2nd Praxis International Conference "Enacting Emotions in Today’s World"

Confirmed keynote speakers:

·        Fabrice Teroni (Université de Genève)

·        Irene Borges-Duarte (Universidade de Évora)

·        Pierre Leger (Université d’Aix-Marseille)

Many thinkers stressed that emotions (at least a significant part of them) do not just happen to us. Since ancient philosophy, there have been many discussions about how there are active components in our emotions: that they are determined by our judgements, by our will or by our choices. There have also been many debates about how one’s culture determines one’s emotions. To a larger extent, this active shaping of emotions is unconscious, but many thinkers explored the possibility of expressly cultivating certain emotions and transforming our emotional life. What we do shapes our emotions. They are at least in part our responsibility. On the other hand, emotions decisively affect the way we think about action and act. This reciprocal relation between action and emotions affects our whole life and it is also decisive for the main crises we face today, such as ecological and climatic disruption, technological perils, social and cultural dissolution, the systemic decay of democratic and geopolitical orders, the erosion of shared truth, the atrophy of sustained attention, global mental health crisis, and so on. The goal of this conference is to discuss how our enacting of emotions contributes to these and other problems we face, as well as how we can cultivate different emotions to help us deal with these problems. 

To discuss this question, it is of course necessary to determine how emotions result from our activity (whether at an empirical level or at a deeper or transcendental level) or how they are marked by what we do. It is also necessary to consider how our enacted emotions have, in turn, a deep impact on our life. Many thinkers studied the way our cognitive processes or our practical decisions are affected by emotions, and contemporary debates on epistemic, aesthetic, moral, political, climatic emotions (among others) help us understand how any emotion we enact affects the way we think, the way we experience things, and the way we act at the individual and the collective level. Thus, it stands to reason that all the problems we face today are also to an extent shaped by the emotions we ourselves have enacted and will enact in the future. This involves both perils and opportunities: on the one hand, emotions can be manipulated to generate reactions, or to mold perceptions of events; on the other hand, one can cultivate emotions to develop capabilities needed in the contemporary world and to build hope, resilience, courage, fortitude, empathy.

We welcome contributions from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives and methodological frameworks, fostering a truly interdisciplinary dialogue on these issues.

Paper proposals should be sent to [email protected] by June 15. They should include an abstract (250-350 words) and a brief biographical note about the authors (up to 100 words). We also welcome panel proposals (3 participants per panel, preferably mixed gender). Notifications of acceptance and rejection will be sent by July 15. Presentations should not exceed 20 minutes and may be delivered in English, Portuguese or French. Please note that all presentations must be delivered in person, as videoconferencing will not be available.