Five Manifestations of Acedia

Last updated on: July 24, 2016 at 4:32 pm by Scott Beauchamp

Five Manifestations of Acedia 2016-07-24T16:32:34-04:00 Scott Beauchamp

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Brueghel – Sieben Laster – Disidia.jpg – zeno.org – PD

To add to my first post about Nault’s wonderful The Noonday Devil: Acedia, The Unnamed Evil Of Our Times, I thought it might help to better define acedia (so often confused with work-a-day laziness, another example of the secularization of a spiritual term coinciding with it also becoming more banal – not a coincidence) by listing the five principal manifestations that Nault reduces it to. He also pairs each manifestation with an illustrative quote from Evagrius of Pontus, the authority par excellence of acedia, and I’ll include a few of my favorite of those. And some music videos. Why not?

A CERTAIN INTERIOR INSTABILITY

What Nault means by this is a Kerouacean restlessness. The urge to keep moving physically. As I mentioned in my first post, acedia is heavily defined in spatio-temporal terms. I think that Nault calls it “interior” because it’s a quasi-emotional sensation that doesn’t really have much to do with the physical reality that one wants to escape or escape to. Here’s Evagrius:

The demon of acedia suggests to you ideas of leaving, the need to change your place and your way of life. He depicts this other life as your salvation and persuades you that if you do not leave, you are lost. – Evagrius of Pontus, De octo vitiosis cogitationibus 12

2. AN EXAGGERATED CONCERN FOR ONE’S HEALTH

This manifestation in our own time takes on a different guise than it had for the monastic fathers in the desert. According to Evagrius, what this meant for them was a concern that the monk would lack even the essentials and so might often lead to gluttony. In our own times, I think this might present itself as people confusing psychological or physical health for spiritual health. Yoga is not prayer, and keeping fit and eating the right foods isn’t *necessarily* a moral achievement.

3. AVERSION TO MANUAL WORK

In an interesting aside, Nault tells us that the desert fathers would make baskets to sell in Alexandria. “And if they did not need to sell them, they used to do as Penelope did: they would unmake at night what they had made during the day!” Nault goes on to say that it was John Cassian’s interpretation of this manifestation that would help mistakenly shift the definition of acedia to something closely resembling “laziness”, losing much of the psychological subtlety that Evagrius brings. But this is an aversion to *purposeful* work, the kind of work one can avoid just as easily laying on the couch as working 14 hours a day as an investment banker.

4. NEGLECT IN OBSERVING THE RULE

For monks, this usually meant neglecting prayer. Nault tells us that this manifestation is of a “minimalist” kind, where every duty feels like too much of a load to bear. Evagrius again:

The monk afflicted with acedia is lazy in prayer and will not even say the words of a prayer. As a sick man cannot carry about a heavy burden, so the person afflicted by acedia will not perform the work of God [with diligence]. – Evagrius of Pontus, De octo vitiosis cogitationibus 6, 16

Evagrius, knowing well that opposites always meet, warns that this kind of minimalism can also lead to a maximalism. It’s a maximalism that can lead to a lack of discernment, taking on much more than one is able to effectively handle, or even hastily proclaiming declarations of victory of acedia itself.

5. GENERAL DISCOURAGEMENT

This is probably the most straightforward manifestation. Nault tells us that the most common example of this manifestation were monks leaving the vocation, much more dramatic but obviously related to monks leaving the spiritual battlefield because of interior instability. Evagrius says:

The soul…due to the thoughts of sloth and listlessness that have persisted in it, has become weak, has been brought low, and has dissipated in the miseries of its soul; whose strength has been consumed by its great fatigue; whose hope has nearly been destroyed by this demon’s force; that has become mad and childish with passionate and doleful tears; and that has no relief from anywhere. – Evagrius of Pontus, Antirrhêtikos VI, 38

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs5wIJlUK1o

Next up: the five remedies for acedia.

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