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but the initial positing of man as consciousness in general, or as a nexus of lived experience or the like-all this must be put into question if a path is to be cleared for us to penetrate into the essence of boredom, and together with it into the essence of time.
If we choose a path through boredom, then it must be a path that leads into the depths of boredom itself. Calculating these depths indirectly by way of inference will not help us in any way. Yet can we tear these closed depths of boredom from out of concealment? If this is to be possible, then it can happen only if these very depths of the essence of boredom open themselves up. This in turn is possible only if profound boredom bores as such, if this profound boredom attunes us through and through and thus puts us in a position to measure the extent of this boredom itself in its depths.
§30. No longer permitting any passing the time as
understanding the overpowering nature of profound
boredom. Being compelled to listen to what profound
boredom gives us to understand.
Are we familiar with this profound boredom? Perhaps we are familiar with it. Yet we now know from what has already been said that the more profound the boredom, the more silent, the less public, the quieter, the more inconspicuous and wide-ranging it is. Correspondingly, our accompanying passing the time is less recognizable as such. Perhaps indeed there is no passing the time at all for this profound boredom. Perhaps this absence of any passing the time is distinctive of it.
The forms of boredom we have dealt with hitherto have already been characterized and designated as becoming bored by something in a particular situation, and as being bored with something on the occasion of a particular situation. And profound boredom? How are we to designate this? We shall try to do so, and shall say that profound boredom bores whenever we say, or better, whenever we silently know, that it is boring for one.
It is boring for one. What is this 'it'? The 'it' that we mean whenever we say that it is thundering and lightening, that it is raining. It-this is the title for whatever is indeterminate, unfamiliar. Yet we are familiar with this, after all, and familiar with it as belonging to the more profound form of boredom: that which bores. It-one's own self that has been left standing, the self that everyone himself or herself is, and each with this particular history, of this particular standing and age, with this name and vocation and fate; the self, one's own beloved ego of which we say that I myself, you yourself, we ourselves are bored. Yet we are now no longer speaking of ourselves being bored with ... , but are saying: It is boring for one. It-for one-not for me as me, not for you as you,