ABSTRACT
Suffering in a state of anxiety is a common experience, if not the default, for the executive. This chapter uses Heidegger's negative-seeming melancholic spirit of anxiety to reveal potentially exhilarating prospects for fundamental change, for both the individual executive and the corporations he or she works in, and most certainly for executive educators. It introduces Heidegger's unusual conception of anxiety as a rare occurrence of what he calls a "ground mood", a manifestation of anxiety in marked contrast to the symptoms of the more clinical varieties of anxiety which are treatable psychopharmacologicaly and therapeutically. The chapter also introduces his notion of "nothingness" as that which is revealed in such a ground mood and Heidegger's concept of "care" (Sorge), namely time. The chapter discusses the commencement of a state of anxiety for Sanjay that culminate in an example of total collapse of Sanjay's world.
