It has been described as a "tame longing without any particular object" by Schopenhauer, "a bestial
and indefinable affliction" by Dostoevsky, and "time's invasion of your world system" by Joseph
Brodsky, but still very few of us today can explain precisely what boredom is. A Philosophy of Boredom
investigates one of the central preoccupations of our age as it probes the nature of boredom, how it
originated, how and why it afflicts us, and why we cannot seem to overcome it by any act of will. Lars
Svendsen brings together observations from philosophy, literature, psychology, theology, and popular
culture, examining boredom's pre-Romantic manifestations in medieval torpor, philosophical musings on
boredom from Pascal to Nietzsche, and modern explorations into alienation and transgression by twentieth-
century artists from Beckett to Warhol. A witty and entertaining account of our dullest moments and most
maddening days, A Philosophy of Boredom will appeal to anyone curious to know what lies beneath the
overwhelming inertia of inactivity.

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