CFP: 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.

Possible topics include (but are not restricted to)

• Phenomenological accounts of intersubjectivity and being-with-others

• The constitution of the social world

• Recognition and social identity

• The social constitution of normativity

• The intersubjective constitution of objectivity and rationality

• Culture, historicity, social habitualization, etc.

• The problem of methodological solipsism in phenomenology

• The collective intentionality debate in analytic philosophy and phenomenology

• Phenomenology of social acts (e.g. in Reinach, Stein, Husserl) and the constitution of social facts

• Phenomenological conceptions of group mindedness, collective consciousness and experience or higher-order and group personality (e.g. in Stein, Scheler, Husserl)

• Phenomenological accounts of social ontological core concepts (such as groups, community and society, institutions and associations, etc.)

• Phenomenological accounts of social cognition (shared attention, empathy, etc.)

Submission and Review Process

Please send an abstract of max. 500 words including references by email, with the subject line “Submission to Discovering the ‘We’ Conference”, to: [email protected] 

Deadline for submission: February 28, 2013

Date of notification of acceptance: March 15, 2013

Further Information 

For further information, see the conference webpage: