Responsible Tourism: A Kierkegaardian Interpretation

Tourism, by its nature, emphasizes the value of one over the value of others. This axiom is supported by the fact that tourism creates innumerable negative costs that stem from the pursuit of primarily hedonistic ends. The response from the tourism community has been the development of several new forms of tourism to offset these costs. As one of these forms, responsible tourism (RT) espouses the fair and equitable distribution of benefits to local communities as well as the protection of the natural world. But what has constrained other types of tourism in their attempt to mitigate tourism's impacts in the past, is equally true of responsible tourism today: the absence of a well grounded philosophical framework which could help us better contextualize the meaning of responsible or responsibility in tourism. As such, this paper attempts to philosophically situate RT through the work of the Danish existentialist, Soren Kierkegaard; specifically his writings on love and responsibility. Although his philosophy is thought to have no social relevance because of its subjectivist, inward dimension to the self, this has recently been challenged by contemporary theorists who argue that Kierkegaard's focus on selfless love for the other can be a basis for responsible citizenship through the development of a community of ethically-oriented selves. This mindset is discussed using the example of sex tourism, and challenges conventional wisdom, i.e., that responsible tourism is merely the act of 'doing'.