Rita Fadda, From the existence as pathos of difference to the domain of indifference. Feeling and acting as places of sense

 

Man is an entity which exists and existing is for him the living of the continuous tearing from himself, the constant feeling different from himself and from the others. As Being-there, he is openness to the world, he finds himself among things of the world, lost in them but dealing with their care. All this underlines how the lived experiences (tear, disorientation) are original. They point out the essential pathos which characterizes the human being. But if existing is creation of difference and feeling of it, the age of technique has made man indifferent: incapable of living and feeling differences, he has become incapable to care about himself and the world. And one important way of the care and source of sense is also the action, understood according to H. Arendt, not as poiesis but rather as praxis, i.e. as capacity to start something new and innovative, as a continuous be born again to themselves and to the world. And acting means to leave a sign of ourselves in a world that is not to be reproduced but rather to be changed. Compared to a world already interpreted by the depersonalized and conformed powers of a system which is dominated by instrumental reason, change becomes action, as it fosters critical thinking. This is, then, the only possibility to retrieve the way of sense. But the lived experiences and the sense can originate only in a plurality of living beings. The supreme danger for modern man is to surrender to the indifference of feeling, the emotional insensibility, the incapability to act without producing, not to be horrified before the emptiness of the absence of the self.

 

Published on: Sense and action in education, N. 21 New Series – Year XI 2015