Receptivity, or receptive agency, is a practical capacity and source of

normativity Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good, desirable, or permissible, and others as bad, undesirable, or impermissible. A Norm (philosophy), norm in this sense means a standard for evaluatin ...

, which, according to the philosopher

Nikolas Kompridis Nikolas Kompridis (; born 1953) is a Canadian philosopher and political theorist. His major published work addresses the direction and orientation of Frankfurt School critical theory; the legacy of philosophical romanticism; and the aesthetic d ...

, has both

ontological Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every ...

and

ethical Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches include normative ethics, applied e ...

dimensions, and refers to a mode of listening and "normative response" to demands arising outside the self, as well as "a way by which we might become more attuned to our pre-reflective understanding of the world, to our inherited

ontologies In information science, an ontology encompasses a representation, formal naming, and definitions of the categories, properties, and relations between the concepts, data, or entities that pertain to one, many, or all domains of discourse. More ...

," thereby generating non-instrumental possibilities for social change and self-transformation. Kompridis has argued for the importance of receptivity to democratic politics,

romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...

and

critical theory Critical theory is a social, historical, and political school of thought and philosophical perspective which centers on analyzing and challenging systemic power relations in society, arguing that knowledge, truth, and social structures are ...

.Nikolas Kompridis, ''Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future'' (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), pp. 199-210.

References

External links

"A Politics of Receptivity".
Special issue of ''Ethics and Global Politics'', Vol 4, No 4 (2011), guest editor Nikolas Kompridis. Critical theory Concepts in ethics Political theories {{ethics-stub