Lars Svendsen, A Philosophy of Boredom.(Book Review)

Parachute: Contemporary Art Magazine, October, 2005 by Menick, John

Lars Svendsen, A Philosophy of Boredom, London: Reaktion Books, 2004, 192 pp.

Is prison the philosopher's ideal habitat? Bertrand Russell suggested as much when he wrote of his incarceration as being "in many ways quite agreeable." Close to five months in prison during the First World War freed Russell from the active life ara pacifist and allowed him to return to the sedentary life of the mind. Able to think and read, he wrote one major work, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, and began another. Prison was meant to scare Russell out of his pacitism. Instead, it threatened him with the most productive stimulant of the twentieth century--absolute boredom.

Lars Svendsen might sympathize with Russell's ecstatic downtime. The thought that boredom is...