Abstract
The aim of this article is to investigate the role of anxiety as an emotional state frequently identified as the most characteristic of the history of modern Europe, and of the ‘Global North’. Starting from an assessment of the main supporters of this interpretation in social theory – such as the risk society approach of Ulrich Beck, and the role of expert knowledge in Anthony Giddens – the article discusses the current relevance and limitations of this well-established notion. The second part applies this discussion to the role of anxiety in the recent Covid-19 outbreak, and more specifically with regard to its relations with trust in scientific knowledge. Even though Covid-19 has been a global pandemic, this emergency can reveal some cultural and historical characteristics of European anxiety in the geo-cultural map of emotions.
Highlights
The aim of this article is to investigate the role of anxiety as an emotional state frequently identified as the most characteristic of the history of modern Europe, and of the ‘Global North’
We find a similar analysis in the work of Anthony Giddens, who explicitly considers anxiety as the emotional state typical of Western modernity, but who describes a bond between anxiety and trust in the numerous varieties of expert knowledge characterizing the modern condition
The critique of modernity developed in Western philosophical thought of the twentieth century was often intertwined with the analysis of an emotional state of anxiety about the failures, contradictions or excessive ambitions of the modern project
Summary
The aim of this article is to investigate the role of anxiety as an emotional state frequently identified as the most characteristic of the history of modern Europe, and of the ‘Global North’. Anxiety is a common emotional state, frequently present in everyday life, often responsible for physical discomfort, and correlated with contingent situations and with cultural dispositions and orientations (Davidson et al, 2005; Harding and Pribram, 2002). Anxiety is not necessarily a temporary state, or the emotional response to a situation It is different from fear, as a specific and present threat: anxiety does not stem from a specific object and it is not something from which one can escape as in the case of a temporary danger. In Western culture, anxiety is a typically future-oriented emotion (Melucci, 1996), and it is correlated to the feeling of trust since they both have a relation with the openness of the future typical of modernity. The cultural space where the individual lives cultivates specific emotional patterns and meanings given to them
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