Heidegger’s “mood theory” explains why you do anything at all

What made you click on this article? What part of your bubbling unconscious made you open this link today? I suspect there wasn’t much of a conscious decision. You probably didn’t stare into space for five seconds weighing up the pros and cons of clicking versus carrying on your internet scroll. Something about you, something in your being, pushed you to open this article. And thank you for doing so. You’re very welcome.

This article will carry on a bit longer, but will you? Because just as there was something that made you click, there will be something that makes you read to the end or something that pulls you away. There is no easy answer to what that thing is. The neurolimbic, biological processes underpinning decision-making are unknown to the best of modern science, let alone available to you right now. And those swirling, unseen forces deserve more recognition. They push us far more than we appreciate.

For Martin Heidegger, we need to pay far more philosophical attention to our moods.

Thrown into the world

You are a moody person. Your moods define how you perceive the world. They define how you remember the world. Your moods define what the world even means. And that’s why Heidegger thought they were so important.

Moods are not the same as emotions. Emotions are temporary moments of feeling that act as a kind of response to the world. They bubble up from inside in reply to some thought or experience. They might linger or disappear. They might be strong or barely noticeable. But emotions are often far more reducible to a kind of input-output model. While they might force our minds a certain way and motivate our actions, they do not define our life as much as our moods do.

Heidegger argues that moods show us how far we are “thrown” into this world because moods will cut out the kind of world we see. As Heidegger put it, “moods are prior to all volition and cognition, but yet beyond disclosure.” They are the unknown and unseen, like some invisible puppet master pulling the strings.

Heidegger talks about anxiety, for example, as different from the temporary state of fear because the anxious person sees everything through their anxious lens. Things of great magnitude are reduced to nothing, while trifles are made into terrible beasts. And the same could be said of the depressive, the joyful, or the restless person. All are moods, and all are vantage points on the world.

We are slaves to our moods, those untold and unseen preconditions of perception. Heidegger’s point is that when we consider our moods more, we realise just how arbitrary decisions can be sometimes. The reason you clicked this article and the reason you’re reading on is because of your mood this morning. On another day, in a different mood, you’d have scrolled on looking for cat videos.

Navigating moody people

So how can we apply our newly earned Heideggerian awareness to our daily work-lives? Here are three practical applications of philosophical moodiness.

Try another day. As you sit down at your desk on a Monday morning, there will be some jobs you have to do there and then, but others you have to do “at some point” between now and a distant deadline. Being aware of our moods demands that we respect “at some point” more. For example, in any given week, I will write an Everyday Philosophy article, a Big Think Business article, and likely an “evergreen” article about whatever I think sounds good. On Monday morning, I will look at my to-do list and ask myself, “What am I in the mood to do?” I do not force myself to do one thing on one day. I listen to what those swirling neurolimbic processes are trying to tell me. (Of course, if it comes to Thursday and my week’s mood has been mostly for procrastination, I’m going to have to be a bit more willful about things.)

Read the signs. One of the defining characteristics of Heidegger’s theory of “mood” is that it happens to us. We wake up in a mood. We are overcome by a mood. Our minds are saturated by a mood. But that doesn’t mean that we need to be entirely passive when it comes to moods. Because moods are one of the oldest, and most helpful, tools by which to make decisions. Even so-called “negative moods” are not negative at all but hugely useful tools. They are like a red warning light in the car. They are telling you something, and you need to address it.

This reframing of “negative moods” helps us deal with them. Anxiety is not something to suffocate under. It’s a tool to put on the table and study. It’s a letter from a concerned friend. Moods can tell us if we’re unhappy in a job or a new role. They can tell us if we need to change something at work or take time to appreciate what we have.

A bad day. You are not the only moody person in the room. Everyone in your office, meeting, Zoom chat, or café is moody. Every interaction we have with another human being is filtered through moods. Their moods will make them say a thing, and your moods will make you interpret it a certain way. If someone says something harsh to you — someone who is normally level-headed and kind — then try to frame it in a Heideggerian way. Something about their mood that day erupted in that. Or, alternatively, something in your mood made you sensitive to it.

Sometimes, though, you will meet people who are so often and so easily defined by their moods that they resemble archetypes. They become “The Moaner,” or “The Puppy.” On Big Think+, Amy Gallo, the best-selling author of Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone (Even Difficult People), has an important lesson about these archetypes and how we can successfully navigate them.