1. I am very grateful to the Gerda-Henkel-Stiftung (Germany) for providing me with a research-grant between October 2007 and June 2008.
2. Denoting the German term ‘Sinn’, comprising the full range of‘sinnhaft’, ‘sinnerfüllt’, ‘sinngebend’ etc., but also meaning openness—as a special sense—for a spatial and temporal horizon of one's own life and of the lives (past, present and future) of others.
3. According to E. Straus’ definition communication is sympathetically being with the world, comprising both sympathic and antipathic relations of the type striving for…or fleeing froM&Hellip; Sympathetic relationship is due to our sensing, prior to the gnostic intentional mode of perceiving. Cf. Erwin Straus,Vom Sinn der Sinne. Ein Beitrag zur Grundlegung der Psychologie, 2nd extended edition, Berlin/Göttingen/Heidelberg: Springer 1956, esp. pp. 329–350.
4. Helmuth Plessner,Lachen und Weinen. Eine Untersuchung der Grenzen menschlichen Verhaltens(1940), inGesammelte Schriften, VII, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1980. Here Plessner undertook an analyses in collaboration with the biologist and physiologist F.J.J. Buytendijk at the University of Groningen. HereafterLW.
5. Unfortunally, there is not enough space to appreciate Plessner's thoughtful analyses in a separate interpretation. I am only using them as a vantage point for my further steps.