Philosophy and Anthropology of Boredom in Hans Blumenberg

Translation Copyright: © 2025 Josefa Ros Velasco. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license for use and distribution (CC BY 4.0). Received 10 November 2025; Accepted 14 November 2025. Journal of Boredom Studies (ISSN 2990-2525) Issue 3, 2025, pp. 1–21 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17608194 https://www.boredomsociety.com/jbs Philosophy and Anthropology of Boredom in Hans Blumenberg JOSEFA ROS VELASCO Complutense University of Madrid, Spain [email protected] https://orcid.org/0009-0005-7799-4212 How to cite this paper: Ros Velasco, J. (2025). Philosophy and Anthropology of Boredom in Hans Blumenberg. Journal of Boredom Studies, 3. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17608194 Translation of Ros Velasco, J. (2025). Filosofía y antropología del aburrimiento en Hans Blumenberg. In J. Ros Velasco, E. J. Torregroza Lara, and O. A. Quintero Ocampo (Eds.), Hans Blumenberg. Preguntas contra el miedo (pp. 215–248). Nexofia. Reproduced with permission of publisher. Ros Velasco Journal of Boredom Studies 3 (2025) 2 1. Introduction. Never Say Never For some time now, I’ve been trying to disconnect from Hans Blumenberg (1920–1996), though I’ve never quite managed to do so. I devoted all my reading hours during the last two years of my degree to his philosophy, wrote a Master’s thesis—focused on his metaphorology—and even a doctoral dissertation (2017a), which required me to spend an entire year of my life in Marbach am Neckar (Stuttgart, Germany), translating, studying, and systematizing hundreds of the Lübeck-born philosopher’s unpublished manuscripts. From those years of tireless work came some of the writings I cherish most: a couple devoted to metaphorology, another two to philosophical anthropology (see, e.g., 2012), two more to issues related to feminism (see, e.g., 2016a), several to prehistory and paleoanthropology (see, e.g., 2016b), and even one in which I had the Hanseatic thinker engage in dialogue with Schopenhauer (2016c). I have also made an effort to understand how his work has been received by Blumenberian scholars (see, e.g., 2014, 2017b). I always think I’ve reached my limit with this thinker, yet I never completely let him go. Although I often promise myself to leave him behind, I end up returning to him at the slightest opportunity: a small request to discuss his relationship with Johann Sebastian Bach (2021), a brief translation of an unpublished text, or an invitation to a specialized conference. To be honest, I always carry Blumenberg on my back; I end up quoting passages from his writings in my own almost automatically; I turn to his teachings to reflect on subjects as diverse as illness, eternal life, fear of death, animal empathy, weakness, COVID-19, capitalism, old age, or suicide. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve publicly declared that this or that would be the last time I wrote or spoke about Blumenberg. False, always false. Here I am again. It’s only fair: through Blumenberg I discovered my passion for philosophical and paleoanthropological study and, as is well known, for the study of the phenomenon of boredom —my field of specialization. It’s curious, really, because although I always bring up Blumenberg when I talk about boredom—and even shoehorn him into the work of other colleagues researching the subject—I have published almost nothing on Blumenberg’s philosophy and anthropology of boredom, apart from what appeared in my doctoral dissertation (2017a). I have never set down in writing a synthesis of the German philosopher’s view on the experience to which I devote every hour of my life, even though I ultimately owe him everything I have achieved in boredom research. In this paper, I want to repay my debt to the philosopher who has brought me to this point. In the pages that follow, I not only aim to present the key ideas in Blumenberg’s philosophy and philosophical anthropology of boredom, but also to put an end to that absurd flight from Blumenberg’s thought that I tried to undertake at the end of my doctoral years, but which I never managed to carry out—for obvious reasons. I will never say never to Blumenberg again. The ideas I will present below are drawn, in addition to my doctoral dissertation (2017a), from the chapter “Hans Blumenberg’s Philosophical Anthropology of Boredom,” published in the collective volume I co-edited with Alberto Fragio and Martina Philippi in 2020 for Karl Alber Verlag, titled Metaphorologie, Anthropologie, Phänomenologie. These ideas were first presented in outline at the 2017 conference Hans Blumenberg. Legacies and Research Programs at the University of Leipzig, organized by the same editors of the volume, and later at the II Congreso Ros Velasco Journal of Boredom Studies 3 (2025) 3 Internacional Blumenberg: Retórica y antropogénesis, held in 2023 at the Complutense University of Madrid, organized by Enver Torregroza and Oscar Quintero. This is not a mere adaptation of that earlier chapter, but rather a revised exposition that reconsiders those notes in light of a theoretical framework on the experience of boredom developed over the years since its publication and presented in my first book, The Disease of Boredom (2026). Before beginning, I would like to thank my colleagues for inviting me to take part in the 2023 event, which once again—and certainly not for the last time—compelled me to return to Blumenberg’s philosophy. I am also grateful to Professor Antonio Lastra, who offered us his publishing house, Nexofia, for the publication of the conference proceedings in which this paper was published in its Spanish version (2025a), thus giving me yet another opportunity to recant my ill-fated intention to bury Blumenberg at the bottom of my heart. 2. History of the Philosophy and Anthropology of Boredom 1 Boredom is a state of discomfort that we experience when the environment in which we find ourselves, or the activity with which we try to engage, fails to stimulate us adequately in accordance with our initial expectations, resulting in the painful experience of a lack of meaning. We all suffer from it to a greater or lesser extent, at all times and in all places, depending both on exogenous factors—stemming from the possibilities offered by the context—and endogenous ones, related to one’s own personality. The person who is bored feels that their relationship with the present reality is damaged and that they must do whatever is within their reach to return to the optimal level of arousal that translates into a sense of well-being. The study of boredom has awakened the curiosity of countless thinkers throughout the history of the West. We moderns are not the first to be doomed to suffer this painful state that is boredom, nor are we the only ones to have left a record of our suffering. Homer was probably the first to do so when, in Book 24 of the Iliad, he referred to the excessive idle time endured by the Achaeans as they waited to begin their battle against the city of Troy. The poet also created several characters—most notably Odysseus and Calypso—who embodied the boredom inherent in moments of waiting, and he wondered, at the end of Book 12 of the Odyssey, what could be more boring than a story told twice. Later, in the Classical period, figures such as Pindar and Isocrates complained about the boredom provoked by overly long and repetitive speeches lacking originality. The old Dicaeopolis, from Aristophanes’ Acharnians, was bored while waiting for the Athenian assembly to begin. Euripides’ soldiers in Iphigenia in Aulis shared the same fate as Homer’s Achaeans, and the husbands in Medea grew bored with their families. Plato admitted in the Laws that he nearly died of boredom listening to wealthy men and merchants talk about their business affairs, while in the Gorgias he confessed his fear of boring others—something that, he noted, occasionally happened to his teacher Socrates as well. The early philosophers understood boredom as a shameful emotion, since it reflected a lack of interest in the cultivation of virtue— 1 The historical overview presented in this section is developed in greater detail in The Disease of Boredom (2026, especially chapters 1–6), as well as in several other texts I have authored on the subject (see, e.g., 2022, 2023, 2024). In these sources, the reader can find a comprehensive bibliography of the works cited. Ros Velasco Journal of Boredom Studies 3 (2025) 4 the supreme ideal of the Greek people. During the Hellenistic period, Metrodorus of Lampsacus lamented how boring the symposia, or drinking parties, could be. Later, during the Roman Empire, Lucretius referred in De Rerum Natura to the boredom that afflicted wealthy Romans, disgusted by remaining always in the same place (horror loci). Horace, in his Epistles, described boredom as the result of a strenua inertia, the cure for which lay in the practice of philosophy and hard work. Seneca, for his part, frequently discussed taedium in his Letters to Lucilius and in dialogues such as On the Tranquility of the Soul, considering it an affliction capable of driving men to suicide. In the Middle Ages, numerous debates arose around the phenomenon of boredom, when theologians conceived of it as a vice that distracted the faithful from their contemplative duties. The term acedia, signifying tedium, appeared in the Septuagint—the Greek translation of the Old Testament—as well as later in St. Jerome’s Vulgate. Even earlier, Origen had addressed boredom in his Homilies on the Gospel of Luke. Throughout the first millennium, St. Augustine reflected extensively on boredom in the Confessions and in The Catechesis of Beginners. Evagrius Ponticus and John Cassian did the same in the Praktikos and the Institutes of the Coenobia, respectively. The Patrologia Latina is filled with references to boredom—sometimes equated with sadness—from the writings of Columbanus of Luxeuil to those of St. Bernard, including those of St. Benedict, St. Pirminius, John of Orléans, Rabanus Maurus, Theodore the Studite, Theodulf of Orléans, Alcuin of York, John of Damascus, Peter Damian, Hugh of St. Victor, Adam Scotus, Richard of St. Victor, and Gilbert of Nogent, among others. Within scholastic philosophy, St. Thomas Aquinas also wrote about boredom in his Summa Theologica. In the Renaissance, boredom—which had until then been regarded at times as a contextual problem and at others as a spiritual ailment—became linked to the old Hippocratic disease of melancholy and came to be seen as a failure of the organism. This transformation was discussed by theologians such as Ignatius of Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises and autobiography, and John of the Cross, in Dark Night of the Soul; by writers of the stature of Dante, in The Divine Comedy, and Petrarch, especially in My Secret; and by figures more inclined toward medicine, such as Marsilio Ficino and Robert Burton, who explored boredom in works like Three Books on Life and The Anatomy of Melancholy. Philosophical reflections on the topic can also be found in Blaise Pascal’s Pensées, already in the 17th century. From the beginning of the Modern Age, boredom came to represent the negation of the capitalist work ethic, even attaining the status of a disease, plague, or epidemic. Lyricists such as Novalis, Hölderlin, and Heine; playwrights like Schiller, von Kleist, and Büchner; and novelists such as Hoffmann, Tieck, and Goethe made boredom the central theme of many of their works, in a kind of critique of the society of their time. Meanwhile, a philosopher like Kant defined it as the cancer of practical pure reason, devoting an entire section to it in his Anthropology in a Pragmatic Sense; Schopenhauer analyzed it through the lens of the concept of will in The World as Will and Representation; and Nietzsche associated it with the organized character of societies in On the Genealogy of Morality. A bit further north, Kierkegaard delved into the concept of existential tedium in works such as Either/Or. Further south, from the French intellectual sphere, boredom embodied the mal du siècle, its decay chronicled by writers such as Senancour, Ros Velasco Journal of Boredom Studies 3 (2025) 5 Chateaubriand, Madame de Staël, Stendhal, George Sand, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Verlaine, and Rimbaud, to name a few. Finally, physiology turned its attention to boredom through the work of physicians such as de Sauvages, Vitet, Hallé, Thillaye, Esquirol, de Tours, Jousset, Roubaud-Luce, Bricheteau, Michéa, and de Boismont. In contemporary times, the experience of boredom is understood as a symptom of life rationalized in the service of the logic of productivity under the capitalist imperative. In the classical period of our era, thinkers such as Simmel, in his essay The Metropolis and Mental Life; Lefebvre, in From Rural to Urban; Kracauer, in The Mass Ornament; and Benjamin, in The Arcades Project, among many others, spoke of the profound sense of boredom caused by the ever-repetitive, entirely redundant, which affects not only the satiated and wealthy, as Tardieu would say, but also the proletariat, weary of the unbearable rhythms of factory life. These philosophers also observed the rise of the mass entertainment industry, which emerged to alleviate boredom, only to operate as a simple extension of work under the premises of the rational capitalist system—aiming to break the vicious cycle of production and diversion to counteract the alienation from which such boredom arises. Similarly, some Germanic schools of psychology follow this line of thought, incorporating boredom, as in Freudian psychoanalysis, into a moral problem of society, as a ‘disease of culture’ that drives the Self toward the pursuit and liberation of pleasures. However, the rise of studies on consciousness, personality disorders, and the physiological substrate of mental processes and human behavior has, in recent times, gradually shifted efforts to understand boredom toward the individual—the person who experiences it— and their particular characteristics, leaving aside the social component. In other words, while philosophers once saw social structure as the disease and boredom as its symptom, the focus later shifted to psychic and physiological factors, which were understood to require treatment within the framework of psychopathology. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty-first, the analysis of boredom has been handled almost exclusively by psychologists and psychiatrists. Other disciplines, such as anthropology, philosophy, and sociology, were sidelined in the study of boredom and have only relatively recently regained their role as observers of the multifactorial reality inherent in its experience. The humanities are reclaiming their indispensable role in the study of boredom after several decades in which it was addressed almost exclusively from the perspective of mental health sciences. This shift was largely driven by the publication of The Philosophy of Boredom by the Norwegian philosopher Lars Svendsen. Other works from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have also moved away from the previously dominant psychological approach, adopting perspectives from cultural or literary studies, historiography, anthropology, or sociology. Examples include The Demon of Noontide by Reinhard Kuhn; Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind by Patricia Meyer Spacks; Boredom and the Religious Imagination by Michael Raposa; Boredom: A Lively History by Peter Toohey; and Experience Without Qualities by Elizabeth Goodstein, one of the strongest advocates for multidisciplinary work within Boredom Studies. More recently, works such as The Art of Being Bored by Sandi Mann; Out of My Skull by John Eastwood and James Danckert; Propelled by Andreas Elpidorou; Ros Velasco Journal of Boredom Studies 3 (2025) 6 Boredom and Capitalism by Daniel Lesmes; The Sociology of Boredom by Mariusz Finkielsztein; essays by Byung-Chul Han; and even my own book, The Disease of Boredom, have continued this trend. In any case, the approach to the experience of boredom in these works remains largely historical and cultural; proper philosophical reflection on boredom is often conspicuously absent. In none of these books—except my own—is Blumenberg mentioned, unlike other philosophers such as Heidegger or Schopenhauer, even though the Lübeck-born thinker developed an entirely original thesis on the experience of boredom, which, in many cases, my colleagues reproduce without realizing that what they are discussing is part of Blumenberg’s intellectual legacy. My efforts to disseminate his philosophy of boredom in English, often at the expense of his interested Spanish-speaking readers, usually fall on deaf ears. No one cites Blumenberg when talking about boredom. 3. Blumenbergian Philosophy and Anthropology of Boredom It will be impossible for me to unpack Hans Blumenberg’s thoughts on the experience of boredom without constantly making references to my own work. His conception of boredom is entirely new. I have embraced it, but as a starting point to develop my own philosophy of boredom—one that ultimately becomes, in part, contradictory to some of the assumptions underlying Blumenbergian approaches. He did not study this experience in a specialized way. He was unaware of what was being said about boredom in his time from disciplines other than philosophy, nor could he know what would be said after his death. With the knowledge I possess, for these reasons, I often have no choice but to contend with Blumenberg on the subject of boredom. Nonetheless, I will do my utmost to clearly distinguish my philosophy from his. First, I wish to begin by noting certain procedural difficulties we will encounter in attempting to systematize his theory of boredom. After this warning, I would like to present my synthesis of his ideas. Finally, I will share his reflections on the role boredom has played in two historical periods as distant as prehistory and our contemporary era. It is tremendously difficult to trace everything Blumenberg wrote about boredom. Almost all the notions we have at hand are found in Description of Man (2011). Scattered references also appear in works such as Time of Life and Time of the World (2007) or Concepts in History (2003). We can also find some remarks on melancholy in Work on Myth (1988). From these texts, one can infer the philosopher’s thoughts on boredom. However, a complete reconstruction necessarily leads us to his Nachlass, housed at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach (DLA). There, we do not find a single unpublished text devoted entirely to boredom, but dozens of small writings dispersed across countless folders. Some are immediately apparent simply by typing the word Langeweile into the DLA’s Katalog Kallías search engine. Others are discovered thanks to the brief index Blumenberg himself created listing several unpublished notes on boredom. Yet many remain hidden under the most baffling labels, giving no hint that they contain key passages for understanding his philosophy of boredom. I had only one year to work on the unpublished Blumenbergian material, so it is highly likely that much of it remained unexamined. It is not my Ros Velasco Journal of Boredom Studies 3 (2025) 7 intention here to dissect all that I did manage to consult—that is fully included in my doctoral dissertation, which I encourage the reader to consult if they want a more thorough account. Almost none of these writings are dated. We know that the section of Description of Man dealing with boredom is based on manuscripts developed from lectures he gave during the winter semester of 1976–1977 at the University of Munich. Several of the unpublished notes are in folders dated between 1968–1988 and 1992–1993. When he wrote the rest remains a mystery. Blumenberg describes boredom as a painful emotion that we experience whenever we are exposed to overly familiar situations or contexts that no longer pose a challenge to us—that is, situations in which we are over-adapted. This definition is quite similar to that proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in his Flow Theory. Here I encounter my first disagreement with Blumenberg. For me, boredom arises from the imbalance we feel between our need for stimulation and the possibilities we perceive the environment as offering. This imbalance does not occur every time we encounter a familiar situation, since many experiences to which we are accustomed—even if they no longer represent a challenge—can still stimulate us adequately. In any case, for Blumenberg, the essential point is not so much to analyze why boredom arises, but rather for what purpose. The philosopher argues that boredom functions to signal what is failing—those situations that provide no added value or hold no meaning for us—forcing us, through our desire to escape pain, to introduce change into the present. Blumenberg’s approach is a true precursor to what some contemporary philosophers have called the Theory of the Functionality of Boredom, with Andreas Elpidorou as one of its main representatives (a friend, as far as I know, who has never read the Lübeck philosopher). I appreciate that Blumenberg places such strong emphasis on how painful boredom is. In Description of Man, he writes that the experience of boredom brings with it an unpleasant sense of lack of meaning, making us feel irritated because, while bored, our self-awareness becomes uncomfortable; it is as if we are at a standstill, as if nothing speaks to us, and as if we cannot make any assertion about anything. In the unpublished text “Langeweile, Kurzweil” (1992–1993) he explains that boredom can even be experienced as a stillness akin to death, hence expressions like ‘dying of boredom’ or references to tödliche Langeweile (mortal boredom). Indeed, boredom is unpleasant. Yet many contemporary discourses seem to ignore this detail when they absurdly extol the desirability of having time to be bored; that is why I like that Blumenberg does not romanticize it. Boredom is always painful because it results from dissatisfaction. No sane person wishes to feel bad; what we desire is to have time of power—another Blumenbergian expression (2007)—for freely chosen activities or to do absolutely nothing at all. But we do not expect boredom, of all things, to occupy that time. Everyday expressions like ‘I’ll spend the whole weekend bored’ or ‘I wish I had time to be bored’ stem from a misunderstanding of the meaning we attach to the word ‘boredom,’ associating it exclusively with leisure time. We only need to recall a moment when we were truly bored and relive that discomfort to realize we would not wish to repeat it—or for it to last longer—and that desiring boredom is an oxymoron. What we Ros Velasco Journal of Boredom Studies 3 (2025) 8 truly desire is to be in ‘goblin mode’ 2 occasionally, but this is not equivalent to boredom, since it brings us pleasure and encourages us to continue in that state. Boredom must hurt in order to fulfill its function, which is none other than to make us react and escape from situations that hold insufficient value for us. In Description of Man, Blumenberg states that the experience of boredom is so powerful that it cannot be ignored. He explains that boredom “belongs to the strongest motivating passions of man,” initially acting as a paralyzing force and later triggering “a violent repulsion” toward the situation that causes it. 3 It cannot be otherwise if the aim is to make us react. Ultimately, boredom is nothing more than the result of “poverty of stimulus and [the] prohibition of [...] falling asleep” (2011, p. 530). In this sense, the philosopher identifies two moments of reaction. The first, outlined in Description of Man, is merely a state of awareness regarding a situation that has become obsolete. It is a moment of recognizing the present context and oneself situated within it. Later, the reaction involves the implementation or materialization of some strategy of escape, enacting a change that frees us from boredom. Blumenberg describes boredom as “a condition in which one does ‘something’ only to escape it” (1992–1993, Langeweile, Kurzweil). Regarding all this, I have several things to say. First of all, I agree that when we are bored, we are all aware of the pain; we feel it. For me, functional boredom is one in which we move through the following dimensions without major difficulty: 1) a sense of discomfort caused by an environment that fails to stimulate us adequately because it does not meet our expectations; 2) the formulation of a strategy to escape the situation causing the discomfort; and 3) the implementation of that strategy. However, I am not so sure about the role of consciousness in this process. Many philosophers of boredom argue that in that first reactive moment, beyond a mere expression of profound dissatisfaction, there is a critical element—a principle of introspection, a drive toward cognitive reevaluation, or epistemic inquiry. It has been suggested that boredom represents an opportunity to learn about oneself and one’s environment. But the process of developing a strategy to end boredom does not necessarily require consciousness; it does not have to involve a reflective or, if you will, meta-representational moment. Throughout our lives, we build a mental catalog of responses to boredom that have proven successful—these are not fixed, but adjustable and flexible. The brain frequently relies on these responses without engaging in any reflective process, aiming to avoid the energetic cost of accessing this catalog consciously to analyze each option or create new ones every time we need to escape boredom. Of course, if the options included in this catalog were derived from prior reflection and awareness, they are more likely to endure over time. However, today our ‘mental hard drive’ is supplemented with pre-set options provided by the mass entertainment industry, which we use when bored without any prior conscious awareness. Furthermore, algorithms now do the work for us, so the brain does not even need to access the catalog unconsciously, as they suggest how to fill our time based on what we have previously shown provides satisfaction. Aside from all this, I am not even sure that Blumenberg always 2 ‘Goblin mode’ refers to The Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the 2022, meaning a type of behavior that is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations in an increasingly goaloriented world. 3 These quotations come from an untitled and unnumbered card located in box Zettelkasten 26 U-Welt at the DLA. Ros Velasco Journal of Boredom Studies 3 (2025) 9 presupposes this conscious moment prior to implementing a strategy of escape, since in Description of Man he also notes that, faced with the poverty of stimulus that boredom represents, an “internal compensation is generated as an invisible movement” (2011, p. 530). Yes, some internal compensation must occur; the question is whether it happens as a visible (conscious) or invisible (unconscious) movement, or whether both are possible. It seems to me that the key lies in the latter. Both are possible, though we tend to respond to boredom through an invisible movement, without any conscious or reflective process, in order to conserve energy. This seriously calls into question the widespread belief that boredom makes us more creative—a notion that, fortunately, Blumenberg never embraced. Escaping boredom does involve a moment of creativity in the sense that we must bring something into play where previously there was nothing, or where what existed no longer stimulates us. However, the myth tells us that boredom will make us more creative, understood as imaginative or inventive, which is a big assumption. On one hand, the change that materializes in response to boredom does not necessarily involve introducing something novel or original into the context. In fact, most of the time the design of a strategy to escape boredom not only occurs unconsciously, but even on the rare occasions when we become aware that something must be done to avoid boredom and attempt to think through how to do it, we repeatedly fall back on the same familiar options from our mental catalog. Blumenberg never claims that the change prompted by boredom must be unprecedented; it is sufficient that the movement occurs. On the other hand, the belief that boredom makes us more creative is overly optimistic. Not only are we encouraged to think that something original will emerge from boredom, but also that this resulting creation will be positive. We forget that a large proportion of our responses—whether conscious or unconscious—to boredom are maladaptive and far from admirable, something Blumenberg was well aware of. Secondly, Blumenberg seems not to take into account that not all experiences of boredom, no matter how painful, are reactive or allow one to move through all the dimensions of the reaction process that make the experience functionally meaningful. For Heidegger, the reactivity of boredom increased as the experience became deeper. In the lectures he delivered during the 1929–1930 academic year at the University of Freiburg, later compiled in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, he explained that profound boredom (es ist einem langweilig) was a fundamental mood or disposition, an existential orientation, or a background structure of experience: a way of being-in-the-world (in-der-Welt-sein) and of adopting stances toward oneself and reality. However, Heidegger acknowledged that not all boredom is deep or endowed with this capacity for reaction. Other forms of boredom only allow one to recognize the situation from which they arise, without prompting any action for change—for example, when we are bored by something (das Gelangweiltwerden von etwas) or when we are bored with something (das Sichlangweilen bei etwas). In these cases, boredom is not fully reactive, and thus not entirely functional, because it does not facilitate escape from its source. In my book (2026), I argue against Heidegger because I believe the opposite occurs: we react more readily to boredom when it is not deep, whereas existential boredom is less functional because it makes designing an escape strategy extremely difficult. But that is another matter—though I will later provide reasons for why I think this is the case. Ros Velasco Journal of Boredom Studies 3 (2025) 16 weak and strong had been “the basic problem of human history” (n.d., 021606). “Through hunting, the strong and clever exploited their position in the group in order to gain advantages over the other members” (1968–1988, 019592). However, in the situation of the weak, “the great deadly boredom spread, driving the new ‘madness,’ making the position of the elite random and suspect” (n.d., 320–322). Determined to break free from the boredom produced by “a stable form of life” (n.d., 320–322), they assumed the risk of stepping out on their own and of being called crazy by the others. “They began to sing and dance around [the strong]” (n.d., 021606). In the end, Blumenberg says, the weak turned out to be “the essence and substrate of every culture” (n.d., 021606), the ones who gave rise to the creation of abstract systems of thought and even to art. Thus, some were able to participate in the evolutionary trajectory because they possessed certain characteristics “that made them preferable for success” (n.d., 0219685) compared to those who tried to impose strength. From then on, the tables would turn: members of the elite would have to compete with those previously marginalized for the favor of the females, who would value rational qualities over muscle. Henceforth, those capable of maintaining better conversations, telling better stories, and, ultimately, providing better company to alleviate boredom, would be the most valued members of the clans. In short, those ancestors “avoided boredom and increased the powers of the mind” (1968– 1988, 021851); “they were elevated” (n.d., 472–476), thanks to boredom, toward a way of life that strove to transcend, that went beyond mere survival. Boredom—or, more precisely, the reaction to boredom—may have pushed them toward a rupture in the perfectly regulated relationship with their environment, without which, perhaps, “human beings would not exist” (2013, p. 67) as we are today. The philosopher’s notes suggest that boredom was present in our prehistory, at a time of great stability, and that in our ancestors’ effort to find relief from it, a response emerged that led to a paradigm shift. Nietzsche wrote in The Antichrist that all myths, chants, dances, and inventions created since the beginnings of human history are a response to boredom. This may be true, but it is also possible that these cultural manifestations arose to transmit group wisdom across generations, or that, initially, they existed merely as entertainment, and only later did their potential for cohesion, prosperity, and survival become evident. We cannot know for sure. The same applies to other proto-cultural manifestations that, unlike the previous ones, endured over time. For example, it is plausible that prehistoric artistic production was simply a way to occupy time for those ancestors who had reached greater cognitive development and higher levels of adaptation. Who knows. 4 If Blumenberg is right—if the experience of boredom is a state of abnormality that becomes an advantage in certain contexts, allowing one to benefit from the experimentation of new niches; if it acts as a key equalizer in life in adaptive terms because, paradoxically, it maintains a necessary degree of maladaptation to keep us alert to future dangers; if it is a failure that permits the emergence of other arrangements through which the species improves; if it is functionally positive despite being emotionally negative; if it has fulfilled this function since ancestral times—then what has happened for its functionality to be so diminished in our era, even 4 A detailed account of Blumenberg’s imaginary conception of the origin of boredom in prehistory can be found in both my doctoral dissertation (2017a) and my book (2026). Ros Velasco Journal of Boredom Studies 3 (2025) 17 to the point of endangering our survival through the desire for war or terrorism? Perhaps the dysfunctional forms of boredom, related to an individual’s inability to imagine more desirable scenarios to overcome moments of tedium, are in communion with the belief that no new niches remain to explore, that everything that could be tried to combat boredom has already moved from potentiality to actuality. Perhaps our capacity to imagine alternatives has been destroyed because we have filled our catalogs of responses with predetermined options. Or perhaps these catalogs have been blocked because we have been discouraged from developing them on our own, or because the logic of our contemporary society has dissuaded us from materializing our personal choices. I don’t know. I don’t know whether today we suffer from more dysfunctional boredom than in other eras; I’m unsure whether, despite the endless predetermined opportunities we have to fill our time, it is now harder for us to react to boredom than in the past. I would have to travel back to check whether the peasant had a large catalog of options to escape boredom or a narrow but effective one to fill the days with meaning. I have the sense that, in every historical period, we must have felt that there was nothing more to draw from, that the peak had been reached. Also, that in every period social pressures must have stifled human creativity when it came to responding to boredom or implementing specific strategies to escape it, causing profound frustration among people. My impression is that the experience of boredom today remains similar to what it was at the turn of the last century. We continue to live through transient, functional boredom, but we are also still immersed in a deep boredom derived from the inability to break free from the capitalist logic that condemns us to live a life without long-term projects, full of meaningless experiences repeating ad infinitum, in a dizzying time, charged with uncertainty, where the rhythms of production and consumption are even more aggressive than in Blumenberg’s era. This is evident in rising stress levels, the unstoppable anxiety of our society, the countless diagnoses of depression, the shocking figures of suicide, and even in the imperative need to experience everything at once and, moreover, to show it instantly to the whole world. We increasingly need more stimuli to satisfy our appetite; we increasingly rely on algorithms to decide how to fill our time, in any way, without thinking, because we are truly exhausted. Our catalogs of options for occupying ourselves are increasingly saturated with predetermined choices, mediated by the mass entertainment industry, rather than personalized options consciously chosen after a process of reflection and self-knowledge. It seems that little remains of the Socratic know thyself, and even less of the Kantian sapere aude. All of these are issues on which Blumenberg, obviously, has not commented, although he did place great emphasis on the importance of learning to tolerate boredom (n.d., 935–937). This means, quite simply, that we should not try to eliminate boredom by taking the quick route, but rather become interested observers of what it has to tell us. I translate this as: consciously build your catalog of options, paying attention to what boredom is signaling, instead of blindly consuming whatever comes your way. Only in this way will boredom be more likely to fulfill its function—and, in some cases, even then, it may fail. The casuistry of boredom is far more convoluted than we would like, and certainly more than Blumenberg ever considered. But this does not mean that we have to regard it as a disease every time we struggle to escape it. Ros Velasco Journal of Boredom Studies 3 (2025) 18 Blumenberg was opposed to labeling boredom in this way. He wrote in Description of Man that the WHO had turned everything into pathology with its definition of health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, promoting the idea that anything “becomes illness and [...] [that] the need for treatment potentially becomes a permanent state” (2011, p. 516). Blumenberg did not want boredom to turn into a nuisance from which health professionals could profit by imposing their “therapeutic pretensions” (2011, p. 516). Perhaps this is why he was so reluctant to view some experiences of boredom as dysfunctional, because he did not want them to be transformed into what he called “a diagnosis with great future” (2011, p. 527) to which “an extremely harsh therapy” (2011, p. 551) would have to be applied, forever overlooking the role that context plays in its experience. Today, boredom has already become a business. Advertisers and the media constantly exploit it as a lure, whereas in the 19th century no serious journalist spoke of it, he says (n.d., 166–167). Blumenberg feared that it was only a matter of time before the most licentious and authoritarian forms of medicine—the kind that would make Foucault’s hair stand on end—took advantage of the more complex experiences of boredom. So far, this has not happened. Even chronic boredom dependent on the individual does not appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Without being as drastic as Blumenberg, I think that, as I have tried to show, dysfunctional boredom does exist, although I always tend to think that its dysfunctionality is caused, at least in most cases, by the context itself, not by an unknown endogenous cause. I would like to believe that if Blumenberg could have read my arguments, he would have agreed with much of what I present. He always said that boredom was by no means a trivial matter, but rather a weapon charged with as much life as lethality. 4. Farewell? Blumenberg; always Blumenberg This concludes my brief exposition of Hans Blumenberg’s philosophy and anthropology of boredom. Short, but dense. After so many years, the Lübeck-born philosopher still helps me think, to bring clarity to my ideas about boredom. What he says about this painful state I understand fairly well, but what I have to say about what he says is not always neatly organized in my mind. Sometimes I fear misinterpreting him, of twisting his words to make them fit—or clash—with my own. I suppose any researcher of this philosopher’s work knows exactly what I mean. I hope I have at least managed to separate the wheat from the chaff so that you, the reader, can close this paper with an overview of what boredom can be: for Blumenberg, a functional, adaptive emotion, even when it involves death; for me, a question mark that I cannot stop turning over in my mind, for over a decade now—because of him! I have time to keep thinking about it, because “the world will always be boring” (1992–1993, Die Langeweile der Zukunft); always with Blumenberg. 5 5 This work received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under a Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 847635 for the execution of the project PRE-BORED. Well-being and prevention of boredom in Spanish nursing homes; with the support of the research projects PID2020-113413RB-C31, PID2020-117413GAI00, PID2019-108988GB-I00, and FFI2016-75978-R, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and the research group History and Ontology of the Present of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid. Ros Velasco Journal of Boredom Studies 3 (2025) 19 References Barnard, A. (2016). Language in Prehistory. Cambridge University Press. Blumenberg, H. (1968–1988). 019424. Musil, Tagebücher Heft 30: etwa März 1929 bis November 1941 und später (I 801) [unpublished document]. In Zettelkasten 01: Anthropologie. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (1968–1988). 019434 [unpublished document]. In Zettelkasten 01: Anthropologie. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (1968–1988). 019592. Alle Tierpopulationen haben Ökologie, nur die menschlichen Populationen haben Ökonomie [unpublished document]. In Zettelkasten 01: Anthropologie. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (1968–1988). 021851 [unpublished document]. In Zettelkasten 01: Anthropologie. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (1968–1988). 022198. Übersprungeinschlafen (Bilz, Paläoanthr. 22) Resignationsschlaf [unpublished document]. In Zettelkasten 01: Anthropologie. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (1968–1988). 017829 [unpublished document]. In Zettelkasten 01: Anthropologie. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (1988). Work on Myth. MIT Press. Blumenberg, H. (1992–1993). 019297–019298. Zeitgewinn und Langeweile [unpublished document]. In Konvolut Text und Materialsammlung Langeweile. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (1992–1993). Die Langeweile der Zukunft [unpublished document]. In Konvolut Text und Materialsammlung Langeweile. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (1992–1993). Langeweile, Kurzweil [unpublished document]. In Konvolut Text und Materialsammlung Langeweile. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (1992–1993). Unbehagen: Land der Langeweile [unpublished document]. In Konvolut Text und Materialsammlung Langeweile. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (2002). Vor allem Fontane. Glossen zu einem Klassiker insel taschenbuch. Insel. Blumenberg, H. (2003). Conceptos en historias. Síntesis. Blumenberg, H. (2007). Tiempo de la vida y tiempo del mundo. Pre-Textos. Blumenberg, H. (2011). Descripción del ser humano. Fondo de Cultura Económica. Blumenberg, H. (2013). Teoría del mundo de la vida. Fondo de Cultura Económica. Blumenberg, H. (n.d.). 019682. Biotopwechsel als “genetische Drift” [unpublished document]. In Zettelkasten 03: Deutsche Aufklärer. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Ros Velasco Journal of Boredom Studies 3 (2025) 20 Blumenberg, H. (n.d.). 020141. Vorhersage möglicher Fossilfundstätten im bereich junger geologischer auffaltungen [unpublished document]. In Zettelkasten 03: Deutsche Aufklärer. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (n.d.). 021606. Die Koalition der Schwachen und die Sklaverei der Eliten [unpublished document]. In Zettelkasten 03: Deutsche Aufklärer. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (n.d.). 0219685. Ist der Kampf ums Dasein eine Metapher? [unpublished document]. In Zettelkasten 03: Deutsche Aufklärer. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (n.d.). Hysterie. Ein fragwürdiger Begriff [unpublished document]. Konvolut Materialsammlung Anthropologie 3/3. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (n.d.). UNF 166–167. Diesseits der Langeweile [unpublished document]. In Schuber 1, Mappe 2. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (n.d.). UNF 1835–1839. Hitlers Bakterien [unpublished document]. In Schuber 7, Mappe 4. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (n.d.). UNF 2271. Kindeswohl und Lichtbedürfnis [unpublished document]. In Schuber 5, Mappe 6. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (n.d.). UNF 2348. Die Indifferenzen der Langeweile [unpublished document]. In Schuber 5, Mappe 7. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (n.d.). UNF 2461. Umkehrung eines Mythos [unpublished document]. In Schuber 6, Mappe 3. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (n.d.). UNF 320–322. Todestrieb der Eliten [unpublished document]. In Schuber 1, Mappe 3. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (n.d.). UNF 373–375. Tödliche Langeweile [unpublished document]. In Schuber 1, Mappe 3. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (n.d.). UNF 472–476. Rache der verstoβenen Metaphysik [unpublished document]. In Schuber 2, Mappe 1. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (n.d.). UNF 820–821. Hohe Ziele und mindere Zwecke [unpublished document]. In Schuber 2, Mappe 4. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (n.d.). UNF 935–937. Langeweile [unpublished document]. In Schuber 3, Mappe 1. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Blumenberg, H. (n.d.). UNF 963. Künstliche Beleuchtung [unpublished document]. In Schuber 3, Mappe 2. DLA, Marbach am Neckar. Flaubert, G. (1997). Razones y osadías. Edhasa. Gide, A., and Valéry, P. (1955). Correspondance 1890–1942. Gallimard. Ros Velasco, J. (2012). Metaforología y antropología en Hans Blumenberg. Azafea: Revista de Filosofía, 14, 207–231. Ros Velasco Journal of Boredom Studies 3 (2025) 21 Ros Velasco, J. (2014). Olivier Feron: Descubriendo a Hans Blumenberg. Res Publica: Revista de Historia de las Ideas Políticas, 17(1), 303–311. Ros Velasco, J. (2016a). Hans Blumenberg y el feminismo. Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía, 33(1), 285–303. https://doi.org/10.5209/rev_ASHF.2016.v33.n1.52298 Ros Velasco, J. (2016b). La caverna como protoinstitución en la paleoantropología de Hans Blumenberg. La Torre del Virrey, 19(1), 197–216. Ros Velasco, J. (2016c). Caminos para el estudio de un diálogo por descubrir: Schopenhauer y Blumenberg. Schopenhaueriana. Revista Española de Estudios sobre Schopenhauer, 1, 53–85. Ros Velasco, J. (2017a). El aburrimiento como presión selectiva en Hans Blumenberg. PhD Diss. Complutense University of Madrid. Ros Velasco, J. (2017b). Alberto Fragio, Metaphors of Subjectivity in 19th-Century Psychology, and Other Essays. Signos Filosóficos, 19(37), 207–211. Ros Velasco, J. (2020). Hans Blumenberg’s Philosophical Anthropology of Boredom. In J. Ros Velasco, A. Fragio Gistau, and M. Philippi (Eds.), Metaphorologie, Anthropologie, Phänomenologie (pp. 91–108). Karl Alber. Ros Velasco, J. (2021). La teología de Hans Blumenberg tras la música de Johann Sebastian Bach. Scherzo: Revista de Música, 36(375), 80–83. Ros Velasco, J. (2022). The Long Hard Road out of Boredom. In A. Elpidorou (Ed.), The Moral Psychology of Boredom (pp. 291–311). Bloomsbury Publishing. Ros Velasco, J. (2023). Contemporary Myths on Boredom. Frontiers in Sociology, 8, 1183875. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2023.1183875 Ros Velasco, J. (2024). A Brief History of the Psychology of Boredom. In M. Bieleke, W. Wolff, and C. Martarelli (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Boredom (pp. 106–130). Routledge. Ros Velasco, J. (2025a). Filosofía y antropología del aburrimiento en Hans Blumenberg. In J. Ros Velasco, E. J. Torregroza Lara, and O. A. Quintero Ocampo (Eds.), Hans Blumenberg. Preguntas contra el miedo (pp. 215–248). Nexofia. Ros Velasco, J. (2025b). The Experience of Boredom in Classical Contemporaneity. In A. Elpidorou and J. Ros Velasco (Eds.), The History and Philosophy of Boredom (pp. 208–227). Routledge. Ros Velasco, J. (2026). The Disease of Boredom. Princeton University Press. Toohey, P. (2011). Boredom: A Lively History. Yale University Press. Valéry, P. (1950). Selected Writings. New Directions.