Responding to the Extra-Ordinary – Bernhard Waldenfels (1934–2026)

The work of Bernhard Waldenfels represents a pivotal stage in German phenomenology of the second half of the twentieth century: It may not be an exaggeration to call his "responsive phenomenology" the most significant German innovation in phenomenology since Heidegger.This innovation would have been unthinkable were it not for Waldenfels' deep engagement with French phenomenology--to whose reception in the German-speaking world he contributed more than anyone else.Drawing on Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, Waldenfels transforms the basic phenomenological concept of intentionality into that of responsivity.His work is informed by the conviction that perceiving, acting, and speaking can no longer, or at least not primarily, be grasped by referring to a constituting consciousness, but by describing the ways in which we deal with and respond to a prior otherness or foreignness.Subjectivity only emerges a posteriori (nachträglich); it is not an autonomous entity that begins spontaneously with itself.In recent years, Bernhard Waldenfels has frequently uttered a statement that is surprising for a representative of phenomenology, a discipline averse to all eternal ideas: "I remain a Platonist."This fits well with the title of his last major monograph: Plato.Between Logos and Pathos (Waldenfels, 2017).This self-description is less surprising when one considers that he passed his state examination in 1961 in Greek, Latin, and history and taught these subjects at a Munich high school before devoting his dissertation to Socratic philosophy.He has retained a lasting passion for the raw, Platonic thinking-far removed from the logic of ideas-that saw the beginning of philosophy in wonder and awe, rather than in questions about a "something" whose reason or essence might be fathomed.The common starting point for both Plato and phenomenology is "passive" experience, in which something happens to us or befalls us that we ourselves, as autonomous subjects, did not will or intend.In Waldenfels's interpretation, Platonic wonder and awe are forms of engaging with these experi-