Acedia: Dreaming with Demons

Photo by Mario Mesaglio on Unsplash

Some time ago, I was invited by Tom Gourlay of the Dawson Society for Philosophy and Culture to present at their “Speakers Forum” series of pub talks. Because they are based on the other side of the country, I rarely get the chance to be part of the good work the Dawson Society engage in, so it was a real treat being able to speak for them.

As a side note, some readers might be familiar with Tom’s guestpost in our series on the lonely city. Some readers might also have started reading Macrina Magazine, a new online philosophical initiative in which Tom is managing editor (I will be dropping an article on postmodern eschatology on that journal soon).

My talk with the Dawson Society looked once again at the vice of acedia, which I have covered in posts and podcasts back in 2019. What I did not cover in those posts which I do in this podcast, was the notion of the vices as a form of simulation. If the virtues are a mode of living in the face of realities in front of you, vices constitute an escape from reality.

We also got a chance to delve deeper into Evagrius’ Praktikos, which was one of the earliest monastic works that dealt with acedia. The Praktikos was interesting also because, unlike in the West, Evagrius considered the vice of sloth to be the deadliest of the “deadly thoughts”. We looked at the excruciating detail in which what Evagrius calls the “noonday demon” attacks the person afflicted with sloth, as well as the depths to which the demon will wind its way into the person’s psyche to lay waste to the persons interior and exterior life.

I am glad to say that the audio of this talk is now available on their podcast page. To find out more, listen to the full podcast here.

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