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New Academia: An International Journal of English Language, Literature and Literary Theory
(Online ISSN 2347-2073) Vol. VI Issue I, Jan. 2017
http://interactionsforum.com/new-academia 10
Fear—A Positive Potential: Classic Explanation And New Elucidation
Shamaila Dodhy
Assistant Professor
Department of English,
University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan.
shamailadodhy@yahoo.com
Abstract
Fear is universal, can be reasonable or without any reason, ever-shifting and indefinablebut one
of the most common and mysterious emotions experienced by mankind. This paper aims to
investigate the notion of fear which is usually associated with apprehensions and intimidations
but I argue that it is a positive emotion having potential of playing a productive role in
motivating a person to be a constructive member of the society. Moving into the realm of fear is
challenging too because it not only exposes the individual to vulnerability but there is also a
possibility that the new chance might not work out.It not only mobilizes energy in coping with
pressuresbut drives man to take preventive measures against expected or unexpected
threats.Acknowledging fears and embracing them boldly induces a person to think about the
origin and causes of fears. The objective of this paper is to highlight how fear equips a person to
not only handle challenges of life with confidence but also to love life with its entire splendor. To
validate the argument, research and analysisdone in this paper,present evidence by examining
and appraising viewpoints of both the classic as well as the modern philosophers.
Keywords: death; fear; feeling; human; rational; self;
Introduction:
Fear is the most natural and common emotion that humankind experiences. It activates
nervous system, mobilises available energy in body and restructures work of all bodily organs.
This results in sudden increase of heartbeat, enlarged pupils and slowing down of activity. At the
same time, the endocrine gland produces an influx of adrenalin, which narrows down veins, thus
drawing out blood from cells of skin. The feeling of fear results in shift in the work of nervous
system and variation in blood pressure. This happens in reaction to some kind of threat. The
New Academia: An International Journal of English Language, Literature and Literary Theory
(Online ISSN 2347-2073) Vol. VI Issue I, Jan. 2017
http://interactionsforum.com/new-academia 11
most common and general threats which a humankind confronts are fears “related to death”
(Saliba39-42)and collapse of life ideals.
Fear—A Positive Potential:
Fear is a rather uncomfortable experience that often disturbs people, puts one out of
action and may cause psychosomatic disorders. Other fear-caused reflexes are shivering or
dryness of mouth, reduction of one‟s body weight, loss of appetite and confusion in case of an
indispensable threat. Rosfort says, “The feelings involved in fear, for example, may tend to block
our higher cognitive skills to promote the immediate instinct to flight from the object that causes
the emotion” (257). It can be destructive to the point where it leads to the deterioration of
personality.
Man is afraid of losing his comforts, dignity, reputation, job and cherished ideals. The
fear of losing his comforts motivates him to construct better ideals to further his ease. It is often
due to the fear of losing job that people are urged to work efficiently and bear disgrace in the
process of earning their livelihood. It is the fear of losing family name that urges a man to not to
indulge in such activities which may stigmatize the family honour. Cancer patients undergo
traumatic chemotherapeutic treatment and withstand painful radioactive rays in fear of losing
life. Thus, fear has a double function to perform. Being ambivalent in nature, it is both
maleficent and beneficent. My argument in this paper is that fear is more useful as it plays a
productive role in motivating a person to play a constructive and effective role in the society.
In the process of evolution, fear served as a defence mechanism against hazards of nature.
Later, with the creation and establishment of human society many types of fears receded. While
confronting an environmental hazard or a fierce animal, the skin grows pale, this indicates the
effect of adrenalin, which forces blood to flow back from the surface of the body and stomach to
be redistributed in muscles. The human organism gains energy, when fresh supply of blood
reaches muscles of the body. This mobilization of energy helps him in coping with threats in
critical situation. This is one of the constructive functions of fear—providing a man with
enough strength to withstand pressures of life that is helped by the flow of adrenalin in blood that
supplies muscles with extra oxygen and minerals. In such cases, fear becomes defensive because
it is linked to self-preservation thus playing a beneficent function in human life.
The second function of fear is that it induces man to take preventive measures against
encountering the cause of pain, which he has already experienced back in time. The memory of
acute pain registers itself on the subconscious of an organism essentially promoting
precautionary measures to be taken against the cause of pain. Poland observes, “We leap for joy,
but we cringe for fear. Yet we know that cringing resistances not only hide but also signal what
threatens to emerge. So it is worth the effort to look fear in the face as much as possible” (203).
New Academia: An International Journal of English Language, Literature and Literary Theory
(Online ISSN 2347-2073) Vol. VI Issue I, Jan. 2017
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Fear also persuades man to move strategically in an unknown situation. When not enough
information is available for the onewho has to take a subjective decision, fear dictates the
strategy. Fear in this case shields the individual from possible psychological and communal
threats. It serves to ensure that the person takes in and considers every tiny detail in the
evaluation of situation, which may save the individual from embarrassment.Talking about
life,Howes says, that it is necessary to take risk and action. He continues,
Mistakes will happen no matter what. It‟s a part of the game; it‟s part of life! Fear
is a necessary component of that — it helps you calculate the risk—but you can‟t
let the fear make the decisions for you. You must feel the fear, process it, and do
what you need to do to achieve what you‟ve set out for yourself.” (112)
Classic Explanation:
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), an English author and philosopher, postulates that the
greatest fear that a living person experiences is the fear of death. He says, “[m]en fear death as
children fear to go into the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is
the other” (12). For a man it is as natural to experience the fear of death, as it is natural for a
child to fear darkness. In both the cases, it is innate. The more one discusses and thinks about
death, the more one becomes afraid of itbecause “fear breeds fear”(Kuwabara1260).
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), a Dutch philosopher. He is considered as one of the
greatest rationalists of 17th Century. Spinoza relates fear to hope. When we think of future, the
soul feels joy because of hope which we might associate with the possibility of good future. At
the same time,if the mind thinks of bad possibility then fear enters in our soul. While talking
about fear, Spinoza thinks that it is the nature of a man to first think with a good possibility and
then about the bad option. With hope is associated confidence but fear brings in despair and
sorrow with it. This takes a man to a conflicting state of mind. He brings in courage to come out
of this state of vacillation but if the situation is enormous then he has to add bravery to the
feeling of courage. Spinoza associates hope with fear saying that they are primary feelings which
result either in confidence or despair. God is the highest good. All things are what they are
because of Him. So we must not fear the highest good. Spinoza argues that deception and malice
are associated with those whom we are afraid of. We deceive to sustain power, while supposes
privation of goodness. We need not to be afraid of God, who is Almighty, All-Powerful and
Supremely Good. He concludes his discussion by saying that “there is no hope without fear and
no fear without hope” (Spinoza 303).
SørenAabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855), a Danish philosopher, poet, social critic and
religious author, widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher,finds the cause of
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unrest in human life is the result of separateness from the Pure Being. The need to come to terms
with God leads, in the opinion of Kierkegaard, to three kinds of movements: the aesthetic, the
ethical, and the religious. These are different ways of trying to get over the feeling of dread of
estrangement. At the aesthetic stage, man is aware of true relationship between the eternal and
the temporal. This is a stage of indiscriminate enjoyment or suffering and there is no question of
choice. At the ethical stage, there is a possibility of two alternatives because the impact of what
is eternal on what is temporal is noticed here. This means that man can either choose to pursue
the Infinite to be in tune with it, or choose to remain finite. Nevertheless, both these choices are
doomed to end in despair, because both these attempts are one-sided. Man cannot be Infinite in
its purity, nor can he get rid of fear of the Infinite by concentrating on his finitude. Man is
ambivalent—a combination of finite and infinite. If he concentrates on becoming purely eternal,
he will be moving in the region of ideals that he cannot put into practice. It is on this ground that
Kierkegaard finds fault with Hegelians who define reality as rational and try to fit reality into the
triadic development of ideas—thesis, antithesis and synthesis. On the contrary, if man is wholly
concerned with the finite, he would be labouring at in procuring material things and temporal
objects. Instead of finding himself in ever-changing flux of the outside world, he would be lost in
it. The result is utter despair and the real solution of the problem of overcoming the fear of
unknown consistently remains there. It is only at religious level that man can hope to overcome
his fears. In contradistinction with the Pure Being, man is always sinful and engaged in baser
activities of the temporal world. It is only when he repents than God forgives him. Self-
realization that consists in overcoming fear is possible only when eternity is seen in its proper
relation with temporality, when man‟s sinfulness is accepted and when God‟s forgiveness is
sought through repentance. Kierkegaard, however, does not believe in pre-destination. The future
is open so man is free to choose. He cannot just use his experience mechanically or adjust his
future line of action accordingly. So fear becomes a positive potential as it leads to the process of
repentance, self-realization and to oneness with Pure Being.Fear is what we experience in
response to sublime also. Looking up at the mountain may arouse fear but the experience
becomes joyful as the climber reaches the top. Therefore, fear can be a part of the process but
when the product comes in hand than fearful darkness is transformed into joyful light. While
positioning fear within the discourse of sublime, one may identify that “fear would be an
appropriate response to take towards an object, though one has managed to resist or overcome it
in some fashion” (Cochrane 128). Therefore, the darkness and the light, the fear and the sublime
are ambivalent characteristics of a same phenomenon.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797), is an Irish author, political theorist, and philosopher insists
on trusting “not to human reasonings, but to human nature, of which the reason is but a part, and
by no means the greatest part” (196). “No passion,” Burke insists, so “effectually robs the mind
New Academia: An International Journal of English Language, Literature and Literary Theory
(Online ISSN 2347-2073) Vol. VI Issue I, Jan. 2017
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of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear,” but his account of fear indicates that it has
some intelligence (230). Fear holds value for it is related to self-preservation and it is
“impossible to be perfectly free from terror” (236). Fear would not occur, Aristotle maintains,
without the belief that bad events are impending (155). Burke maintains that fear “operates in a
manner that resembles the actual pain;” indeed, the only difference between the two is that pain
affects the body first while terror first affects the mind (285). The crucial difference is that fear is
about pain, while pain is borne by physical state.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), a French philosopher, playwright, novelist and literary
critic suggests that fear originated from accusing look of society. The fear of the concentration
camps is aroused by a tap on shoulder, the threat of being shot, the constant surveillance made it
difficult during the Second World War to know who your friend was and who your enemy was.
To be observed meant that someone constantly doubts one‟s intentions. Sartre brings out the
paralyzing and unnerving effect of the stare of agency. The society that causes fear within people
is evil because it results in alienation of the individual. In order to overcome self-alienation, he
says, one must try to be one with one‟s self. The mental and bodily appropriation should be the
aim of every activity in the opinion of Sartre. Love, masochism, desire, sadism, fear and hatred
are the channels through which the self tries to appropriate the other. If the other is enemy, these
reactions are to be used with all intelligence of the self. If the enemy is full of guile, the process
of self-identification must be used with superior guile. The tactics employed by the enemy must
be foreseen and an attempt must be made to defeat him. Thus, love and other human
relationships are used as weapons of war for tactical advantages. Love no more remains a sign of
mutuality, but a shrewd feeling in the process of one-sided self-identification. It involves an
element of cunning or shrewdness, and not necessarily rationality. Sartre‟s principle is „In
choosing myself, I choose man‟; in acting on the principle of making a personal choice, Sartre
seems to recognise the agency in man. This is the principle on which everyone must act. Sartre
wants to preserve freedom of choice by going counter to rationalist dogma of determinism. In his
declaration that every man should act freely, no appeal is made to the faculty of reason, and no
suggestion to the follower of this principle. Sartre asserts that choosing is choosing well and this
assertion is dogmatic, for in practice sometimes we choose rightly, and sometimes wrongly.
In views of Bacon, Kierkegaard, Burke, and Sartre, it is observed that there is a common
desire to overcome the feeling of fear but not in terms of reason. Bacon thinks that it is
instinctive to experience fear no matter how brave or mature a man is. Kierkegaard finds the
remedy in the feeling of repentance, which he regards not merely as a subjective but as having an
objective reference to Personal God; Burke correlates fear with the feeling of sublime and Sartre
finds it in the feeling of freedom which is experienced in the commitment of self in every action.
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New Elucidation:
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1875-1975), a Russian philosopher, literary critic, and
scholar who worked on literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language. The folk culture
inspires Bakhtin because “the images of folk culture are absolutely fearless and communicate
this fearlessness to all” (39). He appreciates the medieval and Renaissance grotesque, because he
argues that it is filled with the spirit of carnival thus liberates the world from terrifying elements
of life. The frightening aspects of life are converted into “amusing or ludicrous monstrosities”
(47). He says that laughter helps in incapacitating fear, “for it knows no inhibitions, no
limitations. Its idiom is never used by violence and authority” (90). Just as language is a
characteristic of human species so is laughter a characteristic of human species.
Derrida (1930-2004), a French philosopher, recognized for developing a form of semiotic
analysis known as deconstruction. He talks of fear from the perspective of hurting someone by
criticizing some text, institution or personality. He feels fear to write but at the same time he
feels a compulsion on himself to write. He says:
Each time that I write something, and it feels like I'm advancing into new territory,
somewhere I haven't been before, and this type of advance often demands certain
gestures that can be taken as aggressive with regard to other thinkers or colleagues —
I am not someone who is by nature polemical but it's true that deconstructive gestures
appear to destabilize or cause anxiety or even hurt others - so, every time that I make
this type of gesture, there are moments of fear. (n.p.)
TichNhatHanh (1926) is a Vietnamese Buddhist, monk, teacher, peace activist and
author. He also believes that fear is essential wisdom to get through the storm of life. He thinks
that as human beings we should have powers to acknowledge our fears to get rid of their control.
He suggests practicingmindfulness and to “face our fears and no longer be pushed and pulled
around by them” (2).Management of fears is to be done by practicing to invite all our hidden
fears to come to the surface.Life only becomes worthwhile if we have a clear vision of all our
fears. Besides this, one should feel the beauty and blessings of nature surrounding us. He, like
Bacon, thinks that the greatest fear which a mankind faces is the fear of death. He suggests that
we need to free ourselves from the concept that we are more than just bodies which will decay,
but we should understand that we are beyond physical bodies which have not come from
nothingness and will not disappear into nothingness. Tracing the history of fear in human life, he
says, that the first fear which a human child experiences is the fear associated with the desire to
New Academia: An International Journal of English Language, Literature and Literary Theory
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survive at the time of birth. For nine months a child has lived in a very comfortable and protected
environment but when he comes to this world he experiences cold, hunger, jarring sounds and
dazzling light. Hanh calls it the “original fear” (7). Out of serene environment flung into a place
where he has to encounter sufferings, as first he has to thrust water out of his lungs and then he
will have to inhale oxygen to survive. So fear is probably the first emotion which a human child
experiences as he is pushed into this world, based on the original desire to live. Manis afraid of
loneliness which makes him look for the caretaker, search a friend, a suitable partner and finally
wishes to have children. He buys various commodities of life to be accepted by the people
around him in fear of rejection. He is afraid to be abandoned and left alone. This primal fear is
behind most of his actions and attitude towards life. Giving the example ofBuddha, he says, that
he became fearless because he practiced mindfulness. By confronting his fears, he achieved calm
and peace of mind. State of fearlessness is the ultimate joy as“[w]hen you touch nonfear, you are
free” (6).
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION:
Can we then completely get rid of the feeling of fear in action? Is every fear immoral and
irrational? Is it possible to put in the place of fear, some thought, feeling or good intention in the
contemporary world. It is not possible to achieve this objective, and even if it were possible to
achieve it, it would be ruinous from the organic or personal point of view.
Fear in excess can be killing or paralyzing but it can be a positive emotion as it keeps a
man active and agile. The time when a person is not afraid, he is not learning much from the
experiences of life because life which is predictable and familiar is not dynamic and lively,
consequently preventing a sense of stagnation from taking hold. Fear takes one outside the
comfort-zone and compels a person to take a new step which might involve risk. In such a case
risk is related to fear. In order grow in life; one has to take risk and to embrace fear. This can be
related to professional life like dumping a job which is offering no growth or promotion, and to
personal life like ending a relationship that is not working anymore or shifting to a new place of
living as the present place has become a source of discomfort.Exploring the realm of fear is
challenging too because it not only uncovers weaknesses of the individual but there is a
possibility that the new chance might not work out. It demands shifting of mindset and breaking
of previously established principles and philosophies of life. It is vital to build an essential
commitment to go ahead for taking the chance and planning the change. Discussing the
intentions with close relations, believing in them, and thinking of a reward if it is successfully
executed are inspiring to take the risk. This fills up a man with creative energy and new ideas are
clicked in one‟s mind. Once the decision is taken then it is necessary to take action because
inaction feeds and grows fear while action escalates confidence and helps fears to subside. There
New Academia: An International Journal of English Language, Literature and Literary Theory
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is a possibility of flying higher or crashing down and burning oneself, but either way, it is certain
to land somewhere new and fresh.Recognizing fears and facing them boldly tempts a person to
think about sources and causes of fears. This prepares a person to not only manage challenges of
life with confidence but also to love life withall its beauty. It becomes easier to control external
consequences as opposed to feel as if being operated by them resulting in a sense of wholeness to
emerge.
Fear is noticeable in human lives on various levels. Sometimes it is a result of aligning
oneself with social norms like keeping up appearances or fear of losing prestige and status; at
other times running after blind competition can be a cause of fear. On personal level, fear
becomes obvious by the desire to prove one‟s potential. People suffer from fear because of being
exposed as incompetent or they are afraid to cope withun/expected losses. Fear being a positive
potential has a negative side too because a person who is afraid of survival will think many times
before sharing his support to others. It is seen that those communities in which individuals are
not worried about their survival, people are more willing to offer their support, part their
knowledge, share their quantifiable and emotional assets with others.
Progress is likely to come in managing and using fear to one‟s advantage. It is a
misconception that fear negates courage, instead when man is afraid he musters up all his
courage to overcome fears.Nothing great can be accomplished without facing fear. Every dream
aspiring towards greatness can be a littleterrifying. We often think things are going to be tough
but there are some fears which in reality do not exist at all. Many great men reveal in their
interviews and auto-biographies that they experienced pressure, stress and fear at different times
of their lives.
Fear serves a biological purpose in the struggle for existence by making the organic life
aware of its enemies and thus putting it in a position to erect a defensive mechanism against
them, “passions motivate us, but they never inform; reason, on the other hand, informs, but can
never motivate human beings” (Dwan574). It is a common experience that some fears are
rational and some irrational. It is fears of the latter kind that need to be eradicated and replaced
by a rational outlook. Dictatorships, which exploit pathological fear in the interest of dictators
and through long subjection instil fear of freedom, are to be deprecated for this reason. This does
not however mean that we should not have even rational fears. Fears of losing the moral
principles of mutuality, equality in humanity, freedom, if totally eradicated would make us
indifferent to morality and loss of fear of the right kind would end up by making us less human.
It is, however, not only fear that should determine our action or life, but also reason which would
lead us to decide what to fear and what not to fear. In this sense, then, it is through reason that we
should determine the place of fear in life, and not the other way round as we see it done in many
a human situation.
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