Acedia

In Ancient Greece, acedia originally meant indifference or carelessness along the lines of its etymological meaning of lack of care.

[3]") and the body of Hector lying unburied and dishonored in the camp of the Acheans (μή πω μ᾽ ἐς θρόνον ἵζε διοτρεφὲς ὄφρά κεν Ἕκτωρ κεῖται ἐνὶ κλισίῃσιν ἀκηδής.

"Seat me not anywise upon a chair, O thou fostered of Zeus, so long as Hector lieth uncared-for amid the huts.

[6] Moral theologians, intellectual historians, and cultural critics have variously construed acedia as the ancient depiction of a variety of psychological states, behaviors, or existential conditions - primarily laziness, apathy, ennui, or boredom.

Evagrius' contemporary, the Desert Father John Cassian, depicted the apathetic restlessness of acedia, "the noonday demon", in the coenobitic monk: He looks about anxiously this way and that, and sighs that none of the brethren come to see him, and often goes in and out of his cell, and frequently gazes up at the sun, as if it was too slow in setting, and so a kind of unreasonable confusion of mind takes possession of him like some foul darkness.

It becomes a mortal sin when reason consents to man's "flight" (fuga) from the Divine good, "on account of the flesh utterly prevailing over the spirit.

Somatic (physical) symptoms range from mere sleepiness to general "sickness, debility, weakening of the knees, and all the members"[15] (in a description attributed to the fifth-century Theodora of Alexandria by 21st-century author Laura Swan).

Author Kathleen Norris in her book Acedia and Me asserts that dictionary definitions such as "torpor" and "sloth" fail to do justice to this temptation; she believes a state of restlessness, of not living in the present and seeing the future as overwhelming is more accurate a definition than straight laziness: it is especially present in monasteries, due to the cutting off of distractions, but can invade any vocation where the labor is long, the rewards slow to appear, such as scientific research, long term marriages, etc.

; all of this, Norris relates, is connected to the hopelessness and vague unease that arises from having too many choices, lacking true commitment, of being "a slave from within".