From Naturalized Suffering to Futile Ownership—A Genealogy of the Depressed Lifeworld

Abstract

AbstractWhile several separate researches focus on either the phenomenological description of depression, or on the modernization theoretical analysis of the structural transformations responsible for its emergence, the combination of both perspectives is still rare. The article aims at filling this gap by analysing modernization from the perspective of the phenomenological preconditions of depression. A depressed lifeworld is characterized by burdensome embodiment, disorganization of linear time, existential hopelessness and guilt, loss of agency and disturbed intersubjectivity. The ideal‐typical late medieval and early modern constellations are described according to these dimensions in order to identify the structural transformations resulting in the increased prevalence of depression. Even if the medieval era is characterized by the naturalization of suffering, limited agency and lacking worldly hope, these experiences are counterbalanced by an eschatological horizon of time providing a transcendental framework for resolving guilt, and, furthermore, a continuous presence of other persons around preventing complete isolation and consequent despair. During early modernity, such formula has changed: the gradual expansion of agency promising control over suffering and enjoyment lead to the emergence of a parallel horizon of worldly time and ambiguities of intersubjectivity. In order to handle these ambiguities and improve worldly control, the modern notion of property as absolute dominion was born, which by linking the potential of control to the detachment from the others resulted in a dangerous compound. Being deprived from property or being failed by it, renders the subject helpless: as the totality of the lifeworld dependent on ownership collapses, depression emerges.