What is Orientation?

The 'orientation' term is mostly used to define other terms, but what it itself means has not been clarified. Therefore, this book offers a foundational orientation about orientation. Orientation is the act and accomplishment to find one's way in always new situations to make out promising opportunities for action in order to master the situation. Usually without notice, orientation selects in advance what 'to make' of something and thus what, at all, 'comes into play' and is 'going on.' This philosophical investigation clarifies how orientation proceeds under the conditions of uncertainty and time pressure and how it operates, e.g. via perspectives, clues, signs, leeways, and routines. They allow orientation to keep up with the time and to deal with the paradoxes it creates. In doing so, basic philosophical concepts like thinking, thing, and identity are redefined. The second half of the book expounds the differentiations of orientation in interaction and communication from body language to the setting of ethical signs. Traditional metaphysics - still in effect today - then becomes visible as a specific orientation that disregards the conditions of orientation and that thereby runs the risk that orientation is reduced - and fails.