Sugar Free Anxiety ( Thesis Proposal)

Sugar-Free Anxiety

Baumeister asserts that our free will is occasional because it depends upon the same resources as self-control, thereby designating it as “costly”(Baumeister 14). However, I will argue how Baumeister limits himself to cause and effect and how anxiety is the affect that creates the possibility of freedom. A counter to this proposal would be the limitation of psychology itself and the necessity to be free from metaphysical claims. However, it is this exact limitation that philosophical and psychoanalytical frameworks must be explored. Therefore, I will propose several conceptions of how one can reach this conclusion: 1) Lacan’s conception of anxiety and how anxiety “produces the body,” developing “its own form of kairos,” consequently breaking away from chronos, the sequential understanding of time (Sigler, David, and Celiese Lypka 17).2) Luther’s and Kierkegaard’’s ironic exposition of freedom on realizing that freedom is only found when “recognition of our bondage makes us free” (Hockenbery, Jennifer  221). 3) Viktor Frankl's utility of logotherapy by granting meaning to suffering or bondage, we can inadvertently become free. Freedom then, for Frankl, I will argue, is something that “cannot be pursued; it must ensue” ( Frankl, Viktor 14). Overall, through these conceptions, I will argue how anxiety is cost-free, allowing us to realize freedom.

Citations

Baumeister, R. F. (2008). Free will in scientific psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(1), 14-19. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2008.00057.

Frankl, Viktor E., et al. Man's Search for Meaning. Beacon Press, 2006.

Hockenbery, Jennifer. “Crippled by Anxiety: Bondage and Freedom in the [Lutheran] Concept of Anxiety.” Dialog: a Journal of Theology, vol. 61, no. 3, 2022, pp. 217–225.

Sigler, David, and Celiese Lypka. “Time/Frame: Rewriting the Mirror Stage in Lacan‘s Anxiety Seminar.” English Studies in Canada, vol. 45, no. 4, 2019, pp. 1–21.