CFP: V Iberian Journey of Phenomenology - VI Congress of the Portuguese Society of Phenomenolgical Philosophy

Submission deadline: June 15, 2020

Conference date(s):
November 18, 2020 - November 20, 2020

Go to the conference's page

Conference Venue:

Portuguese Society of Phenomenological Philosophy - Spanish Society of Phenomenology
Lisbon, Portugal

Topic areas

Details

Human relations with nature are a complex issue. In the firts place, from an anthropological point of view: it may be argued that human beings are an element of nature, or alternatively that a part, at least, of human beings is outside nature, or even that the totality of what a human being is must be explained by principles that contradict the principles in action in the natural world. Within the phenomenological movement, since Husserl's seminal reflections on this subject, in Ideias II, through the initial representatives of the phenomenological movement, such as Edith Stein or Max Scheler, and later the works of Heidegger - which, although they contest the adequacy of the terms “human” and “nature”, play an important role in current ecological debates -, and the classic names of French phenomenology, such as Merleau-Ponty, until more recent authors, such as Marc Richir or Hans Blumenberg, the question has always remained debatable. At the frontiers of the phenomenological thought, in the relationship between phenomenology and neurosciences and biology, Humberto Maturana's work testifies the permanence of the issue.

But the aforementioned relation can still be addressed from a different point-of-view. The human being interferes with natural processes, introducing in them a factor of "disorder" coming from the outside. Since the second half of the twentieth century, and to the extent that nature constitutes the environment in which human beings live and reproduce as a species, important reflections on the limits placed on this interference have been carried out. This reflection, prolonging investigations on the nature of technique that (inside and outside the phenomenological movement) go back at least to the period between the two great world wars, has more recently raised new approaches. Namely, at the ethical level, claims about non-human nature as a subject of rights, or about the rights of future generations to inherit an environment that they can inhabit.

We invite participants to submit papers to the V Iberian Work-shop on Phenomenology and to the VI Congress of the Portuguese Society of Phenomenological Philosophy that critically consider the follwing topics:

1. Humanity and animality.

2. Natural and artificial; nature and culture.

3. Body and space.

4. Phenomenology and Life Sciences.

5. Ethics of the environment vs. Anthropocentrism.

6. Phenomenology and Philosophy of Nature.

Proposals should be sent to: [email protected]

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