Modern people sometimes regard the list of sins enumerated by medieval philosophers with a certain skepticism. We suppose that we are more tolerant than they were of human variation, and more apt to give properly scientific explanations of psychological tendencies. Yet many medieval attitudes remain with us, under another name. There is, for example, our attitude towards acedia.

What is acedia? St. Thomas Aquinas defines it as a "sorrow for the spiritual good." So understood, it is a kind of despair or hopelessness, whereby one does not endeavor to do much of anything. Acedia then has two aspects. First, it is an attitude, a certain attitude towards the good. Second, it is a behavioral tendency, a refusal to engage in certain prescribed or pleasurable activities. This second aspect of acedia is picked out by its standard modern translation, "sloth."

Acedia does not fit neatly into modern psychological categories. It is sometimes identified with depression; Andrew Solomon's excellent book about depression takes its title, The Noonday Demon, from a phrase or figure originally used by monks to describe acedia. But acedia differs from modern depression in a number of ways. Notably, it does not seem to involve that distinctive kind of low mood or melancholy that is distinctive to........

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