La trayectoria intelectual de Marcuse está acompañada de un compromiso constante con las formas de la crítica filosófica heredadas de la tradición occidental, desde la forma en la cual aparece la negación de lo dado a través del diálogo socrático hasta la manera en que se configura la crítica del sistema capitalista en el siglo XX. Esto no quiere decir que Marcuse haya sido un erudito que absorbió y comprendió a cabalidad todos los sistemas e ideas filosóficas y que las (...) utilizó al servicio de su propia consideración crítica del mundo; más bien resalta que entre sus elaboraciones han estado presentes algunos de los contextos e ideas más potentes del pensamiento que ha entendido de manera crítica la estructura de las sociedades humanas. (shrink)

This paper outlines the basic traits of a responsive phenomenology by focusing on the issue of originary substitution. On the one hand, a phenomenology of alienness or otherness and an ethics of the other in the sense of Levinas will prove to be closely bound up with this sort of substitution. On the other side, this substitution can be concretised by transitional figures such as the advocate, the therapist, the translator, the witness, or the field researcher; they all intervene from (...) the position of a Third without closing the fissure which opens between ourselves and the Other, between the own and the alien. Precisely by focussing on the issue of substitution, we have the opportunity to outline the basis traits of a responsive phenomenology and to discuss some of its institutional consequences. (shrink)

Starting from the experience of the Other, phenomenology takes otherness as something which withdraws from my own experience and exceeds the limits of our common orders. Radical otherness is something extraordinary, arising in my own body, situated between us and striking us before we look for it. Psychiatry confronts us with a peculiar sort of pathological otherness which in ethnopsychiatry is doubled to an otherness of a higher degree. We encounter the anomalies of other orders as if we were dipping (...) into the Other’s shadow. This brings up many questions. How is the pathic related to the pathological, the normal to the abnormal? How can psychiatry take account of the intercultural Other without sacrificing its otherness to universal points of view? How is the unconsciousness of our own culture connected with that of other cultures? To what extent does intercultural otherness affect our intracultural otherness? Is there an alternative to the extremes of fundamentalism and globalism, which tend either to repress otherness or to level it? (shrink)

This article aims to highlight the relevance of Bernhard Waldenfels’ responsive phenomenology for questions related to normality and to the different kinds of deviation from what is taken tobe normal. The article begins with a discussion of two limit cases in the understanding of the concepts of normality and deviation: a strictly normative understanding, according to which each deviation is norm-deviation, and a descriptive understanding, according to which deviation is what underlies individuality. Considering Waldenfels’ responsive philosophy in connection with Kurt (...) Goldstein’s and George Canguilhem’s philosophies of the organism, both understandings are critically discussed. In particular, the article shows how both views turn out to be one-sided and should be revised on the basis of a responsive account of the organism (particularly of the human organism) and its situated relation to circumstances, events, and affordances in the world it inhabits. The analysis of the different forms of responsiveness of the human organism, and notably the distinction between ‘catastrophic’ or pathological and ‘creative’ or organising kinds of responsiveness, can allow us to develop a relational and dynamic account of normality and deviation. Accordingly, neither normality nor deviation should be taken as univocally defined states; they should rather be reassessed on the basis of the processes in and through which order is interrupted, disturbed, and possibly reshaped or newly instituted. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The article argues that theological hermeneutics by its own standards requires a theological understanding of the act of human listening. Based upon a phenomenological approach to this act, and drawing especially on Husserl and Ihde, an analysis of auditory intentionality is carried out. The categories of voice and auditory horizon are then applied to the field of theology. Using further insights by Ricoeur, Barth and Kierkegaard, it is argued that the auditory dimension in theology can be reconstructed as the (...) experience both of listening to Scripture as well as listening with Scripture. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show the relations between responsiveness and strangeness in the work of Bernhard Waldenfels. I will expose this relationship in six theses, so that they complement each other and show, in the most appropriate possible way, the relationship between responsiveness and the experience of the strange. These points are, 1. A brief clarification of terminology. Difference between the other and the strange. 2. The relationship between written and spoken speech. 3. The conception of order, (...) linked to mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. 4. The relationship between pathos and response, as focal points of responsive rationality. 5. The relationship between saying and what is said and the temporality that links and separates them. And finally, 6. I will deal with the problem of how to talk about the strange and the problem of indirect language. (shrink)

The article argues that theological hermeneutics by its own standards requires a theological understanding of the act of human listening. Based upon a phenomenological approach to this act, and dra...

How is distributive justice possible with respect to immigration if political decisions about entry and membership cannot be grounded in the symmetry of a prior commonality, human or otherwise, that could guarantee reciprocal relations between members and nonmembers? This paper deals with both aspects of this question. Initially, it engages critically with Seyla Benhabib's plea for ‘dialogical universalism,’ showing why the strong discontinuity between political and moral reciprocity precludes understanding distributive justice as the process of mediating between political particularity and (...) moral universality. Subsequently, it suggests that a way out of this conceptual and normative impasse can be found in the fact that boundaries create a double asymmetry. This double asymmetry is constitutive for the ‘dia’ of the political dialogue that separates and joins members and nonmembers. This ‘in between,’ which eludes control by the parties to a dialogue, is the realm of distributive justice. (shrink)

This article explores the implications of Bernhard Waldenfels’s responsive phenomenology for the discipline of cultural anthropology or ethnology, insofar as it understands itself as the “science of the culturally Other”. It discusses Waldenfels’s own engagement with ethnology and shows the compatibility of his approach with discussions within the discipline. The intertwining of ownness and alienness that is central to Waldenfels’s account of experience is applied to the problem of culture in ethnology. This leads to an acknowledgement of a domain between (...) cultures, a genuine interculturality, as the fundamental field of ethnological research, which, however, can only be addressed through indirect forms of representation. Such forms are identified in the practice of ethnographic citation, and through a reinterpretation of Horace Miner’s classical satire “Body Ritual among the Nacirema”, thus demonstrating the possibility of a prospective “responsive ethnology”. (shrink)

Resumen: En este trabajo me propongo exponer las relaciones entre racionalidad responsiva y extrañeza en la obra de Bernhard Waldenfels. Expondré esta relación a partir de seis tesis con el propósito de que ellas se complementen mutuamente y logren mostrar, de la manera más apropiada posible, la relación entre responsividad y la experiencia de lo extraño. Estos puntos son: 1. Una breve aclaración terminológica. Diferencia entre lo otro y lo extraño. 2. La relación entre discurso escrito y hablado. 3. La (...) concepción de orden, vinculada con mecanismos de inclusión y exclusión. 4. La relación entre pathos y respuesta, como los puntos focales de la racionalidad responsiva. 5. La relación entre el decir y lo dicho y la temporalidad que los vincula y separa. Y por último, 6. Me ocuparé del problema de cómo hablar sobre lo extraño y el problema del lenguaje indirecto.: The purpose of this paper is to show the relations between responsiveness and strangeness in the work of Bernhard Waldenfels. I will expose this relationship in six theses, so that they complement each other and show, in the most appropriate possible way, the relationship between responsiveness and the experience of the strange. These points are, 1. A brief clarification of terminology. Difference between the other and the strange. 2. The relationship between written and spoken speech. 3. The conception of order, linked to mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. 4. The relationship between pathos and response, as focal points of responsive rationality. 5. The relationship between saying and what is said and the temporality that links and separates them. And finally, 6. I will deal with the problem of how to talk about the strange and the problem of indirect language. (shrink)