The ancient sources of pathos and its contemporary reminiscences in the responsive phenomenology of Bernhard Waldenfels

Abstract

The ancient sources of pathos and its contemporary reminiscences in the responsive phenomenology of Bernhard Waldenfels

Abstract

The area covered by the ancient Greek meanings of pathos suggests there are four main contexts shaping this category: the rhetorical, the ethical, the tragic and the emotive (passio). Although these four areas have remained relatively independent, sometimes changing the meaning of pathos in very different periods, we can nevertheless point to a common core that defines the basic character of pathos. This is its inherent relation to disturbance, affectivity and its role in the generation of crisis. This nature keeps pathos in close connection with experiences that are painful, sudden, wondrous and also – following the Greek path taken by Waldenfels – with passive states from which the subject, as a lively-reacting and bodily “respondent”, awakens thanks to the impact of pathos.

The goal of this article is to trace these ancient sources of pathos and identify their contemporary reminiscences in Waldenfels’ responsive phenomenology. The structure of the text is as follows: in the first section we take a look at the historical applications of the concept of pathos (mainly in the context of Greece); in the second part, we analyse pathos in relation to wonder– that which promopted philosophical thinking according to Plato and Aristotle; in the third section, devoted to Waldenfels’ phenomenology, we present the affective and bodily dimension of the experience of pathos, radicalised both with respect to Cartesian dualism and Husserl’s theory of autoaffection; in the fourth section we return to the historical contexts of pathos, to reveal how Waldenfels, on the basis of his responsive phenomenology, reinterprets those contexts, polemicising with “classical” conceptions of experience and emotion.

Keywords:

Pathos, responsive phenomenology, Bernhard Waldenfels, rhetoric, tragedy, ethics, affect