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An Incomplete Dialectics? Rosa on the Good Life

‘A better world is possible, and it can be recognized by the fact that its central yardstick is no longer domination and possession but listening and responding’ (p. 762, original emphases), writes Hartmut Rosa in closing his recent effort to fathom the ‘other’ of alienation: modernity’s promise to realize a yearning for deep connections to self and others, things, nature, history, God – to ‘world’. It is a culturally and institutionally enabled mode of being-in-the-world whose relational dynamism is focused in its key concept and acoustic metaphor – resonance. The book can be read as Rosa’s endeavour to think through the consequences of modernity’s accelerating growth logic first fielded in book form in Social Acceleration (2013). In Resonanz, whose publication in English should not be too far off, Rosa turns to the potentials for a ‘good’ or ‘successful’ life; the chances of its actualization are said to depend on the quality of our relationship to the world. The crucial difference to other critical analyses of modern life – from social philosophy to happiness research – is Rosa’s departure from a resource-focused approach. Modernity depends on ‘dynamic stabilization’, the reproduction of the ‘status quo’ by means of escalating growth, itself dependent on an accelerating and competitive run on resources. A ‘good life’ can no longer be envisaged beyond an extension of our ‘reach’ into the world, a grab for material, social, cultural and corporeal goods. Even when underpinned by emancipatory hope, a prevalent social science focus on resources is for Rosa yet another sign that we find it difficult at best to transcend a mind-set bent on