What can a phenomenology of the strange be? In his new book Bernhard Waldenfels, Germany’s outstanding phenomenologist, poignantly outlines its crucial traits. The key themes are: order, pathos, answer, body, attentiveness, interculturality.

As the extraordinary, the strange arises in the form of disturbance, deviations and surfeit on the border limits of given orders. The question thus arises how we can approach the strange without stripping it of the very thorn that renders it alien. The result is a responsive form of phenomenology that goes beyond all intentions and rules and assumes recalcitrance and countervailing claims. An answering self is the corporeal self that is never completely with itself. The strange begins at home. It begins with the attentiveness involved when we notice something. And it ends not least with interculturality, which is also a challenge for philosophy. Global thought is neither to be expected nor desirable in this context. The attempt to transgress borders without eliding them is part of the adventures of alien-ness between cultures. It is authors such as Bakhtin, Freud and Mauss, such as Calvino, Kafka, Musil and Valéry, who add the special spice to the phenomenology of the strange.

Plato