Discovering the ‘We’: The Phenomenology of Sociality

The aim of this three-day conference is to re-evaluate critically and in contemporary terms the rich phenomenological resources regarding the understanding of social relations and social reality generally, i.e. the intersubjective, interpersonal, collective and communal aspects of the shared life-world. However much they differ in degree and commitment, phenomenologists all agree on the basic idea that humans are intrinsically social beings, necessarily embodied and embedded in a common, historical world shared with others. Phenomenological conceptions of sociality are expressed in such notions as ‘being-with-others’ (Heidegger’s Mitsein or Sartre’s Being-for-Others), ‘consociality’ (Schütz), the ‘we-world’ (Husserl’s Wir-Welt), ‘communalization’ (Vergemeinschaftung), and so on.

A special feature of the conference is that it will not only focus on the phenomenology of sociality found in main figures such as Husserl, Heidegger, Schütz, Scheler, or Sartre, but also on hitherto more neglected figures of the period such as Edith Stein, Felix Kaufmann, Adolf Reinach, Dietrich von Hildebrand, and Karl Löwith, among others.

By exploring the methodological and thematic variety of phenomenological approaches to human sociality the conference shall, not least, contribute to recast and invigorate the conceptions of collectivity and sociality as currently discussed in post-Frankfurt School social philosophy, in research on social cognition or in analytic social ontology.

Contact: [email protected] 

Further Information 

For further information, see the conference webpage: