Phenomenology, Aesthetics and the Arts, Joint Conference of the Irish Phenomenological Circle and the British Society for Phenomenology, University College Cork, March 30-April 1, 2012.

Confirmed speakers: Prof Paul Crowther, National University of Ireland, Galway, Prof Joanna Hodge, Manchester Metropolitan University, Prof Gary Schapiro, University of Richmond.

Phenomenology has always been closely associated with aesthetics and the arts. Even Husserl, who conceives it as a 'rigorous science', remarks on the close relation between phenomenological reflection and 'disinterested' aesthetic judgment. The later Heidegger, although dismissive of aesthetics, describes poetic art as the 'happening of truth' and the 'opening of the world'. Merleau-Ponty hopes to find in artistic practice clues for a practice of phenomenology as an embodied alternative to scientistic and intellectualist models of inquiry. We should remember also the contributions made to phenomenology, aesthetics, and reflections on the arts by Sartre, Levinas, Ricoeur, Ingarden, Dufrenne, De Beauvoir, and Hartmann among others. More generally, hermeneutic and later post-structuralist strands of phenomenology, with their emphasis on interpretation and textuality over and against purely logical or causal explanation, often pitch their critiques in artistic, or literary, modes of engagement.

Artists, in turn, find in phenomenology a type of philosophical reflection that offers ways of thinking about the complex embodied and social experiences of their practice. In particular, phenomenological approaches have been exploited as alternatives to the earlier conceptual turn in art making. Now it is time to rethink the relations between phenomenology, aesthetics and the arts in contemporary contexts of new political, wider social and scientific developments.

The British Society for Phenomenology and the newly established Irish Phenomenological Circle have joined together for this conference in order to unite international voices from both philosophical and artistic fields for an open discussion of the potential contributions phenomenology can make to philosophical and artistic practices and debates.

If you are interested in reading a paper at the conference, please send an abstract of approx. 1000 words by 15 January, 2012 to bsp.ipc.2012@gmail.com.

"The Forces of the Cosmos and the Ontopoietic Genesis of Life," 62nd International Congress of Phenomenology, Lucernaire Centre National d’Art et d’Essai, Paris, August 8-10, 2012.

International Scientific Committee, Directed by Angele Kremer-Marietti (FRANCE):

AZERBAIJAN: Salahaddin Khalilov;
FRANCE: Claire Hill;
ITALY: Angela Ales Bello, Francesco Totaro, Daniela Verducci; 
NORWAY: Konrad Rokstad,
POLAND: Maria Bielawka, Mariola Sulkowska-Janowska;
TURKEY: Klymet Selvi, Erkut Sezgin;
UNITED STATES: Ogla Louchakova-Schwartz, Thomas Ryba, Patricia Trutty-Coohill, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

Local Organization Committee: Carmen Cozma, Claire Hill, Konrad Rokstad, Leszek Pyra
Conference Director: Daniela Verducci
Program Presided by: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

Topics of Sessions will be announced later, on our website: Website: http://www.phenomenology.org

Proposals of contributions should be sent to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, President, World Phenomenology Institute, 1 Ivy Pointe Way, Hanover, New Hampshire 03755, United States, E-mail: wphenomenology@aol.com, Fax: 802-295-5963. 

Proposals are due January 1, 2012. Full papers are due April 1, 2012. 

All papers submitted are copyrighted for the first option of publication by A-T. Tymieniecka in Analecta Husserliana: the Yearbook of Phenomenological Research.

"Responsibility, Formal Knowledge and the Life-World," Australasian Phenomenology and Hermeneutics Association, Murdoch University, November 28-29, 2011.

Confirmed Speakers

• Prof. Chan-Fai Cheung The Chinese University of Hong Kong
• Ivan Chvatík, Dr.h.c. Charles University Prague, Czech Republic
• Prof. Jeff Malpas University of Tasmania, Australia
• Prof. Dermot Moran University College Dublin, Ireland
• Prof. Horst Ruthrof Murdoch University, Australia
• Prof. Chung-chi Yu National Sun Yat-Sen University, Taiwan
• Dr Suzi Adams Flinders University, Australia
• Dr Ingo Farin University of Tasmania, Australia
• Dr Paul Healy Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
• Dr Lucy Tatman University of Tasmania, Australia
• Dr Lubica Učník Murdoch University, Australia

http://jrl-workshop.heroku.com/

Burnham, Douglas, and George Papandreopoulos. "Existentialism." (INTERNET ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY).

Existentialism is a catch-all term for those philosophers who consider the nature of the human condition as a key philosophical problem and who share the view that this problem is best addressed through ontology. This very broad definition will be clarified by discussing seven key themes that existentialist thinkers address. Those philosophers considered existentialists are mostly from the continent of Europe, and date from the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Outside philosophy, the existentialist movement is probably the most well-known philosophical movement, and at least two of its members are among the most famous philosophical personalities and widely read philosophical authors. It has certainly had considerable influence outside philosophy, for example on psychological theory and on the arts. Within philosophy, though, it is safe to say that this loose movement considered as a whole has not had a great impact, although individuals or ideas counted within it remain important. Moreover, most of the philosophers conventionally grouped under this heading either never used, or actively disavowed, the term ‘existentialist’. Even Sartre himself once said: “Existentialism? I don’t know what that is.” So, there is a case to be made that the term – insofar as it leads us to ignore what is distinctive about philosophical positions and to conflate together significantly different ideas – does more harm than good.

In this article, however, it is assumed that something sensible can be said about existentialism as a loosely defined movement. The article has three sections. First, we outline a set of themes that define, albeit very broadly, existentialist concerns. This is done with reference to the historical context of existentialism, which will help us to understand why certain philosophical problems and methods were considered so important. Second, we discuss individually six philosophers who are arguably its central figures, stressing in these discussions the ways in which these philosophers approached existentialist themes in distinctive ways. These figures, and many of the others we mention, have full length articles of their own within the Encyclopedia. Finally, we look very briefly at the influence of existentialism, especially outside philosophy. . . .

http://www.iep.utm.edu/existent/

Kelly, Michael R. Review of Keith Ansell-Pearson, et al., eds. THE NEW CENTURY. NDPR (September 2011).

Schrift, Alan D., and Keith Ansell-Pearson, eds.  The New Century: Bergsonism, Phenomenology, and Responses to Modern Science. Vol. 3 of The History of Continental Philosophy.  8 Vols.  Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010.

The New Century is the third of an eight volume set on the history of continental philosophy. It is aptly titled, capturing the innovative spirit of the early twentieth century, even in philosophy, with a nod toward one of its forgotten idols -- Henri Bergson -- and his emphasis on genesis, novelty, and creativity. For both those new to and those steeped in continental philosophy, it provides useful overviews of most of the most significant thinkers, issues, and movements of the continental tradition from (roughly) the 1890s to the 1930s (ix). Its selection of essays on central and marginal figures, movements, and themes of significance for early continental philosophy is complemented by a generous and helpful (twenty page) timeline of philosophical, cultural, and political events from the seventeenth century to the present (381-400). The contributions, generally of very high quality, are written, by and large, by leading scholars. For any given topic, the extensive (but not tedious) bibliographic information and footnotes should facilitate further research. It is a largely accessible, reliable, and thus recommendable collection that often combines the range of an encyclopedia and the substance of an article.

Like the series as a whole, the volume presents the methods of continental thought and its representative thinkers and issues in the context of "figures and developments outside philosophy (in the sciences, social sciences, mathematics, art, politics and culture)" as well as "philosophers not usually associated with continental philosophy" (viii) rather than "a chronologically organized series of 'great thinker' essays". The editors frame the volume according to the spirit of the times understood as a set of varied responses to nineteenth-century positivism and scientism more specifically (5). As Keith Ansell-Pearson notes in his detailed introduction, 'continental' thinkers at the turn of the 'new century' – thinkers as diverse as its inaugurators, Nietzsche, Bergson, and Husserl -- pursued a unified 'vocation' of regaining philosophy's independence and reasserting culture's future "faith in the human as the being in search of truth and rational modes of being" (4). These thinkers respected the regional inquiries of the sciences while developing the conviction "that the 'true being' is not a possession the human has, like the self-evidence of the 'I am', but . . . echoing Nietzsche, a task" (3). For these thinkers, who one could call the 'founders' of continental philosophy, the task was one of creating anew (in Bergson's case) or renewing (in Husserl's case) philosophy's "own sources of knowledge" rather than "imitating developments in the method of science" (6). . . .

http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/25986-the-new-century-bergsonism-phenomenology-and-responses-to-modern-science/

Birmingham, Peg. Review of James Dodd, VIOLENCE AND PHENOMENOLOGY. NDPR (May 2011).

Dodd, James.  Violence and Phenomenology.  London: Routledge, 2009.

James Dodd's Violence and Phenomenology begins by considering whether we have become the "dupes of violence." The danger of being duped by violence, he argues, is particularly grave in the violence of war because in the form of war especially we expect both too much and too little. We expect too much when violence is used to shore up state authority or to spread spheres of power, and we expect too little when we think that violence will eventually "whither away due either to the weight of our moral vigilance or the effectiveness of the political, legal, social, or ethical instruments that we employ in the hope of avoiding the destruction of war" (1). Dodd suggests that becoming the dupes of violence, by either expecting too much or too little from it, is rooted in an unacknowledged tension or opposition between a purely instrumental conception of violence and a conception of violence as uniquely constitutive of its own meaning or sense. In other words, we are easily duped by violence because we do not grasp that violence is always more than simply instrumental, used as a means to accomplish some end; it is at the same time constitutive of the meaning or sense of human existence which, he argues, makes violence a philosophical problem of the first order.

Violence is also a philosophical problem because from its beginnings philosophy has been bound up with the question of war. By this Dodd does not simply mean that Plato's philosophy arises out of the catastrophe of the Peloponnesian Wars or that Hobbes's thought is born of the English Civil Wars (6). Eather, he claims that philosophy's central concerns with freedom and the nature of the self emerge from a reflection on how we fight: "There is something fundamental about free being that finds its way into expression through the peculiar intensification of the experience of war" (9). Both war and philosophy for him are extreme circumstances that reveal the self:

For if both of these experiences -- the assumption of risk, of standing together in danger that is basic to the combat experience, and the struggle with the question of the self, in dialogue standing together to face the risk of an uncertain result -- manifestly define in basic ways the primordial experience of freedom, then is there not the possibility that, on some fundamental level, philosophy and war are the same event? (10)

The risks and uncertainty of waging war and the risks and uncertainty of rational free argument are for Dodd one and the same, thereby putting philosophy and war on the same footing. Thus, the philosophical examination of violence is at the same time self-examination.

Dodd turns to phenomenology to navigate the tension between understanding violence as either instrumental or constitutive of sense because of phenomenology's "conviction that all genuine philosophical problems are problems of sense and meaning" (15). His turn to phenomenology, however, is more than simply the use of a method. With chapters on Clausewitz and Schmitt, Arendt and Sartre, Jünger and Heidegger, and, finally, Patočka, Dodd does not limit himself to a phenomenology of violence. Instead, he shows how phenomenology itself emerges out of the violence of the twentieth century, a century that Patočka calls "the century of war." In other words, while it is true that for Dodd phenomenology is the philosophical method best suited for grappling with the sense of violence, nevertheless, the importance of his analysis lies in its examination of how various phenomenological understandings of the self, freedom, possibility, history, and responsibility emerge from out of the violence of war. . . .

Visit: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23589.

Cfp: 6th Annual Meeting, North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics, Boston College, September 15-17, 2011.

NASPH was formed in 2005 in order to further the study of philosophical hermeneutics. While honoring the rootedness of philosophical hermeneutics in the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, NASPH also recognizes that the future of such thinking depends on engaging with a diverse range of figures and issues. Our intention is to promote dialogue focusing on both the sources of, and the prospects for, philosophical hermeneutics.

James Risser will give the Keynote Address.  Other invited speakers will include Theodore George, Drew Hyland, Dennis Schmidt, and Charles Scott.

Cfp: Meeting (in Conjunction with 2011 Annual Meeting of Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy), International Association for Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (IAPCS), Philadelphia, October 19, 2011.

We invite abstracts for papers that explore issues at the intersection of phenomenology and the cognitive sciences. This includes, but is not limited to, developing approaches to naturalized phenomenology, neurophenomenology, and the treatment of various issues (e.g., embodied cognition, perception, intersubjectivity and social cognition, etc.) that foster communication between the continental phenomenological tradition, analytic philosophy of mind, and empirical cognitive science. Phenomenology is here understood as a philosophical discipline and method in the tradition started by Edmund Husserl, and including the work of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and numerous others.

Abstracts (maximum 500 words) should be sent as email attachments no later than May 16 to:
joelk@hum.ku.dk.

"Feminist Phenomenology and Medicine," Uppsala University, May 18-21, 2011.

Phenomenology and much feminist theory and philosophy investigate lived experiences and affirm the role of embodiment for human meaning-making. Furthermore, both unveil and scrutinize taken-for-granted and in this sense ‘hidden’ assumptions, beliefs and norms that we live by, that we strengthen by repeated actions and that we also resist, challenge and question. Whereas there is a growing area of feminist phenomenology dealing with concrete issues of embodiment and situatedness surprisingly little work focuses on topics/phenomena related to medicine and health. Whereas phenomenologists have made valuable contributions to the analysis of the nature of medicine, the meaning of illness and health as well as clinical practice, there have been comparably few analyses of such issues that combine insights from feminist theory and philosophy with phenomenology.

This conference is based on the conviction that facticities of human life, such as birth, illness, sex and death benefit from being examined in the light of feminist theory and phenomenology. More and more often, these facticities are managed in medicine, through medical treatment and medical technology. We want to approach both the facticities of human existence and the different ways in which these are being medicalized through the perspectives of feminist phenomenology. By doing this we want to bring to light the role of bodies in different human experiences and in subjective and intersubjective meaning-making. We want to examine taken-for-granted assumptions about bodies that inform and structure medical practices and lived experiences in medicine as well as in everyday life. We further want to raise questions of how the relation between phenomenology and feminism can be understood in a fruitful and mutually enriching way and how phenomenon such as birth, illness, sex and ageing can and does inform feminist phenomenology as a theoretical framework.

We welcome contributions from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives dealing with the overarching topic of feminist phenomenology and medicine. Topics can include (but are not limited to) phenomenological analyses and/or approaches to:

- ethics
- suffering and pain
- disability
- birth and death
- embodiment of subjectivity
- sexualities and sexual identities
- medical practices
- medical diagnosis
- bodily movement
- health

Visit: http://www.genna.gender.uu.se/conferences-events/conferences-workshops/femphenmed/.

Copenhagen Summer School in Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind, Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen, August 8-12, 2011.

This summer school is an initiative of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology. The course will provide essential insights into central themes within the philosophy of mind, viewed from a phenomenological perspective. Topics include: transcendental philosophy, intentionality, perception, empathy, and the enactive mind. The course will consist of a mixture of lectures and seminars (25 hours total), aimed at advanced MA students and PhD students.

Speakers include: Prof. Jocelyn Benoist (Sorbonne, Paris), Prof. Shaun Gallagher (Memphis), Prof. Camilla Serck-Hanssen (Oslo), Prof. Dan Zahavi (Copenhagen), Dr. Søren Overgaard (Copenhagen)

Visit http://cfs.ku.dk/summerschool/.

Cfp: "Human Experience and Nature: Examining the Relationship between Phenomenology and Naturalism," University of the West of England, August 31-September 2, 2011.

This conference aims to bring together prominent thinkers from phenomenology and other fields in philosophy, to discuss the relationship between phenomenology and naturalism. This relationship may vary from one field to another. It may be that phenomenology is compatible with naturalism in the philosophy of science, while the two approaches are incompatible in ethics. It would be interesting to examine whether this is the case and if so, why?

The conference aims to capture phenomenology’s main ideas in an accessible and non-jargonistic way, in order to provide an introduction to this rich tradition to philosophers working in other traditions. The conference also aims to examine phenomenology’s metaphysical underpinnings. It will ask: does phenomenology have a metaphysical commitment, and if so, what kinds of metaphysical commitments are compatible with phenomenology? Is there a restriction on the type of metaphysical view one may hold while practising phenomenology?

A final theme in the conference will be the question whether phenomenology is compatible with naturalism. A case in point is cognitive science, where the application of phenomenology has recently become popular, sometimes without sufficient attention to what conflicts there might be between phenomenology and the naturalistic basis of cognitive science. The invited speakers hold very different views on this issue. The conference will close with a roundtable discussion of this issue.

Speakers:
•Prof Thomas Baldwin (York)
•Prof Rudolf Bernet (Leuven)
•Dr Eran Dorfman (Berlin)
•Dr Iain Grant (UWE)
•Prof James Lenman (Sheffield)
•Dr Michelle Montague (Bristol)
•Dr Darian Meacham (Leuven)
•Prof Dermot Moran (UCD)
•Dr Seiriol Morgan (Bristol)
•Prof David Morris (Concordia)
•Prof David Papineau (KCL)
•Prof Matthew Ratcliffe (Durham)
•Prof Galen Strawson (Reading)
•Prof Fredrik Svenaeus (Södertörn)
•Dr Jon Webber (Cardiff)
•Prof Michael Wheeler (Stirling)
•Prof Dan Zahavi (Copenhagen)

Visit: http://www1.uwe.ac.uk/cahe/hpp/newsandevents/events/humanexperienceandnature.aspx.

Beardsworth, Sara. Review of Gunnar Farlsson, PSYCHONALYSIS IN A NEW LIGHT. NDPR (December 2010).

Karlsson, Gunnar.  Psychoanalysis in a New Light.  Cambridge: CUP, 2010.

Karlsson's book redefines the significance and purpose of psychoanalysis from a phenomenological perspective that conceives of psychoanalysis as a science (searching for truth) and "not merely as a method of treatment." His purpose is "to discuss the domain and conditions of psychoanalysis theoretically rather than from the perspective of clinical experience." This project is clearly executed with helpful chapter summaries along the way. Overall, it casts a powerful phenomenological searchlight upon the couch, levering the intelligibility of psychoanalytic theory off from dependence on its own empirical moment, the practice. We will consider the major fruits of this endeavor before questioning its risks.

Four specific objectives can be discerned in Karlsson's book: to ground psychoanalysis as a science phenomenologically, to present the Freudian subject as a temporalizing subject whose original striving is the striving for existence, to integrate narrative truth and historical truth in psychoanalysis, and to establish the function of self-consciousness in the analytic setting. . . .

Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=22030.

"Habit and Second Nature," Annual Conference, British Society for Phenomenology, St. Hilda’s College, University of Oxford, April 15-17, 2011.

Friday:

3.45 pm Ben Morgan (Oxford University): "Heidegger's Habits"
5.30 pm David Wood (Vanderbilt University): "Reinhabiting the Earth"

Saturday:

10.00 am Mark Sinclair (Manchester Metropolitan University): "Ravaisson and Phenomenology"
11.45 am Philip Goodchild (Nottingham University): "Thinking Nature: On Habit and Virtue"
4.15 pm Claudia Baracchi (The New School of Social Research and Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca) "The Work of Being: Aristotle and the Architecture of the Human"
6.00 pm THE WOLFE MAYS MEMORIAL LECTURE: John Milbank (Nottingham University), "Hume's New Habit and How it Relates to Aristotle's Older One"

Sunday:

10.00 am Johanna Oksala (University of Helsinki): "The Neoliberal Subject of Feminism"
11.45 am Matthew Ratcliffe (Durham University): "Habit and the Phenomenology of Negation"

Visit: http://britishphenomenology.co.uk/conference/.

Ansell-Pearson, Keith. Review of Francois Raffoul, THE ORIGINS OF RESPONSIBILITY. NDPR (January 2010).

Raffoul, François.  The Origins of Responsibility.  Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2010.

In this book François Raffoul seeks to undertake a major reconsideration of the concept of responsibility, drawing upon the rich resources offered by trajectories in continental thought, notably Nietzsche, Sartre, Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida. His fundamental contention is that we need to think responsibility less in terms of denoting a sphere of power and control, revolving around the establishment of a sovereign subject, and more in terms of our exposure to an event that does not emanate from us but which does call us. According to Raffoul we need to think responsibility not in terms of a spontaneous initiation but rather as a response. This suggests to him that the phenomenological senses of responsibility are closer to a problematic of answerability than to one of accountability and the latter's dependence on a 'metaphysical' conception of the subject. As such, the argument represents what is now a familiar set of moves within continental philosophy, namely, dethroning the imperial claims of a philosophy of the subject and replacing this with a thinking of the event. However, the chief danger of such a move is that it runs the risk of instituting a new set of oppositions -- for example, between activity and passivity, between control and letting be, etc. -- and becomes blind to those situations where sovereign subjects might be needed in order to assume power and exercise control. I am not convinced that sovereignty can be so easily dispensed with, and in some cases in this study, Nietzsche for example (the philosopher of will to power!), the argument seems far-fetched and over-determined.

The book is highly challenging. One of the main challenges consists in Raffoul's insistence that a fundamental rethinking of the question at hand, the nature and status of responsibility, needs to take place outside of the terms of familiar debates in moral philosophy, such as that between the competing claims of free will and determinism and the identification of responsibility with the sphere of the voluntary. Instead, Raffoul favours a phenomenological approach in which the terms of major debates within ethics prove themselves to be inadequate. Furthermore, the opposition between free will and determinism remains caught up in metaphysics and is merely an 'ontical' distinction and thus an obstacle to a proper ontological inquiry (concerned with the phenomenological 'being' of responsibility). The key claim of the book, then, is that, as classically and typically understood, responsibility is wedded to a questionable metaphysics of the free and autonomous subject and we need to start to think the possibilities of a responsibility without reference to such a subject. For Raffoul, the way forward lies in opening up, with the aid of his chosen continental thinkers, the senses of the Latin 'respondere', meaning responsiveness and answerability. The focus is to switch attention away from the subject that creates ethics for itself to an examination of the nature of the ethical claims that call us. . . .

Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=22251.

Pub: Gabrielle A. Hezekiah, PHENOMENOLOGY'S MATERIAL PRESENCE.

Hezekiah, Gabrielle A.  Phenomenology's Material Presence: Video, Vision and Experience.  Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010.

Phenomenology’s Material Presence draws on recent work in phenomenology, embodiment, and cinema and extends the field by examining metaphysical presence in postcolonial cinema. Where other scholarship has assimilated insight from individual phenomenological thinkers, Phenomenology’s Material Presence utilizes the methods of these thinkers—Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty—to produce a richly textured and poetic essay that brings them into conversation. Through a meditation on three experimental videos by Trinidadian filmmaker Robert Yao Ramesar, this book makes the case that video performs an act of phenomenological inquiry. Phenomenology’s Material Presence extends our theorizing in both film studies and philosophy. Further information on the book is available here: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=8928333.

See also her presentation in the Norman Jewison Series at York University, Toronto: Gabrielle A. Hezekiah speaks on Phenomenology’s Material Presence:

Gabrielle A. Hezekiah addresses key questions raised in her new book, Phenomenology’s Material Presence: Video, Vision and Experience. How do aesthetic practices engage with experience? How do we arrive at a description of that experience? What does phenomenological method offer in the way of description and what is to be gained by the use of phenomenology as a distinct approach to moving image theory? Can video be shown to perform – rather than illustrate – philosophical methods and concepts? In her talk, Hezekiah will draw on the experimental video documentaries of Trinidadian filmmaker Robert Yao Ramesar and the insights of philosophers Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Her presentation includes screenings of Ramesar’s videos Heritage: A Wedding in Moriah, Mami Wata and Journey to Ganga Mai. Admission is free and all are welcome.  For further information, visit: http://www.yorku.ca/yuevents/index.asp?Event=21685&Category=54&ShowCal=&TimeSame=Feb&Month=2&Year=2011&EventTitle=York%20Events:%20Norman+Jewison+Series%3A+Gabrielle+A.+Hezekiah+speaks+on+Phenomenology%92s+Material+Presence.

Cfp: "Phenomenology and the Human Positioning in the Cosmos -- the Life-World, Nature, Earth," 61st International Congress of Phenomenology, Istanbul Kultur University, June 27-July 1, 2011.

Deadlines and Fees:

Abstracts due by January 1, 2011
Full Papers due by April 1, 2011
Registration Fee: $200.00 before May 1 and $250.00 after May 1, 2011

Contact:

Professor Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka
The World Phenomenology Institute
1 Ivy Pointe Way, Hanover NH 03755, USA
Fax: 802-295-5963.

Cfp: "Human Experience and Nature: Examining the Relationship between Phenomenology and Naturalism," Royal Institute of Philosophy Conference 2011, University of the West of England, August 31-September 2, 2011.

Questions about the relationship between consciousness and the natural world have been at the centre of many philosophical debates. How can we relate first- and third-person data? Is it possible to explain exhaustively consciousness in naturalistic terms? What metaphysical view can best account for human experience? These questions have been the driving force of much recent philosophical work. Within this broad field, one issue in particular has been underexplored. This issue is the relationship between phenomenology (as a philosophical method for describing lived experience) and the broadly accepted idea that philosophy should be consistent with a naturalistic worldview.

Phenomenology is a rich philosophical tradition providing a method to explore human experience and consciousness. Nonetheless, some philosophers have been sceptical about phenomenology’s contribution to philosophy and have attributed anti-naturalist and anti-scientific views to it. The aim of this conference is to ask: is this scepticism towards phenomenology justified? This conference aims to bring together prominent thinkers from phenomenology and other fields in philosophy, to discuss the relationship between phenomenology and naturalism.

Speakers:

Prof Dan Zahavi (Copenhagen)
Prof Thomas Baldwin (York)
Prof David Papineau (KCL)
Prof Dermot Moran (UCD)
Prof Matthew Ratcliffe (Durham)
Prof Michael Wheeler (Stirling)
Prof James Lenman (Sheffield)
Dr Jon Webber (Cardiff)
Prof Samir Okasha (Bristol)
Dr Eran Dorfman (Frei university Berlin)
Dr Iain Grant (UWE)
Prof Fredrik Sveneaus (Linköping)
Dr Seiriol Morgan (Bristol)
Prof Rudolf Bernet (Leuven)
Prof Alison Assiter (UWE)
Dr Darian Meacham (Leuven)

For further information, email: havi_carel@hotmail.com.

Cfp: "The Early Phenomenology of Munich and Göttingen," Franciscan University of Steubenville, April 29-30, 2011.

Keynote Speakers:

Angela Ales Bello (Pontifical Lateran University)
Dallas Willard (University of Southern California)
Antonio Calcagno (Kings College, UWO)
Alice von Hildebrand (CUNY, Hunter College)

The MA Philosophy Program at Franciscan University of Steubenville invites all scholars working in the area of the early phenomenology to submit abstracts on any topic relevant to the theme of the conference. This encompasses the members of the Munich and Göttingen circles (major and minor figures), their students, their influence, their place within the early period of phenomenology, their relationship to other philosophers, as well as their contributions to the development of the early phenomenology.

For further information, email: mroberts@franciscan.edu.

"Concepts of Tradition in Phenomenology." STUDIA PHAENOMENOLOGICA 11 (2011).

The 2011 issue of Studia Phaenomenologica is dedicated to the topic: Concepts of Tradition in Phenomenology. As it is commonly known, Husserl’s phenomenology demanded at its first breakthrough a total refutation of all uncertified knowledge, theory or meaning inherited from the past. However, the development of phenomenological inquiry gradually resulted in a more ambiguous attitude towards history and tradition. On the one hand, history and tradition are necessary but still unfortunate distortions, which hinder phenomenological research in its strive for original self-givenness; on the other hand, they become themselves universal phenomena that must be explored as such. As recent publications of late Husserlian manuscripts have revealed, Husserl himself became more and more aware of these topics in his last decade, as he was finally inclined to interpret the Life-world itself in its full concreteness as a “generative tradition”. Tradition in this sense pertains to all meaning sprung from earlier acquisition. Therefore, the concept obviously exceeds its ordinary meaning, exclusively related to inter-subjective historical inheritance, by gaining a fundamental importance for all areas of phenomenological analysis, as they all have the characteristic of “traditionalizing”. Thus, there is “tradition” at work in all action or bodily movement, in every instance of a given situation and in any relation to another thing or being. Understood in this broad sense, the term does not address only the genetic fact of sedimentation, but also a specific, “habitual” quality that things allow to see through themselves, as bearers of a past. Hence, the theme marks an intersection of various problematic strata in Husserlian phenomenology, starting from the correlation of genetic and static phenomenology, following through different aspects of phenomenological methodology, and up to several ground-themes of phenomenological research, such as historicity, memory, language, bodily existence, inter-subjectivity, life-world and others. The same twofold relation to tradition – of growing thematic interest, on the one hand, and utter criticism, on the other – shows in the post-Husserlian phenomenology as well. Heidegger, for instance, is from his early beginnings convinced that history should be the true guideline for phenomenological research, while at the same time pleading for a systematic destruction of the philosophical tradition. A similarly ambiguous position defines his later project of transcending metaphysics, and certainly other examples can be found as well. The aim of our 2011 issue is therefore to explore the two fundamental poles that define the phenomenological approach of tradition: the task of understanding the problem of tradition thematically, on one hand, and the necessity of confronting it methodically as a residual distortion, on the other hand. We welcome all submissions addressing either one of these two landmarks. Contributions to the late Husserlian topic of “tradition”, in its universal acceptation or in some concrete life-worldly application, are particularly encouraged, as well as submissions dealing with other, post-Husserlian, phenomenological approaches to the concept of “tradition”. Contact: tradition@phenomenology.ro.

"Hermeneutics and Science: Worlds, Realities & Life," International Society for Hermeneutics and Science, Sigmund Freud University, August 27-29, 2010

The birth of hermeneutic (or hermeneutic phenomenological) philosophy of science was a result of the so-called "hermeneutic turn" of philosophy of science in the 60's. Arriving at different consequences of the critique of the traditional positivist philosophy of science almost the same transformation is called as social or sociological turn. In these years Apel, Hanson, Heelan, Ihde, Kisiel, Kockelmans, Markus, Follesdal, and others started to apply Heidegger's and Gadamer's views to depict the science and technology from a non-positivist position. As a consequence of these attempts for the 80's - 90's a relatively well-identifiable trend was emerged in philosophy of science: the hermeneutics of science, or hermeneutic philosophy of science and technology. Heidegger's and Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics provides an opportunity for developing a hermeneutic alternative to the analytic philosophy of science. This intellectual adventure has significant outcomes.Hermeneutics of science scrutinized the life world of scientists, the process of discovery, the structure of perception, scientists' relatedness to the world, experimentation, scientific and technological tools, scientific debates, the reconstruction of scientific texts, and many others topics. It shed new light e.g. on the issues about the philosophical foundations of Psychoanalysis. Heideggerian hermeneutics is also the basis of well known results in the Dasein analysis targeted the openness included in human Dasein, and aims to widen it via the analysis and develop self understanding and identity. Taking the problems of hermeneutic philosophy of science into a broader philosophical context some fundamental epistemological problems can be identified. These dilemmas yield to the identification of the unnecessary domination of the so-called scientism in culture and provide a possibility to its critique. It would be interesting to disclose the appearance the different forms of these problems in the practice of social and natural sciences, humanities, psychology, informatics and other forms of technology. This would be also an opportunity to confront philosophical ideas with everyday scientific and technological practice.

The aim of this conference is to provide an open and inspiring atmosphere to discuss all of these and related issues. Possible topics for discussion includes: •Reflections of scientists on their own praxis •Creativity, innovation and re-interpretation •Interpretation in History of Philosophy of Science •Science as human enterprise/praxis •Information and meaning: the question of interpretation •Open world hermeneutics: go beyond the "two cultures" •Life-world, systems and institutions •Institutions, organisations and relationships •What does it mean to live a fulfilled life? •How to cope with uncertainty? Challenges of uncertainty in everyday life and science. •Philosophical background of Dasein analysis •Life technologies and human survival: human-environment relations. •Varieties of relatedness to the world •Tools, toolmaking and technologies •Embodiment and thinking •Scientific knowledge and experties

Visit the conference website here: http://ishs.hu/call-for-papers.