Attention is a necessary capacity of our mind; we need it in our everyday life to focus on certain things and withdraw from others in order to effectively navigate our environment. However, as studies have shown, we seem less and less able to concentrate on something and not get distracted. On average, a person checks their email 74 times a day, and each time they check it, they spend about 32 seconds on average to do so.

Especially in western societies, attention has become an indispensable resource or currency. Various socio-psychological phenomena such as the rise of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Burn-Outs or the influence of social media networks such as Instagram or Facebook are just some examples of a general feature of today’s accelerated and condensed life wherein attention becomes a difficult issue. How do we attend to our environment, to art, to nature, to other people? And why should we attend? What kinds of attention are there? Apart from focused attention, we can identify distributed attention and full attention, but also attentiveness, mindfulness, and immersion. At the Department of Philosophy at the University of Fribourg a team of advanced researchers investigates these issues from various perspectives.

The leading project behind this is the SNSF-PRIMA Project Aesthetics and Ethics of Attention comprised by Susanne Schmetkamp (PI) and her team. The project collaborates, among others, with the Chair of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art of the University of Fribourg, the EXRE research group, and the research workshop Aesthetics and Critique.

Group Website