North American Society for Early Phenomenology / Max Scheler of Society of North America (Joint Meeting)

PHENOMENOLOGY AND/OF CRISIS

Phenomenology was born in the context of crisis. Not only was the identity of philosophy itself at a crossroads, given the rise of the positive sciences, but there was also much change and uncertainty socio-politically. Thus, early phenomenologists did not conceive of their work as scholarly contributions to scholarly problems, but as innovative and wide-ranging responses to problems other thinkers had not sufficiently grasped, problems in the foundations of mathematics, civil law, reason, the relation of natural and humanistic sciences, etc. A variety of crises abound, and phenomenologists are still reckoning with this concept that lies in their history. Does one adopt a phenomenological attitude as a response to a palpable sense of crisis? Or does the phenomenological attitude bring a previously invisible crisis into view? 

NASEP and MSSNA welcome papers exploring phenomenological intersections to contexts of crisis: theoretical, socio-political, religious, educational, technological, etc.  Our focus is on how (and whether) phenomenology offers a valuable approach to contexts of crisis. The historical focus of these societies refers to early or “classical” phenomenology. However, papers presenting points of relation between early phenomenology and later iterations are welcome. We are interested in papers that draw attention to areas that have been historically neglected or underrepresented.