ABSTRACT Sometimes, we do not act in accordance with what we know. For example, we may purchase products that we know are the result of production chains with questionable ethics. This contribution investigates the paradox between social action and rational knowledge, starting from the ambivalence between emotion and reason. The analysis integrates Schmitz's Neue Phänomenologie and Neophenomenological Sociology (NPS) and is divided into three parts: (1) clarifying affective involvement as a social a priori and the patheur 's felt‐bodily communication, (2) focusing on the concepts of the semi‐thing, the situation, and the atmosphere as pre‐reflective motivators of action and multisituationality, and (3) interpreting Hochschild's concept of feeling rules as programme components of the situation, thereby highlighting the emotional friction that can arise when one is emotionally involved in two or more conflicting situations. Building on this, the concept of social sensibility is introduced as a trans‐subjective dynamic, shaped atmospherically in a sensitisation process, which guides social action. This concept offers a tool for understanding action and inaction in contemporary crises.
Michele Granzotto (Sun,) studied this question.