Volume 69, Issue 5

The boom in new theories of resonance is most certainly due to an intellectual atmosphere closely linked to the so-called “affective turn” in the humanities. The paper compares some theories of resonance or responsivity such as Thomas Fuchs’ phenomenological-psychopathological analysis of resonance and Bernhard Waldenfels’ phenomenology of responsivity with a sociological research on resonance by which Hartmut Rosa aims at contrasting the capitalist dictatorship of the growth-acceleration-innovation triad and the resulting loss of bodily resonance in the modern age, and above all with Hermann Schmitz’s (neo) phenomenology idea of felt-bodily (leiblich) communication. My aim is to show that by providing a neophenomenological approach to atmospheric perception – viewed as an affective and pre-reflexive bodily communication triggered by a spatial feeling whose sounding board is our Leib – a pathic aesthetics can assign both a diagnostic and a therapeutic value to the concept of resonance. This furthermore means that a sociology also attentive to the bodily and pre-linguistic dimension and a phenomenology also attentive to situative and historical-collective dimensions, both being able to focus on the pathicity of everyday life, may find an unexpected but promising point of contact.

This essay develops a new interpretation of Moses Mendelssohn’s ontological argument in the Morning Hours: Lectures on God’s Existence . At the beginning, Immanuel Kant’s famous criticism of the ontological proof of God’s existence in the Critique of Pure Reason is presented. Then I offer an in-depth analysis of Mendelssohn’s original ontological argument in the Morning Hours . It is shown that with Mendelssohn’s new proof of God, Kant’s objections are answered. Finally, it is explained why Mendelssohn does not succeed in completely refuting Kant’s objections.

In this article, Herbert Marcuse’s nature-ethical considerations, which have to date been scarcely received, are used to develop perspectives on how the nature-ethical gap in contemporary Critical Theory could be closed. The central idea is that nature is tobe recognized as a subject in its own right without needing to anthropomorphize it in the process. The advocatory ethics of nature, which is outlined here, differs from current sustainability and environmental ethics primarily in that it maintains the tension between an anthropocentric and an ecocentric approach and does not resolve it in one direction. Marcuse’s so-called “liberation of nature” is understood as a means for the “liberation of humans”, but the latter can only succeed if the former is also carried out.

The term Dao originally means a Way or Course or Guide, something very close to purposive action as such – a prescribed course to attain a prescribed goal. It is precisely something that is selected out, valued, desired, kept to rather than discarded. The Daoist usage of the term “Dao” is thus an ironic usage: it is used deliberately in the opposite of its literal sense to make a point – the real way to attain value is through what we do not value, the real way is an anti-way, the real fulfilment of purpose lies in letting go of purpose. Purpose by definition excludes the purposeless. But this relationship is not symmetrical; purposelessness does not exclude purpose. On the contrary, it includes, allows, and even generates purpose. Not one purpose, however, but infinite purposes, all of which remain embedded in a larger purposelessness, but not contradicted or undermined by it. The structure of purpose is such as to either exclude or to subordinate the purposeless. But even if merely subordinated rather than excluded, purposelessness ceases tobe genuinely purposeless. It becomes instead instrumental to purpose, pervaded completely by purpose. So a monotheist cosmos is one that ultimately forecloses entirely purposelessness, and thereby also undermines all forms of inclusiveness, non-duality, and the non-personal. The relation of purpose to purposelessness is more tricky than it appears. This essay attempts a direct reconfiguring of this relation through the concept of wu-wei as effortless and purposeless action.

In this essay, Christoph Menke’s “aesthetics of force” converses with contemporary Chinese philosophy, especially with the field of Transcultural Research in the Zhuāngzǐ conducted in Taiwan. The starting point of the following reflections is that “the artist is able to be unable” (der Künstler kann das Nichtkönnen). How can we philosophically describe a way of doing that retains self-awareness in the midst of self-forgetfulness? What Zhuāngzǐ discusses is an aesthetic cultivation of “contemplative perception” (Schau/guān 觀) in the midst of doing. His language is able to describe and interpret from within a way of doing that refrains from purposeful action. Menke’s approach corresponds with my reflections on Daoism and the book Zhuāngzǐ developed in recent years. Particularly important in this context is the exploration of relating aesthetics to ethical and political questions through an aesthetic transformation of subjectivity. Following the linguistic dynamics associated with the transcultural interweaving of texts, this essay connects Menke’s interpretation of Nietzsche and my interpretation of the Zhuāngzǐ . In so doing, I hope to set in motion a change in thinking on both sides.

This essay is concerned with a topic that has been widely discussed in East Asia for decades – the relationship between Martin Heidegger’s thought and Daoism. At the centre of my reflections is a motif that appears in Heidegger’s 1945 “Evening Conversation: In a Prisoner of War Camp in Russia, between a Younger and an Older Man” – a “doing that is a letting” ( ein Tun, das ein Lassen ist ). Starting from this, I discuss Heidegger’s approach to the Daoist “thinking of the useless” expressed in his Black Notebooks and other texts. In the development of Heidegger’s thought the “turning” ( die Kehre ) marks an important juncture. I propose speaking of a second or transcultural turning, which begins around 1943. For this transformation in Heidegger’s thought, what has been of outstanding importance is his preoccupation with Daoist texts, and especially his reading of the classical texts Lǎozǐ and Zhuāngzǐ . This is evident in his numerous explicit or implicit references to the Daoist classics. In 1945, in a situation of extraordinary emergency, Heidegger refers to Zhuāngzǐ’s motif of uselessness and the “necessity of the unnecessary”. This can be seen as a personal escape from responsibility, but also, importantly, as a way out of his deep entanglement with National Socialism. Although the way Heidegger proposes is arguably twisted and disturbing, its value lies in its providing a necessary perspective from which to unfold the critical potential of transcultural philosophy.

In the text “The Principles of a Liberal Social Order”, Friedrich A. von Hayek quotes from Chapter 57 of the Daoist classic Lǎozǐ 老子 (alternative transliterations are Lao Tzu, Laotse, etc.; the text is also known under the title Dàodéjīng or Tao Te King 道德經). Appearing in a text devoted primarily to the concept of “spontaneous order”, the quote opens up questions regarding the relationship between liberalism and Daoism, which I address in this essay. The discussion comprises three parts. In the first part, I turn to the translation cited by Hayek and, by way of a commentary to the translation, I attempt to gain access to the motifs of “effortless action/without doing” ( wúwéi 無為), “self-transformation” ( zìhuà 自化) and “self-government” ( zìzhì 自治); the second part offers a hermeneutic commentary through which I discuss interpretative approaches found in the Chinese commentarial tradition; finally, the third part outlines transcultural correspondences which explore the political meaning of the Daoist “without doing” and the idea of “spontaneous order” in the context of the discursive struggle between the “democratic West” and “authoritarian China”.

In the summer of 1943 Edgar Zilsel resigned from his membership in the exile organization of Austrian Social Democrats, a political movement he had joined as a young man back in Vienna. Zilsel (1891–1944) is known as an innovative scholar bridging philosophy, history and sociology of science, and belonging to the so-called left wing of the Vienna Circle of Logical Emipricism. Details of his political convictions are less recognized. A recently detected manuscript illuminates his worldview: His resignation letter had been accompanied by a short exposition of his interpretation of socialism near the end of World War II. The article introduces Zilsel, his life and work and publishes for the first time Zilsel’s statement from 1943.