Acedia and Its Discontents: Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire

Acedia and Its Discontents revisits the ancient spiritual diagnosis of acedia to illuminate modern experiences of restlessness, despair, and apathy. R. J. Snell blends philosophical insight with theological tradition to show how this vice undermines love of God and neighbor.

“In the arid wasteland that is academic writing, amid the wider desert that is modern secular thought, R. J. Snell’s book on acedia is an oasis of flowers and fruit and fresh water. Professor Snell reminds us that man must never be made subordinate to work, nor even to the empty ‘vacations’ that are but interruptions in work. He diagnoses the besetting disease of our time—spiritual torpor—and prescribes as a remedy the joyful celebration of the Sabbath. A stupendous book, filled with the happiness of wonder.” — ANTHONY ESOLEN, author of Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child

“A whole book about just one vice, ‘sloth’? Ah, but this book is different—and devastating. It exposes a deeply hidden and deeply destructive fundamental attitude that pervades our culture, an attitude that comes not just from the flesh (laziness) or from the world (world-weariness, cynicism), but from the Devil: disgust and rebellion toward Being itself, natural as well as supernatural. Know your enemy. Read this book!” — PETER KREEFT, author of Practical Theology: Spiritual Direction from St. Thomas Aquinas

“Acedia—the sin of sloth, so often confused with laziness—is the most overlooked but widespread illness of the modern age; the emptiness under the mask of the world’s frantic activity. R. J. Snell helps us see why this is so and what Christians can do about it with elegant, penetrating insight. This is a terrific book about a badly misunderstood ‘deadly sin’ and its antidotes.” — CHARLES J. CHAPUT, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Philadelphia

“Our modern Empire of Desire manufactures endless appetite while simultaneously denying that anything is objectively good, beautiful, or desirable. The result is not great yearning or passion, but acedia or sloth, a pervasive ‘noonday demon.’ In this learned study, R. J. Snell draws on the vast spiritual and intellectual resources of the Christian tradition to diagnose the deep structure of our contemporary nihilism, exposing this demon and its far-reaching effects with elegance and profundity and thereby providing the weapons necessary to slay it.” — MICHAEL HANBY, author of No God, No Science: Theology, Cosmology, Biology