sensitivity
Sensitivity (from Latin: sēnsibilitās , f. = Sēnsibilis ("sensitive, sensitive") + -itās ) denotes in the language of philosophy and psychology as well as in literary studies and in colloquial language a high willingness to accept signals from the environment, which is a broad Has a spectrum of manifestations. These range from sensitivity , sensitivity and delicacy through sympathy and empathy to sentimentality. In particular, the artistic sensitivity or the reaction to aesthetic influences is often meant. A distinction is made between sensitivity or sensitivity in the purely physiological sense.
History of the term
Virgil is considered the master of sensitivity , who in his eclogues (shepherds' poems) describes an idyllic dreamland with residents who are characterized by subtle moods and deep human emotions .
Thomas Aquinas assumed that nothing would be recognized by a person that he had not sensed. He differentiates between sensibilitas and sensualitas . The first term means the process of perception and knowledge, the second the physical pleasure or displeasure.
The philosophy of sensualism in England in the 17th century is based on sensation as a fundamental element of knowledge, with the subsequent period increasingly differentiating between external and internal experience or sensation. For sensualistic materialists like Claude Adrien Helvétius or Diderot ( sensibilité physique ), physical sensitivity is the central characteristic of human beings, to which the power of judgment can be traced back. For Diderot, the universal sensitivity of matter also allows organic elements to emerge from the smallest building blocks of matter. Even Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis spoke sensitivity to inanimate nature.
Since the 17th century, the term sensibilité was used more frequently in France in the moral and love discourse. The sensibilité de l'âme (S. of the soul) and an increased moral feeling were recognized as important driving forces of the interpersonal happenings. In the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century, virtuous sensibilité became an ethical and aesthetic ideal that found its way into English and French fiction around 1750. The sentiment d'existence for Jean-Jacques Rousseau a result intensivster introspection with the goal of self-knowledge, the result is the self-subsistence.
The literary epoch of sensibility was a reaction against French rationalism . It ended with the French Revolution, but was continued in Romanticism. The heightened sensitivity now often took on a melancholy character as in the term " Weltschmerz " coined by Jean Paul or appeared in the form of Christian sensitivity, inwardness and enthusiasm that goes back to Pietism , and to a transfiguration of suffering that was brought about by the Catholic image policy was served.
Increased sensitivity was ascribed to the female sex in particular throughout the 19th century. As the century progressed, the idea of sensitivity became increasingly trivialized and increasingly kitsched up .
Artistic sensitivity and hypersensitivity
Since the end of the 19th century, more and more psychologists and writers have been concerned with the phenomenon of heightened sensitivity. This was closely related to the emergence of the genius cult , but also to the widespread celebration of decadence . In Joris-Karl Huysmans ' novel Against the Grain , the hero cultivates his pathological sensitivity partly with the help of drugs.
According to Paul Valéry , human intelligence finds its highest expression in artistic sensitivity and imagination. However, he states that hypersensitivity is becoming fashion: “The writer deals in everything he sees, feels and reads. He turns his feelings into self-improvement. He then carries his production, even if it was created with painfully sweet feelings, to the stock exchange. ”Thus, the decadence poetry plays with the alternation of lust for life and boredom. For Valéry, however, after a long period of refinement, the sensitivity of modern people decreases due to overstimulation : "Pain has no meaning" - it is only a physiological stimulus.
Rediscovery of Sensitivity and Ascension of Sensitive Self
After the concept of sensitivity had been discredited by the decadence literature, but also ousted from the discourse by the rationalistic asceticism of scientific belief, dictatorships and solid “consumerism”, it gained new attention since the student movement. The sensitization of the subject was a reaction to the progressive “disenchantment” of the world ( Max Weber ). In his attempt at liberation, Herbert Marcuse called for a "new sensitivity" that opposes violence and cruelty, manipulation, performance thinking and a purely technical rationality of the. The human instinctual structure, distorted by capitalism, needs to be regenerated in order to immunize him against brutality. Similar tendencies can be seen in the subject-centered literature since the 1970s.
In Richard Rorty's neo-pragmatist approach, doubt about one's own sensitivity to the pain of others is the basis for solidarity with the injured and humiliated. It articulates an ethical sensitivity that, according to Rorty, developed especially in the western world: for him, empathy is a prerequisite for modern ethics , which is constituted in the area of emotions and not through understanding or conscience. This also makes the rationalist justification of democracy and human rights questionable. José Manuel Barreto speaks of the climate of a "global moral warming" ( global warming moral ), a global awareness of the human rights, universal for Rorty the place of Kant's claim to validity of reason and of Max Weber's rationalization of modernity occurs; For Alasdair MacIntyre, the instrument for this is an éducation sentimentale .
In the late 20th century, sensitivity is no longer the privilege of writers and artists. More and more members of the middle class are aestheticizing and poeticizing their everyday world, which is now called “cultural society”, combined with the enhancement and refinement of feelings. In addition, there is a "sensitization of the psychosomatic ": People become more attentive to psychological impairments, food intolerance or stress. Their introspection and self-centered concern increase.
It is questionable whether this has also increased the willingness to empathize. Some studies show that younger people recognize the emotions of their counterpart more precisely than older people; but these show a greater willingness to be compassionate. B. with mourners and a greater emotional concordance than the younger ones.
Indeed, ethical awareness has been raised in many areas since around 1980. Today one speaks of the vulnerability of the child or the necessary appreciation in the workplace, one is more attentive to discrimination against minorities and in everyday relationships (see Me too ), demands gender-equitable pedagogy, gender-equitable language , more climate sensitivity and more often uses politically correct formulations than earlier. Even though many of these processes also take place in the purely linguistic or symbolic area, the sensitivity to injustice and its victims, as well as the shame of being the beneficiary of injustice, evidently increase; however, there is also growing concern about being exploited by the victims or becoming victims themselves.
With the sensitivity to discrimination of groups, however, the willingness to celebrate the ingroup also increases, which may derive psychological discrimination gains from the appreciation of one's own group and the depreciation of the other group.
Positive sensitivity as a culture of well-being
According to Andreas Reckwitz, the “massively psychologized culture” of late modernism is closely linked to a positive psychology of self-development that only allows sensitivity if it is linked to positive emotions, i.e. to a “feel-good sensitivity” that only allows for joy, enthusiasm and aesthetic well-being and is not ready to accept negative deviations from the expected, discomfort or ambiguities . The “anesthetic”, imperceptible modern threats, for example from radiation or environmental toxins, play a special role, which , according to Wolfgang Welsch , cannot be felt with the senses, i.e. cannot be grasped with increased sensitivity (in the strict sense of the word), but they can all the more likely to generate diffuse fear.
A widespread hypersensitivity leads to the fact that people are no longer able to cope with their own feelings, even the emotions that novels or pictures trigger in them. This leads, for example, to the massive use of trigger warnings at American universities or to the establishment of safe spaces . It is criticized that this infantilizes young adults and promotes a victim attitude, i.e. emotions that protect against rational criticism. Reckwitz sees the danger that right-wing populism will use this weakness of cultural liberalism to despise the “soft” in the name of the “hard”.
literature
- Burkhard Liebsch (Ed.): Sensibility of the Present: Perception, Ethics and Political Sensitization in the Context of Western Violence History. Journal for Aesthetics and General Art History (ZÄK), special issue 17, 2018. ISBN 978-3-7873-3544-2 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ J.-J. Rousseau: Les rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire. (1776–78), French first edition 1782, German edition: The dreams of the lonely walker. New translation, Reclam, Stuttgart 2003.
- ↑ Jürgen Sänger: Aspects of decadent sensitivity: J.-K. Huysmans' work from Le Drageoir aux épices to À rebours. (= Studies and documents on the history of Romanic literatures, Vol. 4) Frankfurt, Bern 1980.
- ^ Paul Valéry: Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci. In: La Nouvelle Revue Française , 1919. Online
- ^ Paul Valéry: Cahiers , first volume, quoted in According to Barbara Ketelhut, Guido Gin Koster: Of melancholy and other gloomy feelings: Rehabilitate Weltschmerz! on: deutschlandfunkkultur.de, November 23, 2017.
- ↑ Herbert Marcuse: Attempt on Liberation. Edition Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1969.
- ↑ José Manuel Barreto: Rorty and human rights Contingency, emotions and how to defend human rights telling stories. In: utrechtlawreview.org, 7 (2011) 2, p. 13.
- ↑ Barreto 2011, p. 12.
- ^ Alastair MacIntyre: After Virtue. Notre Dame UP, 1981.
- ↑ Wolfgang Welsch: Aesthetic Thinking. Reclam, Stuttgart, 8th edition 2017.
- ↑ A google search on October 12, 2019 yields 168,000 references to the keyword “culture of pleasure”.
- ↑ Andreas Reckwitz: Dialectics of Sensibility. In: Philosophy Magazine No. 6, 2019, p. 56 ff., Here: p. 59.
- ↑ Cornelia Wieck: Age differences in empathy: multi-directional and a question of context? Diss. Univ. Leipzig, 2015, p. 5; D. Richter, U. Kunzmann: Age Differences in Three Facets of Empathy: Performance-Based Evidence. In: Psychology and Aging , 26 (2011) 1, pp. 60-70.
- ↑ If the climate sensitivity of industries and regions is meant, as in Heike Auerswald and Gerit Vogt, Zur Klimasensibil der Wirtschaft in der Region Dresden , ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, IDEAS 17 (2010) 3, p. 15–23, it would be better to use the term climate sensitivity .
- ↑ Manfred Schmitt, Anna Baumert, Detlef Fetchenhauer, Mario Gollwitzer, Tobias Rothmund, Thomas Schlösser: Sensitivity for injustice. In: Psychologische Rundschau 60 (2009), pp. 8–22. On-line
- ^ Friedrich Heckmann: Ethnic minorities, people and nation: Sociology of inter-ethnic relations. de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 2016, p. 142.
- ↑ Welsch 2017, p. 21.
- ↑ 51% of US teachers use trigger warnings. See data that makes you think , in: Philosophie Magazin , 6/2019, p. 50.
- ↑ Reckwitz 2019, p. 60 f.