SEE THIS CURRENT BLOG SERIES LANDING PAGE ON DERRIDA’S AND HEIDEGGER’S PHILOSOPHY OF DEATH: Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger on The Philosophy of Death

Once that affect of conclusion (conviction or belief) is suspended, “it is surely possible,” says Freud, “to throw oneself [to give oneself up to—it is a strong phrase: sich hingeben] into a path of thought, a line of thought (Gedankengang), and to follow it wherever it leads out of simple scientific curiosity, curiosity, or, if one prefers (wenn man will), as an advocatus diaboli, who is not on that account himself sold [by written contract] to the devil (sich darum nicht dem Teufel selbst verschreibt).”51 This recurrence here of the devil, yet again, deserves our attention. It is strange to see a suspensive démarche, one that is being attributed to simple curiosity or else to scientific curiosity, compared to a diabolical operation, or, more precisely, because all this is even more diabolical, more double, to playing the devil’s advocate. Why would curiosity be on the side of the devil? What about the devil in science or in psychoanalysis? But also, one has to be careful here; the devil’s advocate is not the devil; it is more cunning than the devil. It is what represents the devil in court, what feigns to take the side of the devil, but is not itself the devil and does not believe in the devil. Or at least, even if it believes in him, it manages to take the devil’s side or to put the devil on its side without putting itself on the side of the devil, without giving itself over, or selling itself, or promising itself, to the devil, without any contract with the devil. No promissory note to the devil (nicht dem Teufel sich verschreiben). (Derrida, Jacques. Life Death (The Seminars of Jacques Derrida) (p. 279). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition).

I’m reading here as catching the scent of something Derrida said about Heidegger and tracing that scent back to the source for the sake of argument to see if there is anything there. What is remarkable about Being and Time is we start by talking about what is most all-encompassing, Being, and ends up finding what individuates us – our being toward death.  So, what is ownmost to Heidegger? Heidegger explicitly refers to himself as a “Christian theologian” in a letter to his student Karl Löwith dated August 19, 1921.  He gives a lecture course about Paul regarding the phenomenology of the religious life in the Winter Semester of 1920–21.  Derrida feels it is this Christianity that forms the base for Heidegger’s philosophy of death in Being and Time. Regarding Heidegger and death through the lens of Christianity and Stoicism, Derrida writes:

“Seneca describes the absolute imminence, the imminence of death at every instant.  The imminence of a disappearance that is by essence premature seals the union of the possible and the impossible, of fear and desire, and of mortality and immortality, in being-to-death (Derrida, Aporias, 4).”

“Later, we will raise the question of whether, in order to sustain this existential analysis, the so-called ontological content does not surreptitiously reintroduce, in the mode of ontological repetition, theorems and theologemes pertaining to disciplines that are said to be founded and dependent – among others, Judeo-Christian theology, but also all the anthropologies that are rooted there (Derrida, Aporias, 55).”

“Well, precisely to that from which it demarcates itself, here mainly from the culture characterized by the so-called religions of the Book …Despite all the distance taken from anthropo-theology, indeed, Christian onto-theology, the analysis of death in Being and Time nonetheless repeats all the essential motifs of such onto-theology, a repetition that bores into its originarity right down to its ontological foundation, whether it concerns the fall, the Ver-fallen, into the inauthenticity of relaxation or distraction, or the sollicitudo, the cura, and the care (Sorge), or sin and originary guilt (Schuldigsein), or anxiety, and, regarding the texts, whether it concerns St. Augustine, Meister Eckhart, Pascal, Kierkegaard, or a few others.  … [N]either the language nor the process of this analysis of death is possible without the Christian experience, indeed, the Judeo-Christiano-Islamic experience of death to which it testifies (Derrida, Aporias, 79-80).”

For one thing, Christianity is the religion of anxiety par excellence.  Paul says if the dead are not raised we might as well be gluttons and drunks for tomorrow we dies.  But just as Jesus was wrong that the eschaton was imminent, and Paul wrongly thought it was in fact underway, the resurrected Jesus being the first fruits of the general resurrection harvest of souls for Paul:  The natural question is if Jesus and Paul were so wrong about so central a topic as the end times, what else were they wrong about?  And the different sources present different Jesuses, e.g., Luke-Acts does not teach substitutionary atonement.  The disciples are said to have believed because they saw (e.g., the Cana wine miracle), but the text says blessed are those who have not seen but still believe.  The tradition from Thomas to Luther encapsulated this with transitioning from truth as correctness to truth as certainty free from doubt, because the Christian anxiety from uncertainty had to be overcome as what had to be certain in the sense of freedom from doubt: was the salvation of the soul.

For another thing, Derrida evidently has in mind for instance, the care/lack of care acedia in the Christian monastic tradition where a central issue is the hidden restlessness of the human which becomes conspicuous when separated from distractions.

In the Christian monastic tradition, acedia (from the Greek akēdia, literally meaning “lack of care” or “without care”) refers to a profound spiritual vice characterized by apathy, listlessness, and indifference toward one’s relationship with God and the demands of the spiritual life. It represents a “lack of care” for the soul’s salvation, prayer, ascetic practices, and communal duties, often manifesting as a deep weariness or aversion to the good.  Acedia emerged as a key concept among the early Christian Desert Fathers and Mothers in the 4th century, who lived in solitary or communal asceticism in Egypt and surrounding regions. It was systematized by Evagrius Ponticus (c. 345–399 AD), a monk and theologian, who included it among the eight “evil thoughts” (logismoi) that tempt the soul—the precursors to the later seven deadly sins.  Evagrius described acedia as the most burdensome temptation, often personified as the “noonday demon” (drawn from Psalm 91:6 in the Septuagint: “the destruction that wastes at noonday”). This “demon” typically assaults the monk around midday, when the heat is intense, initial enthusiasm for the day has waned, and the end of daily labors feels distant. The monk feels restless, dissatisfied with his cell (living space), scornful of manual work, and tempted to abandon prayer or flee the monastery altogether.  John Cassian (c. 360–435 AD), who transmitted Desert Fathers’ teachings to the Western Church, echoed this in his Institutes and Conferences. He portrayed acedia as causing boredom, lethargy, unreasonable confusion, frequent glances at the sun, and a desire for distractions—like unnecessary visits to others or busying oneself with trivial tasks to avoid solitude and spiritual focus.

The “Care / Lack of Care” problem, at its core: Acedia is the problem of “lack of care” (akēdia) in contrast to the vigilant “care” (cura or epimeleia) required for the soul’s health and union with God. Monastic life demands persistent attention to prayer, scripture, labor, and community as acts of love and response to God’s grace.  Acedia undermines this by fostering indifference or sorrow over the divine good—making spiritual efforts feel burdensome, pointless, or overwhelming. It can appear in two seemingly opposite forms:

(i) Passivity: Idleness, sleepiness, procrastination in prayer or duties.

(ii) Restless activity: Fleeing into distractions, gossip, unnecessary errands, or over-busyness to evade interior silence and God’s presence.

The ultimate goal of acedia, as the Desert Fathers saw it, is to break the monk’s resolve, leading to abandonment of vocation and spiritual stagnation. Remedies emphasized perseverance (hypomonē), manual labor, psalm recitation, and community accountability to counter it.  In the 6th century, Pope Gregory the Great merged acedia with sadness (tristitia) into the sin of sloth (acedia in Latin) in his list of seven capital vices. Medieval theologians like Thomas Aquinas further defined it as “sadness about spiritual good,” a sorrow that weighs down the mind and makes divine friendship feel unappealing.  Though often reduced today to mere laziness, traditional understandings highlight its deeper spiritual dimension: resistance to God’s transforming love.  Acedia remains relevant in modern discussions as a form of spiritual fatigue or depression, tempting people to numb themselves to prayer and meaningful commitment amid distractions. The monastic tradition views it as a serious “problem” because it erodes the soul’s care for eternal goods, hindering growth in holiness. 

This relates to Ecclesiastes’ “nothing new under the sun,” and Nietzsche’s eternal return, and the Greco-Roman tradition whereby, for example, Toohey notes Horace’s description of Bullatius’s boredom and restlessness as deinon/horror loci woes in Epistles I. II were countered by philosophy (verses  25-30), with the exercise of logic (ratio) and prudence (prudential) that brought about acalm mind(aequus animus).  Restlessness being brought to repose with a calm mind seems to be what Heidegger and Holderlin see as the purpose the Greeks had for philosophy. Plato noted the restless soul should strive to achieve the constancy of the stars, a condition Aristotle called athanatizein/godliness/deathlessness, noting only beasts or gods were at home in solitude.  Consider our hidden “being out of joint” which becomes conspicuous in a rainy cottage with nothing to do in shack wacky cabin fever.

There is a direct conceptual and etymological relationship between acedia (the “lack of care”) and cura in the Christian monastic tradition.  Acedia fundamentally represents a lack or absence of care—spiritual apathy, indifference, or torpor toward God, prayer, ascetic discipline, and the soul’s welfare. This “lack of care” directly contrasts with cura, the Latin term for vigilant care, concern, solicitude, or attentive diligence.  Monastic writers frame the spiritual life as requiring ongoing cura (careful attention and commitment) to divine things, which acedia undermines by fostering restlessness, boredom, or aversion to such efforts. The Desert Fathers and later tradition saw acedia as a vice that erodes the very cura essential for perseverance in prayer, manual labor, and communal obligations.

The Greek akēdia (ἀκηδία) literally means “without care” or “neglect” (from a- “without” + kēdos/kēdia “care”).When transmitted to the Latin West via figures like John Cassian, the term acedia (or accidia) was retained as a transliteration, but medieval glossaries and etymological explanations explicitly linked it to cura. For instance, around the 12th century and earlier, sources gloss it as “Acci grece, cura latine” (akēdia in Greek, cura in Latin), interpreting acedia as the negation or absence of cura.  This reflects a folk etymology common in medieval theology: acedia as “a-cura” or “non-cura” (without care).  Key Thinkers include Evagrius Ponticus (Greek tradition): Describes acedia as a “lack of care” for the soul’s pursuits, opposed by epimeleia (diligent care).  John Cassian: Transmits this to the West, portraying acedia as negligence in spiritual duties, implicitly requiring cura as its remedy.  Thomas Aquinas and later scholastics: Define acedia as sorrow or disgust toward spiritual good, which withdraws from the cura (care/action) owed to God.  In summary, acedia and cura are antonyms in the monastic spiritual vocabulary: one embodies the perilous “lack of care,” while the other represents the attentive care that counters it and sustains the path to holiness.

With Heidegger’s interpretation of phenomenology: “Aletheia (un-hidden)” with the alpha privative = disclosing from hiddenness. Heraclius: “physis kryptesthai philei” (Being loves to hide. For Hegel: The tearing of the sock phenomenalizes the Category of Unity, as a lost-Unity. Hegel, in his inaugural address, Heidelberg, 1816, says “The Being of the universe, at first hidden and concealed, has no power which can offer resistance to the search for knowledge; it has to lay itself open before the seeker — to set before his eyes and give for his enjoyment, its riches and its depths.” Heidegger comments: “Both scientific and prescientific comportments are a knowing in the sense of uncovering what is previously concealed, of revealing what was previously covered up, of disclosing what so far was closed off.”

To see care we must contrast it with acedia. Heidegger says:

“In order to understand, Heidegger says, one must see phenomenologically. He thus invites us to the first exercise of phenomenological “kindergarten.” To tear apart [zer-reissen] means: to tear into two parts, to separate: to make two out of one. If a sock is torn, then the sock is no longer present-at-hand—but note: precisely not as a sock. In fact, when I have it on my foot, I see the “intact” sock precisely not as a sock. On the contrary, if it is torn, then THE sock appears with more force through the “sock torn into pieces.” In other words, what is lacking in the torn sock is the UNITY of the sock. However, this lack is paradoxically the most positive, for this Unity in being-torn is present [gegenwärtig] as a lost unity.” (Heidegger, Martin. Four Seminars p. 11)

“Twice the audience laughed over the “torn sock” saying. At first Heidegger answered pedantically, “I do not know why you are laughing. You must learn to endure the scope of a sentence such as the one I have cited.” (Heidegger, Martin. Four Seminars  p. 100).

And so for Heidegger we are only asking half the question when we inquire into care, and so must further press to a more fundamental lack of care.

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The second tier of Derrida’s analysis of Heidegger’s Christian/Stoic philosophy of death is how it brings to mind the stoic being-toward death.  Derrida says:

“Seneca describes the absolute imminence, the imminence of death at every instant.  The imminence of a disappearance that is by essence premature seals the union of the possible and the impossible, of fear and desire, and of mortality and immortality, in being-to-death (Derrida, Aporias, 4).”

Seneca, in his essay On the Shortness of Life (De brevitate vitae), particularly chapter 10, describes death as absolutely imminent at every instant because time is relentlessly slipping away, and most people waste the majority of their life rather than truly living it. He vividly illustrates this by imagining an address to a centenarian (or anyone at a late stage of life): reflect on your years, and you will see how little time has actually been yours—much has been lost to distractions, vices, obligations to others, or idle pursuits. As a result, even someone very old dies “prematurely” (immaturum mori) in the sense that they have not achieved a full, wise life; they perish immaturely, unfinished.  This constant imminence arises from the nature of time: every moment that passes diminishes what remains, and humans foolishly act as if their supply is inexhaustible. We defer wisdom, virtue, and genuine living to some future point (the 50th or 60th year), squandering the present “as if from a full and abundant supply,” while fearing death like mortals yet desiring endless time like immortals. Such “forgetfulness of mortality” (mortalitatis oblivio) denies our finite condition.  Seneca’s point is practical and therapeutic (Stoic in essence): recognizing death’s presence at every instant should end procrastination. Live now—balance life’s accounts daily, pursue wisdom without delay—so that each day is complete, and death, whenever it arrives, finds you ready and unrobbed of true life. For the wise, no death is truly premature, because a virtuous life is sufficient at any length. Derrida draws on this in Aporias to highlight how Seneca’s view of death’s premature yet ever-imminent character creates an aporetic tension (uniting possible/impossible, fear/desire, mortality/immortality).

Of course, most people live their lives “as though” the next moment won’t be denied, though it could be.  Every time I reach for my glass or leave for work I’m doing so “as though” the activity will be completed, as though the next moment won’t be denied, though it could. The most helpful example of Philosophy and Death I can think of is the spectrum of stances toward death one might take embodied in the ancient notions of Carpe Diem at one pole, and Memento Mori at the other pole. In ancient Greco-Roman philosophy, “carpe diem” (“seize the day” for tomorrow is not guaranteed), originating from Horace’s Odes around 23 BCE, represents a stance toward death that emphasizes embracing life’s fleeting pleasures and living fully in the present, given mortality’s inevitability and the uncertainty of tomorrow. This approach aligns with Epicurean influences, urging one to pluck the ripe moments of existence without excessive worry about the future.  By contrast, “memento mori” (“remember that you must die”) embodies an opposing perspective, rooted in Stoic thinkers like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, as well as earlier philosophers such as Plato, who viewed philosophy itself as a preparation for death.  This stance uses the constant awareness of death not to indulge in earthly allure but to cultivate virtue, humility, introspection, and restraint—curbing excesses, focusing on moral living, and sometimes preparing for an afterlife or judgment, as seen in Roman triumphal traditions where a servant reminded victorious generals of their mortality to temper hubris.  While the two concepts can overlap or complement each other in motivating purposeful action, they are frequently framed as antithetical: “carpe diem” as empowering and savoring, versus “memento mori” as humbling and resistant to life’s temptations.  There is a spectrum of possibilities of stances toward death from the extreme left pole of hedonism which mellows out into tranquil carpe diem and epicureanism of the simple pleasure of meals and friends, through the middle to momento mori and stoicism, and to the far-right pole of rigid asceticism. For example, as a secular activist I write on Historical Christianity and so with the apostle Paul we get the idea that if the dead are not raised we might as well be gluttons and drunks for tomorrow we die (1 Corinthians 15:32), Paul coming from Tarsus, the birthplace of the stoic enlightenment.

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Kierkegaard

It says in Being and Time death is my own, perhaps suggesting the analysis is Heidegger’s personal journey.  Similarly, unlike his signed works like Works of Love, Kierkegaard often wanted his philosophy attributed to pseudonyms to avoid the idea of getting philosophy/life advice from the great sage Kierkegaard – like we have no signed works by Socrates only Socrates according to Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes, etc.  Similarly, we have no works by Jesus, but Jesus according to Paul, Quelle, Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, etc.  Similarly, what we might have in Being and Time is the human condition as Heidegger lived it.

Kierkegaard’s gravestone in Assistens Cemetery, Copenhagen, is inscribed with “Den Enkelte” (“That Single Individual”), reflecting his own wish and self-understanding.  He repeatedly used the phrase “that single individual” (hiin Enkelte) in his authorship—most prominently in the dedications of his upbuilding discourses—as the address to his true reader: the person who does not read as part of “the crowd” but appropriates in passionate inwardness before God. He saw this category as the highest human possibility and the essence of authentic Christianity, in opposition to the levelling anonymity of “Christendom” and “the public.”  Kierkegaard regarded himself as an exemplary (though not imitable) instance of “the single individual.”

In his retrospective writings, especially The Point of View for My Work as an Author (written 1848, published posthumously) and his journals, he explains what he believed individuated him and set him apart: 

A profound, lifelong melancholy (Tungsind), which he described as an almost demonic inwardness that prevented him from living an ordinary human life.

The “great earthquake” in his youth: his father’s confession of having cursed God as a boy, which Kierkegaard interpreted as a curse hanging over the family, dooming all his siblings to early death and marking him as the survivor burdened with exceptional suffering.

A “thorn in the flesh”: a secret, painful affliction (possibly physical deformity, psychological torment, or sexual incapacity) that he believed God had given him, analogous to Paul’s thorn, to keep him humble and dependent.

The broken engagement to Regine Olsen (1840–41): he viewed breaking the engagement as a religiously motivated sacrifice—he believed he could not marry and fulfil a “universal” ethical life because his melancholy and religious vocation made him an “exception.”

Divine governance: he felt himself singularly chosen and directed by Providence from childhood to become a religious author “without authority,” a corrective figure whose task was to reintroduce Christianity into Christendom by stripping away illusions of collective faith.

These elements, in his view, made him the exception who could not simply follow the universal ethical norms (marriage, career, social integration) but was called to a higher, solitary religious existence. He did not present himself as a model for direct imitation—others should strive for the universal—but as a “sign of contradiction” whose suffering and authorship awaken others to become single individuals themselves before God.  In short, just as his memento mori / Christian stance toward death individuated Heidegger, what individuated Kierkegaard was his conviction that an extraordinary confluence of personal suffering, guilt, sacrifice, and divine appointment isolated him from ordinary human existence and gave him his unique mission. “Den Enkelte” on his grave is his final self-designation as the one who lived (and died) in that singular relation to the Absolute.

Martin Heidegger explicitly states in Being and Time that being-toward-death (Sein zum Tode) is in each case one’s own (eigenst, “ownmost”).This is a central claim in his existential analysis of death in Division Two, particularly §§49–53 (in the standard German pagination; corresponding to sections on death as the possibility of Dasein’s impossibility).  Heidegger describes death as Dasein’s ownmost possibility (eigenste Möglichkeit): it belongs essentially and non-substitutably to the individual Dasein. No one else can die my death or take it over from me (§50: “No one can take the Other’s dying away from him”).

Being-toward-death individualizes Dasein, bringing it back from the inauthentic “they” (das Man), where death is evaded as something that happens to “one” in general, to an authentic recognition that death is mine in each case (§53).

He ties this to the broader structure of Dasein as “in each case mine” (Jemeinigkeit, introduced early in §9): existence is always individualized, and death exemplifies this most radically as a non-relational (unbezüglich), not-to-be-outstripped (unüberholbar) possibility.  In the Macquarrie/Robinson English translation (widely used):”Death is a possibility-of-Being which Dasein itself has to take over in every case. With death, Dasein stands before itself in its ownmost potentiality-for-Being” (§50)., the finite continuum of our possibilities from the pole of hedonism on the one hand and the long distance in between to rigid asceticism at the other pole. And more explicitly: “death reveals itself as that possibility which is one’s ownmost, non-relational, and not to be outstripped.” (§53)  Authentic being-toward-death thus requires anticipatory resoluteness (vorlaufende Entschlossenheit), where the individual owns up to this utterly personal horizon.  Heidegger’s entire discussion insists that death cannot be generalized or shared; it is the phenomenon that most forcefully discloses the mineness of existence.  Given the Christian/Stoic Derridean interpretation of death in Being and Time, the passage from Paul about being a glutton and drunk if the dead are not raised is a possible origin for authentic/inauthentic will to power valuation.  Why else is the inauthentic relation to death any less desirable than the authentic one?  If someone is fine with being “das Man,” why is that not fine and desirable?

The phrase “if the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” is from 1 Corinthians 15:32, where Paul argues against those denying the resurrection, highlighting that without it, Christian suffering and hope are pointless, reducing life to mere earthly pleasure before inevitable death, a concept he refutes by emphasizing Christ’s resurrection as the foundation for believer’s hope in a future life. Paul uses this rhetorical statement, possibly quoting a pagan saying or reflecting on the futility of his own struggles (like facing “beasts at Ephesus”) without resurrection, to underscore the absolute necessity of believing in the resurrection for Christian faith to have meaning.

The argument in 1 Corinthians 15 is unique in its depth and rhetoric. Paul repeatedly uses conditional statements to highlight the devastating consequences of denying the resurrection:

• Faith and preaching would be vain or futile (kenos/mataia, vv. 14, 17).
• Believers would remain in their sins (v. 17).
• The dead in Christ would have perished (v. 18).
• Christians would be the most pitiable of all people, with hope limited to this life only (v. 19).
• His own sufferings (e.g., fighting “beasts at Ephesus”) would be pointless, leading to the hedonistic conclusion: “let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (v. 32, echoing Isa. 22:13 or Epicurean ideas).

This chain of reasoning directly counters specific deniers of the general resurrection in Corinth (v. 12) and ties Christ’s resurrection inseparably to believers’ future hope.  In other authentic letters, Paul affirms the resurrection and its implications for hope, ethics, and suffering, but he does not employ the same “if no resurrection, then…” argument about the utter pointlessness or futility of Christian faith and life:  1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 — comes closest: Paul comforts grieving believers by contrasting them with “others who have no hope” (v. 13), grounding Christian hope in Jesus’ resurrection and the future raising of the dead. This implies that without resurrection, hope (especially for the deceased) would be absent.

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Eternal Return

I do not mean to say that Nietzsche and the doctrine of the eternal return are not traditional in any way; I too think that <this doctrine> is deeply rooted in the tradition, that it is a thinking of the tradition.  Derrida, Jacques. Life Death (The Seminars of Jacques Derrida) (p. 186). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.

A particulary instructive example of the ancient experience of horror locci is Horace:  Horace’s boredom has him restlessly switch between town and country, turn against friends, and switch between philosophical standpoints from Cyrenaic hedonist, to indifferent stoic sage, to apathetic Epicurean, to unbending cynic, to accommodating Peripatetic. His positions are opportunistic and fickle, unable to remain with one set of beliefs.  Horace calls this a kind of boredom and restless desire for change insanity (insanire).  Horace has intellectual horror loci, just as he does in his regular life.

Similarly, we see Seneca’s “nausea,” seasickness, which means profound boredom:

26.  Some people suffer from a surfeit of doing and seeing the same things. Theirs is not contempt for life but boredom with it, a feeling we sink into when influenced by the sort of philosophy which makes us say, ‘How long the same old things? I shall wake up and go to sleep, I shall eat and be hungry, I shall be cold and hot. There’s no end to anything, but all things are in a fixed cycle, fleeing and pursuing each other. Night follows day and day night; summer passes into autumn, hard on autumn follows winter, and that in turn is checked by spring. All things pass on only to return. Nothing I do or see is new: sometimes one gets sick even of this.’ There are many who think that life is not harsh but superfluous. (Seneca ep. mor. 24. 26)

We see a similar thought about this eternal return of the same expressed in the Jewish tradition by Ecclesiastes: Ecclesiastes in the bible makes the point about the tedium and pointlessness of life because there is just a circular bad repetition  ad nauseam of “the same” with the consequence that there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:8-9), that life becomes inherently meaningless in the face of eternal recurrence:

All things are wearisome;

    more than one can express;

the eye is not satisfied with seeing,

    or the ear filled with hearing.

9 What has been is what will be,

    and what has been done is what will be done;

    there is nothing new under the sun.

Seneca says the rich are especially prone to boredom.  In Epistle 24 Seneca says boredom can be such a problem that it leads to suicide.  Life is seen not as bitter but superfluous, and one is prone to the libido moriendi or death drive.

Like the historical analogy with Ecclesiastes and The Stoics, Nietzsche seems to very much have Schopenhauer in mind with eternal tragic temporal repetition. Schopenhauer said in On the Sufferings of the World:

“Boredom is a form of suffering unknown to brutes, at any rate in their natural state; it is only the very cleverest of them who show faint traces of it when they are domesticated; whereas in the case of man it has become a downright scourge. The crowd of miserable wretches whose one aim in life is to fill their purses but never to put anything into their heads, offers a singular instance of this torment of boredom. Their wealth becomes a punishment by delivering them up to misery of having nothing to do; for, to escape it, they will rush about in all directions, traveling here, there and everywhere. No sooner do they arrive in a place than they are anxious to know what amusements it affords; just as though they were beggars asking where they could receive a dole! Of a truth, need and boredom are the two poles of human life… [And in his essays on Pessimism Schopenhauer summarizes] “He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits some time in the conjurer’s booth at a fair, and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant to be seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone.”

 To which Nietzsche responds to Schopenhauer regarding the performance from the point of view of the creative and artistic individual:

“56. Anyone like me, who has tried for a long time and with some enigmatic desire, to think pessimism through to its depths and to deliver it from the half-Christian, half-German narrowness and naivete with which it has finally presented itself to this century, namely in the form of the Schopenhauerian philosophy; anyone who has ever really looked with an Asiatic and supra-Asiatic eye into and down at the most world-negating of all possible ways of thinking – beyond good and evil, and no longer, like Schopenhauer and the Buddha, under the spell and delusion of morality –; anyone who has done these things (and perhaps precisely by doing these things) will have inadvertently opened his eyes to the inverse ideal: to the ideal of the most high-spirited, vital, world-affirming individual, who has learned not just to accept and go along with what was and what is, but who wants it again just as it was and is through all eternity, insatiably shouting da capo not just to himself but to the whole play and performance, and not just to a performance, but rather, fundamentally, to the one who needs precisely this performance – and makes it necessary: because again and again he needs himself – and makes himself necessary. – – What? and that wouldn’t be –circulus vitiosus deus? (Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil)

Eternal return wipes away meaningfulness from beings, and so this is tragic for the eros of the sick and weakly like Achilles, but an opportunity for creation for the transfiguring godless agape of the artistic and healthy.  Hence, Heidegger quotes Nietzsche twice: “To stamp becoming with Being, that is the highest form of will to power.”  Nietzsche sats in Human All Too Human: “He who completely entrenches himself against boredom also entrenches himself against himself: he will never get to drink the most potent refreshing draught from the deepest well of his own being.”  In a letter to Overbeck Nietzsche describes himself in a small rainy cottage with friends who were suffering terrible cabin fever while he joyously wrote his 2^nd Untimely Meditation.

Conclusion

Theology and Being and Time: θεο- (theo-): Stem of θεός (theós), meaning “god” (singular; the plural θεοί/theoí means “gods”).  -λογία (-logía): Derived from λόγος (lógos), meaning “word,” “speech,” “account,” “reason,” or “discourse,” combined with the suffix -ία (-ía), which forms abstract nouns denoting a field of study, discourse, or collection of sayings.  This is not what Heidegger is doing.  He is not trying to teach universal truths about God, let alone proselytize.  He is giving an account of the human condition as it spoke to him (his ear), which is really the only way we have access to the human condition.