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The contribution clarifies the concept of resonance as a mode of relationship consisting of four elements: 1) affection, 2) self-efficacy, 3) transformation and 4) essential uncontrollability. Reso...

The extensive, profound and influential oeuvre of Charles Taylor has inspired generations of thinkers. But how can we explore such a body of work? As we try to show in this Special Issue: by understanding him literally and making use of his notion of moral maps – or, differently put, by ‘mapping’ Charles Taylor. As he is far too modest a person to reveal to us his own moral atlas, we have decided to seize the occasion of his 85th birthday to ask several of his renowned colleagues, students and interlocutors to contribute to the reconstruction of such a map. This introduction develops three ‘mountain ridges’ in this cartography – a philosophical anthropology in spatial terms, the indispensable motif of dialogue, and the role of political life –, around which the following 24 illuminating appraisals are grouped.

A society is modern when it operates in a mode of dynamic stabilization, i.e., when it systematically requires growth, innovation and acceleration in order to maintain its socio-economic and institutional status quo. Within this frame, this essay presents an analysis of modern society that explains the structural features which lead into this escalatory cycle. Secondly, it identifies the corresponding cultural “imperatives for growth” that translate the structural requirement of growth, acceleration and innovation into a strategic necessity in the humans’ search for a good life. Thirdly, it presents an alternative conception of the good life, based on the concept of resonance, which also proves to be an indispensable tool for a critique of social conditions.

Governmentality studies and social theories agree that in contemporary societies the idea of autonomy is no longer simply an ideal or an individual aspiration but a social obligation. In an attempt to clarify the meaning of autonomy in this day and age, this paper asks how individuals perceive and negotiate the various dimensions of autonomy and how this affects the functioning of late-modern institutions. The empirical insights derived from a qualitative study provide a differentiated picture of how individuals pursue their claims to autonomy and comply with institutional demands for autonomy in everyday practice. By presenting seven types of late-modern "autonomy managers," the analysis evinces a usurpation of autonomous agency that renders individuals the institutional editors of the contemporary contradictions, deficits, and tensions that occur in their everyday interactions. This comes at the price of notionally free but exhausted actors running short of all kinds of resources.

The paper starts by identifying dynamic stabilization as a defining feature of modern societies. This term refers to the fact that such a society requires (material) growth, (technological) augmentation and high rates of (cultural) innovation in order to reproduce its structure and to preserve the socioeconomic and political status quo. The subsequent sections explore the mechanisms and consequences of this mode of social reproduction, proceeding in three steps. First, three key aspects or ‘motors’ of dynamization are identified, namely the mechanisms of (socio-economic) appropriation, (socio-cultural) acceleration and (socio-political) activation. In the second step, we argue that this ‘Triple-A-Mode’ of dynamic stabilization necessarily entails a logic of incessant escalation which eventually threatens to undermine itself, leading to a multifaceted process of destabilization. Unmistakable signs of this can be seen in the current financial, democratic, ecological and psychosocial crises. The third and last part briefly and very preliminarily sketches out the possible contours of a ‘post-growth’ society which could move beyond the current mode of dynamic stabilization.

The function of the economy and of democratic politics should be to allow for a good life for people, to better, not to worsen their situation. Economic growth is not only a play with numbers over time, it is a concept deeply engrained in the social imaginaries and socio-economic structures of Western, post-1945 societies. By reducing social conflicts, the prospect of steady economic growth also justified the privatisation of the good life. The society is considered modern when it operates in a mode of 'dynamic stabilisation', i.e. when it systematically requires growth, innovation and acceleration for its structural reproduction and in order to maintain its socio-economic and institutional status quo. The capitalistic mode of production is a central motor, but dynamic stabilisation extends well beyond the economic sphere. This chapter provides an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book.

This essay focuses on the debate between Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, and, more specifically, on whether social critique should focus on the resources for a good life (redistribution) or on the quality of social relationships (recognition) – or on both. In particular, Rosa argues that social criticism should focus on relationships indeed, but not just on social ones. The concept of resonance that he proposes is also crucial. If the process of appropriation (through participation) fails, we end up in states of alienation. And, as Fraser’s work suggests, under capitalist and patriarchal conditions, there is a high risk of this due to social acceleration, competition, and inequality.

The claim I want to make in this article is, in short, first, that democratic theory for the most part has seriously neglected the temporal preconditions of liberal democracy and, second, that it therefore fails to adequately grasp some fundamental aspects of the crisis of democratic self-determination in the contemporary global age. In its first part, the article seeks to demonstrate that the history of modernity is an ongoing process of social acceleration and that most of the phenomena we currently grasp under the concept of “globalization” can in fact best be understood as instances or consequences of the latest wave of social acceleration. In the second and main part of this article, the consequences of this acceleratory character of modernity for the plausibility, legitimacy and possibility of political democracy are systematically explored. The main argument is that the speed-up of society at first enabled and supported democratization, but beyond a certain critical threshold, the reverse effect oc...

If we are to find the criteria for critical analyses of social arrangements and processes not in some abstract, universalist framework, but from the guiding ‘self-interpretations’ of the societies in question, as contemporary contextualist and ‘communitarian’ approaches to social philosophy suggest, the vexing question arises as to where these self-interpretations can be found and how they are identified. The paper presents a model according to which there are four interdependent as well as partially autonomous spheres or ‘levels’ of socially relevant self-interpretation that have to be taken into account equally in order to provide a sound basis for social and political criticism. Thus, it is from the tensions and incoherences between (A) social ideas and doctrines, (B) social institutions and practices, (C) individual beliefs and convictions, and (D) body-practices and habits that social pathologies can be identified and possible solutions can be envisaged.

As the contributions to this volume virtuously demonstrate and illustrate with overwhelming evidence, the nature as well as the scope of the space between idleness and leisure, indolence and pastime are as murky and mysterious as they remain fascinating and attractive to the scholars analysing these phenomena. Most strikingly, it turns out to be virtually impossible to arrive at neat definitions of, for example, leisure, or of idleness, for the meaning of these concepts, and even more so the normative evaluation of the corresponding practices and attitudes, appear to be matters of permanent and maybe even ‘essential’ contestation. They are contested across time and between different social groups or philosophical attitudes (see Gallie 1956 on the notion of essentially contested concepts).