Beethoven, the Sailor, the Boy and the Nazi. A reply to my critics

ABSTRACT

The contribution clarifies the concept of resonance as a mode of relationship consisting of four elements: 1) affection, 2) self-efficacy, 3) transformation and 4) essential uncontrollability. Resonance is not based on harmony, fusion or unity, but on a transformative encounter requiring difference. Subsequently, the paper demonstrates that experiences of resonance have the power to break with given institutional or interpretive frames. It is precisely experiences of resonance which allow for individual, social and moral change. Furthermore, the paper discusses the relationship between strong evaluations, reflection and resonance and sketches the contours of an ethics of resonance.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethics of resonance
• strong evaluations
• alienation
• natality
• best account principle
• second order resonance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For example, in his famous ‘Acceptance Speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention,’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWcez2OwT9s.

2. The Max Weber Center in Erfurt, which I direct, is set up for comparative studies between Western and non-Western Societies on the one hand and between contemporary and historical sciences on the other. It includes at present an international graduate school for the comparative study of resonant self-world-relations in socio-religious practices. This, of course, is an attempt to give the comparative approach a more systematic grounding.

3. On my reading of Taylor, see my book on him (Rosa 1998).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hartmut Rosa

Hartmut Rosa holds the Chair for Sociology and Social Theory at Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, and directs the Max-Weber-Center at Erfurt University, Germany. He has been a visiting professor at the New School for Social Research in New York from 2001-2006 and at the FMSH/EHESS in Paris and he holds a honorary doctorate from the University of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht. Among his most important books are Alienation and Acceleration (2007), Social Acceleration. A New Theory of Modernity (2013), Resonance. A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World (2019) and The Uncontrollability of the World (2020).