I want to return to Heidegger's phenomenology of anxiety in his What is Metaphysics. I return because Heidegger talks about the realms of sentiment, emotion, fellow feeling and thought that is ignored by the neo-classical economists. It is the realm of everyday life in which we live that is dismissed by economists as the realm of the bleeding hearts.
It is not only Adorno who becomes increasing relevant to us with the process of the internationalization of capital. Heidegger also. I reckon Heidegger is saying something important in relation to the examples I gave of anxiety from economic reforms of the 1980s in relation to people carrying the burden of adjustment. That 'phrase carrying the burden of adjustment' is economic talk of the neo-classical zealots, and it ignores the human experience of carrying that burden. That public experience is what Heidegger is exploring.
It is a public experience that was changed by the brutality of the 1990s recession. We never bought the story of progress to salvation through renovating the economy.
If we pick up What is Metaphysics from where we left of here, then we find that Heidegger is distinquishing anxiety from fear (para 21). He says:
'We become afraid in the face of this or that particular being that threatens us in this or that particular respect. Fear in the face of something is also in each case a fear for something in particular. Because fear possesses this trait of being “fear in the face of” and “fear for,” he who fears and is afraid is captive to the mood in which he finds himself. Striving to rescue himself from this particular thing, he becomes unsure of everything else and completely “loses his head.” '
This mood was non-specific. It wasn't about this or that as such. True, it was about us being the buffer at the end of the station, the shock absorber, as we carried the burden of adjustment of an economy in transition on our backs. We were fearful---especially about becoming unemployed as the economy sank to the bottom as unemployment hit 11%. Or we were fearful about decreasing job security We had few grounds for hope, were depressed and lived in a state of from all the restructuring that was really a process of destructuring.
It was a kind of anxiety about stepping out into the ocean from a leaky boat without any plans to build even a raft. The public mood was more than fear.
Heidegger continues (para 22):
"Anxiety does not let such confusion arise. Much to the contrary, a peculiar calm pervades it. Anxiety is indeed anxiety in the face of... ,but not in the face of this or that thing. Anxiety in the face of . . . is always anxiety for . . . , but not for this or that........In anxiety, we say, “one feels ill at ease [es ist einem unheimlich].” What is “it” that makes “one” feel ill at ease? We cannot say what it is before which one feels ill at ease. As a whole it is so for him. All things and we ourselves sink into indifference. This, however, not in the sense of mere disappearance. Rather in this very receding things turn toward us. The receding of beings as a whole that closes in on us in anxiety oppresses us. We can get no hold on things. In the slipping away of beings only this “no hold on things” comes over us and remains. Anxiety reveals the nothing."
Heidegger gives us another way of talking to that of the pointyhead's doctrine of the main game by which they meant restructuring the economy to make it compatible with internal economic flows. Their economic talk was about pulling the economic levers to get the belts and pulleys moving; current account deficits and inflation rates; economic laws that had to be accepted; and recessions as a necessary section of the journey to economic growth.
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