La atención: una mirada desde la fenomenología responsiva

Abstract

Waldenfels responsive phenomenology contributes to break new ground in phenomenological themes. The notion of responsiveness opens the way to a different view on some philosophical problems, such as intersubjectivity and self-awareness. Firstly, the sense of reciprocity involved in responsiveness makes manifest that intersubjectivity must be thought in terms of the development of multi-relational bonds with others. Secondly, each and every action of the Self, as well as the concept of self-awareness is built up by some aspects of otherness. Within this perspective, every genuine experience is a process by which otherness appropriates to someone his/her existence in order to appropriate him/her to itself. More precisely, experience becomes a lived event penetrated by pathos. The phenomenon of attention reveals the pathetic dimension of experience and the fact that we are affected by what happens before being able to respond to it. Therefore, in the experience of attention we are confronted with a particular kind of event, which means that paying attention to what happens is not primarily an action of a particular subject. Rather, attention is the coming-to-be of an event which connotes the horizon of intertwined experiences, where time and different degrees of nearness and remoteness play a determining role.