Sergio Starkstein

Hobbes’s Leviathan is among the first philosophical texts to provide a systematic argument concerning the crucial role of fear in shaping social institutions, and to examine how this emotion may be manipulated for social control. Hobbes’s political ‘remedy’ for social chaos is the establishment of a powerful sovereign capable of enforcing a strong political system by using the fear of social punishment. It is argued that Hobbes’s political construction does not help to reduce human fears, since it basically consists in a strong state allegedly able to reduce anxiety to ‘tolerable’ levels, but in which the ‘horizon of expectations’ is stabilised by fear.

The concept of fear includes several semantically-related emotions, such as anxiety, phobias, panic and anguish. Therefore, the first section of this chapter provides a lexical introduction to the concept of fear and cognate words by examining the roots of these terms in the secular Old Greek and Latin lexicons. The second section briefly reviews how fear has been conceptualised in contemporary philosophy, from traditions that consider it is possible to provide categorical definitions of fear and related terms, to those that argue that the word ‘fear’ includes a variety of semantically-related terms united by ‘family resemblances,’ but with fuzzy boundaries. The third and last section considers the importance of conducting a conceptual analysis of fear, given that conceptual analysis is a powerful technique for both clarifying the meaning of fear, and helping to understand the best therapeutic approaches.

Williams James suggested that the emotions result from the subject’s perception of somatic changes, thus implying that fear does not depend on an appraisal of danger, being instead the result of a complex neuronal reflex. James’s theory was the departure point for the current neurobiological paradigm of fear, which flourished in the second half of the twentieth century. Neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio reduce fear to specific neural mechanisms, which also include metaphysical entities such as visual images, somatic markers, and metarepresentations. Ludwig Wittgenstein warned against the dangers of reductionism, and provided thoughtful remarks directed towards a broad concept of fear, stressing the many ways in which fear can be understood in our lives. Accordingly, fear is no longer reduced to a cybernetic mechanism, but becomes an important thread in the human ‘form of life,’ dynamically changing in quality and intensity, becoming a major determinant in behaviour.

This chapter describes the process of medicalization of fear and anxiety which began in the early twentieth century and continues today. The radical biological approach to fear and anxiety promoted by contemporary psychiatry results in a fundamentalist approach to emotional disorders. Thus, committees of experts decide on new nosologies for fear and anxiety consisting of a limited set of diagnostic criteria accompanied by the design of biological models to explain their mechanism and treatment. A similar fundamentalism applies to extreme social constructionist approaches, which reduce fear and anxiety to by-products of socio-cultural forces, thereby ignoring personal attributes and the complex variability of contexts. As it is argued in this chapter, the dilemma of what counts as abnormal is not empirical but conceptual, and has not yet been satisfactorily addressed, let alone resolved. Thus, the so-called “age of anxiety” gives rise to therapeutic solutions that might better be characterised as part of ‘the age of fundamental reductionism.’

The Passions of the Soul is Descartes’s main treatise on the passions (or what are currently more usually referred to as the emotions), in which the philosopher willingly investigates the passions from the perspective of a physiologist rather than a philosopher. Conceptually, Descartes’s approach is a strong departure from the humanist concept of emotions, employing as it does a mechanical strategy consisting in the separation of soul and body as different ontological entities in constant interaction. It is argued that Descartes’s reduction of fear to the product of a hydraulic mechanism was unfortunate, as it re-oriented understanding of this emotion away from philosophical insight. Moreover, the therapy of the passions suggested by Descartes is mostly based on ancient Stoic remedies, and his therapy does not follow from the mechanism of the passions that he attempted to describe with clockwork precision.

Montaigne’s Essays is of major importance for the philosophy of fear. In this work, Montaigne provides narratives of a variety of fears, and in doing so describes a full palette of fear-related emotions, from individual doubts and avoidance, to terror and generalised panic. Montaigne’s analysis and treatment of fear is unique because he is among the first philosophers to openly discuss his own fears and the variety of philosophical therapies he used to subdue them. After employing Stoic and Epicurean remedies, Montaigne found the most useful philosophical therapy in the sceptical Pyrrhonian tradition. Thus, the Essays express an open-minded, particularistic and anti-dogmatic approach to life. Montaigne’s motto ‘What do I know?’ reflects his non-partisan approach and receptiveness to improving his emotional well-being, as well as increasing his knowledge and joy of life by accepting life events as these unfold.

A major shift in the concept of fear occurred in 1895 when Sigmund Freud separated out from the syndrome of ‘neurasthenia’ a specific entity he termed ‘Neurosis Anxiety.’ This conceptual demarcation had major consequences for the nosology of fear and anxiety. Most importantly, Freud’s delineation of pathological anxiety resulted in the description of a specific pathogenesis based on psychodynamic theories and the creation of a therapy, both instrumental in the medicalization of fear. This chapter provides a critical analysis of Freud’s construction of normal, and pathological fear and anxiety as well as the conceptual problems arising from his psychophysical reduction, which consisted in a pneumatic system of deflected sexual energy, and later, in memory images of early traumas.

The dominant contemporary concept of fear navigates between the Scylla of biological psychiatry and the Charybdis of social construction. It is paradoxical that after all the attention in the neural and social sciences to fear in the last century, we are often seen to be living in an age of risk, fear, stress, and anxiety. The oversight provided by the different understandings of fear and its therapies in this book reflects the preference for a broad perspective on different aspects of fear, and for empowering individuals in active participation in their own therapeutic process. This is not to advocate for an anachronistic return to ancient remedies; rather, by setting out the different understandings it is possible to see how their concepts may be philosophically re-elaborated for delivering better therapies and further conceptual and empirical investigation.

Cicero’s concept and therapy of fear and distress are mainly conveyed in the Tusculan Disputations, a text with strong Stoic influences. In this work, Cicero’s therapeutic aim is to empower individuals to become their own therapists and to enable them to master their emotions. He argued that words have the potential for curing, or at least soothing, teaching and consoling. Cicero created a Stoic-Platonic therapy consisting in a thorough investigation of the roots of fear, complemented by applying techniques of self-mastery, memorization of philosophical maxims, and meditation. A century later, Seneca provided, in his Letters on Ethics, an in-depth analysis of fear and anxiety-producing situations, and considered fear to be the greatest scourge of the human mind. Seneca’s Letters offer an engaging approach to the problem of fear, beginning a tradition of more personally directed, curative philosophical dialogues between philosopher and patient, the reader his or herself.

Epicurus was among the first philosophers to recognise the negative impact of fear upon peace of mind. This chapter argues that the Epicurean state of ataraxia was only to be achieved after a systematic therapy of fear, and above all by fighting the fear of death. Epicurus stressed that it is because of the negative impact of fear that humans live in a state of anxiety, pursuing empty desires, and forgetting to live in the present. What Epicurus brought to the world was a strong commitment to alleviating human fears, his solidarity with anyone coming to the Garden for counsel or study, and a vivid example of how philosophy can provide the tools for a contented way of life.

There is an important gap in the philosophical literature concerning the concept of fear and its remedies, and this book has been designed to examine different concepts of fear that inform its therapy. Structured as a historical-philosophical investigation of the concept of fear, this book is not a purely historical analysis of fear but also provides a broad brushwork rendition of the main concepts of fear as presented by selected philosophers and thinkers, and how they have approached its therapy.