This article has two parts. In the first part, Philipp W. Rosemann reflects on the epidemic of depression in our time. While depression is real, it is also historically constituted. Did people experience depression before it became a medical diagnosis? Strictly speaking, no. They suffered, but not with depression. They may have suffered with melancholy, whose symptoms overlap with depression. They might also have suffered with acedia (spiritual despair). These notions, however, highlight the individual. In the 19th century, their social dimension came to the fore with Marx's notion of alienation. Similarly, Durkheim's concept of anomie directs us to how, in an egalitarian consumer society, there are no limits to what we can desire, with the result of meaninglessness. Rosemann concludes with a Christian critique of Durkheim, centered on the thesis that the infinitude of desire finds its fulfillment in our striving for God. In the second part, Robert Kugelmann provides commentary, stressing commonalities among depression, melancholy, acedia, and anomie. Depression, the medical condition, has a moral dimension insofar as it is not only a physiological disorder; there must be a subjectivity to experience the disorder. We can experience acedia in the dryness of our spiritual lives, and depression in the “mood” of being open to the anhedonia of the world. Finally, we experience anomie in “stress,” our term for the absence of limits to desire. Acedia, melancholy, depression, stress-all point to our dwelling in a vale of tears.
Rosemann et al. (Sun,) studied this question.