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REVIEW ON PHILOSOPHY OF FEAR: A MOVE TO OVERCOMING NEGATIVE FEAR


This cerebral work stands out as a consequence of the intellectual ruminations and churning of the mind of the author, Michael Eneyo. Herein, he presents complicated ideas on fear in a much simpler, tastier and easily comprehensible form. Like Amrit, the divine nectar ready to be drunk for attaining eternity, so has Eneyo made this work.
Albeit an arduous task, the author makes the concepts and observations surrounding fear and their analysis interesting as well as captivating. In one of his positive interpretations of biblical verses, he says, “…the coming of Christ was to enthrone love and to encourage his followers not to be afraid” (Matthew 1: 20). Such is the optimism that reflects his ideation so as to brighten the otherwise dimly lit path of human life.
The best part, explicitly visible in his style of approach, is that he resorted to antithetical treatment of various fear constructs to aver that opposites unless taken into consideration, enquiry is incomplete and that nothing tangible will ensue.
The author views Subba as fear positivist in the sense that the positive side of fear outweighs and Kalu as fear negativist for the contrary thereto. The author also interprets the stratagem of Kumar and Sushmita as fear negativistic. These three perspectives, according to him, are tinged with opposite orientations, rather
in subtle manner. Then he fuses the whole gamut of different viewpoints in the Fisherian crucible of fearlessness, thereby reaching a beautiful and a comprehensive philosophical synergy. At this point, Eneyo proposes: “…opposite is a natural characteristic of every being and none can be eliminated…they necessitate each opposite’s existence…positive fear must continue to struggle with the negative fear using fearlessness approach…”.
While journeying by the train of his thoughts, the author finds himself in a never ending ‘fear territory’ where he exhibits his unique knack of rhetoric with scintillating coinage like ‘fear conflict’, ‘fear territory’, ‘fear dilemma’, ‘fear climax’, etc. These new vocabularies expand the human mind to understand fear more insightfully as Lera Boroditsky, a cognitive scientist infers in her research that the new words and new dialects do shape the way we think..
In order to elucidate the multifaceted nature of fear more succinctly, the author has intelligently developed a typology of fear, making each segment of category not only unambiguous but also easily comprehensible. The fear that poses as challenge turns creative and proactive and results in productivity whereas that fear which confronts as procrastination gets translated into underdevelopment, he reasons.
How fear is generated, has been systematically discussed in the chapter on ‘the process of fear’. Like a manufacturing procedure, where one component gets converted into the other by a step-by- step method, fear process also takes its route through six phases, culminating into consequences or effects. Kudos to the author for bringing the entire fear genesis to a logically plausible end with ‘reason’ as ‘catalyst’!
Congruent to dual nature of fear as to its positive and negative results, its impact on humans and society has also been examined in both constructive real life examples. The author has undoubtedly
succeeded to prove his point that the fear which acts sometimes as a builder of society has also the potency of becoming a destroyer. At some other times, it stands as a guarantor for success yet at some other instances, a becoming that is responsible for failure.
For managing fear, the author takes recourse to love and courage. Positive love controls positive fear, negative love controls negative fear. He deduces by narrating ordinary daily experiences from his home land. He also explains how ‘courage’ suppresses the tensions unleashed by negative fear. He intends to surmise that ethically and morally driven decisions can control negative fear. Furthermore, righteous socioeconomic-psychological environment backed by value based educational and legal systems help overcome negative fear, the author contends.
The last parts of the book enthuses the readers to empathize with Nigerians. It ponders over the role negative fear has played in the country’s backwardness. The author is nevertheless optimistic that this can be rectified via dedicated adherence to and spirited application of positive fear.
In essence, I would like to conclude my review by affirming that this wonderful philosophical treatise on fear has been thoughtfully conceived, logically sequenced, intelligently chaptered, analytically explained and convincingly presented. I admire the cognitive toiling and intellectual labour that the author, Michael Eneyo has put in while crafting this masterpiece.

B. Maria Kumar,
Author: The Youth Don’t Cry
India.

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