Apathy

Apathy (pronounced ap-uh-thee)

(1) An absence or suppression of passion, emotion, or excitement.

(2) A lack of interest in or concern for things that others find moving or exciting; a state of un-interest.

1595-1605: From the Middle English apathy & apathie (freedom from suffering, passionless existence, from the sixteenth century French apathie, from the Latin apathīa, from the Ancient Greek ἀπάθεια (apátheia) (impassibility, insensibility; freedom from emotion; freedom from suffering; a want of sensation), from ἀπαθής (apathḗs) (not suffering or having suffered; without experience of), the construct being ἀ- (a-) (not) + πάθος (pathos) (anything that befalls one, incident, emotion, passion, suffering), from the primitive Indo-European root kwenth- & kwent- (to suffer).  From the origins influenced by the use in Greek philosophy, the word in English originally expressed either a neutral or positive quality; the meaning shift to a sense of "indolence of mind, indifference to what should excite" was noted as prevalent in general use by the 1730s, the adjective apathetic (characterized by apathy) emerging during the following decade on the model of the earlier pathetic.  In Hellenic philosophy apatheia was the state of mind in Stoic philosophy in which one is free from emotional disturbance; the freedom from all passions, a variant of that idea and word adopted (a little opportunistically) in the late twentieth century as apatheism, the coining a blend of apath(y) +‎ (th)eism (technically the belief in the existence of a supreme God as the creator of all things but used also of the belief in deities generally) which was a fork of both atheism and agnosticism which didn’t so much deny the existence of God (thought it seems implicit) as treat it with apathetic indifference as a matter of no importance.

In English, the construct was a- + -pathy.  In this context, the a- prefix was from the Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-) (ἀν-) (not, without, opposite of).  The–pathy suffix was from the ancient Greek Ancient Greek πάθος (pathos), “suffering”) +‎ -y and was used variously to denote (1) suffering, feeling, emotion, (2) damage to, disease of, disorder of, or abnormality or (3) therapy, treatment, method, cure, curative treatment.   The –y suffix was from the Middle English –y & -i, from the Old English -iġ (-y, -ic), from the Proto-Germanic -īgaz (-y, -ic), from the primitive Indo-European -kos, -ikos, & -iḱos (-y, -ic).  It was cognate with the Scots -ie (-y), the West Frisian -ich (-y), the Dutch -ig (-y), the Low German -ig (-y), the German -ig (-y), the Swedish -ig (-y), the Latin -icus (-y, -ic), the Sanskrit -इक (-ika) and the Ancient Greek -ικός (-ikós); a doublet of -ic.  The –y suffix was added to (1) nouns and adjectives to form adjectives meaning “having the quality of” and (2) verbs to form adjectives meaning "inclined to".  Apathy is a noun, apathize is a verb, apathetic & apathetical are adjectives and apathetically is an adverb; the noun plural is apathies.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, discussing stoicism, Los Angeles, 2012.

In antiquity, apathy had a positive association because, some indolence of the mind, unaffected by the excitements stimuli induce in others, was thought a virtue.  From the start a spectrum-condition, later variously codified by physicians, the philosophy of the Stoics is perhaps unfairly described as classical apathy in purist-form, stoicism here presented as a freedom from emotion of any kind.  The word stoicism itself shifted meaning in the modern age and dictionaries now suggest stoic is used also to describe those who suffer quietly, but conspicuously.  Apathy’s meaning-shift in modern English was influenced by early-modern medicine where apathetic was used to describe conditions such as a slow heart-rate.  Later, early psychiatrists, seeking both scientific credibility and a way of describing patients’ mental state, would introduce their own apathy scales; a forerunner of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) which later would codify differences within spectrum-conditions.  What the spectrums never tracked was that among some of those who suffer most conspicuously, it can be a bit of a calling.  The DSM has long made a point of differentiating between apathy and depression while acknowledging the extent of the overlap between the conditions, something prevalent in those suffering a variety of neurodegenerative and other conditions.