What Is Acedia? How a Medieval Stigma Remains With Us Today

Modern people sometimes regard the list of sins enumerated by medieval philosophers with a certain skepticism. We suppose that we are more tolerant than they were of human variation, and more apt to give properly scientific explanations of psychological tendencies. Yet many medieval attitudes remain with us, under another name. There is, for example, our attitude towards acedia.

What is acedia? St. Thomas Aquinas defines it as a "sorrow for the spiritual good." So understood, it is a kind of despair or hopelessness, whereby one does not endeavor to do much of anything. Acedia then has two aspects. First, it is an attitude, a certain attitude towards the good. Second, it is a behavioral tendency, a refusal to engage in certain prescribed or pleasurable activities. This second aspect of acedia is picked out by its standard modern translation, "sloth."

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Acedia does not fit neatly into modern psychological categories. It is sometimes identified with depression; Andrew Solomon's excellent book about depression takes its title, The Noonday Demon, from a phrase or figure originally used by monks to describe acedia. But acedia differs from modern depression in a number of ways. Notably, it does not seem to involve that distinctive kind of low mood or melancholy that is distinctive to depression, nor the kind of negative beliefs about self, such as guilt and shame. Acedia is negative in its own way, but it is a negativity of absence.

If we want to find a synonym for acedia in the contemporary psychological lexicon, I think a better candidate may be avolition. Avolition is a lack of motivation to perform everyday tasks, such as paying bills or grocery shopping. It is not itself a psychiatric disorder, though it can be a symptom of one. It can be a symptom of depression, but it can also be a symptom of schizophrenia (avolition is a paradigm of the so-called "negative symptoms" of schizophrenia). Conversely, however, someone may exhibit avolition without meeting diagnostic criteria for any mental disorder.

It is worth considering a simple but profound question about acedia or avolition: Is it always bad? Certainly, the medievals presupposed that it was and some philosophers, such as Aquinas, explicitly argued why it should be considered a sin. Similarly, most psychiatrists would consider avolition a troubling symptom, not just because of what it indicates, but because of what it is in itself. Any evaluation of people's mental health that gives significant weight to outcomes such as employment will tend to support this belief since avolition will tend to reduce the incidence of things like employment, and indeed of effortful action more generally.

It is worth contrasting avolition here with depression. Depression can be an inherently painful condition, one that can lead to terrible outcomes, including suicide. People with depression typically wish very much that they were not depressed. Avolition, in contrast, seems not to be like this. It is clear it troubles the person who is treating someone with avolition, it is less clear how much it troubles the person with avolition itself. At least, it does not have the manifestly painful effect associated with depression.

In many ways, we are not so far from medieval philosophers on this point. When confronted with someone who shows little interest in the kinds of projects that most deeply move us – be this the love of God or the pursuit of meaningful work – there is a strong tendency to imagine that there must be something wrong with the person who does not share our passions. Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener— who famously responds to every request to work with I prefer not to—is not merely ignored by those around him. Rather he earns their sadness and in time their contempt, and is eventually imprisoned for vagrancy. A certain stigma remains against acedia, and the acedic individual provokes a certain kind of ire.

I want to suggest a different way of thinking about these cases. One thing we know from psychology research, and our daily observations, is that the will can take many forms. Some people form extensive plans and stick to them no matter what, others prefer to leave things open-ended, and most of us are somewhere in between. There is no "right" or "wrong" place to be on this spectrum; people are just different in their degree of planning.

The same can be said for our degree of choice itself. Some people wholeheartedly sign up for many activities and commitments; others are more indifferent, pursuing some things but staying neutral on the rest. Again, perhaps, there is no "right" or "wrong" here, just different ways the will can be.

I want to suggest that, in many cases, what gets called acedia, avolition, or sloth, is simply a certain point on this spectrum of choice. Refraining from willing is not necessarily a bad thing, still, less is it a sin; it is just one way a person might be. This is not to deny that avolition can at times be an important psychiatric symptom, and should be regarded as such. If someone is disinclined to choose anything at all, we should not straightaway infer that there is something wrong with that person. They may simply have a different kind of will.