Anxiety and Trauma With and Beyond Kierkegaard

For this 2025 edition of the Existential Philosophy in Times of Change and Crisis cycle, we invite scholars, researchers, and practitioners to submit abstracts for an interdisciplinary conference examining the themes of anxiety and trauma and relations to existential philosophy. We eagerly await submissions in the context of Kierkegaard’s philosophy and that of subsequent existential thinkers, but also encourage more modern approaches exploring how these ideas can be expanded and reinterpreted in contemporary thought and contexts. We aim for this conference to initiate a dialogue between philosophy (anxiety as a philosophical concept), theology (anxiety in relation to religion and the divine), psychology (anxiety, trauma, neurodivergence, etc.), and related disciplines to address the persistent and urgent issues of existential anxiety and trauma in our modern world. 

This conference will consider Kierkegaard’s and existential philosophy’s contributions alongside modern theories of anxiety and trauma, engaging with questions such as: How can Kierkegaard’s understanding of anxiety inform current conversations about individual anxiety, psychological, cultural and social trauma? In what ways can existential insights be expanded or challenged by modern perspectives, including psychoanalysis, neuroscience, existentialist perspectives and post-structuralist thought? Can existential philosophy provide pathways for therapy, for healing in the face of individual and collective trauma?

9:00-9:50 — James Cartlidge
Behold, All Things Have Become New: Repetition, Anxiety, and Hauntology

9:50-10:40 — Jörg Disse
 Anxiety: Søren Kierkegaard's ‘Either/Or’ and Cognitive Psychology

Coffee Break

10:55-11:45 — Andrzej Słowikowski
 The Dialectic of Anxiety and Existential Crisis

11:45-12:35 — Moritz René Pretzsch
A New Understanding of Kierkegaard's Concept of Despair for Our Present Day

Lunch Break 12:40-14:30

14:30-15:20 — Yannick Marszalek
Between Existence and Transcendence: The Role of Existential Anxiety in the Philosophy of Karl Jaspers

15:30-16:20 — Milan Petkanič
 Kierkegaard’s Dialectics of Despair as a Self-Alienation

Coffee Break

16:30-17:10 — Mélissa Fox-Muraton
Beyond the Existential and the Psychological: A Critique of the Concept of Anxiety through the Lens of Neurodivergence

17:10-18:00 — Malwina A. Tkacz
 Anxiety and Trauma in the Time of Pandemic: A Kierkegaardian Perspective

18:00-18:50 — Maciej Kałuża
Dizziness of Numbness: Kierkegaard on Antidepressants – A Phenomenology of Loss of Anxiety

9:00-9:50 — Amanda Platek
 Tell Me What to Do: Technological Freedom and Kierkegaardian Anxiety

9:50-10:40 — Cécilia Lombard
Anxiety, Desire and Corruption – Kierkegaard on the Therapeutic Considerations of Child-Like Sexbots

Coffee Break

10:55-11:45 — Marcus J. Carney
Implication as Distinction — The Implicated Subject as Boundary of Contemporary History

11:45-12:35 — L. N. Wyman
Between Death: Kierkegaard, Seigel, and Heidegger on Suicide and Social Death

Lunch Break 12:40-14:30

14:30-15:20 — Edyta Kuzian
Trauma as Rupture and Revelation: An Exploration of Embodied Perception

15:30-16:20 — Cassandre Caballero
When One’s Secret Inwardness Becomes a Commodity: Kierkegaardian and Marxist Perspectives on Religious Trauma

Coffee Break

16:30-17:20 — Dominik Kulcsár
Controlled Irony and Measured Anarchy – Thinking Kierkegaard and Camus in the Time of Democratic Decline

17:20-18:10 — Katarzyna Sanak-Kosmowska & Hanna Nasielska
Rationality & Beyond. How anxiety models memory and how it affects freedom - Kierkegaard and Cioran versus contemporary research.

Conference Organizers:

Mélissa Fox-Muraton, Clermont School of Business/PHIER, University Clermont Auvergne 

Jakub Gomułka, AGH University of Krakow

Maciej Kałuża, Krakow University of Economics 

Hanna Nasielska, Krakow University of Economics, Doctoral School University of the National Education Commission, Krakow

Organizational and Scientific Committee:

Katarzyna Baran, Krakow University of Economics 

Katarzyna Sanak-Kosmowska, Krakow University of Economics 

Bartłomiej Kossakowski-Kisiel, Doctoral School University of the National Education Commission, Krakow