A reconceptualization of the term ataraxia based on its origins

Abstract

Few terms have been so severely disfigured in Europe as that of ataraxia. Initially, Hellenic thinkers created an entire philosophical phenomenon around this concept with their own, more or less successful, interpretations, but maintaining a relatively acceptable meaning. Centuries later, when new philosophical and social approaches began to emerge on the European continent, the concept of ataraxia was questioned by those who wished to recover the passions repressed during a long period of obscurantism. Several philosophers attacked this concept until the middle of the last century, when particularly vehement criticisms began to appear in the field of sociology in which ataraxia came to be equated with sociopolitical apathy, though this is simply absurd. The present analysis, therefore, posits three objectives: first, to explain the origin and degradation of the term ataraxia; second, to address the attacks on this term; and, third, to reformulate ataraxia for a modern world to sketch the nature of the possible interaction between a population and a government that both exist in a state of ataraxia.