10.13135/2036-542X/8114
In The Dialogue of Experience&nbsp;Dorthe Jørgensen presents Gianni Vattimo’s understanding, expressed in his The Responsibility of the Philosopher, of what it means to be a philosopher. According to Jørgensen, Vattimo’s work as a philosopher is an example of &nbsp;‘world–engaged philosophy’ as distinct from ‘school philosophy’ or ‘applied philosophy.’ The concept of ‘world–engaged philosophy’ is associated with Jørgensen’s concept of ‘world poetry’: that the immanent world is ambiguous; it occasions experiences of a surplus of meaning, traditionally called beauty. Furthermore, both concepts are associated with her concept of ‘basic experience’ and with her understanding of it as characterized by an immanent ‘dialogue’ between sensation, faith, and comprehension. According to Jørgensen, all experiences are rooted in sensation, faith, and comprehension; art, religion, and thought, or aesthetics, theology, and philosophy, are thus interrelated. ‘Experience’ and ‘dialogue’ also play crucial roles in Vattimo’s understanding of philosophy, and recent works such as Hermeneutic Communism confirm that his thought continues to be world–engaged. Jørgensen’s philosophy of experience allows for a development of the systematic consequences — for the relationship between aesthetics and philosophy, for instance, and in terms of the possibility of understanding theoretical thinking as a practice in itself.
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Dorthe  Jørgensen
Trópos
world-engaged philosophy
The Dialogue of Experience
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Monografica
2016-06-01
2023-08-20
2016-06-01
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45-62
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Dorthe  Jørgensen
2016/06/01
10.13135/2036-542X/8114
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Aarhus University
2036-542X
1
world-engaged philosophy
62
The Dialogue of Experience
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                                                       trópos • anno IX • numero 1 • 2016 – ISBN 978-88-548-xxxx-x
                                                           DOI 10.4399/97888548xxxxx4 – pag. 45-62 (giugno 2016)




                                          The Dialogue of Experience
                                                                          D J*




   : In “The Dialogue of Experience,” Dorthe Jørgensen presents Gianni
      Vattimo’s understanding, expressed in his The Responsibility of the Philosopher,
      of what it means to be a philosopher. According to Jørgensen, Vattimo’s work
      as a philosopher is an example of ‘world–engaged philosophy’ as distinct from
      ‘school philosophy’ or ‘applied philosophy.’ The concept of ‘world–engaged
      philosophy’ is associated with Jørgensen’s concept of ‘world poetry’: that the im-
      manent world is ambiguous; it occasions experiences of a surplus of meaning,
      traditionally called beauty. Furthermore, both concepts are associated with her
      concept of ‘basic experience’ and with her understanding of it as characterized
      by an immanent ‘dialogue’ between sensation, faith, and comprehension. Ac-
      cording to Jørgensen, all experiences are rooted in sensation, faith, and compre-
      hension; art, religion, and thought, or aesthetics, theology, and philosophy, are
      thus interrelated. ‘Experience’ and ‘dialogue’ also play crucial roles in Vattimo’s
      understanding of philosophy, and recent works such as Hermeneutic Communism
      confirm that his thought continues to be world–engaged. Jørgensen’s philos-
      ophy of experience allows for a development of the systematic consequences
      — for the relationship between aesthetics and philosophy, for instance, and in
      terms of the possibility of understanding theoretical thinking as a practice in
      itself.

   : philosophy of experience, the philosopher’s vocation, dialogical conver-
      sation, basic experience, world–engaged philosophy.


Without language, there would probably be no philosophy, for the concept
is the medium of philosophical thought. But philosophy is produced in
various languages and is therefore subject to varied conditions. The specific
languages open different perspectives and set individual limits on what can
be conceived. In German, it is possible to distinguish between Erlebnis and
Erfahrung, and this distinction can be translated into Danish using the words
‘oplevelse’ and ‘erfaring.’ In English, however, both Erlebnis and Erfahrung
are referred to as ‘experience.’ Since the concept of experience is central to
philosophical hermeneutics, this lack of distinction is a problem for anyone
who wants to speak in English about hermeneutics, and perhaps even wants
    ∗
      Professor of Philosophy and the History of Ideas at Aarhus University in Denmark (id-
edj@cas.au.dk).


                                                                                                              
      Dorthe Jørgensen


to think in a hermeneutic way in this language. It is necessary to manipulate
the English language, develop its philosophical terminology, to approach
the degree of precision which is much more easily reached in German and
related languages [B?][B?]such as Danish. One might, for example,
choose to abstain from using the word ‘experience’ to designate something
that is just an Erlebnis; find another term for Erlebnis, for instance ‘impres-
sion,’ and distinguish systematically between ‘impression’ and ‘experience.’
This problem concerning ‘experience’ is just one of several problems that
appear when philosophical thought worded in German (or Danish) is to
be translated into English. But in the present context it is the most rele-
vant example, because ‘experience’ is an important word in my work as
a philosopher, and because experience also plays a major role for Gianni
Vattimo, both in his philosophy as such and in his book The Responsibility of
the Philosopher, which is the point of departure in what follows.
    For many years I have been engaged in developing a philosophy of experi-
ence, at the core of which one finds the concepts of religious and aesthetic
experience, and the relationship between theory and practice. I believe that
theory, understood as thought, is a practice in itself — it is an art — and that
we are not attentive enough to the art and craft of thinking beautifully. Since
the s I have published numerous monographs focusing not only on the
philosophy of experience, but also on, for example, the theory of modernity,
philosophy of history, the intellectuals, philosophy of beauty, philosophical
aesthetics, hermeneutic phenomenology, the philosophy of religion, and ed-
ucational philosophy. These publications have led to extensive collaboration
with theologians, artists, teachers, politicians, dramaturges, and education
researchers, among others. In this presentation, I will mention some of my
books, especially Beautiful Thinking (Den skønne tænkning) from , and
I will apply some of the concepts I have coined in these books, including
my concepts of ‘basic experience,’ ‘the intermediate world,’ ‘world poetry,’
and ‘world–engaged philosophy.’


. Contingency and Necessity

“[O]ne isn’t born a philosopher,” Gianni Vattimo writes in The Responsibility
of the Philosopher, “it’s something one becomes” (Vattimo : ). The
process of becoming a philosopher is a random one, so the profession of
the philosopher is also associated with contingency. Since the philosopher
could have become something else, the connection between him and his

     . Beautiful Thinking was published in Danish, but contains an English summary (pp. –).
See also footnote  for a description of the aim and the contents of the book.
                                                    The Dialogue of Experience   


employment is not inevitable. It would not ruin his life were he to practice
another profession. But that does not mean that nothing matters, for as
Vattimo also writes: “Fortuitous circumstances, though, are mostly just
the start of a trajectory that is driven much more by necessity, in form and
in detail, than it may appear to be at the outset. There is a contingency in
every professional vocation that transforms in part, or may transform, into
necessity. For example there is a certain determinism in the affinities that
one goes on to discover, or forge” (Vattimo : ).
    So, ultimately it would probably still be a problem if a philosopher
could no longer practice philosophy — for example, because of increasing
difficulties finding the right words to use. He might have become something
else, but has now become one with thought. Thinking has become his way
of being in the world, and if it were taken from him, not much else would
be left. However, I am not referring to the philosopher’s vocation as a
professional philosopher, his position as an employee at a university. On
the contrary, I am referring to philosophical thinking and the way of life
associated with this thinking. It is not the profession, but this thinking and
this being in the world that become constitutive of someone who ends
up as a philosopher. That is what becomes necessity, even if it started in
contingency.
    And even the philosopher’s profession is associated with necessity. Not
in the sense of the duties imposed on professors as university employees,
but in the sense of the commitment permeating their performance of
these duties, provided they are ‘intellectuals’. ‘Intellectuals’ is Edward W.
Said’s designation, in Representations of the Intellectuals, for people who think
about things, ask questions, and side with the weak in society; such is the
responsibility of the intellectual. In contrast, ‘professionals’ is what Said calls
academics who prioritize their careers, value their competence more highly
than universal values [B?][B?]such as truth and freedom, and cultivate
a postmodernism that is nothing but one big concession of their own “lazy
incapacities, perhaps even indifference” (Said : ). For the sake of their
careers, professionals are busy “not rocking the boat, not straying outside
the accepted paradigms or limits, making [themselves] marketable and
above all presentable, hence uncontroversial and unpolitical and ‘objective’”
(Said : ). According to Said, this mentality has spread from academia to
the media and to the cultural sphere, where we are presented with positivist
knowledge and subjective opinions, but no reflection on key issues. Much
would be gained if more people refused to do as expected, and asked why
one does what one does, and whom it benefits. If it were not the need
to bask in the limelight that made their mouths run, but “love for and
unquenchable interest in the larger picture, in making connections across
lines and barriers, in refusing to be tied down to a specialty, in caring for
    Dorthe Jørgensen


ideas and values despite the restrictions of a profession” (Said : ).
    Whereas Said’s book is about the responsibility of the intellectual, Vat-
timo’s is about the philosopher’s responsibility; but expressed in Said’s ter-
minology, Vattimo speaks precisely as an intellectual when he speaks of
the teaching and communication that are part of his job as a philosopher.
“I have to perform well as a philosophy professor, because it’s my job,”
he writes. “But ultimately ‘because it’s my job’ just means: because I am
of service to someone” (Vattimo : ). His occupation involves more
than the job, and is actually not work, but doing, which expresses itself
in his way of understanding and managing his job. The job, his position
as a philosophy professor, is contingent, but the doing is necessary, and
it serves the salvation of others, rather than of himself — that is, of the
students, the general public, the European community. His doing is not
for the benefit of the institution or his career, but for something larger that
demands dialogue and thinking. “Actually, in my considered view, there is no
difference between what I do when I am teaching in the university, and what
I do when I write a column for a newspaper,” he says (Vattimo : ).
And as a teacher and columnist he does not only educate, he also engages in
Bildung (formation), for “in philosophy I believe that some political good is
always at stake, some question of political community. That is what justifies
philosophy as teaching, philosophy in the newspapers, and philosophy in
politics too” (Vattimo : ).


. The Importance of Dialogue

Vattimo thinks of “the philosophical vocation as profoundly grounded in
the polis,” from which the hermeneutical idea of [B?][B?]the impor-
tance of dialogue was inherited (Vattimo : ). Socrates is the classic
example of the conversational philosopher who, in dialogue with other
people, explores questions aroused by wonder, and to whom conversation
is the medium for his thinking. Here, we find the source of the idea that
not only does thinking take place through conversation, but also that think-
ing is conversation — an idea that has taken on various forms throughout
the course of history. Socrates had conversations not only with his fellow
citizens, but also with both the goddess Diotima and with himself, his
own daemon. As a writer of philosophical dialogues, Plato was in conversa-
tion with both the historical Socrates and Plato’s literary manifestation of
Socrates, and thus also with a whole gallery of other people. To Christian
philosophers, thinking has unfolded as a conversation with God, and for this
same reason it has been difficult to distinguish it from prayer. Therefore, it is
perhaps unsurprising that not only religion, but thought, too, got into trou-
                                                             The Dialogue of Experience        


ble when philosophers such as Immanuel Kant reduced prayer to foolish
monologue (Kant : ). The conversation became one that was based
on the premises of the modern sciences. Previously, it was characterized
by a desire for religious and philosophical insight; now it took the form
of a quest for scientific knowledge, and the art evaporated from the art of
conversation, as it turned into knowledge sharing.
    The foregoing development was not only applauded, but also thwarted
— by the early German Romantics, Søren Kierkegaard, and Friedrich Niet-
zsche, among others. To them, Socrates was not necessarily exemplary, but
their philosophical forms of presentation were related to Plato’s, thanks to
the literary devices they made use of. Since then, especially the philosophi-
cal hermeneutics of the th century has tried to save the art of conversation,
in hermeneutics through the dialogue with tradition in particular, about
which Martin Heidegger and Hans–Georg Gadamer were concerned, which
they practiced, and whose importance they also articulated. However, in
recent years the academic world has been unfavorable to hermeneutics. Pro-
fessorships in philosophical hermeneutics are being discontinued in favor of
something that is often of an analytic philosophical or cognitive–scientific
character. At the same time, hermeneutics is also being discredited in other
humanistic disciplines, for example by literary scholars who — misled by
polemicists such as Hans–Ulrich Gumbrecht — reject it on the basis of a
reductionist understanding of what hermeneutics is. They see hermeneu-
tics as ‘passive reception’ — as distinct from the creative practice in the
form of ‘creative writing,’ for example, which they regard as the opposite
of hermeneutics, and which they believe should be prioritized in the cur-
riculum. The students do not need to interpret texts or other phenomena,
but to express themselves — no matter how they are to become good at
this, including having something to say, if they do not learn how to ‘read
the world.’
    The humanist rejection of hermeneutics is fatal to the Humanities. This
rejection has been facilitated by too little and too poor dialogue between
professional philosophers and other humanist scholars, but it cannot be
explained solely with reference to philosophical introversion. The rejection
is also due to a general contemporary humanist aversion to genuine philo-
sophical thinking, and that is why it is dangerous. The Humanities can do
without philosophy as a discipline, at least in principle, but they cannot

     . Gumbrecht’s polemical–reductionist approach to hermeneutics disfigures his Production of
Presence. See my discussion of Gumbrecht in the chapter “Presence and Somaesthetics” (Nærvær og
somaæstetik) in my book Beautiful Thinking. See also footnote .
     . E.g., B.M. Thomsen’s contribution, “Arts as Cultural Studies — a Humanistic Angle,” at the
conference “Cultural Studies at Arts — Identity and Strategy” at Aarhus University, December ,
.
     Dorthe Jørgensen


do without philosophical thinking. Besides wonder, philosophical thinking
requires the creation of a connection between the part and the whole. With-
out an eye for the universal in the particular, it is not possible to gain insight
into what things mean to us; one is confined to simply registering what
is before us. Insight requires interpretation, and interpretation demands
the gaze that both Vattimo and others have described as characterized by
totality understood as an orientation towards the whole.


. The Orientation towards the Whole

“[T]he life of the spirit is a unity that specificates in the individual vocations
and yet maintains a certain continuity,” Vattimo writes, referring to Wilhelm
Dilthey and Luigi Pareyson (Vattimo : ). Whatever one does, one
expresses all one’s spirituality, and thus the task is to “maintain the unity
of the spiritual life while knowingly accepting one’s own finiteness, and
therefore choosing and accepting one’s own specialization” (Vattimo :
). However, in extension of this, Vattimo also writes that: “It is sometimes
said that the characteristic of philosophers is that they have a certain rapport
(which may even be critical) with totality. Georg Simmel depicted the
philosopher as ‘he who possesses an organ that perceives and reacts to the
totality of Being’ [. . . ] the philosopher has ‘a sense for the wholeness of
things and life’” (Vattimo : –).
    Vattimo’s statement that one is not born a philosopher probably concerns
not only the profession, but also this sense of wholeness. So, no one is born
thinking holistically, but one may learn to think like that, and that is why
the activities of teaching and communication associated with the job of a
philosophy professor are so important. The task is not just to share one’s
knowledge with others, and to make sure that they acquire more knowledge
of the things about which it is possible to have knowledge, for example the
history of philosophy, the characteristics of various positions, the meanings
of concepts, and the use of logical formulas. The task is also to help others
to develop their ability to think holistically, so that they can connect varied
knowledge rather than just archiving what they know, and so that they
can interpret their knowledge rather than resorting to subjective opinion–
making. And to this I add that if the point is not only to educate but also
to form, it must be because there is something to form — to cultivate.
There is something that is innate — and this is true of not just some, but all
— namely, the possibility of becoming someone who knows how to think
holistically, also called a philosopher.
    It is the afore–mentioned possibility that is being ignored by the ‘profes-
sionals.’ The intellectual not only masters a profession, but also manages
                                                   The Dialogue of Experience   


to rise above the knowledge she gains through her profession, and there-
fore she is not limited by her knowledge, but is able to use it to serve the
common good. As a cultural–analytical literary scholar at an American uni-
versity in the s, Said could not refer to intellectuals as philosophers, and
probably could not see them in this light either. However, this shortcoming
is merely an expression of historical contingency. If he had been living a
century earlier in Central Europe, his vocabulary would have been different,
but the object would have been the same: holistic thinking, without which
we are only producers of knowledge and opinion makers. Vattimo expresses
this clearly when he writes that “nobody can seriously ‘specialize’ unless
they are permanently alive to the totality of spiritual life: that is what’s
‘philosophical’ in every human life” (Vattimo : ).
   According to Vattimo, the desire to practice the kind of thinking made
possible by the sense for wholeness, and to pursue the goals it implies —
namely, to focus on the salvation of others, to side with the weak — is
what motivates the philosopher, and according to Said, it is what drives
the intellectual. This desire is not only the precondition of philosophical
thought, but also what justifies it: “[. . . ] I believe that, in any case, if you
forget what drew you into your field, if you forget the political interest that
spurred you, the religious interest, the emancipatory interest in general, you
end up reproducing ‘the crisis of the European sciences’,” Vattimo writes.
That is, “once again theory can’t (in the best of cases) be anything more
than a simple literary exercise, or artistic–philosophical experimentation, or
(more commonly), an exercise in individualism for its own sake, serving
private interests and power” (Vattimo : ).


. The Experience of Beauty

As a consequence, the thinking of the intellectual is philosophical. That is
why she takes political responsibility — because she thinks holistically, not
the other way round. And it is this responsibility, that is, the responsibility
of the intellectual, which the philosopher exhibits when he not only fulfils
his function as a professor, but also thinks philosophically. Philosophical
thinking, whose orientation towards wholeness and political responsibility
the philosopher and the intellectual thus share, may be understood as a
dialogue — and as a conversation not only between two, but between several
participants. Thinking is a conversation with the daemon in the individual,
which Christians may find meaningful to perceive as God’s voice, also called
‘the conscience.’ But thinking is also a conversation with the collective of
other people that, in the written expression of the individual’s thoughts,
is manifested as the imagined reader who co–writes the text. And in addi-
      Dorthe Jørgensen


tion to these two dialogues, there is also a third dialogue of significance to
thought, namely, ‘the dialogue of experience.’ I am not referring only to the
conversation about experience that philosophy is to hermeneutic philoso-
phers, but to a conversation in the experience: a dialogue between different
aspects of the experience, without which both the conversation with the
daemon and the conversation with other people would be unthinkable.
    In order to describe the dialogue in the experience, I will now introduce
my concept of ‘basic experience’ and its three–fold structure. The concept
of ‘basic experience’ is from my book Beautiful Thinking: it comes from
the book’s religio–philosophical implementation of philosophical aesthetics,
hermeneutic phenomenology, and the connections between aesthetics, phe-
nomenology, and hermeneutics. In order to introduce the concept of basic
experience, I must also explain what I mean by words such as ‘aesthetics’
and ‘aesthetic.’ This is necessary because of a widespread tendency to con-
fuse philosophical aesthetics with the philosophy of art. In brief, the central
topic of philosophical aesthetics is not art but the aesthetic experience, and
the aesthetic experience is not identical to the experience of art. Instead,
it is the experience of beauty that is the epitome of aesthetic experience,
but not understood as an experience of something nice and neat, and not
understood as an experience that only art can occasion. On the contrary,
beauty is everything that has a value in itself, and philosophical aesthetics is
about our experience of this ‘having–a–value–in–itself.’
    Philosophical aesthetics was introduced by Alexander Gottlieb Baum-
garten, and conceived within the framework of a philosophy of abilities.
Therefore, I have updated aesthetics based on a way of thinking inspired by
phenomenology and hermeneutics, among other approaches. So I do not
think of the experience of beauty as something that we ourselves have (that
is, ‘do’), but as something that happens to us, the source of which is not
to be found in ourselves, in specific abilities, but in the encounter between
us and the occasion (not the object) of the experience. In Baumgarten’s
work, the so–called lower cognitive abilities are the subjective source of

      . The overall aim of Beautiful Thinking is to develop, with a point of departure in philosophical
aesthetics and hermeneutic phenomenology, a philosophy of experience for all kinds of experience of
transcendence (aesthetic, religious, and metaphysical experiences). At the same time, the ambition
of the book is also to provide a basis for theological aesthetics with a proper philosophical grounding,
i.e., theological aesthetics that is well rooted in philosophical aesthetics and not just in, for example,
art theory. Beautiful Thinking thus provides detailed interpretations of both older and newer theorists,
especially A.G. Baumgarten, Immanuel Kant, Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, but also, for ex-
ample, Hans–Ulrich Gumbrecht, Hermann Schmitz, Gernot Böhme, Wolfgang Welsch, Martin Seel,
and Richard Schusterman. Furthermore, the book contains a comprehensive religio–philosophical
implementation of aesthetics discussing other theorists, including Jean–Louis Chrétien, Eugenio
Trías, K.E. Løgstrup, H.U. von Balthasar, Eberhard Jüngel, Klaas Huizing, Mark C. Taylor, Hannah
Arendt, Hans Joas, and Dieter Henrich.
                                                  The Dialogue of Experience   


the experience of beauty. In Beautiful Thinking I translate Baumgarten’s
terminology into ‘feeling, sensation, and presentiment,’ and I also have a
new interpretation of the topic, according to which it is no longer about a
subject’s sensitive abilities, but subjectivity in the sense of sensitivity. The
experience of beauty happens in this sensitivity, that is, at a level at which
subject and object are not yet constituted. Therefore, the experience of
beauty may be categorized as neither purely subjective nor purely objective;
on the contrary, it transcends such distinctions. For the same reason, I do
not understand the experience of beauty as an experience of something
specific having a value in itself, let alone as an experience of what value that
something is supposed to have. On the contrary, I interpret the experience
of beauty as an experience of the very fact that anything at all may be
valuable in itself.


. The Basic Experience

Intellectually, we necessarily approach the sensitivity in which the experi-
ence of beauty occurs from the level of the understanding’s subject/object–
structured way of thinking. Therefore, to us this sensitivity appears as an
intermediate world, and in Beautiful Thinking I thus give it this name. It is
at the sensitive and therefore aesthetic level of experience constituted by
the intermediate world that things start to appear. This aesthetic–sensitive
level of experience is the precondition making it possible for phenomena
to appear as well as permitting the understanding generated by their ap-
pearance. Thus, in Beautiful Thinking I conclude that what was understood
as ‘phenomenological’ or ‘hermeneutic’ experience in the th century
had already been discussed earlier in history, but as ‘aesthetic’ experience.
Furthermore, this kinship not only indicates what hermeneutic and phe-
nomenological thinkers such as Heidegger and Gadamer could not see,
namely that their philosophies were not critical alternatives but creative
updates of philosophical aesthetics, but is also an argument in favor of con-
sidering what I refer to as ‘basic experience’ as something that is aesthetic
in the sense of being sensitively sensuous.
    When I use the expression ‘basic experience,’ I am referring to a level of
experience, not to any specific experience. It does not concern any particular
single experience, but the attentive beginning of all perception, without
which we would have no experience, nor would we have any knowledge.
The concept ‘basic experience’ thus denotes our very sensitively sensu-
ous ‘being–there–in–the–universe–together–with–whatever–else–there–is,’
without which there would be no consciousness. As mentioned before,
this existence called basic experience is sensitive — in it we sense the exis-
    Dorthe Jørgensen


tent: ourselves in our being present, and that with which we are together
in this presence. In early philosophical aesthetics it was already explained
that sensitive experiences provide cognition, but of a different kind than
understanding’s logical or pure cognition; therefore I would rather refer to
it as ‘insight.’ And in Beautiful Thinking I add that the insight associated with
sensitive experience is not only due to its sensitivity, but also to the faith, in
the sense of trust, with which we respond to the sensitively provided insight.
Therefore, the basic experience includes not only the duality of sensitivity
and insight of which philosophical aesthetics was already aware. On the
contrary, the basic experience is characterized by a three–fold structure, for
besides sensitivity and insight, it also includes trust. In Beautiful Thinking
this is referred to as the trinity of sensation, faith, and comprehension, and it
is among these three aspects of the experience that an immanent dialogue
unfolds.
    Thanks to sensation we sensitively comprehend ourselves, one another,
and the world around us, and we spontaneously have faith in what we com-
prehend: we trust the insight we receive through our sensitive experience.
We sense, comprehend, and have faith in what we comprehend when our
experience is something that happens to us, instead of being something we,
ourselves, do. This exchange, in which sensation includes comprehension
that gives insight which produces meaning because we rely on the insight
provided by the sensation — this ‘dialogue’ in the experience — may be de-
scribed using the ancient aesthetic concept of ‘unity in diversity.’ However,
such a use of this concept presupposes that we reinterpret the concept so it
does not represent a reduction of the different to the same, but an associa-
tion of something that is and will remain different. Our use of the concept
of unity in diversity to describe the dialogue in experience requires that we
do not understand unity as a synthesis that eliminates the uniqueness of the
individual elements connected by it — instead, we must see unity as a join-
ing of something that retains its uniqueness in the association. For the three
aspects of basic experience, that is, sensation, faith, and comprehension, are
not in a hierarchical relationship with one another as are the religious, the
aesthetic, and the philosophical in G.W.F. Hegel’s phenomenology. Sensa-
tion, faith, and comprehension are rather equiprimordial, as are attunement
and understanding in Heidegger’s ontology.


. World Poetry

According to Walter Benjamin, philosophical thinking is qualified, unlike
rational cognition, through its presentation of ideas and interpretation of
phenomena. Slightly akin to the idea referenced by Vattimo, that philosophi-
                                                                 The Dialogue of Experience          


cal thinking is characterized by an orientation towards the whole, Benjamin
thought that philosophy strives to present ideas, but without aiming directly
at its goal. Instead, philosophy digresses to the phenomena; this is the way
it tries to present ideas. The orientation towards ideas, which is thus a con-
tributing factor in philosophy’s contemplation of phenomena, means that
philosophy is not just descriptive, but interpretive: Its effort to present ideas
gives perspective to its handling of phenomena. So, philosophical thinking
is oriented towards a different level than those of phenomena and concepts,
namely, the level of ideas. However, we should not look for this level some-
where else, in a distant transcendence, but in the phenomenal world, that is,
in immanence. The ideas ‘inhabit’ the phenomena, in which they do not
act as fixed entities, however, but as potential for experience and knowledge
that must be actualized by philosophy, whose medium is the concept. This
is precisely why philosophy’s presentation of ideas is both necessary and
infinite, and it is also the reason why the presentation elevates philosophy’s
handling of phenomena from mere description to interpretation that gives
insight.
    Or to put this slightly differently: “Reality is ambiguous: It has several
layers,” I wrote in the preface to a book entitled World Poetry ( Jørgensen :
). “This does not concern the ancient idea that there is another world to
be found somewhere else. On the contrary, this concerns the world here
being multidimensional. The sensual world is sprinkled with super–sensual
meaning. There is a surplus of meaning for those who seize the moment,
when the sun splits the clouds, or the door is left ajar” ( Jørgensen :
). From the preface, it also appears that the experience just described is
an experience of a surplus of meaning, and that it is universal to human
beings. “It is the experience that something may have a value in itself,
formerly called beauty,” the preface says. “Art and philosophy are both
able to intercept and shape this experience which emerges from the poetic
perception of the world. A perception which is important to the individual
as well as to community: It induces us to live — in harmony” ( Jørgensen
: ).
    The ontologies articulated in Benjamin’s theory of ideas and in the pref-
ace of World Poetry, respectively, are interrelated as follows: The kind of

     . This book, whose text is in both English and Danish, was published parallel to an exhibition
that carried the same title. The book and the exhibition were the results of my collaboration with a
visual artist and of a joint research stay in Damascus (spring ). Both book and exhibition consisted
of oil paintings and thought–images (in the exhibition written on white banners that hung alongside
the paintings). The texts did not comment on the paintings, and the paintings did not illustrate the
texts. Both the texts and the paintings were works in their own right, but they communicated with
each other thanks to their common starting point in the above–mentioned stay in Damascus and the
understanding of reality reflected in the book’s preface, which also served as the introduction to the
exhibition.
    Dorthe Jørgensen


experience that is depicted in the preface is not just subjective, nor is it
simply objective. Instead, it is a subjective actualization of objectively given
potential for experience — a potential that constitutes a ‘more’ in the world,
and is perceived as a poetic surplus in it. This is precisely why reality is
ambiguous. It is both material and immaterial; the material is ‘inhabited’ by
immateriality; the world is packed with potential to experience a surplus,
also called beauty. Or rather, the intermediate world contains this potential
for experience, and it is also where it is actualized, namely, when those
experiences happen which the potential makes possible. Hence, in the in-
termediate world we are presented with something we ourselves did not
create, but to whose appearance and activity we do contribute. We con-
tribute without being subjects of what is happening, for in our susceptibility
we not only perceive potential not created by us; this reception is itself
productive, as it actualizes the potential as experience.


. World–engaged Philosophy

I will gather together the inspiration from Benjamin and the idea of world
poetry in an argument for ‘world–engaged philosophy,’ which is appli-
cable, I think, to Vattimo’s lifelong work as an intellectually responsible
philosopher. Today, you often get the impression that there are only two
options: ‘school philosophy’ and ‘applied philosophy.’ School philosophy
clings in a reactionary way to the ivory tower, whereas applied philosophy
relates opportunistically to current trends and demands, which it sees as
an opportunity to escape the tower. But there is a third option as well:
‘world–engaged philosophy,’ which is philosophy that honors its own name
by unfolding as free, open, and questioning thought, and which practices
this philosophia in a contemporary way by being attentive to our experiences.
World–engaged philosophy engages an exploration of the experiences of
oneself and others in a freely reflecting and thus openly questioning way. It
tries to find and articulate the universal in the specific experience without
losing sight of the uniqueness of what is individual, which requires both that
the experience be dwelt on responsively, and the courage to interpret. In
this way, world–engaged philosophy contributes the most important thing
philosophy can deliver, which is the understanding–seeking actualization
of not–yet–actualized potential for interpretation, and the critical perspec-
tivization of the existent — a truism–subversive reflection — constituted by
this actualization.
    The concept of basic experience contributes to the practice of world–
engaged philosophy, however theoretical the concept itself is. The idea of a
dialogue between sensation, faith, and comprehension at the level of basic
                                                  The Dialogue of Experience   


experience implies that art, religion, and thought are ontologically linked,
despite their historical divorce caused by the modernization process. Art,
religion, and thought are products of different aspects of a common experi-
ential spring, that is, sensation, faith, and comprehension, which explains why
many concrete experiences of a surplus of meaning are often categorized
as both religious and aesthetic. It also explains the ease with which not
only the beautiful, but also the true and the good, were previously referred
to using the same terminology, that is, the terminology of the philosophy
of beauty. Indeed, God was not only true and good, but also beautiful; he
was the unity of the true, the good, and the beautiful manifested in his
beauty, which was thus not allegorical. Furthermore, the concept ‘basic
experience’ and the philosophy of experience, within which it is conceived,
make it possible to contribute to various disciplines and professions, for
example, the study of art, theology, and the philosophy of science, and both
practical and philosophical pedagogy, in ways that facilitate dialogue across
borders which are otherwise apparently insurmountable. Over time, much
power has been wasted on arguing in a hierarchy–producing way for the
prevailing status of belief or understanding, compared to sensuality and
emotionality, thus fortifying the borders drawn by modernity. In contrast,
the philosophy of experience from which I have now lifted the veil a little
appeals to an exploration of the dialogue between art, religion, and thought,
which human existence invites thanks to the equiprimordial relationship
between sensation, faith, and comprehension, and the dialogue unfolding
in experience.


. Theory and Practice

After the publication of The Responsibility of the Philosopher, Vattimo and
Santiago Zabala have committed themselves to what they call ‘hermeneutic
communism.’ This commitment does not only show that Vattimo’s work as
a philosopher remains world–engaged. It also reveals how closely connected
theory and practice are to him, and it agrees with my view mentioned in
the introduction of this presentation, namely that theory in the sense of
thought is a practice in itself. In Hermeneutic Communism, Vattimo and Zabala
differentiate between ‘the weak and those in power,’ not between ‘the weak
and the strong,’ for the weak are strong thanks to the ‘weak thought’ they
share with their hermeneutic communist allies. Those in power encompass
the owners of capital as well as ruling politicians and ‘professionals;’ in
Hermeneutic Communism, the latter are identical to the majority of university
philosophers. Those in power lean on the metaphysics they reproduce and
refer to in order to legitimize their exercise of power. This metaphysics is the
      Dorthe Jørgensen


notion that reality is identical to the given, which epistemologically means
that reality is limited to what can be known scientifically. In the perspective
of the philosophy of history, it also means that the past could not have
been any different and that the future is predictable, as per the ‘policy of
necessity’ and the current absence of alternative future scenarios. According
to Vattimo and Zabala, this ‘metaphysical realism’ is an expression of the fact
that the people in power are not thinking, as well as being the reason why
they are not thinking, for to think is not to act or to describe, but to interpret.
However, interpretations change the interpreted, and thought thus has
a practical effect — not only as theory put into practice, but precisely
as thought. Thought changes the world by interpreting it; according to
Vattimo and Zabala, it is therefore pointless to criticize hermeneutics for
being conservative. Hermeneutics is rather anarchic thanks to the ‘recovery’
of metaphysical realism that it provides by being interpretive — a recovery
that is the ‘strong weakening’ which hermeneutics shares with the weak, to
whom the given is never a matter of course but a constant challenge.
    In accordance with this understanding of the relationship between the-
ory and practice, Vattimo and Zabala have not formulated a political pro-
gram for subsequent translation into political action. Their preparation of
Hermeneutic Communism is a political act in itself, insofar as the book mani-
fests the hermeneutics it deals with: an interpretive rather than descriptive
and thus not conservative but recovering way of thinking. Furthermore,
their book is also political in the sense that being a manifestation of such
interpretive and, therefore, critical thought, it tries to awaken and release
the potential for something similar outside the book itself — in its readers
and in society. According to Hermeneutic Communism, it is also generally
the case that the task of thought is not to provide programs and action
instructions available for a practice which is thus exhibited as thoughtless
and ‘theoriebedürftig.’ On the contrary, the task is to mobilize the political
power that thought itself makes out — to mobilize it in favor of releasing
the potential for thinking that the practical world offers, incarnated in the
weak (understood both as the oppressed groups of society and as that which
is overlooked because it is marginalized by the prevailing view). Such a
reflexively provided release of the reflexive potential of society is the way to
recover metaphysical realism, and this recovery is a prerequisite for being
able to articulate alternative future scenarios, and thus also to encourage
something else than what is promoted by the policy of necessity. So there

     . Heidegger distinguished between überkommen (getting over in the sense of leaving something
behind) and verwinden (getting over in the sense of coming to terms with it). The latter is translated
‘recovering.’ According to Heidegger, metaphysics (the predominant ontological structures) will
not disappear, but perhaps recover (i.e. recover from itself, from the oblivion of its own essence as
metaphysics) (Heidegger :  ff.).
                                                                The Dialogue of Experience         


is no need for new theory seen as a basis for another practice. But there
is a need to think differently — then practice will also change, because
thought itself is practical, as said above. Thought is even the crucial practice.
It determines the future, because the way in which we think defines the
limits of what we can imagine, and thus also of what we do.


. ‘Samtale’ or ‘konversation’

If the attempt of hermeneutic communism to free the political power of
thought is to be truly world–engaged, it is not enough, however, that the
hermeneutic thinker conceptualizes this option. He must also listen to the
thought expressed in the thinking articulated by the weak. So in order to
be world–engaged, hermeneutic communism must be dialogical, but that is
also the precondition for it being hermeneutical. Or as Vattimo writes in The
Responsibility of the Philosopher: “The only emancipation I can conceive is an
eternal life in charity, a life of heeding others and responding to others in
dialogue” (Vattimo : ).
    Nevertheless, Vattimo has also opposed dialogue, supposedly fearing
that it dominates all conflict thanks to an inherent will to consensus. But
it is wrong to link dialogue with harmonism. Literary history informs
us that dialogue is related to the philosophical essay, and that they are
both distinguished by being polyphonic media for the searching reflection
called ‘aesthetic’ by Kant and Baumgarten. Both the dialogue and the essay
are thus open forms that do not just explain what they treat but want to
understand it. What they treat is not just described and determined, but
explored and interpreted, and as seen above, interpretation is a critical
practice. Interpretation is critical both in the sense of the word articulated
by Kant — its quest for understanding implies a study of the limits of
understanding — and in the sense highlighted in Hermeneutic Communism:
The interpretation is ‘metaphysics–recovering,’ which means that it sides
with the weak by definition. And when someone sides against those in
power, there is not just peace and harmony. Understood as a medium of
the interpretive practice represented by the common thinking practiced
through dialogue, the dialogue challenges the powerful, and it does not
only allow for the critical element missed by Vattimo. The dialogue is itself
a source of criticism.
    The dialogue is the above–mentioned source; it is also a framework for

    . An opinion of this kind was expressed by Vattimo in the discussion following my presentation
“The Dialogue of Experience” at the conference “Effetti d’interpretazione” at the University of Turin,
March –, .
    Dorthe Jørgensen


and a manifestation of critical thought, and it is a critical counter–image: a
listening — offering time, ear, and understanding — that does not distinguish
the current procedural democracy, but without which democracies are not
democratic. It is not in dialogue but in conversation and in conversational
democracy that the will to consensus threatens to dominate everything
conflictual and to blur the power relations. In Danish, the English word
‘conversation’ can be translated both as ‘samtale’ and as ‘konversation,’ and
these two words have different connotations. This duality is revealing; it
points out both the gift and the risk associated with conversation. It is the
term ‘samtale’ that in Danish is used for serious exchanges between people:
schools invite parents to parents’ evenings which are known as ‘school–
home samtaler,’ psychiatrists have developed ‘samtaler’ for the relatives of
their patients, and priests offer ‘pastoral–care samtaler.’ These ‘samtaler’ fail
if they are not dialogical, but the same cannot be said of ‘konversationer.’
On the contrary, ‘konversationer’ tend to be monological, regardless of the
number of participants, and they become something else, namely ‘samtaler’,
if they become dialogical. As an example of a ‘konversation,’ one might
think of the small talk taking place around a dinner table at which people
who are strangers to each other are seated. At such a table there is not
only the risk of monological self–promotion, but also of monologue that in
addition to being empty and non–committal is also conflict–avoiding. That
is precisely the danger of democracy: that it descends into ‘konversation.’
This risk is not hypothetical but real — it is known from the ‘aesthetization’
of politics that has blurred the difference between talk show and political
debate by staging the debate as a show. In the show the participants yell and
use big gestures, they swear, insinuate, and offer lewd comments, but none
of them take any of it seriously, and they all cloud the real conflicts. The
show is harmless and does not change the world because it is devoid of
dialogue and thus of thinking.


. Democracy as Event

When philosophers are intellectual rather than professional, they practice
world–engaged philosophy, not school philosophy or applied philosophy.
Intellectual philosophers do not just describe the world but interpret it,
and according to The Responsibility of the Philosopher dialogue is the way to
achieve the kind of emancipation that is driven by interpretation, because
interpretation recovers the metaphysical realism discussed in Hermeneutic
Communism. Dialogues are open and polyphonic thanks to the searching
reflection by which they are constituted; so dialogue is the medium of
interpretive thinking. But in the words of Kant and Baumgarten, this means
                                                   The Dialogue of Experience   


that the reflection unfolding in dialogue is ‘aesthetic’ rather than ‘determin-
ing.’ Intellectual philosophers think aesthetically, whereas the professionals’
descriptive monologues simply identify observed phenomena without re-
flecting upon them.
     The foregoing confirms the interpretation of hermeneutics previously
alluded to. I am referring to my interpretation presented in Beautiful Think-
ing, according to which hermeneutics is not the alternative to aesthetics that
hermeneutic philosophers present it to be. Like hermeneutic phenomenol-
ogy (Heidegger), philosophical hermeneutics (Gadamer) is a ‘reinvention’ of
philosophical aesthetics. This statement does not reflect a diminution of phe-
nomenology and hermeneutics; in Beautiful Thinking, the word ‘reinvention’
is not used in a pejorative way. Instead, the point is that the hermeneutic
phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics of the th century neither
simply dismissed th century philosophical aesthetics nor merely repeated
it. Phenomenology and hermeneutics actualized aesthetics on the historical
conditions with which th century thought was presented. According to
Beautiful Thinking, there is thus greater kinship between aesthetics, phe-
nomenology, and hermeneutics than phenomenology and hermeneutics
have recognized and acknowledged; but the book also shows that aesthetics
was changed by its reinvention. The latter means, inter alia, that it was in
a desubjectivized form that aesthetic thinking had a ‘comeback.’ Unlike
in the th century, aesthetic thinking was no longer something done by a
subject, but rather something happening to existence: aesthetic thinking
was actualized as experience, and the experience as event.
     The responsiveness of the world–engaged philosopher must precisely
serve the possibility that the ‘event’ can happen — that genuine experi-
ence can occur, not only for the individual philosopher but also among
people. World–engaged philosophers engage in dialogue with the outside
world, but not to agree on what is right and wrong. Instead, they seek to
hear the thought expressed in that which is articulated by the oppressed
and the marginalized. They lend voice to the weak, but in recognition of
their strength. Being responsive, the world–engaged philosopher creates
space for the event — the happening kind of experience — that thought
is if it is beautiful, that is, if it is free, open, and questioning. That is the
task of the intellectual of our day: to create such spaces in a society that
despite its formal democracy renders beautiful thinking, and thus genuine
democracy, impossible because of metaphysical realism. Formal democracy
is not a guarantee of genuine democracy. But democracy of the genuine and
true kind occurs locally and momentarily as people listen in the aesthetic–
sensitive way that allows them to hear the idea of [B?][B?]what is said,
and thus to apprehend the universal (as opposed to the general) that can
be shared (because it both exceeds and retains what is individual). World–
     Dorthe Jørgensen


engaged philosophers who understand thought as the practice it is, and
who therefore listen and interpret rather than applying theories given in
advance, draw magic circles around themselves and the participants of the
dialogues they engage in. Together they and their interlocutors embody
the democracy which is otherwise non–existent, except as a caricature in
contemporary media, parliaments, schools, and universities.


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