Hartmut Rosa: The Futures Lecture Series 2023

From Responsibility towards Respons-a-bility: Resonance as an Ethic of Care in an Accelerated World

Abstract:
Sympathy, empathy, love, friendship and care: Modernity’s cultural and ethical vocabulary is full of concepts and conceptions signalling a specific, ‘resonant’ or responsive and empathic form of social relationships. However, the structural logic of modern society stands in sharp contrast to this relational mode. It is based on a mode of dynamic stabilization - i.e., on acceleration, optimization, growth and innovation – which institutionalizes and habitualizes a mode of aggression towards the world: Aggression against nature (ecological crisis), against others (democratic crisis) and against ourselves (burnout crisis). So how could it be different? How could we structurally as well as institutionally reconcile our mode of life with those ethical conceptions of resonant, responsive relationships? What is the alternative to acceleration and aggression? The lecture will try to outline such an alternative on the basis of resonance theory. It will then go on to reconstruct the very nature of relationships such as love, friendship, solidarity and care and explore the differences between them. As we will see, resonance as a mode of relating to others (and to things) actually includes an ethics of care which comes very close to Knud Ejler Logstrups conceptions of life and love.

Moderator:
Vice dean Anne Marie Pahuus

Discussants:
Professor Lotte Meinert
Professor MSO Thomas Schwarz Wentzer