Concept
Apathy
Overview
Apathy, also referred to as indifference, is a lack of feeling, emotion, interest, and/or concern about something. It is a state of indifference, and/or the suppression of emotions such as concern, excitement, motivation, or passion. An apathetic individual has an absence of interest in or concern about emotional, social, spiritual, philosophical, virtual, or physical life and the world. Apathy can also be defined as a person's lack of goal orientation. Apathy falls in the less extreme spectrum of diminished motivation, with abulia in the middle and akinetic mutism being more extreme than both apathy and abulia.
The apathetic may lack a sense of purpose, worth, or meaning in their life. People with severe apathy tend to have a lower quality of life and are at a higher risk for mortality and early institutionalization. They may also exhibit insensibility or sluggishness. In positive psychology, apathy is described as a result of the individuals' feeling, they do not possess the level of skill required to confront a challenge (i.e. "flow"). It may also be a result of perceiving no challenge at all (e.g., the challenge is irrelevant to them, or conversely, they have learned helplessness). Apathy is usually felt only in the short term, but sometimes it becomes a long-term or even lifelong state, often leading to deeper social and psychological issues.
Apathy should be distinguished from reduced affect display, which refers to reduced emotional expression but not necessarily reduced emotion.
Pathological apathy, characterized by extreme forms of apathy, is now known to occur in many different brain disorders, including neurodegenerative conditions often associated with dementia such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia. Although many patients with pathological apathy also have depression, several studies have shown that the two syndromes are dissociable: apathy can occur independent of depression and vice versa.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
For skepticism is the most spiritual expression of a certain many-sided physiological temperament, which in ordinary language is called nervous debility and sickliness; it arises whenever races or classes which have been long separated, decisively and suddenly blend with one another. In the new generation, which has inherited as it were different standards and valuations in its blood, everything is disquiet…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
States what Apathy is; the author is tied to Apathy in the knowledge graph.
They could be extended indefinitely by any careful observer of the scene. The significant thing is that familiarity has bred indifference if not contempt. Indifference is the evidence of current apathy, and apathy is testimony to the fact that the public is so bewildered that it cannot find itself. The remarks are not made with a view to drawing a conclusion. They are offered with a view to outlining a problem: What…
John Dewey, The public and its problems
States what Apathy is; names Apathy twice.
But he compares himself with a being who alone must be capable of the conduct that is called unegoistic and of an enduring consciousness of unselfish motive, with God. It is because he gazes into this clear mirror, that his own self seems so extraordinarily distracted and so troubled.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
States what Apathy is; the author is tied to Apathy in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Apathy
Related ideas
- Passion (emotion)
- Philosophy
- Ancient Greek
- Positive psychology
- Apatheia
- Christians
- Stoicism
- Social relation
- Motivation
- Schizophrenia
- Brain injury
- War
- Orbitofrontal cortex
- Anterior cingulate cortex
- World War I
- Virtue
- God
- Flow (psychology)
- Stroke
- University of Toronto
- Anxiety
Place in the tradition
Part of Agnosticism.