Uważność jako społeczna powinność. Humanistyka publiczna Richarda Sennetta i Tima Ingolda

This article places the category of mindfulness in the field of public humanities and social sciences, moving beyond its therapeutic-meditative and individualistic discourse. Searching for different conceptualisations of mindfulness, the author explores reflection focused on people’s political nature rather than their subjectivity as individuals. The thus placed mindfulness allows us to, firstly, make a claim for sociological imagination (Mills), and secondly, oppose to humanities being pushed to esoteric peripheries and having their scientific value questioned. To analyse mindfulness as our duty towards the world, the author refers to Richard Sennett’s sociology and Tim Ingold’s anti-hylomorphic project. Both concepts promote focus on the material and processual character of the world to enable us to live in it ethically and ecologically. Mindfulness is understood here as striving for the coordination of mind and body, theory and practice, conceptual (non-material) work and physical labour. It is about focusing on cooperation and respecting inequality. In this sense it may be perceived as an element of sophisticated work and a mechanism that prevents alienation.