At the heart of my argument for an ethos of attentiveness to calculation is the claim that by diverting our attention from being moral and giving attention to morality as a manifestation of calculative thinking, we might come to inhabit the world in a more profoundly attentive fashion and thereby become less moralistic and more responsible. Taken together Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, Weber, and Heidegger show that by giving attention to calculable responsibility and calculative thinking more generally, we can cultivate a deeper and broader attentiveness to the world. They each conceive of their desired attentiveness to the world in different ways. Attentiveness is seeing from a multiplicity of one's inner passional perspectives; attending to being (das Sein) as disclosure; grappling with the simplifications of common sense by seeking the eternal ideas; heeding the intelligible world as the ground of our existence in the sensible world; and facing the world “as it really is” without the lens of cosmic ethical rationalism and with “a sense of proportion” (Augenmaß).

I conclude this book by considering, more generally, the dynamics of attention. Going beyond the thinkers I have surveyed and the details of their thought, I consider how cultivating a nonmoral attention might actually make us more responsible. I also consider how giving attention to morality as calculable responsibility might work as a constant and noncalculative provocation to attentiveness. This possibility helps us conceive of an appropriate place for morality. I caution against attempts at attentiveness to the incalculable dimensions of responsibility without an accompanying attentiveness to calculative thinking. Such attempts leave our approach to the incalculable too vulnerable to co-optation by calculable responsibility. I showed the risk of casuistic attention to the incalculable in my reading of Kant's Groundwork; now I show how this risk can play out in politics. Finally, I close with the thought that the underlying concern of this book has been the difference between paying attention, on the one hand, and giving or gifting attention, on the other.

Responsible nonmoral attention

Hanif Kureishi, in describing “The Art of Distraction,” writes, “it is incontrovertible that sometimes things get done better when you're doing something else.” But it is very difficult for us to accept that indirectness with regard to morality – a schooled inattentiveness to morality – would not lead to disorder and immorality, and may even make us more responsible.