Hartmut ROSA – grand séminaire : The Power, Promise, and Danger of Vertical Resonance

Conférence en anglais

Modération : Sebastian Husch (AMU), Kathrin-Julie Zenker (AMU)

Lieu : Campus Schuman – Bât. multimédia, salle de colloque 2 – Aix-Marseille Université

Hartmut Rosa est l’un des principaux sociologues contemporains, professeur titulaire de la chaire de sociologie générale et théorique à l’Université de Friedrich-Schiller d’Iéna et directeur du Max-Weber-Kolleg à Erfurt. Hartmut Rosa a reçu de nombreux prix et récompenses pour son activité académique. Sa théorie de la résonance et ses études sur l’accélération sociale ont trouvé un large public, y compris au-delà du monde universitaire, en Allemagne et dans le monde. Son livre sur la résonance a été traduit en plusieurs langues, dont l’anglais, l’espagnol, l’italien et le français.

Resonance is a specific mode and form of being in the world, and of relating to the world. It is distinctly different from our every-day mode of accelerated, instrumental, goal-driven interaction with things, people, times and places. Resonance is characterized by four distinctive elements: Af-fection (something really speaks to us, even calls upon us from the outside), Emotion (we respond to the affection, reach out and connect, thus experiencing self-efficacy), Transformation (when we are in resonance with someone or something, we do not stay the same), and, finally, un-controllability (resonance is essentially open-ended in that we cannot fabricate or bring it about instrumentally and that we cannot predict its outcome). Furthermore, we can distinguish four different Axes of Resonance: A social axis (when we resonate with people), a material axis (in which we resonate with material objects), a self-axis (as reso-nance between body and mind/soul), and vertical axis of resonance (as resonance with what we perceive as an en-compassing, ultimate reality).

The lecture will start by developing the concept of resonance in detail and then focus on the vertical axis of resonance. Vertical (or existential) resonance is a sense of connection to the encompassing reality in the sense of Karl Jaspers. We can term and experience it as ‘the universe’, ‘nature’, ‘life itself’, ‘the world’ etc. It is in rituals of art and religion, but also in contact with nature, that people have experiences of vertical resonance. The lecture will take a close look at these three axes of vertical resonance (nature, art and religion) and explore their power and promise, but also the social dangers connected to them.