Abstract
An overview is provided of the psychological constituents of the emotional register, and special focus is given to the longer-lasting existential moods—our being-attuned to being—that we as humans experience. The classic concepts of existentialism (Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre) are reviewed and challenged. Moods, such as emptiness, meaninglessness, existential anxiety for freedom and nothingness, have not always been dominating aspects of human existence, nor are they today. These moods primarily stem from urbanity and modernity; but worldwide the majority of people do not know what autonomy, freedom, and relativity means. The outer as well as the inner nature of humans, and of human existence, are underexposed in classic and modern existential thinking. The aim here is to remedy this shortcoming by presenting an empirically anchored outline of a natural existential psychology, which, based on modern neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, comparative psychology, and phenomenology, provides further knowledge about our basic existential moods and our species-specific resonances of being-in-the-world.
We humans experience the world through a membrane of emotions. If we take a closer look at the psychological constituents of the emotional register, the majority of these are volatile, episodic, psychophysical states that reflect the stimuli we receive. This applies to the so-called core affects, vitality forms, basic emotions, and complex secondary emotions. These emotive states have clear intentionality, and relate to specific entities (objects, situations, and people) in the outside world (Ratcliffe, 2008; Russell, 2009).
Other emotive states, however, follow us over time and places, as a kind of prolonged existential tone or keynote. These existential moods have no specific outer object. Rather, they express “Die Stimmung, das Gestimmtsein,” as put by Heidegger (1927), and thus our “being-attuned” to being as such, prior to all psychology of moods, as a fundamental “existentiale.”
The existential basic moods are the theme of this article. I am of the opinion that the classic concepts of existentialism provide only a limited view of the being-in-the-world conditions and existential experiences on which the existential moods are based. The horizon of being does not, to the necessary extent, take its starting point in humans’ natural being-in-the-world conditions. The principal thinkers of the paradigm (Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre), as well as the existential psychologists they inspired (Binswanger, 1963; Frankl, 1969; May, 1953/1973; Yalom, 1980), all take root in a privileged, Western, metropolitan existential setting, and the moods they revolve around are first and foremost urban, modernist moods, such as emptiness, meaninglessness, existential anxiety for freedom, and nothingness. Thus, the horizon of being in focus is rather a modernist special ontology of relevance to the well-educated, intellectual Westerners who have experienced a humanistic liberation, the dissolution of the master narratives, and subsequently suffered under the rootlessness and the collapse of values, which for them became the price of freedom. Nevertheless, these analyses of being-in-the-world are presented sub specie aeternitatis, as something immanent and universal. From a historical perspective, however, it is a nanosecond since humans became city dwellers. For millions of years, our conspecifics have been part of nature, as foraging nomads, and still today, a large part of humankind is closer to a basic survival existence than to privileged Western metropolitan living. Furthermore, in recent years, nature is playing an ever-increasing role in the consciousness of modern humans because of global climate change. Thus, nature, in its outer as well as inner form, constitutes a central part of our being-in-the-world, but this has not really found a foothold within existential thinking. In this paper, I try to remedy this, but first a couple of clarifying delimitations.
As the title says, this is merely an outline written with the aim of suggesting content for researchers and others to elaborate on. Thus, the outline in itself does not implement its own vision in a fully unfolded form, if anything, it invites discussion and elaboration. For example, the argumentation implies various epistemological questions, which the researcher finds no room to unfold, or does not manage to clarify for the time being. Furthermore, the focus is solely on the basic texts of the principal thinkers of the existential paradigm (Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre). No attempt is made to enter into a discussion with contemporary existential psychology in general. However, since the lack of natural anchoring of the principal thinkers is handed down from generation to generation, the criticism must take its starting point here.
But first, we need to take a closer look at the more episodic and transient affects and emotions. Both because they are a significant part of the emotional register and because it helps clarify the way in which the existential moods are based on, and differ from, these parts of human emotionality.
Affects, vitality forms, and emotions
From a psycho-biological science perspective (the Heideggerian reservations follow in the next paragraph), core affects are neurophysiological conditions in the organism that unite a hedonistic toning (attraction/aversion) with an arousal potential (activating/deactivating; Barrett & Bliss-Moreau, 2009; Russell, 2009). Our changing needs entail core affects, and any incoming stimuli trigger immediate affective responses determining whether we perceive the input as: (a) Interesting – Uninteresting (innate bias for novelty), (b) whether it is Pleasant – Unpleasant, Dangerous – Harmless, Beneficial – Harmful, and finally, (c) whether we should Approach – Avoid, Accept – Reject.
Likewise, the special key stimuli (Høgh-Olesen, 2019; Lorenz, 1981; Tinbergen, 1951) that all species are programmed to be particularly aware of (because they have guided the species in making the right fitness-enhancing choices) entail immediate core affects. As stated above, any (inner and outer) stimulus entails an affective-predictive response, and this perceptive-affective-predictive loop represents a functional unit (Asma, 2021; Høgh-Olesen, 2021). One may speculate when in the line of development this bio-mental alertness loop occurs. And, in its most elementary forms, that is, attraction/aversion registration and approach–avoidance behaviour, the prerequisite is probably multicellular, self-moving organisms, no more than that, so these are basic processes we are dealing with here.
Developmental psychologist D. N. Stern (2010) introduced the concept of vitality form inspired by the work on lived bodily development of Susanne Langer (1967). Vitality forms are the experience-qualities that derive from the unfolding life, including the emotions. They can be described by adjectives such as roaring, wavy, buoyant, titillating, vibrant, exuberant, and floating, as well as by dimensions such as pale/dark, light/heavy, calm/fiery, and strong/weak. So, a state of joy can be stormy and overwhelming or cautious and embarrassed, that is, always joy of a certain kind. Never pure joy as such.
It is given that our being-in-the-world conditions and moods always come with a commitment or a power, and, according to Stern (2010), the arousal system, around the formatio reticularis of the brain, produces this experienced vitality-dynamic power. It therefore seems to me that what Stern designates as vitality forms, and devotes special attention to, is merely the arousal part of the above-described core affects. Not least because Stern (2010, p. 32) himself stresses that the only time we can experience a pure vitality form devoid of content is in the first milliseconds after a stimulus has activated the arousal system, but before emotion and cognition (the hedonistic toning) have had time to present themselves.
Thus, the core affects add hedonistic toning and arousal to the emotions and moods we experience (Russell, 2003). Furthermore, within psychology there is widespread agreement that we, as a species, hold a limited number of basic emotions. The majority point to the following five: anger, anxiety, joy, sadness, disgust (Ekman, 1999; Ekman et al., 1972; Oatley, 1992). Quite often, surprise (Izard, 1977) is added as a sixth basic emotion, and sexual arousal and jealousy as number seven and eight (Buss, 2000; Campos et al., 1983). A few others could be mentioned. The basic emotions are mainly innate and universal templates, but open for cultural and contextual modulations and variations (Mesquita & Boiger, 2014). They are distinctive signals with distinctive physiology and distinctive releasers. Blind-and-deaf-born children also exhibit them, and clear forms exist in the rest of the mammal world, especially in primates (Ekman, 1999). From an evolutionary point of view, these emotions are adaptations that have been functional in the species’ handling of fundamental life tasks such as mating, co-operation, domination and submission, battle and defence (Darwin, 1872/2009; Ekman, 1999). The emotions are reflections of our being-experiences, mirroring our encounter with the world. Furthermore, they are communicative signals revealing the state of being of ourselves and our conspecifics, and as such, important input to help social beings navigate. Moreover, the basic emotions can be combined into more complex secondary emotions, in the same way as the many shades of our colour vision are formed based on the basic colours red, yellow, and blue. For example, contempt is anger mixed with disgust. The above psychophysical states and processes are by nature relatively volatile and episodic, but this does not mean that core affective processes do not play a role in the toning of the longer-lasting existential moods and attunements that we now turn towards.
Being and resonances of being
In Sein und Zeit, Heidegger (1927) distinguishes between Stimmung, Gefühl, and Affekt. Like the above affect and emotion categories, the latter two refer to short-term psychophysical moods with particular reference to specific entities in the outside world, whereas the Stimmung experience results from the individual’s general feeling of being-in-the-world, that is, its Dasein (existence) or Befindlichkeit (state of mind), and as such, a more permanent condition or existential attunement.
As a rule, an existential mood has a weaker imprint, and a lower degree of precision as to our experiencing things, than do our emotions. For example:
I am on a train, and I am in an immediate state of not having made myself clear about how I feel. Like in the majority of my waking hours, my consciousness is merely referential, not reflective. I see houses, gardens, and trees passing by without thinking about it. When suddenly some children, by a stone wall, wave at me, and I quickly, without further reflection, answer this gesture of friendship, before the train passes, it becomes clear to me that my basic emotion can be described as cheerful. Subsequently, I become aware of how my day has been and can confirm that my inner space has been bright and marked by cheerfulness, as a kind of existential well-being, without me being explicitly aware of this; but now I realize it. The waving children gave me a hint.
Thus, the existential mood is not directed towards anything in particular, rather it is the existential attunement as such. The resonance of being and hence the background on which we perceive, sense, think, and act: Die Stimmung, das Gestimmtsein, as put by Heidegger (1927, pp. 134–135). Our moods represent a horizon of immediate insights (that is preconceptually, prereflexively and preintentionally), reflecting or resonating, the conditions, opportunities, and limitations that we as human beings are subject to. Before realizing something, I am already present-there (Da-Sein) in a certain manner, and this state of being present in a certain mood forms the basis of my “figuring out.”
Here Heidegger (1927, 1929) turns his back to the Cartesian “subject–object split,” which he finds misleading and meaningless. The seen is never objectively observed from the outside. As observers, we are already caringly (Heidegger’s concept of Sorge) committed to what we are observing, and in this way somehow connected with it. Our existential moods are not just personal psychological conditions. They refer not only to a subject, but also to something existentially inherent in our being-in-the-world. A mood simply assails us. Moreover, this mood comes neither from “outside” nor from “inside,” but arises out of being-in-the-world, as a way of such Being. According to Heidegger, scientific factual description (true or not) can therefore never be primary; it remains secondary to an ontological analysis of our primordial attunement. We cannot here initiate a discussion of the ontological status of scientific facts as such, but a few clarifications may be helpful.
I sympathize with Heidegger’s epistemological concerns; but overall, a more complementary approach, along the lines of Niels Bohr (1999) and Antonio Damasio (1995, 1996), seems to be a more accurate and fertile way of looking at these matters. Cognition and emotion are complementary entities in a functional body–mind unit, and to ask if one or the other is primary is like asking a physicist if light is waves or particles. The answer is yes! Furthermore, cognition is hardly ever detached, but engaged, just as emotion or mood is not without insight and knowledge. In contrast, emotions, moods, and attunements are bursting with adaptive knowledge and expectations about the world, as we shall see.
To Damasio, emotions are cognitively mediated body states (“the somatic marker hypothesis”). Due to innate as well as learned neural connections, somatic signals are associated with perceptual stimuli and thus “mark” those stimuli with certain body states (from alarm to enticement), and with specific cognitive expectations and behavioural programs. Moreover, Damasio’s (1995) “background feelings” (which resemble Heidegger’s existential moods in that they reflect “the feeling of life itself, the sense of being”), originates in “background body states rather than in emotional states” (p. 150). These body states constitute an anchor that ties us to the world and opens it up as a meaningful realm of deliberation and action (Ratcliffe, 2002, p. 298), and this is yet another approach, which enables us to acknowledge Heidegger’s epistemological points without splitting a functional body–mind unit into halves.
Existential anxiety is an example of a base condition (Grundbefindlichkeit) in life, and not only a personal emotion such as anger, fear, and joy. It is an ontological characteristic of human life, and “Das Wofor der Angst ist das In-der-Welt sein als solches” [“That in the face of which one has anxiety is being-in-the-world as such”] (Heidegger, 1927, p. 186). Or, as put by Sartre (1939/1994): “The emotion is a way of making us feel in possession of the world” (p. 56). Again, our attunement is not only mood. It is also understanding, knowledge, and insight into being-in-the-world, and thus a cognitive element.
For Heidegger, and other existentialists, anxiety does not derive from subconscious impulses and conflicts, as claimed by psychoanalysis, but rather the opposite: it is an expression of a heightened awareness of being-in-the-world. As put by Kierkegaard (1844/1978), anxiety is the hallmark of spirit, and the more spirit/consciousness, the more anxiety.
But what is it then that anxiety may be revealing about us?
Anxiety and nothingness—The minor soundboard of existence
For Kierkegaard, anxiety is the encounter with freedom and possibility. Anxiety is simply “the dizziness of freedom that emerges when spirit wants to posit the synthesis, and freedom now looks down into its own possibility and then grabs hold of finiteness to support itself. In this dizziness freedom subsides” (Kierkegaard, 1844/1978, p. 75).
For Kierkegaard (1844/1978), anxiety holds a duplicity—that is, “a sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy” (p. 136)—that emanates from a constitutional duality in the human being. According to Kierkegaard, humans are a synthesis of: Soul Body Infinity Finality Possibility Necessity Eternity Temporality
The right side of the synthesis—the nature part of human being—embeds us in what is given. In this position, the human being forms part of its conditions, it is merely vegetating and present in the world, in the same way as an object or an animal. As something specifically human, however, unlike objects and animals, humans have the opportunity to “ex-ist,” that is, to “step forward” and be more or less present in relation to themselves and their current being-in-the-world. This opportunity is represented in the left side of the synthesis—the spirit part—and this is the opportunity for one’s spirit or consciousness, through reflexivity and self-reflection, to relate to oneself and to being as such. The spirit part of the human being establishes the presence of freedom and possibility, for which one part of the human being is longing, and towards which another part is hesitating. Anxiety is thus the emotion of choice and possibility, and possibility is frightening because it inevitably leads us into nothingness, and “what effect does nothing have? It begets anxiety,” as Kierkegaard (1844/1978) states in The Concept of Anxiety (p. 136). If we choose to actualize a possibility, it is a leap out into the unknown, because in the possible, everything is possible, and anything can happen. If we do not choose, we will destroy the opportunity, waste our life, and stagnate. In other words, we are both afraid of the possibility and afraid of losing it.
For Heidegger (1927), who read Kierkegaard in the 1920s, anxiety is likewise related to freedom: “Die Angst bringt das Dasein vor sein Freisein für” [“Anxiety reveals the freedom inherent in Dasein”] (p. 188), as well as to our recognition of existential nothingness:
Nothingness in the form of death and nonbeing. As something unique in the animal world, humans are aware that we are going to die.
Nothingness as lack of authenticity. In the form of Thrownness (Geworfenheit) and Facticity (Faktizität), when we humans are unable to handle freedom and our existential Project (Entwurf); but are merely passively vegetating, like objects or animals, not ex-isting but just being present. Anxiety simply throws Dasein back upon that which it is anxious about: its potential for authentic engaging in its own being-in-the-world.
Nothingness, when the structures of being break down, and the world no longer seems natural, but meaningless, strange and unheimlich. Anxiety vernichtet Dasein. Dasein is “nothing” and “nowhere.” Life collapses, and emptiness resonates.
In Sartre’s (1943/1969) radical existentialism, it is argued that we are “condemned to freedom,” that is, condemned to create something out of nothing, as existence precedes essence, and anxiety in humans is actually caused by the awareness of this condition. Or, as argued in Being and Nothingness: anxiety represents the reflective self-understanding of freedom.
In short, the above provides an understanding of how humans are laid in anxiety, because in human life there is a tension between what is—facticity—and what could or should be—the facultative. And with human consciousness—and not least self-awareness—humans have been given an opportunity to cross this abyss, and thus have a binding responsibility for their own existence. Other animals just merge with their conditions. They do not have our ability of mentally travelling in time and place. They are more or less trapped in the world here and now, and cannot, like humans, find themselves in an infinite mental space with many balls in the air. In short, they do not have our degrees of freedom. On the other hand, they do not experience anxiety, emptiness, or meaninglessness. They are not discouraged by old age and death, or fill the darkness and the future with imaginative demons. They fear something specific, not nothing.
Fundamental ontology or special ontology
Overall, the question is how general this ontology is? There is no doubt that moods such as anxiety, emptiness, and meaninglessness are particularly human moods that no other animal may be expected to experience. But are these moods general being-in-the-world resonances? Have they always been a dominant part of the conditions of being human? Are such moods the predominant resonance of the majority of people today, and where is the baseline to determine these questions? For obvious reasons, we cannot use statistics on the prevalence of anxiety and depression in the world to illustrate these conditions, because clinical anxiety and depression are not the same as existential anxiety and meaninglessness, and even if we could, these conditions could in no way be generalized (World Health Organization [WHO, 2022, para. 3] estimates that 3.6% of the world’s population suffer from anxiety and 5% of depression [WHO, 2023, line 2]).
From a historical point of view as to ideas and mentality, of course, these moods are primarily due to the liberation of humans entailed by the birth of the modern individual. In short, they are a product of Renaissance humanism. Once again, under the given circumstances it is only possible to present a short outline of this exciting history of ideas, on the basis of which the modern individual sees the light of day. Out of the Middle Ages’ closed tradition-directed universe, where everything has its God-given place and essence—where humans may not be free but indeed free from modernity’s confusion as to identity and meaning—an inner-directed, autonomous, and transgressive renaissance human being occurs, carrying a new sense of being (Burckhardt, 1955; Pater, 1924; Riesman, 1950). This human being is self-aware, bordering on megalomania. Everything is possible, and the ideal is the immense effort, the magnificent project, the infinite endeavour, in stark contrast to both Antiquity’s Sophrosyne virtue (calm, moderation, level-headedness) and the Middle Ages’ essentia thinking. According to Oswald Spengler (1918/1962), the seeds of this “Faustic human being” were sown as long ago as in the 10th century, but the process culminates in the Renaissance period, and is fully developed in Pico de la Mirandola’s (1486/1996) “Talk of human dignity” from 1486. A modern individual has now seen the light of day, and this individual cannot only choose between this and that. In a radical sense, it can choose itself: “We have not given you a particular place to be, a special guise or a specific function, Adam, so that you, according to your own wishes and your own decision, can achieve the place to be, the guise and the function you may want,” says de la Mirandola’s (1486/1996) paraphrase of Genesis (p. 52).
The Renaissance spirit brings light and air into enclosed spaces, where time has stood still. However, it also starts a radical centrifugal process in which people are thrown out of their social anchoring in competition with each other, and where millennium-old truths and dogmas are relativized and replaced by what the French cultural sociologist Edgar Morin (1988) calls the perpetual negation of generalized problematizing. Once God’s “Word” was the ultimate pronunciation of the world, but after the Renaissance where the individual was set free, the Word loses its power with no emerging new words to replace it. The human world becomes relative, a field of competing world drafts. The Word is now just one perspective among others. For many, just an empty sound. Later, in the 19th and 20th centuries, to some people, emptiness has become spleen (Lyhne, 1990). They get bored and cannot find lust, curiosity, and meaning in life. In an escape from freedom, others seek the absolute and some kind of belongingness, leading them into the arms of totalitarian powers (Fromm, 1941). Freedom has become a burden, and it has become increasingly difficult to orientate oneself in a world where “all that is solid melts into air,” as Marx and Engels (1848/1998) formulated it in The Communist Manifesto (p. 1). Others have documented this history of mentality in greater detail (Burckhardt, 1955; Fromm, 1941; Høgh-Olesen, 1999; Morin, 1988; Pater, 1924; Riesman, 1950; Spengler, 1918/1962), but here we have to settle for the above.
At the end of this centrifugal process, some extremely gifted, sensitive, and well-educated Europeans enter the arena, and set up a fundamentalist ontology on the basis of this humanistic wreck. However, the majority of the Earth’s people have not lived through a humanistic revolution. They are not aware of autonomy, freedom, and relativity, nor are they tortured for longer periods of time by emptiness, meaninglessness, or an anxiety for nothing, I would argue. Their existentially tangible threats are about wind and weather, food and survival, cover and shelter, and they rarely get bored. When once in a while there is a lack of pressure on them, they decorate themselves and their homes, or fill life with song, music, and dance (Høgh-Olesen, 2019). Today, the majority of Western citizens do the same despite their humanistic cultural history. Key elements of the “fundamental ontology” on which modern existentialism is based are therefore more of a “special ontology” for the sensitive nerve nobility, for whom the loss of meaning and freedom has become a burden rather than a general ontology. To a much greater extent, a general ontology must be based on the natural being-in-the-world conditions we humans are subject to, than is the case here. Let me elaborate briefly.
A phenomenological analysis of existence may be based on the specific available everyday circumstances of life. But it is not enough to make do with this solitary window, if this analysis wants to be a “fundamental ontology,” which is how Heidegger refers to his own thinking. A fundamental ontology must, as a minimum, be based on comparative examination of conditions of existence and resonances of being as to a wide range of human key situations, historically, cross-culturally, socio-and ontogenetically, that is, if adequate general categories are to be described and distilled. If this is not the case, it will eo ipso be a special ontology. A well-founded fundamental ontology is thus a Herculean exertion that requires time and place, so here we have to make do with outlining some of the supplementary measures, which may bring us on track. Furthermore, a nature-based existential psychology must incorporate an understanding of the evolutionary history of the human brain, the sensory apparatus and the nervous system, in order to understand how our ancestors’ conditions of existence have selected for certain innate sensibilities and programs, that shape and colour the sensory impressions we receive, and thus the phenomenal categories that we experience and build up.
Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre all have a heightened awareness of what is particularly human, that is, our increased self-reflexivity and meta-consciousness: attributes that relate to ourselves in an infinite recourse, and the space of opportunities that arise due to them (Kierkegaard, 1849/1994c). However, they understate the fact that we are human animals with an inner as well as an outer nature. In the following, I shall try to remedy this unbalance, by suggesting a more naturally anchored existential psychology, and since I do not have as many pages available as Sein und Zeit, this can only be an outline. Anxiety will still play a major role in this psychology, and it will still contain an inherent duality; but it anchors in a number of other conditions than the usual suspects: freedom, possibility, nothingness, and so forth. Existential anxiety still reveals that the world is a place where threats and danger exist: it resonates an uncertainty inherent in existence, and the nature of this uncertainty, I will try to qualify in the following.
The gaze of nature: Tense vigilance and on-guard-being
Privileged Westerners easily tend towards believing that we as a species, and as human beings, may have conquered nature, but to solitary individuals in nature, it is a completely different matter. After only a few hours in the wilderness, everything seems to vibrate, and we begin to take full notice of the rustling of leaves in the wind. Two days later, most of us will once again have become animists in a personified and spirited universe that we try to appease and negotiate with (Willerslev, 2021).
To the modern, worldly individual, a concept such as “the gaze of nature” is mystified. Nature has no soul, no subjective will, and therefore no gaze. “The civilized world” left behind such notions long ago. Nonetheless, such ways of thinking and experiencing the world form a natural part of the human DNA, and the way in which our brains function (Boyer, 2001), which is why they exist in all cultures today—and in us when we are left alone amid the forces of nature, or when the lights are turned off.
Humans are hunters, but first we are prey, and the primordial experience and anxiety of a prey is that something or someone is lurking in the shadows. We merely see the world from one viewpoint, one perspective. However, in nature, we are being observed from all sides. The world’s all-seeing eyes surround us, so to speak. In the tangle of scrub, branches and trees, hills, mountains and valleys, soil, rocks and liquids, of which we have no overview, someone or something senses us and watches what we are doing.
Our being-in-the-world is founded on such primal experiences and existential on-guard-being, and even today, innate brain programmes testify to this alertness. Leopard spots, tiger stripes, a snake’s zig zag markings and its characteristic pattern of movement, as well as pointy, edged, and serrated forms (similar to thorns, teeth, and claws), are key stimuli that release increased sensibility behaviour. Systematic perception experiments show that, in the crowded arrivals hall, we indeed spot the lady in the leopard coat long before the woman in the green raincoat. All such innate sensibilities are a testimony to the fact that old hardwired perception programmes are intact in the modern human being (Coss, 2003; Coss & Charles, 2021; Høgh-Olesen, 2019; Shabbir et al., 2018).
Highlighting these being-in-the-world experiences as crucial to human life is indeed an understatement. The animistic idea of a personified and animated nature, that has plans for us, is based on precisely these natural experiences. Animism is the opposite of emptiness and loss of meaning. Animism is hair-raising significance. Everything is important! A shivering fullness of signals must be decoded. Primal-anxiety may be a fear of being-annihilated; but it is not an anxiety of “nothingness” as such. Rather, it is an anxiety related to the overwhelming importance and complexity of being-in-the-world, and thus an anxiety that something vital is overlooked or misconceived.
Each species has its own resonances of being depending on its sensory and brain specific set-up. A wolf “Wolfs” the world, just as whale “Whales” it. As prey, we share a basic vulnerability with many other species. However, there is a significant difference. Only in the human animal this exposure develops into anxiety, and only the human brain humanizes and personifies its outside world. Overall, the existential alertness in other animals is fear: a specific emotion based on distinct sensory impressions (scent, sight, hearing) referring to particularly dangerous entities in the surrounding world, and there is ample sensory impression for the animal to keep on guard.
In addition, there are all the dangerous forces that only humans can imagine, for example, Gods, demons, monsters, dangerous peers (alive and dead), as well as the spirits of the place, the tree, the animal, nature, and ancestors, that may be insulted and threaten you. The volume of significance is thus greatly intensified, and a sudden rattling in the leaves can be so much more than a predator. If possible, this makes the experienced existential vulnerability even greater than the one in the other animal world.
Nevertheless, many of us modern Westerners have managed to keep nature so distant in our daily life that we come close to forgetting our basic vulnerability. This condition of vulnerability is only staged in the narrative universes of horror and disaster films. Here we find people who are exposed and alone in surroundings, with overwhelming forces they are not in control of, and who are forced into permanent preparedness in order to decipher and interpret all the impressions they receive. Many main characters in the horror genre (witches, trolls, vampires, werewolves, and zombies) bear the archetypal characteristics of a predator, that is, fur, sharp teeth, claws, and strong smell. In this framework, the primordial fear is intact, but in Westerners’ everyday lives, it has almost disappeared.
Nevertheless, our existential vulnerability is indeed a fact of life. At the time of writing, up to 5 million people have died as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 30,000 Germans and Belgians are without housing, and the cities they have been living in for generations have been destroyed, because nearby rivers have suddenly become uncontrollable forces of nature that caused 400 of them to drown. Global climate change and viral epidemics herald the return of Nature with a capital N, and show us once again how small and powerless we are. Ever since the Renaissance, Westerners have been cultivating the story of our powerfulness and limitlessness. In this context, the role of nature is to form a passive background to our actions. But today, nature has begun to act again, constituting an existential matter that we have to deal with. A matter that once again exhibits our natural anchoring (Macäes, 2021).
Neophilia and our need for stimulation: Intent curiosity
Our existential vulnerability as prey with limited vision, subject to nature’s all-seeing gaze, places us in a state of tense vigilance. But this basic mood is not solitary. As a species, the human being is a neophile, stimulation-seeking animal, which generates a kind of balancing attunement in us, here referred to as intent curiosity.
A species’ neophile behaviour shows as an urge to approach and examine unknown objects in the outside world, whereas neophobic behaviour is the desire to avoid this. In most species, neophilia is a transient youth trait, however, this is not the case for humans. We remain curious and explorative throughout life.
Food-specialist species, who survive by specializing in one type of food for which there is not so much competition, are typically far more neophobic than food-generalist species (Day et al., 2003). For example, in my garden you find a lettuce specialist: the turtle, Carl Blomkvist. If Carl is confronted with an object unknown to him, he instantly hides under his carapace, and does not move until he is sure that nothing unexpected will happen. After a while he will leave the spot in a neat and reserved way: You want me to check that out? Don’t even think about it!
When it comes to food, humans are opportunists and largely omnivorous, which makes it worthwhile for us to be inquisitive and explorative. First, the nut is cracked, then the oyster, the mussel, the crab, and the lobster, even though these creatures do not immediately seem edible; because this is what neophile opportunists do. Moreover, the human species profits from the calorie intake. While other carnivorous species, such as the big cats, sleep for up to 16 hours after a successful hunt, we convert calories into activity and inquisitive voyages to discover the world and our surroundings. The human brain is indeed geared to a high level of activity, which makes humans busy stimulation-seeking creatures, while cats are lazy, vegetating creatures (Høgh-Olesen, 2019).
All species have an optimal stimulation level (OSL) indicating well-being (Berlyne, 1960; Hebb, 1955; Høgh-Olesen, 2019), that is, the optimal and pleasant balance between known and unknown. At a stimulation level below the OSL, the species members exhibit random stimulation-seeking behaviour with a tendency towards uneasiness, restlessness, and in humans, boredom too. Being understimulated is simply unpleasant. On the other hand, if the stimulation level is above the OSL, everything seems frighteningly confusing. You suffer stress, become fearful, and initiate stimulation-reducing behaviour (see Figure 1).
Optimal stimulation level (OSL).
The decisive factor behind an organism’s OSL is the basic arousal tonus of the organism (Berlyne, 1960). In humans, this brain tension is essentially a function of the cell mass around the brain stem, which is called formatio reticularis (see Figure 2).
Formatio reticularis.
In certain species, such as reptiles, the OSL is low. In most ungulates and felines, the OSL is modest to moderate, and in a few species, such as crows and parrots, large marine mammals (dolphins and whales), and the different kinds of primates, the OSL is high or even extremely high (Høgh-Olesen, 2019). The latter applies to the human animal. Of course, humans’ individual needs for stimulation and change vary (Zuckerman, 2007), but at species level we are comparatively among the OSL top scorers of the animal world.
Humans are not least unique in that even during relaxation with all needs satisfied, we actively seek stimulation. For example, in a study by Wilson et al. (2014), 83% of the test participants reported that they never spend time unoccupied, sitting in their own thoughts. When later, on a group of tests, participants were instructed by researchers to do precisely this: sit in their own thoughts for 15 minutes without sleeping or walking around, this short time of passivity and understimulation was found to be very unpleasant. If allowed to read, listen to music, or surf the internet, they chose to do so, and then described the experience as pleasant. If having the opportunity to inflict themselves with unpleasant electric shocks rather than just sitting dormant for 15 minutes, 67% of men and 25% of the women chose this option! That is, rather painful stimulation than no stimulation. This can only be the reaction of extremely stimulation-seeking beings.
Classic psychology experiments on sensory deprivation (Bexton et al., 1954) show the same result. Even though the test participants are paid double to spend time lying inactive and deprived of stimulation in isolation tanks, they are only able to participate in this kind of experiment for a very short time. After a few hours, the test participants show difficulty concentrating, reduced problem-solving capacity, motor unrest, emotional fluctuations, restlessness, and increased irritation. In case of extended time of deprivation, hallucinations occur. Afterwards, visual disorder occurs, and for up to 24 hours after the experiment has ended, conditions such as confusion, headache, nausea, and fatigue are reported. Long time solitary confinement alone produces similar effects (Shalev, 2008). In contrast, snakes easily remain inactive for several months, as long as they do not lack nourishment.
These data clearly show that the human brain’s normal function is dependent on an ongoing flow of incoming stimuli producing arousal to the brain. Thus, in addition to the specific function of a stimulus, that is, to trigger and guide a particular behavioural sequence, it has the nonspecific function of maintaining adequate brain arousal. If this fails to happen, we cannot function. Consequently, a fundamental ontology that wants to understand being has to incorporate the arousal-regulating basic programming (the species OSL) through which we as humans encounter the world.
A natural ontology
How to describe the basic moods characteristic of humans’ being-in-the-world? Phenomenologically, I would describe the human basic mood as an underlying bivalent existential alertness—alertness in the form of tense vigilance, resulting from our existential vulnerability as prey with a limited overview, and in the form of intent curiosity, resulting from our basic arousal programming and thus our extremely high OSL (see Figure 3).
Existential alertness: Humans’ bivalent resonances of being.
We humans are observant, active, and on guard, and we meet the world in a state of existential watchfulness. Moreover, we are restless and stimulation-seeking, neophile and explorative, and constantly scanning our surroundings, or fiddling with, investigating, reversing, turning, hammering on, smelling, and tasting something at hand that is unknown to us. Our starting point is activity, movement, tense and intent alertness, but usually we are unaware of this basic natural tension, even though this is the underlying bivalent attunement through which our species meets the world.
When faced with something new, strange, and undefined, this bivalent duality arises inside each of us. Some part of us is intrigued, while another part is on guard. When societies divide on all sorts of questions, like how to treat foreigners and refugees, or if one should follow governmental demands regarding lockdown and vaccine injections, this existential alertness is at the centre, and the personal balancing of its moods determines how we respond as individuals.
When undergoing momentary understimulation, we experience discomfort. Such discomfort is, for example, called boredom, and this feeling too quickly develops into restlessness and diffuse stimulation-seeking behaviour. Boredom is a kind of restless deficiency, where our inner need for stimulation finds no satisfaction, which makes the organism examine its surroundings. If the organism is a human being, activities such as quickly scanning the TV channels, messing with one’s mobile phone, and opening the fridge when not even hungry, are likely to take place. We wander around aimlessly, like a dog that has lost track, hoping to get the whiff of something to distract us.
Yet, the discomfort of boredom is usually momentary, and, only rarely—in very privileged societies, where an overstimulated and sensory-satisfied elite has risen so far above “the natural basis,” that they no longer need to work, let alone struggle to exist—the idleness develops into a general existential nausea, known as spleen in England and l’énnui de vivre in France (Lyhne, 1990). These moods may come to affect the sensory-satisfied individual who, after a long time with unrestrained sensory stimulation, has exhausted all pleasures of life and is now left only with dull “more of the same.” In Either/Or (Kierkegaard, 1843/1994a) and Stages on Life’s Way (Kierkegaard, 1845/1994b), Kierkegaard describes the restless, hedonist, and stimulation-seeking “aesthetic type” that incarnate this life-form, and provides analyses of the circumstances and inclinations that could lead to this condition. Of course, only a minority of humankind is materially wealthy enough to experience such privileged sensory-blasé in life, and even fewer experience persistent existential nausea.
When we develop psychopathology, this bivalent attunement is distorted, and its foundational moods become unbalanced and exaggerated. We experience our being-in-the-world through changed lenses linked with new and exaggerated body states. Our natural tense and vigilant on-guard-being becomes dysmorphic, and this may give way to a variety of clinical disorders such as clinical anxiety, OCD, paranoia or depressive help- and hopelessness—the “antipathetic despairs,” in Kierkegaard’s (1844/1978) terminology.
Likewise, our intent curiosity may become careless, restless stimulation seeking and risk taking, and as henchmen to this way of being follow pathological “sympathetic despairs,” such as dissocial personality disorder, ADD, ADHD, manic disorder, and the above-mentioned spleen, in the form of sensory burnout resulting from prolonged and unrestrained sensory stimulation (Høgh-Olesen, 2001).
On the other hand, when we are fit and sound, and the level of stimulation is optimal, we experience that joyful condition known as flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 2005). This “well-being” is indeed an overlooked existential mood within classic existential thinking, which takes far more interest in the bleaker sides of existence. Nevertheless, this particular mood fills us every time we manage to reach the balance between known and unknown, intent and tense. However, this flow of well-being can only be passively enjoyed for a short time. Instead, this well-being generates new unrest and new activities in the form of surplus actions such as playing, dancing and singing, making music, telling stories, and decorating ourselves as well as our surroundings (Høgh-Olesen, 2019).
Discussion
As I have attempted to underline, inner and outer nature plays a crucial role in relation to our being-in-the-world, and this has largely been neglected in classic existential thinking. Yet, each species perceives the world through its own sensory receptors and neural brain system, which is why resonances of being are species-specific.
As argued, humans’ basic attunement resonates a bivalent existential alertness based on a tense on-guard-being resulting from our existential vulnerability as prey, as well as from an intent curiosity following our, comparatively speaking, extremely high OSL.
Some might object that thousands of years have passed since we were existentially exposed prey, subject to nature’s “all-seeing gaze,” and that this existential resonance could therefore hardly be of relevance to modern urban humans. In evolutionary time, it is though only a nanosecond ago that these conditions existed on a daily basis; and since the human brain is not an iPhone, with ongoing system updates, substantial parts of this evolutionary alertness is still intact. That this is the case is underlined by our innate sensibility towards certain shapes and animal patterns with signal ornamentation, and by how easily an animistic, deciphering vigilance awakens in a modern human being after just a few hours alone in the darkness, or in the wilderness (Boyer, 2001; Willerslev, 2021).
Furthermore, the bivalent alertness has phenomenological affinity to the inner “duality” of anxiety (its “antipathetic sympathy and sympathetic antipathy”) described by Kierkegaard (1844/1978, p. 136). We are frightened and attracted, tense and intent, and the tense part of our existential alertness remains to be a primal-anxiety in its essence.
Kirkegaard describes this duality as something unspecific and abstract, and as a consequence of humans’ inner duality as beings with both spirit and nature parts whereas the duality is here described as the concrete consequence of our experiences as prey and our species-specific arousal programming. Thus, anxiety indeed still plays a role in the natural ontology outline proposed here; but it anchors in some other existential conditions than the usual existential suspects: freedom, possibility, emptiness, and nothingness, and it is balanced by an equally basic intent curiosity.
Within existential thinking, this curiosity is largely overlooked or misunderstood. In Sein und Zeit (Heidegger, 1927), curiosity is addressed on two small pages as an unimportant everyday consciousness, characterized by restlessness, novelty seeking, distraction, and the inability to dwell on anything (Aufenthaltslosigkeit). To Heidegger, curiosity is a kind of restless everyday ADHD, making us haphazardly rush on to the next distraction, without really wanting to understand anything. He does not realize that curiosity is a defining characteristic of the human species, and the primate line to which it belongs, and that by virtue of our curiosity, urge for stimulation, and neophilia, we are right in the process of understanding and exploring our surroundings.
When taking a look at our tense on-guard-being, it remains apparent that the world is a place where threats and dangers exist, and the anxiety part of this bivalence is a reflection of the risks of human life that resonates an inherent existential uncertainty. Like in all other species, the inner part of the human species forms a natural reflection of the outside world. The exterior is reflected in the interior in the form of innate, species-specific adaptations, sensibilities, brain programs, and behavioural action programs, which have guided us to survive and propagate through the history of development. Here we find the natural basis for Heidegger’s repealed division between subject and object, his concept of Sorge, and humans’ “caring” existential interconnectedness with everything. When confronted with the natural basic conditions of our species (the “existentials”), and the key stimuli that follow, we simply go into reflection resonance mode, which is why a fully developed natural existential psychology must be based on a knowledge of our species-specific adaptations, innate preparedness skills, and sensibilities.
I cannot go into detail here, but we humans have innate sensibilities for, and thus a natural way of being attracted to or feeling aversion towards, certain shapes, colours, patterns, materials, sounds, smells, and tastes. We are attracted to and disgusted by specific issues and situations in the surrounding world, and we prefer specific animals and plants in the surrounding fauna and flora, and specific areas and habitats for longer stays (Høgh-Olesen, 2019, 2020). Even though today almost everybody in the modern West lives in population-dense urban spaces, nature means a lot to us. For example, if we are asked what we prefer to have in our urban environment, we choose something green, living, and natural such as trees, vegetation, and water rather than nonliving human-made objects (Lohr & Pearson-Mims, 2006). Overall, the price of a home with a view of water and nature is high, because that is how people prefer to live. Furthermore, when hospitalized people have access to a view of vegetation/nature, they get well more quickly, have fewer complications, use fewer painkillers, have lower blood pressure, and experience less anxiety. Even images, photo states, and wallpapers with these key stimuli have a positive effect on our health and well-being (Orians, 2001; Ulrich, 1995).
Our innate sensibilities—and the spontaneous body background states and core affects that they trigger—are the underlying basis of our being-in-the-world encounters. Moreover, innate alertness represents an a priori knowledge and expectation of something in the outside world, like when we are spontaneously drawn to and fall to rest in certain environments and avoid others. Every stimulus is then followed by an affective–predictive response, and this perceptive–affective–predictive circuit is an automatically ongoing functional body–mind unit. All our short- or long-term existential feelings and moods receive their first hedonistic toning (attraction/aversion, approach–avoidance), as well as initial arousal potential, via this core affective circuit. This is where our resonance of being takes its starting point. Here, we find our existential attunement.
Conclusion
The major contribution of existential thinking to human life is its emphasis on freedom and responsibility, that is, the individual’s ability to proactively create and shape one’s existence through choice and thereby consciously relate to oneself and the outside world. This emphasis has been world-opening and liberating for the individual, but in fact it has also been epistemologically biased.
Existential thinkers indeed have a heightened awareness of what is particularly human, that is, our increased ability for self-reflexivity and metaconsciousness, but they tend to ignore that we are human animals with an inner as well as an outer nature. Overall, consciousness is overexposed whereas natural characteristics are either underexposed or completely left out. With Kierkegaard and Heidegger, the nature aspect is recognized to a certain extent (in the form of “body,” “necessity,” “finality,” “thrownness,” and “facticity”) but in a rather unspecific and abstract way. With Sartre (1936/1975, 1943/1969), humans have no nature. Furthermore, consciousness is established as “impersonal spontaneity,” which means that it is constantly in the process of developing on the basis of nothing.
Likewise, the aforementioned thinkers indeed highlight the bleaker side of existence. Nevertheless, moods derived from a feeling of emptiness, meaninglessness, and fear of nothing (or of freedom) have not always been a dominant part of humans, nor are they today. The majority of the Earth’s people have not lived through a humanistic revolution. They are not aware of autonomy, freedom, and relativity, nor are they tortured for longer periods of time by emptiness, meaninglessness, or an anxiety for nothing. Their threats are existentially tangible and their recurring basic mood is a bivalent existential alertness based on tense vigilance and intent curiosity. When deprived of stimulation they experience disinclination, restlessness, and boredom, and when overstimulated, they experience stress and anxiety. When optimally stimulated, they experience flow, joy, and well-being.
There may be several reasons for omitting or underexposing nature within traditional existential thinking. First, it takes its starting point from a very privileged, urban position. The nonexistent daily fight for survival makes room for time to worry about phenomena such as purpose, meaning, identity, and emptiness. Second, at the time when these thoughts were conceived, our knowledge of the basic programmes of human nature was not as comprehensive as it is today. But first and foremost I think that the reason for this neglect is the fact that the above authors (Sartre in particular) experience nature as a threat to the freedom and responsibility project, which they are in the process of building. They simply do not want nature, in its inner and outer form, to set limits for our freedom, which it undeniably does. However, we can only deal with things that we are aware of, which is why the worst thing we can do is to neglect or turn our back to the natural conditions and limitations of human life.
Freedom is not a freedom from or of something, as Kierkegaard (1844/1978) pointed out. Neither is it the blank cheque issued by Sartre. Instead, freedom is a “freedom to” relate to all the factors in life that affect us. The recurring question regarding everything about you is: “And what will you do about it?” Thus, freedom belongs in the category of responsibility and it tastes unmistakable of duty. Stating, like Sartre, that humans have no nature is a disingenuous allegation, but if, on the other hand, you exchange the word humans with “individuals,” and the word nature with “fate,” like this: “Individuals have no fate,” the statement approaches reality.
Actually, natural currents in the sea of human life are forcing us to go in certain directions, but it is humanly possible to pull the boat against these currents if one is able to figure out which way they are going. Like all living organisms, we are constituted bottom-up and equipped with a range of innate mechanisms and programmes. However, as something particularly human, we are likewise organizing ourselves top-down, and through higher brain processes in the neocortex we have the opportunity to influence these basic programmes via self-awareness and willpower. This happens when a child, who has hurt themselves, postpones their spontaneous crying reflex, until someone who can console them is within sight and hearing. This also happens when a monk or nun chooses to lead a celibate life, and when a mountaineer suppresses basic needs for heat, food, and oxygen to climb Mount Everest. In this way, nature does not take away our freedom but rather puts it into perspective, which is why knowledge of the boundaries it lays out is our only opportunity for taking responsibility for our being-in-the-world.
A comprehensive fundamental ontology is still quite far from being fully elucidated within existential psychology. To further advance this project, it may be advantageous, as here suggested, to take a closer look at insights contributed by contemporary neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and comparative psychology. An existential psychology aiming to credibly understand and communicate the existential resonances of the human species must be anchored in nature. Knowledge of our species’ evolutionary history and innate sensory- and behavioural preparedness will therefore be indispensable.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
