Although the most profound versions of this condition are found in a withdrawal from all forms of participation in or care for others or oneself, a lesser but more noisome element was also noted by theologians. Acedia takes form as an alienation of the sentient self first from the world and then from itself.
Įmotionally and cognitively, the evil of acedia finds expression in a lack of any feeling for the world, for the people in it, or for the self. Concurrently, this apathy can be seen as an inadequate amount of love.
Sloth has also been defined as a failure to do things that one should do, though the understanding of the sin in antiquity was that this laziness or lack of work was simply a symptom of the vice of apathy or indifference, particularly an apathy or boredom with God. In the Philokalia, the word dejection is used instead of sloth, for the person who falls into dejection will lose interest in life. Following the logics of contrapasso, the slothful work to purge themselves of their vice through continuous running. Dante encounters the slothful on the fourth terrace of Mount Purgatory, where his guide, the Roman poet Virgil, explains that sloth can be seen as the effect of an insufficient amount of love. Italian poet Dante Alighieri contemplates the nature of sloth as a capital vice in Canto 18 of Purgatorio, the second canticle of the Divine Comedy.
Henry Edward Manning argued that while the state and habit of sloth is a mortal sin, the habit of the soul tending towards the last mortal state of sloth is not mortal in and of itself except under certain circumstances. It may arise from any of the other capital vices for example, a son may omit his duty to his father through anger. Unlike the other capital sins, sloth is a sin of omission, being a lack of desire and/or performance. Sloth ignores the seven gifts of grace given by the Holy Ghost ( wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, piety, fortitude, and fear of the Lord) such disregard slows spiritual progress towards life-to neglect manifold duties of charity towards the neighbour, and animosity towards God. is evil in its effect, if it so oppresses men as to draw him away entirely from good deeds." According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "acedia or sloth goes so far to refuse joy from God and is repelled by goodness." In his Summa Theologica, Saint Thomas Aquinas defined sloth as "sorrow about spiritual good" and as "facetiousness of the mind which neglects to begin good. Two commentators consider the most accurate translation of acedia to be "self-pity," for it "conveys both the melancholy of the condition and self-centeredness upon which it is founded." Catholicism Physically, acedia is fundamentally with a cessation of motion and an indifference to work it finds expression in laziness, idleness, and indolence.
Mentally, acedia has a number of distinctive components of which the most important is affectlessness, a lack of any feeling about self or other, a mind-state that gives rise to boredom, rancor, apathy, and a passive, inert, or sluggish mentation. Spiritually, acedia first referred to an affliction to women, religious persons, especially monks, wherein they became indifferent to their duties and obligations to God. The word "sloth" is a translation of the Latin term acedia (Middle English, acciditties) and means "without care".