Editorial to JBSP Special Issue on the Phenomenology of Listening (52:4) Phenomenology of Listening

Abstract

It is not a coincidence that we often use acoustic metaphors in order to describe the relation between interiority and exteriority. The sense of hearing can be understood as the door to the soul, but it is also essential for a human being’s openness to the external world. Moreover, there is an obvious phonetic connection between Vernunft (the German word for “reason”) and Vernehmen (the German word for “hearing” or “perceiving a sound”), which implies that thinking is particularly related to listening. While Derrida’s criticism of logoand phonocentrism assumes an underlying “metaphysics of the logos, of presence and consciousness” where “thinking to oneself”means “hearing oneself speak” (and thus ignoring the trace of absence in the chain of signification), the contributors to this special issue explore listening as the bond between impression and expression, between call and response, and as one’s link par excellence to the Other— thereby concentrating on what eludes the apparent identity between reason, language, and reality. The collection of articles in this issue originated in a series of lectures and research seminars that I organized at the Center for the Study of Jewish Thought in Modern Culture, University of Copenhagen, in connection with my “Semper Ardens” Fellowship within the Humanities and Social Sciences, sponsored by the Danish Carlsberg Foundation (grant CF16-0517). In these events, which took place in 2017-2018, a multi-disciplinary approach to a phenomenology of listening was developed with a special emphasis on the foreignness of the word, voice, or speech experienced by a person who becomes moved and de-centered by more or less harmonious or conflictual events of resonance in-between subjectivity and alterity. The articles in this special issue focus on various aspects of a phenomenology of listening. Thematically and in terms of the disciplines involved, this special issue can be divided in two parts: the first three contributions in Part I address hermeneutical, theological, and anthropological aspects of listening; the last three contributions in Part II combine existential philosophy, ethics and poetry, while also addressing psycho(patho)logical issues.