Identity and Community in Times of Uncertainty

This sixth edition of the Existential Philosophy for Times of Change and Crisis series seeks contributions exploring issues surrounding identity and community in times of uncertainty.

Writing in the aftermath of the Second World War, Simone de Beauvoir’s existential ethics centred around the ambiguity of the human condition. Her work critiques traditional ethical frameworks subsuming plurality and ambiguity under the generalisations of normative concepts and practices. Ethics, she argues, should enable individuals to assume this ambiguity and plurality, mindful of the diversity of our human condition. Ethics of Ambiguity, notably, strives to demonstrate how existentialism can be and indeed is inherently moral or social. Beauvoir appeals to us to recognise our freedom and responsibility, yet at the same time highlights the limits of this freedom in situations of oppression, and that this freedom is the most precarious in times of ‘uncertainty’—where ‘crushed by present events, [one] loses one’s way before the darkness of a future haunted by frightening spectres: war, illness, revolution, fascism.’

Beauvoir’s existential ethics sought to respond to the challenges addressed to existentialism, accused of miserabilism and solipsism. This conference seeks develop on Beauvoir’s works and legacy and those of her contemporaries, and to explore the resources available within existential philosophy for rethinking the role of identity and community in times of uncertainty and crisis. Does the focus that existential philosophy places on the singular individual impede the construction of community? Does existentialism provide tools for articulating situations of oppression, and navigating hostile environments? Does it provide guidance for concrete forms of action and activism, and paths for navigating the uncertainty in the contemporary world?

Conference Programme:

Thursday 22 October 2026

9:00 Welcome and introductory words

9:10-10:00 Mélissa Fox-Muraton, Clermont School of Business/PHIER, University Clermont Auvergne

A Duty to Resist Oppression Whatever the Cost: Beauvoir’s Lessons for Living in Uncertainty

10:00-10:50  Maciej Kałuża, Krakow University of Economics

                  Ambiguous Identity: Camus' reply to Beauvoir

Break

11:10-12:00 Hyun Höchsmann, East China Normal University

                  Merleau-Ponty on the Reciprocity of Chiasm of Ourselves and Others

12:00-12:50 Monika Wernerowska, AGH University of Krakow

Identity in Fallen Worlds: Pathologic 2 as Representation of Existential Experience of Illness

Lunch Break

14:30-15:20 Dominik Kulcsár, Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences 

Camus' Appropriation of Hegel's Dialectic and the Missing Unhappy Consciousness

15:20-16:10 Mohammad Hadi, Independent Researcher, Berlin Germany

The Ethics of Ambiguity in War

Break

16:30-17:20 Wojciech Kaftański, Institute of Philosophy, Jagiellonian University /Human Flourishing Program, Harvard University

                  Kierkegaard’s Moral Imagination: Cognitive /Non-Cognitive?

17:20-18:10 Jan Jasper Mathé, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Selfhood and Community in the Polycrisis: Kierkegaard on Anxiety and Possibility

19:30 Conference Dinner for Speakers

Friday 23 October 2026

9:00 Welcome

9:10-10:00 Daniel Chakrabarti, University of Essex 

Gerda Walther and Shared Feelings 

10:00-10:50 Michal Chudý, Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences

Shedding the Spirit of Seriousness: Sartre's Call to Abolish Identity and Embrace Community

Break

11:10-12:00 Ahmet Emre Çoban, Independent Researcher, Ankara Turkey

Unmaking the Home in the Encounter with the Refugee: Kierkegaard, Beauvoir, and the Ethics of Asylum

12:00-12:50 Mariola Tajs, University of Wroclaw

The Indebted Body: Debt, Identity, and Situated Freedom in Madame Bovary and The Ugly Stepsister

Lunch Break

14:30-15:20 Václav Sklenář, University of Pardubice

Nietzsche and the New Nietzschean Right

15:20-16:10 Jakub Marek, Charles University

Humanism, Existential Philosophies, and the Testimony of Holocaust Survivors 

Break

16:30-17:20 Jakub Gomułka, AGH University of Krakow 

Lem on Holocaust 

17:20-18:10 Bernardo dos Santos Martins, New University of Lisbon

Faculty of Indifference versus Inherent Fanaticism—a reading from Emil M. Cioran

18:10 Closing wordsRegistration: by email to [email protected] by 15 October 2026, providing your name and institutional affiliation