David Rondel's "A Danger Which We Do Not Know"

David Rondel is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nevada, Reno.

He applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, A Danger Which We Do Not Know: A Philosophical Journey into Anxiety, and reported the following:

Page 99 turns out to be the first full page of chapter four. Readers are introduced to the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and his unrivalled gloominess. Schopenhauer believed that suffering is both overwhelming and inescapable. The world bankrupt and irredeemable. Genuine happiness is a mirage, always just beyond our reach. The future is bleak. Life, even if it contains moments of joy and fulfillment, is probably not worth it in the end. “Despite this gloominess, or more likely because of it,” page 99 of the book begins, “Schopenhauer’s work is a treasure-trove of insight into the human condition. Schopenhauer did not have a great deal to say about anxiety as such. He was interested in ‘suffering’ more nebulously defined. Even so, there is much to be learned about the nature and meaning of anxiety from Schopenhauer’s pessimistic philosophy. Or so I shall suggest in what follows.” Page 99 then goes on to offer a few biographical snippets about Schopenhauer, his parents, and the Prussian controlled city of Danzig (what is today Gdansk, in Poland) where Schopenhauer was born in 1788.

I think the Page 99 test works reasonably well in this case, providing an accurate snapshot of what A Danger Which We Do Not Know: A Philosophical Journey into Anxiety is all about. The book is made up of six vignette-like chapters, each one focusing on the work of a particular philosopher or philosophical tradition with an eye toward showing how their ideas help us better understand anxiety’s nature and meaning. In addition to the chapter on Schopenhauer, the book features discussions of philosophers Soren Kierkegaard, William James, Martin Heidegger, Iris Murdoch, and the Roman Stoics. There are also bits of memoir sprinkled throughout the text. Taken as an ensemble, the chapters in A Danger Which We Do Not Know tell a story about some of the many connections between philosophy and anxiety. No single page in the book could possibly tell this story on its own, but page 99 is probably as good (or at least no worse) than any other for giving the flavor of the book as a whole.

Visit David Rondel's website.

--Marshal Zeringue