Toward a Synthesis of Hartmut Rosa and John Vervaeke
I. Introduction
Something has gone wrong with modern life—not at the level of material provision, which has never been more abundant, but at the level of meaning, connection, and felt significance. In recent years, two intellectually ambitious frameworks have emerged that offer comprehensive diagnoses of this condition and affirmative visions of what recovery might look like. Hartmut Rosa, the German sociologist and social theorist, has developed a theory of resonance as the counter-concept to alienation—a mode of vibrant, responsive relation between self and world. John Vervaeke, the Canadian cognitive scientist and philosopher, has articulated an account of the “meaning crisis” rooted in the collapse of traditional frameworks for wisdom and transcendence, proposing relevance realization and participatory knowing as the cognitive-existential capacities that must be recovered.
These projects emerge from distinct disciplinary traditions—Rosa from critical theory and phenomenology, Vervaeke from cognitive science and ancient philosophy—yet a closer examination reveals striking convergences. The central argument advanced here is that Rosa’s concept of resonance and Vervaeke’s concept of participatory knowing are convergent theoretical vocabularies describing the same fundamental phenomenon: a responsive, transformative mode of relation between agent and world that constitutes the core of meaningful existence. Integrating these frameworks yields a richer understanding of human flourishing and the modern conditions that imperil it.
II. The Phenomenology of Responsive Encounter
Rosa’s theory of resonance begins with a phenomenological description of what it feels like when our relationship to the world is alive rather than dead, responsive rather than mute. Resonance, for Rosa, is characterized by four interconnected features: being genuinely affected and touched by something beyond ourselves; experiencing ourselves as capable of reaching back and being received; undergoing mutual transformation in which neither self nor world remains as it was; and an element of uncontrollability—resonance cannot be manufactured or instrumentalized but has an element of gift that exceeds our capacity for mastery.
Vervaeke’s account of participatory knowing exhibits a remarkably parallel structure. Participatory knowing is the mode of cognition in which the agent and the arena—Vervaeke’s term for the world as a field of affordances—co-constitute one another. The agent is not a detached observer representing an external reality but a participant whose very being is shaped by and shapes the arena in which it is embedded.
The convergence becomes visible when we place these descriptions side by side. Both thinkers insist that the mode of relation they describe is non-instrumental: it is not about using the world or extracting value from it, but about being in a reciprocal dance of mutual affecting and being-affected. Both emphasize transformation: the self that emerges from resonance or participatory knowing is not the same self that entered the encounter. Both point to a reciprocity that is ontological rather than merely social. And both recognize an element of gratuity: this mode of relation cannot be forced or technologically guaranteed, which is precisely why it is so endangered by the logic of modern life. Participatory knowing names the cognitive-existential structure of which resonance is the phenomenological surface.
III. Embodiment, Affect, and the 4E Framework
If resonance and participatory knowing describe the same phenomenon, Vervaeke’s cognitive-scientific framework can provide the explanatory infrastructure that Rosa’s phenomenological account leaves implicit. Central to this infrastructure is the 4E model of cognition, which holds that mind is not an encapsulated processor located in the brain but is constitutively embodied, embedded in environmental contexts, enacted through dynamic interaction, and extended across tools and social structures. This model dissolves the Cartesian picture of a mind contemplating an external world from a position of detachment; cognition, on this view, is inherently relational.
Rosa’s phenomenology of resonance assumes something like this picture without fully articulating it. When Rosa describes resonance as involving bodily vibration, as being touched in ways that exceed cognitive comprehension, he is gesturing toward an embodied understanding of relation. The 4E framework makes explicit what Rosa leaves implicit: resonance is possible because cognition itself is already worldly, already relational, already embodied. Furthermore, both frameworks point to the centrality of affect. For Rosa, resonance is fundamentally affective—to resonate is to be emotionally moved. This is consonant with Vervaeke’s account of relevance realization, which is not a cold computational process but a felt sense of salience. When something becomes relevant, it grips us. A synthesis of Rosa and Vervaeke thus enriches both: Rosa’s phenomenology gains cognitive-scientific grounding; Vervaeke’s cognitive science gains affective depth through Rosa’s insistence on the felt, emotional character of meaningful encounter.
IV. The Sacred and the Vertical Axis
Rosa’s topology of resonance includes a vertical axis concerning our relationship with what exceeds and encompasses us—nature, art, religion, history, what he calls “totality.” Rosa treats this axis phenomenologically: whether or not God exists metaphysically, humans can have resonant or alienated relationships with the ultimate.
Vervaeke’s account includes a sustained engagement with the sacred. The sacred, for Vervaeke, is a mode of experience in which reality discloses itself as inexhaustibly deep, fundamentally real, and calling for transformation. This experience has been rendered inaccessible by the collapse of premodern worldviews—but it can be recovered without regression to literal supernaturalism.
There is an obvious convergence here. Rosa’s vertical resonance—the experience of being addressed by and responding to totality—is phenomenologically equivalent to what Vervaeke calls encounter with the sacred. Both describe a mode of relation in which the ultimate becomes responsive and alive, in which we find ourselves claimed and transformed by something that exceeds us. Rosa remains cautiously phenomenological, describing the experience without metaphysical commitment. Vervaeke is bolder, invoking Neoplatonic categories and speaking of relevance realization as attuned to the deep structure of reality. This tension can be held productively: Rosa’s caution disciplines Vervaeke’s metaphysical flights by insisting on social and cultural mediation; Vervaeke’s vocabulary enriches Rosa’s phenomenology by naming what is at stake—not merely a pleasant feeling but an encounter with the real. Together, they gesture toward a metaphysics of relation in which the ultimate is neither a supernatural person nor a meaningless void but the inexhaustible depth that discloses itself through participatory encounter.
V. From Insight to Intervention: Practice, Politics, and the Ecology of Resonance
Both Rosa and Vervaeke offer accounts of how the pathologies they identify might be addressed, yet their emphases differ instructively.
Vervaeke foregrounds practice: the recovery of “psychotechnologies” such as meditation and Socratic dialogue, cultivated within an “ecology of practices”—a mutually reinforcing set of disciplines addressing different dimensions of the self. No single practice suffices; wisdom requires a dynamic ecosystem in which contemplative practice deepens insight, dialectic sharpens reason, embodied discipline grounds both, and community provides the relational matrix in which transformation unfolds.
Rosa foregrounds politics and institutions. His critical theory argues that the logic of dynamic stabilization—the structural requirement that modern societies accelerate to maintain themselves—produces alienation. No amount of individual practice can overcome alienation if social structures systematically undermine the conditions for resonance.
Both emphases are necessary; neither is sufficient. A purely practical response risks ideological accommodation: if individuals can achieve resonance through meditation retreats, the pressure for structural transformation dissipates. A purely political response risks waiting for structural change while neglecting existential work that can be undertaken now. Moreover, political transformation requires transformed agents capable of perceiving and enacting alternatives.
A synthesis requires articulating practices embedded in resonance-enabling social forms. The ecology of practices must be situated within institutional conditions: certain practices become possible or impossible depending on social structures. Conversely, Rosa’s political analysis needs the practical specificity that Vervaeke provides. Resonance is not only dyadic but collective—the horizontal axis involves social relations that are themselves alive. An ecology of practices is thus a social form: communities of inquiry, contemplative fellowships, democratic assemblies in which genuine participation is possible.
VI. Conclusion
The synthesis proposed here yields a framework that is simultaneously phenomenological, cognitive-scientific, and sociologically attuned. Participatory knowing, understood as the cognitive-existential capacity underlying resonance, provides the integrating concept. It names the mode of relation in which agent and arena co-constitute one another through responsive encounter. When this mode is functioning, we experience the world as alive, significant, and calling forth our capacities. When it breaks down, we experience alienation: a mute world, a numb self, the pervasive sense that something essential is missing.
The framework also offers resources for intervention, identifying both the practical disciplines that cultivate participatory knowing and the social conditions that enable resonance. It refuses the false choice between individual transformation and political struggle, insisting that both are necessary. It retrieves the dimension of the sacred without regression to supernaturalism, articulating a metaphysics of relation that takes seriously the phenomenology of transcendence while remaining aware of social mediation.
Significant questions remain: the metaphysical tension between Rosa’s phenomenological caution and Vervaeke’s Neoplatonic boldness is not fully resolved; the political dimension deserves more detailed development; the question of how resonance-enabling social forms are sustained across generations requires further elaboration. Despite these open questions, the convergence of Rosa and Vervaeke offers a vocabulary for naming what ails contemporary life and a vision of what recovery might look like. The possibility of resonance—of being genuinely affected by and responsive to what exceeds us—remains a fundamental human need, and the integration of these two frameworks brings us closer to understanding the conditions under which it might be met.