Heidegger against the Stoics on mindfulness

Watch the presentation I gave at the conference Phenomenology and Mindfulness that took place at the University of Cyprus 1-3 June 2022.

Christos Hadjioannou: “Heidegger against the Stoics on mindfully overcoming uncanny feelings”

This paper will compare and contrast two competing models of mindfulness, a Heideggerian model and a Stoic model, focussing on the way they respectively theorize affective states and the normative ideal of “well-being”, thus delineating opposing stances and therapeutic options regarding extremely negative, uncanny, feelings. The first section will clarify the Stoic idea of the “sage” and the ideal of freedom from emotions (apatheia). Emotions will be theorized using a cognitivist model and will be identified as products of (bad) judgment, which must and can be eliminated cognitively. Then, the section will analyze the “naturalist principle” of oikeiōsis (“appropriation”, “familiarization”) as a form of mindfulness, which permeates the whole process of becoming sage.

The second section will look at Heidegger’s early phenomenology. It will argue that in Being and Time the “Heideggerian sage” (the human being that exists “authentically”) is someone who does not try to overcome angst, but rather cultivates a comportment that embraces existential anxiety. Here, the “sage” is called to own up to their latent angst and sense of unhomeliness/uncanninness, a feeling that amounts to a philosophical destination and which rehabilitates the human being’s existential condition and its “well being”, bringing it back to its unsettled “nature”. Finally, the Heideggerian model of mindfulness (resoluteness) will be conceived along the lines of phronetic prudence, rather than a cognitivist-reflective model that characterizes Stoic mindfulness.