joy.” Heideggerian mindfulness is shown to involve a certain reversal of Stoic mindfulness with respect to homelikeness. However, it is also shown that in some respects, Heideggerian authenticity and mindfulness would involve a rehabilitation of the Stoic idea of oikeiōsis, as is revealed for example by the homology between oikeiōsis and Befindlichkeit, where both non-conceptually disclose the organism’s constitution to itself.
Introduction
The purpose of this article is threefold: (a) first, to conceptualize Stoic mindfulness by putting the notion of oikeiōsis at the center; (b) second, to conceptualize Heideggerian mindfulness as a qualified reversal of Stoic oikeiōsis that does not amount to an absolute prevalence of the unhomelike, but rather involves a certain rehabilitation of homelikeness; and (c) third, to show the common ground shared by both models of mindfulness, thus enabling an important dialogue to be fostered with the overarching future aim of constructing a unified Western version of mindfulness. 1
The article proceeds as follows. The second section provides the schema for a Stoic theory of mindfulness in terms of well-being, freedom from passions, and appropriation (eudaimonia, apatheia, and oikeiōsis). The third section schematizes a Heideggerian theory of mindfulness, connecting it to well-being, affectivity (moods), and the uncanny. The fourth section offers some concluding remarks.
A more accurate title for this paper would be: “Two western models of mindfulness that aim at affective ‘Heimlichkeit’—Beyond Stoicism: A Heideggerian model for mindfulness.” But that would have been too long. The article is about two as-yet underdeveloped and underdetermined models of mindfulness, one Stoic and one Heideggerian. The focus will be on the different ways they theorize and aim for well-being, and how this pertains to what we might call Heimlichkeit, coining a positive term for which Heidegger’s familiar concept of
So why should we be interested in Stoic and Heideggerian models of mindfulness? Philosophers and cognitive therapists have reacted to the relatively recent success of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) in various ways—some by calling for a properly Westernized version of mindfulness, one that would draw on Western philosophy and its distinct theoretical background. 3 This has gone hand in hand with some philosophers’ call for a rejuvenation of Stoic philosophy, drawing attention to the fact that MBCT and Stoicism share the same basic principles with respect to the nature of emotions and ways of dealing with them. 4 Several online platforms now offer patients training in Stoic Mindfulness. 5
The success of MBCT has indeed worked as a catalyst for a revival of Stoic philosophy. As a result, it is not only the practice of mindfulness that is spreading widely but also the specific Stoic notion of well-being—eudaimonia. At the same time, other philosophical schools have been put forward as Western models of mindfulness. In particular Martin Heidegger’s existential phenomenology—a philosophy preoccupied with death, anxiety, and authenticity, and which is critical of Stoicism—has emerged as a prominent rival to Stoic mindfulness. The disagreement between the two lies primarily in their views of emotional life: their appraisal of emotions (or moods) like anxiety and their prescriptions for how to mindfully regulate them for the sake of our well-being. At first glance, they seem to propose diametrically opposing emotional regulation techniques: while Stoicism is thought to call for a total abolition of intense emotions like anxiety, Heidegger goes in the opposite direction when he urges us to deliberately accept and even embrace anxiety.
But a careful analysis reveals a more complex landscape in both Stoicism and Heideggerian philosophy. On the one hand, Stoicism does not actually advocate for the total abolition of emotions; on the other hand, Heideggerian philosophy does not regard an unqualified embracing of anxiety as the end of the story. Rather, it holds that an experience of joy and being at home 6 in the midst of anxiety is possible and desirable. A juxtaposition with Stoic mindfulness will greatly help in clarifying key issues about the main characteristics of an existentialist-phenomenological version of mindfulness—specifically with respect to its aims, namely its conception of well-being, and how the homely and the unhomely are related to it.
A Schema for Stoic-Inspired Mindfulness
The Stoic school of thought spanned many centuries and showcased philosophers with such diverse views that it is often difficult to identify the overarching tenets that unify it in its distinct phases. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that we do not possess any original texts from the early Stoic period, that is, from philosophers such as Zeno and Chrysippus. However, we can reconstruct a unified Stoic theory by emphasizing certain tendencies, such as the sustained focus on virtue and eudaimonia.
The modern Stoic movement attempts to overcome the countless hermeneutic issues that have perturbed scholars so as to offer a solid practical philosophy that speaks to contemporary human beings in their everyday lives. Debates concerning a Stoic version of mindfulness are very much alive and many issues remain unresolved. As Massimo Pigliucci (2022) acknowledges, there exists “an ongoing debate within the contemporary Stoic community about our version of ‘mindfulness’ [. . .] whether it is, in fact, something that the ancient Stoics did, and whether it should be incorporated in modern Stoic practices” (p. 374). I shall try neither to minimize nor resolve these issues here, but will offer a schema that plausibly puts the notion of oikeiōsis at the center, thus enabling an important dialogue to be fostered between Stoicism and existential phenomenology, with the overarching aim of constructing a Western version of mindfulness.
The Stoic schema that I propose is conceptualized thus: Mindfulness is a form of attention (prosochē) whose telos is the achievement of eudaimonia, which is characterized as oikeiōsis and at the emotional level involves the cultivation of apatheia. Let us now turn to a brief description of each of the conceptual ingredients that make up the schema: prosochē, eudaimonia, oikeiōsis, and apatheia.
Prosochē
One of the important contemporary debates in Stoic scholarship concerns the precise nature of prosochē and the question of whether it constitutes a central concept in Stoicism. Katerina Ierodiakonou (2021) argues that it is highly questionable whether the notion was actually employed by Chrysippus or other members of the early Stoa (p. 207).
“Prosochē” is a Greek word that literally translates as “attention,” though, as Pigliucci (2022) points out, it is often also translated “mindfulness” (p. 375)—the same way that “being mindful” of something, in English, is synonymous with “paying attention” to it. 7 It names a technique the Stoic must practice so as to relate in a specific way to the present moment. Prosochē is the state of mind that enables us to focus on sense-impressions and thoughts, as well as on the Stoic principles, so as to guide us to a eudaimonic life: to observe the precept to live in accordance with nature, and to attend to the fundamental distinction between what is up to us and what is not (Ierodiakonou, 2021, p. 210).
Prosochē was classified as a good “in state” (en schesei) (Ierodiakonou, 2021, p. 205): a state with no firm root in a structure, which hence cannot endure (as opposed to hexeis— “tenors”; Ierodiakonou, 2021, p. 206). Ierodiakonou (2021) speculates that prosochē was “not considered just as a stage toward the ultimate good, but as constituting the ultimate good [eudaimonia] itself by being part of it” (pp. 205–206). In effect, prosochē is intrinsic to wisdom (Ierodiakonou, 2021, p. 211). However, for the ordinary, as-yet unwise person, who exhibits varying degrees of attention (Ierodiakonou, 2021, p. 212), prosochē requires effort, perseverance, and practice.
Pierre Hadot (1995) argues that “attention (prosochē) is the fundamental Stoic spiritual attitude” named by Epictetus, involving “a continuous vigilance and presence of mind, self-consciousness which never sleeps, and a constant tension of the spirit,” thanks to which “the philosopher is fully aware of what he does at each instant, and he wills his actions fully” (p. 84). More specifically, as Chris Fisher argues, prosochē works “by constantly reminding the agent to pay attention to the here and now (hic et nunc),” and specifically to the following three things: present representations (the sensations that impress themselves on the psyche), present impulses (desires and aversions that define moral will [prohairesis]), and present actions (Pigliucci, 2022, p. 376). 8
Prosochē is also associated with the distinctive philosophical-therapeutic act of katharsis (purification), which consists in the “purification of judgments from certain errors,” something that, as Robertson (2010) suggests, could be referred to as “cognitive katharsis” or “cognitive hygiene” (p. 158), which would be the result of Stoic mindfulness (p. 159). This means that another result of prosochē would be freedom from passions, since, as will be shown, passions are a product of bad or unhealthy cognitions. This would also amount to becoming unafraid of death, as Seneca writes, and enjoying life (Robertson, 2010, p. 165).
Eudaimonia
Prosochē aims at the accomplishment of eudaimonia, a concept originating with Aristotle and translated alternately “happiness,” “well-being,” and “flourishing.” Just like all arts and crafts have a function and a telos, so too the human being has a certain “function,” which is none other than the achievement of eudaimonia (Aristotle, 2000, p. 11). Eudaimonia is then the end of what is done, the end of all acts (Aristotle, 2000), and the life lived “in accordance with virtue (arete), where virtue is understood as standing for the state of mind which best fulfils man’s proper function” (Engberg-Pedersen, 1990, p. 19; see Aristotle, 2000, Book I). For the Stoics, too, “virtue all by itself suffices for a completely good human life, that is, for eudaimonia” (Nussbaum, 1994, p. 359). Yet according to Engberg-Pedersen (1990), Aristotle did not work out the substantive content of that which would fulfill the formal telos of eudaimonia (pp. 20-21). The distinctive contribution of the Stoics lies in their fleshing eudaimonia out in terms of oikeiōsis.
Oikeiōsis
The doctrine of oikeiōsis holds that the substantive content of the telos of eudaimonia is to live in homology—harmony—with nature (Engberg-Pedersen, 1990, p. 61). This doctrine established a principle of moral action based on self-awareness. Oikeiōsis begins with the human animal’s first impulse—that to self-preservation—which is based on the organism’s familiarity and awareness of its own constitution, a form of self-consciousness that provides a normative criterion, and the natural impulse toward what is useful and aversion form what is harmful (Martin, 2015, p. 345). Yet oikeiōsis does not name just an innate concern and criterion for self-preservation, but also a process of expansion whereby the organism progressively appropriates its environment, so that, in the case of human beings, the organism is “‘at home’ in the human sphere as a whole” (Martin, 2015, p. 352). As Engberg-Pedersen (1990) argues, the doctrine of oikeiōsis managed to do considerably more than Aristotle in the way of specifying the telos of moral action, “by fixing on the distinction between a subjective and an objective approach to the substantive question about happiness (although not in those very terms) and by constructing a theory in which the interplay of these two approaches is central—as it was not in Aristotle” (p. 22).
The telos is “the good” which, following Cicero, is defined as something perfect that is related to nature and pertains to a rational being as rational (Engberg-Pedersen, 1990, p. 98). The good is identified with nature, and “the good properly,” according to Cicero, “starts to be present and to be understood in its true nature” only at the final stage of oikeiōsis, that is, once the human being is already living in an advanced homology with nature (Engberg-Pedersen, 1990, p. 99). This means that the process of oikeiōsis should be understood in terms of belonging (Engberg-Pedersen, 1990). Oikeiōsis is a process whereby the human being employs her reason so as to know both the world and herself, in such a way that she reflectively appropriates herself as part of nature and at that point grasps what is good and her sense of belonging as good (Engberg-Pedersen, 1990). But it is also, as Martha Nussbaum (1994) argues, “a natural orientation to one’s own good” (p. 323). In other words, only once we have achieved oikeiōsis will we grasp the good.
Oikeiōsis is an achievement of reflective, mindful attention, which integrates the subjective and the objective points of view and dissolves any opposition in beliefs that are mutually inconsistent about some state of affairs (Nussbaum, 1994, pp. 198–199). Engberg-Pedersen clarifies what this means by referring us back to “the fundamental distinction between the child’s view and the adult view which lies at the heart of oikeiōsis as the Stoics describe it” (Nussbaum, 1994, p. 196). The “child” and the “sane adult” here correspond to two distinct ways in which attention operates and relates to objects or states of affairs. As Engberg-Pedersen argues: The child is someone who is immediately related to a given particular object in ways that the sane adult is not: (1) it is directly concerned with the given object (judging it to be either good or bad), and (2) it is more immediately concerned with the given object, i.e. from a single point of view, its own subjective one. The sane adult, in opposition, (1) relates to the object through a certain understanding of the object, which is wider and is not exhausted by immediacy because it reflects attention being given to a larger number of other experiences in memory and other considerations, and (2) sees the object both from their own subjective view but also an objective view that relativizes the former. (Nussbaum, 1994, pp. 196–197)
What does this attention and the achievement of oikeiōsis involve with respect to emotional life? Oikeiōsis is supposed to have a therapeutic effect with respect to the passions, that is, intense, akratic emotions. A passion is an abrupt emotional reaction, “a change of mind, from a considered belief to a non-considered one,” and thus a phenomenon of inconsistency that concerns human attention whereby two opposing points of view—the subjective and the objective—clash (Nussbaum, 1994, pp. 198–199). Passions are thought to occur because the mind “is divided in the sense that it is made up of a set of beliefs that are mutually inconsistent” (Nussbaum, 1994, p. 198). Being irrational/inappropriate beliefs, passions they are products of incorrect cognition and can therefore be cognitively dissolved via willful reflective attention.
Apatheia
Leading a life in homology with nature means leading a rational life, whereby the self and the natural world, the “inside” and the “outside,” are not in tension with one another. In oikeiōsis, the dominant affective state is a calm sense of belonging, which indicates a passion-less life. It is not immediately apparent why oikeiōsis should involve the process of overcoming—“curing”—all the passions, but we see it once we distinguish between passions and other emotional states. Apatheia does not mean being utterly emotionless or unaffected by the environment or the body but being rid of the passions. There is a category of emotions that the Stoics called eupatheiai that are not classed as passions but considered appropriate states of feeling which the sage, too, experiences (Sorabji, 2000, p. 47). (Nor do the passions include bodily appetites such as hunger and thirst Nussbaum, 1994, p. 319]). The passions are those emotions that overwhelm and agitate the soul, like the fear of death and existential angst. Following Zeno’s definition, a passion is “an agitation of the soul alien from right reason and contrary to nature” and thus to be regarded as an illness of the soul (Sorabji, 2000, p. 43).
There are several debates about the ontology of emotions and passions in Stoic scholarship, and it was also an important point of contention between the ancient Stoic philosophers themselves. The underlying debate concerned whether emotions are judgments (kriseis) or irrational forces. On the one hand, Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, held that emotions arise when one goes against one’s own true and better judgment, and therefore they are not false judgments per se but signify disobedience to one’s reason (Sorabji, 2000, pp. 7, 63). This is closer to Plato’s position, where emotions are irrational (though involving belief [doxa]). Later on, Posidonius, siding with Zeno (against Chrysippus’ cognitivist approach), supported the more Platonic view that emotions are irrational forces within the soul (Sorabji, 2000). Against this, we have the position of Chrysippus, whose theory of emotions became the Stoic gold standard, and which held that emotions are evaluative judgments (Nussbaum, 1994, p. 366; Sorabji, 2000, pp. 7, 95). 9 Specifically, emotions consist of two distinct judgments: (1) a judgment that something is good or bad for us and (2) a judgment about the appropriate reaction (kathēkon) to it ((Nussbaum, 1994; Sorabji, 2000).
Insofar as emotions are judgments, emotional regulation can be achieved by cognitive modification. It follows that, as Nussbaum (1994) argues, emotions must be approached by a therapeutic technique that uses the arts of reason (p. 367). This is not very far from what modern cognitive therapy does when it asks the patient to articulate and then rationally scrutinize (for example) their phobias. 10
A Schema for Heidegger-Inspired Mindfulness
What would a Heideggerian model of mindfulness look like? I propose the following schema: mindfulness is a form of resoluteness (Entschlossenheit) that is motivated by angst, whose telos is authenticity (Eigentlichkeit), which, at the emotional level, involves the acceptance of angst-ridden, unhomelike, being-in-the-world. Let us now proceed to a description of the ingredients that make up the schema, with the caveat that what is described are aspects of a unified phenomenon that are only formally, not ontologically, distinct: authenticity (Eigentlichkeit), anticipatory resoluteness (Entschlossenheit), angst, and unhomelikeness (Unheimlichkeit).
Well-Being and Authenticity
“Dasein” is Heidegger’s term for the human being, but literally it means “being there.” As Beatrice Han-Pile (2013) points out, the end of all acts is Dasein itself, its own selfhood, its own transcendence and freedom (p. 292). Dasein’s freedom to choose itself is tied to authenticity, which is a form of ownership or appropriation of the self, manifesting itself in a particular relationship to one’s death (McManus, 2015, p. 245).
It has been argued that Heidegger’s talk of authenticity is a process of complete self-realization and, as such “falls within a tradition dating back to Rousseau and Herder, and running through Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Dilthey” (Egan, 2012, p. 302). But Heidegger’s account of authenticity can also be seen as part of a tradition dating all the way back to the Stoics: as Josh Hayes (2022) argues, it can be regarded as a retrieval of the Stoic notions of oikos (home) and oikeiōsis (p. 138), further consolidating the argument about self-appropriation. Heideggerian well-being would have to be tied to ontological understanding (that is: an understanding of what the meaning of being itself is, the meaning of existence, as opposed to the understanding of what specific entities in the world are); as such, it would have to be a comportment that is connected to authentic understanding of the meaning of Being, which is the essential characteristic that differentiates the human being (Dasein) from other beings. Given the fact that authenticity in Being and Time is modeled on Aristotelian phronēsis (practical wisdom), a Heideggerian theory of well-being would share certain structural characteristics with Stoic eudaimonic oikeiōsis. But to understand in what ways the Heideggerian and the Stoic understanding of well-being overlap—and differ—let us clarify how well-being is connected to a specific way of being disposed, namely a specific way of being attuned to the world through a mood (Stimmung).
Well-Being as a Disposition (Befindlichkeit)
Heideggerian well-being would have to be a way of being-in-the-world, tied to a specific attuned understanding. “Being-in-the-world” names patterns of meaningful existence and engagement with the world, whereby the human being is delivered in a social (intersubjective) world, placed in a meaningful structure, finding himself in an already attuned understanding.
As Svenaeus (2001) points out, “[t]he attunement of our being-in-the-world seems to be the phenomenon to focus upon, when we try to get hold of the difference between healthy and ill ways of being-in-the-world” (p. 93). 11 A linguistic analysis would be helpful here for clarifying the connection between well-being and disposition in Heidegger. In the German language, the word for well-being is Wohlbefinden, which literally means to find oneself well. It denotes a determinate way in which the human being finds itself—it is an expression of what Heidegger called Befindlichkeit, which is a basic structure of being-in-the-world. We can plausibly argue that well-being, Wohlbefinden, is an existential possibility of Befindlichkeit, and as such is a disposition. Let us explain this connection in some more detail.
In his analytic of Dasein, Heidegger offers a phenomenological account according to which the nature of human existence is grasped as meaningful being-in-the-world, where the human being understands the world through their everyday practical engagement with things in the world as well as with other human beings. Being-in-the-world is constituted by four basic existential structures (existentials): disposition (Befindlichkeit), understanding (Verstehen), fallenness (Verfallensein) and talk (Rede) (Heidegger, 1962, pp. 171–172). 12 These four structures are the transcendental conditions of Dasein’s (being) “there.” “Befindlichkeit” was a word Heidegger used to render the Aristotelian concept of diathesis (Hadjioannou, 2013, p. 223), and it is a noun derived from the reflexive verb sich befinden, which literally means “finding oneself.” In an everyday context, the colloquial German phrase “Wie befinden Sie sich?” means “How do you feel?” or “How is it going?” or “How are you faring?” It refers to the way Dasein finds itself situated, affected by and attuned to the world, and this is a fundamental way through which the world and particular entities in the world are disclosed to Dasein in a meaningful way (Hadjioannou, 2015, p. 27). Befindlichkeit fulfills various ontological functions, the most important being the disclosive submission to the world, which enables the primary discovery of the world as something that matters (Heidegger, 1962, p. 177; Hadjioannou, 2015, p. 28). As such, it is a primordial way in which Dasein makes sense of the world. The most important way in which Befindlichkeit becomes manifested is through Stimmung (mood). Stimmung is the concept Heidegger uses for the phenomenon of passions, as the ancient Greeks (including the Stoics) understood it 13 —it denotes a pre-reflective relation that precedes any subject-object distinction. 14
Before we proceed, let us briefly draw an analogy between Befindlichkeit and Stoic oikeiōsis, as this will help shed some light on both of these notions. Befindlichkeit is a mode of disclosure that opens us not only to entities in the world (discovering) and to the world as a space of intelligibility (world-disclosing) but also to ourselves (self-disclosure; Withy, 2019, p. 155), and specifically—as shown elsewhere—to our constitution (Verfassung; Hadjioannou, 2013, pp. 225–226). One can easily draw an analogy here with oikeiōsis, which also non-conceptually discloses the organism’s constitution to itself, in a proto-transcendental manner (see Hayes, 2020; Martin, 2015). Unlike oikeiōsis, although, Befindlichkeit does not denote an inner condition, but rather arises out of being-in-the-world as such (Heidegger, 1962, p. 176).
Anticipatory Resoluteness Instead of Prosochē
Mindfulness in Heidegger would be quite different from Stoic prosochē. The latter has been variably defined as “introspective supervision,” “spiritual attitude,” “presence of mind,” “self-consciousness” and “full awareness,” and is invariably connected to an awareness of “present representations” and “the here and now.” For Heidegger, these modes of attending to phenomena are associated not with mindfulness but rather with mindless engagement with the world, thus associated with inauthentic understanding. 15 According to Heidegger, cognition, intuition, and any form of reflective and representational intentionality, which rely on a subject-object dichotomy, result in inauthentic and distorted ways of understanding existence (see Hadjioannou, 2019).
Heidegger describes a mode of “mindful awareness” that would allow for the interplay between presence and absence to become manifest (see O’Brien, 2019). 16 In Division II of Being and Time, Heidegger speaks about anticipatory resoluteness, 17 which has the following characteristics: (a) It is an awareness not of entities in the world, but of one’s own death, and hence of nothingness, as a possible way to be; (b) It involves a form of commitment and personal investment and embracing, whereby some form of choice is made between possibilities; and (c) It is “projective”—looking ahead toward Dasein’s ownmost potentiality-for-being (i.e., death) (Heidegger, 1962, p. 354). As it projects into the future (as opposed to the here and now of Stoic prosochē), it grasps the ultimate as-yet unrealized possibility of existence; (d) It is guided by a disposition (namely angst), meaning it is always already attuned through a mood (even when it appears to be neutral or mood-less, 18 contrary to prosochē). In his later work, Heidegger replaced the concept of anticipatory resoluteness with Gelassenheit, a disposition that does not rely on angst (although, according to my reading, it does not extirpate angst), but rather is associated with equanimity and calmness.
Authenticity: Angst and Unhomelikeness
The mood mostly associated with authenticity in Heidegger’s thought is angst in the face of death. Angst discloses to the person the essence of their own transcendence and the meaning of being, and discloses authenticity as a possibility that Dasein can choose. Through angst, the person is presented with the possibility of leading an authentic life through its awareness of being-toward-death and resolutely embracing this. Angst plays the crucial methodological role of disrupting the ordinary and familiar and enabling authenticity to arise out of a breakdown of the everyday (Withy, 2012, p. 200). Writes Heidegger (1962): “As one of Dasein’s possibilities of Being, anxiety—together with Dasein itself as disclosed in it—provides the phenomenal basis for explicitly grasping Dasein’s primordial totality of Being” (p. 227).
Angst has a nauseating effect that suspends the meaningful attachment that the person has with the world and their own life and sense of identity. Due to the radical breakdown of meaning, angst transforms being-in-the-world into “not-at-homeness” (Nicht-zu-Hause), revealing the “radically negative finite existence” which is unsettled at the core of its being (Capobianco, 2010, p. 53). In angst, “the world has the character of completely lacking significance [Bedeutsamkeit]” (Heidegger, 1962, p. 231). What angst reveals is the deeper structure of human existence: the unhomelike/unhomely is neither an epiphenomenon nor an epistemological device but rather a primordial, ontological structure (Kamens, 2019, p. 701; Svenaeus, 2001, p. 93; Todres & Galvin, 2010, pp. 2–3). As Hubert Dreyfus (1991) argues, this shows that human practices are radically rootless, which means that “human beings can never be at home in the world” (p. 37).
Svenaeus’ Objection
If mindfulness is meant to bring about well-being, and if well-being is identified with authenticity, angst and unhomelikeness, then we have the paradoxical situation whereby practicing mindfulness would be a nihilistic exercise at odds with any conventional understanding of well-being.
This is an option that Fredrik Svenaeus criticizes fervently. According to Svenaeus (2001), a phenomenological definition of healthy being-in-the-world, and of well-being, cannot rely on authenticity, but only on homelikeness (p. 92). While he accepts that unhomelikeness is indeed “a basic aspect of our existence” (Svenaeus, 2001, p. 93), the experience of well-being and of healthy being-in-the-world must be understood as “a being-at-home that keeps unhomelikeness hidden” (Svenaeus, 2001, p. 93). The homelike attunement, which would be in line with Stoic oikeiōsis, is associated with the experience of wholeness in being-in-the-world (Svenaeus, 2001, p. 100). A homelike attunement would be a modality of Befindlichkeit whereby Dasein’s being(-in-the-world) is balanced.
It seems to me that Svenaeus’ position relies on a specific interpretation of authenticity as a bijective function of angst, where authenticity and angst are exclusively paired and one cannot exist without prompting the other. What is more, he sees not-being-at-home and being-at-home as two antagonistic a priori structures of existence, where one of the two wins out over the other at any given moment and takes control of our being-in-the-world (Svenaeus, 2011, p. 93). This would make authenticity a short-lived unsustainable state that is preceded and followed by the only other alternative existential possibility: inauthenticity.
Some scholars have indeed argued for the gloomy unsustainability of angst and, by extension, of authenticity: for example, Marcuse argued that being-toward-death amounts to “a joyless existence. . . overshadowed by death and anxiety” (Marcuse & Olafson, 1977, pp. 32–33), and Kukla (2002) argues that “sustained authenticity would require that we negotiate our world through an ongoing alienated uncanniness that would amount to a crippling form of psychosis” (p. 13, my emphasis). Svenaeus (2001), too, points out that “the total withdrawal from the activities of the world only lasts for a moment” (p. 107). From this perspective, Heideggerian mindfulness would amount to alienating the person from the world and itself, a state incompatible with the conventional understanding of well-being as well as with the Stoic notion of oikeiōsis.
There are two other (contrasting) interpretations of authenticity whereby angst and the unhomelike are not understood as catastrophic or unsustainable states, but rather try to make sense of authenticity in terms of a certain stability. Authenticity is about maintaining a relation between self-awareness and the deeper essence of unhomelikeness, so that the unhomelikeness of selfhood becomes somehow embraced or owned in a constant manner. As Heidegger argues, self-constancy is a characteristic of authentic Dasein: “The constancy of the self, in the double sense of steadiness and steadfastness, is the authentic counter-possibility to the non-Self-constancy which is characteristic of irresolute falling” (Heidegger, 1962, p. 322). But if authenticity consists in achieving some form of self-appropriation/self-realization, (a) How does this pertain to angst and the unhomelike?; (b) What is the disposition/mood of authentic Dasein?; and (c) How does it compare/contrast with Stoic oikeiōsis? The answers depend on which interpretation of authenticity one subscribes to.
Authenticity as Stability and Unity
One interpretation holds that authentic Dasein achieves a kind of stability and unity in selfhood that inauthentic Dasein fails to achieve (Egan, 2012, pp. 301–302). 19 On this view, the questions will be answered as follows: 20
(A1) Angst cannot be a characteristic of a stable and autonomous self since it is precisely a characteristic of a self-alienated being who can never “be entirely itself” (Egan, 2012, p. 303). Therefore authentic Dasein manages to comprehensively overcome angst and unhomelikeness. This means that the authentic Dasein will have achieved homelikeness (self-appropriation).
(A2) Authentic Dasein would not be susceptible to unstable, disruptive, and unhomelike fundamental moods (passions), but only to appropriate emotions or moods, similar to what the Stoics called eupatheiai. One could perhaps rely on Heidegger’s reference to “unshakable joy” as an emotion that authentic Dasein feels in conjunction with authentic angst, so as to argue that this would be the main emotional state of authentic Dasein.
(A3) Authenticity would in some respects, mutatis mutandis, be reconcilable with Stoic oikeiōsis.
Authenticity as Instability and Openness to Angst and Unhomelikeness
According to this interpretation, which is the one I endorse, authentic Dasein does not achieve any stability or unity that inauthentic Dasein does not have; authenticity is equally exposed to angst, the difference being that authentic Dasein accepts its instability (Egan, 2012, pp. 301–302). 21
This interpretation answers the above questions thus:
(B1) The constancy of resoluteness (authenticity) does not free Dasein from angst, but rather makes it be ready for angst (Egan, 2012, p. 303). In effect, there is no modification or regulation of angst or unhomelikeness—only a kind of readiness and acceptance concerning the unhomelikeness of existence and its norms. Authenticity is a resolve to take ownership of the unhomelike, i.e. to accept it as one’s own essence. This involves becoming familiar with one’s own nullity, thus remaining an enigma to oneself (Hayes, 2020, p. 145).
(B2) Angst is acknowledged as the fundamental disposition of Dasein that passively constitutes the affectivity of existence, which may or may not emerge in consciousness. If and when angst becomes manifest, it happens rather unpredictably in a way that shakes the person’s everydayness, without, however, giving rise to metaphysical theories of existence (ontologies) that suppress or deny finitude or the primacy of nothingness over presence and being, or which deflate affects as regards their ontological or epistemic import.
(B3) Authenticity would in many respects be a kind of reversal of Stoic oikeiōsis. As Hayes (2020) argues: “By undertaking to reverse the direction of oikeiōsis from familiarity with oneself to familiarity with that which is most uncanny or unfamiliar (unheimlich), Heidegger privileges our ownmost nullity as what remains incapable of appropriation” (p. 146). One could argue that this apparent reversal of Stoic oikeiōsis constitutes a transcendental critique that begins with the everyday dominance of familiarity, showing the conditions of its own possibility, thus delimiting its provenance and grounding it in the unhomely, in alienation (allotriōsis) and expropriation (see Hayes, 2020, p. 153).
This interpretation overcomes important preconceptions concerning Heideggerian authenticity, specifically the following: (a) That angst is the mood to which authentic understanding is permanently and exclusively attuned; (b) That unhomelikeness and homelikeness are two antagonistic structures of existence, where one of the two wins out over the other at any given moment and takes control of our being-in-the-world; and (c) That angst and unhomelikeness are terminal events, dead ends, the only way out being a return to where one came from (inauthenticity).
A key issue here concerns what happens when meaningfulness and homelikeness are disrupted by angst. Invaluable here is Withy’s nuanced analysis, which involves a qualified sense of unhomelikeness that pertains to self-understanding and loss of motivation, but not a total collapse of the world. As Withy (2012) argues: “In angst, entities recede into insignificance and so our absorption in them is suspended (but not surrendered)” (p. 50). This doesn’t mean that the person becomes totally confused and unable to identify what each thing is and how it is used, but rather that its significance (Bedeutsamkeit) falls apart; this means that while the person still knows what each thing is, they fail to connect the world with their practices and life-goals. Things become unfamiliar not in the sense of unidentifiable, but in the sense that we lose our investment in them, become dissociated from them. This is a phenomenon similar to what psychologists call derealization (Withy, 2012, pp. 54, 56), although not identical to it since angst is transitory (Withy, 2012, p. 62).
In effect, the person loses their investment in the world entirely, since no human goals can compel them (Withy, 2012, p. 57). This is a breakdown of homelikeness, motivation, and meaningful engagement, which most importantly reveals that unhomelikeness pertains not just to whether the world is found meaningful or not, but to selfhood as such (Withy, 2012, p. 69). It is not only significance that is momentarily lost, but the ultimate ground of significance—that is, the self—is itself withdrawn. Insofar as significance is the ordering of things in relation to human goals, the ultimate goal of which is (in line with the Aristotelian eudaimonic structure that Heidegger adopts) the highest good, which is Dasein itself, it follows that in the face of Dasein’s death, the whole order of significance collapses, revealing the unhomelike as its ground. Unhomelikeness is revealed as something distinct from and indeed deeper than angst, in the sense that it is something more pervasive than the disruptive mood of angst, 22 which can be disclosed through other moods as well. Angst is neither necessary for authenticity (since other moods can do the same work) nor sufficient (since angst has to be heeded and “owned”).
A remaining question now is: what does all of this mean for homelikeness? Homelikeness is revealed as something to which we can still return in two ways: either inauthentically, or authentically.
Authenticity and Homelikeness
According to the preceding analysis, unhomelikeness needs the homelike to emerge—it is a kind of interplay between the familiar and the unfamiliar in which the realm of familiarity is disrupted (Withy, 2012, p. 9). As Svenaeus and Sarvimäki agree, homelikeness and unhomelikeness are equally fundamental and necessary to our existence.
Although authenticity involves a kind of reversal of oikeiōsis, embracing that which remains incapable of such appropriation, this does not amount to a sovereign prevalence of the unhomelike. Anticipatory resoluteness involves an authentic reconnection with the world and therefore entails a certain rehabilitation of homelikeness.
What, then, would be the goal of a mindfulness that aims at well-being, on this Heideggerian model? Would it be the embracing of the unhomely or the re-establishment of homelikeness? My answer is it would be a post-anxiety authentic reconnection with the world in a resolute, equanimous comportment, which would involve giving up a certain paralyzing, absolutist, ontological belief—what Iain Thomson (2013) has described as the belief “that there is a single correct choice to make” (p. 273).
I thus propose a notion of well-being that is close to one described by Todres and Galvin. In the early Heidegger of Being and Time, homelike being-at-home is associated with inauthenticity, and homelessness is ascribed primordiality and associated with authenticity. Todres and Galvin (2010) note how Heidegger in his later work prioritizes the notion of “homecoming,” which is authentically possible for human beings as “a movement from the inauthenticity of a familiar being-at-home (zuhause) through a more authentic embrace of existential homelessness to the possibility of an authentic homecoming” (p. 3). In this movement, the experience of homelessness constitutes an “energizing potential that can be itself felt as well-being,” providing the motivation for further seeking the experience of homecoming (Todres and Galvin, 2010). Thus, for Todres and Galvin, the experience of homelessness is an experience pregnant with motivation—a transitional state that gives mobility and refers back to homecoming.
Well-being is thereby that which “grounds the human potentiality for a peaceful attunement to existence (Gelassenheit), which is ‘letting-be-ness,’ characterized by acceptance and peace” (Todres and Galvin, 2010, p. 4). Gelassenheit is a disposition, usually translated “releasement” or “equanimity,” which “blocks us from imposing our will on things and thus opens up to alternative ways of relating to reality” (Wendland et al., 2019, p. 2). According to my interpretation, Heidegger’s later notion of Gelassenheit does what anticipatory resoluteness did in his early work.
One might be tempted to consider Gelassenheit either an emotionally numb comportment, like Stoic apatheia, which has extirpated the passions altogether, or as a calm emotion, a homelike equanimous feeling that forecloses or supersedes the unhomely passion of angst. But that would miss the ontological character of Gelassenheit, whose aim is not to suppress or abolish the passions or other emotional phenomena, but rather to disentangle them—release them—from the activity of the will as well as from cognition and judgment. Gelassenheit would involve a transformed relation to the passions, including angst and homelessness itself, so as to enable a homecoming to homelessness, a dwelling in homelessness.
This would involve a qualified rehabilitation of oikeiōsis. Homelikeness remains open to angst and the unhomelike, freeing Dasein to experience joy in the here and now, in such a way that the here and now is not trapped in the metaphysics of presence and absolute sovereignty. Another Heideggerian term that captures the essence of this homelikeness is “dwelling.” Dwelling, Todres and Galvin (2010) explain, “is a form of being grounded in the present moment, supported by a past that is arriving and the openness of a future that is calling” (p. 4). As they argue: Heidegger never eradicates the givenness of homelessness, but what he does open up at various levels and stages is a space in which homelessness does not exclude the possibility of well-being. This kind of well-being has to be inclusive enough in order to hold open the possibility of homecoming within homelessness. (p. 4)
Concluding Remarks
This article has offered a schematic description of two models for mindfulness, a Stoic and a Heideggerian one, focusing on the different ways they theorize well-being, emotions, and the role of unhomelikeness and homelikeness. It was shown that Stoic mindfulness would have to aim at well-being qua oikeiōsis through a form of attention, which would involve the extirpation of passions. On the contrary, Heideggerian mindfulness would have to aim at well-being as an interplay of unhomelikeness and homelikeness, through anticipatory resoluteness. Heideggerian mindfulness would not only not aim at the extirpation of passions but would rather be motivated by a passion (angst) and embrace the passion. Heideggerian mindfulness was shown to involve not the sovereign prevalence of unhomelikeness (and angst) but rather a reconnection that involves a certain rehabilitation of homelikeness, expressed through “unshakable joy” (Heidegger, 1962, p. 358).
Heideggerian mindfulness was shown to involve a certain reversal of Stoic mindfulness with respect to homelikeness. However, it was also shown that in some respects, Heideggerian authenticity and mindfulness would involve a rehabilitation of the Stoic idea of oikeiōsis, as is revealed, for example, by the homology between oikeiōsis and Befindlichkeit, where both non-conceptually disclose the organism’s constitution to itself, in a proto-transcendental manner.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: ONISILOS Funding Program of the University of Cyprus.
