CFP: 42nd Annual KJSNA Meeting: Dilthey in Jaspers' Psychology of Worldviews

42nd Annual KJSNA Meetings
Topic 1: Dilthey in Jaspers' Psychology of Worldviews

Due to the pandemic, the 42nd Annual KJSNA Meetings are scheduled to take place online. This is the first of three meetings, the other two take place on April 23-24 and on May 7-8, 2021

KJSNA cordially invites proposals for presentations that engage with the Psychologie der Weltanschauungen that was composed in 1919 and is published as volume six of Jaspers' works in the Karl Jaspers Gesamtausgabe (KJG), edited by Oliver Immel, scientific collaborator of the Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. The Psychology of Worldviews has to date not been translated into English. Looking back, Jaspers referred to the book as being his "first philosophical exposition" and "the earliest writing of the later so-called modern existential philosophy." Jaspers draws in this work on Husserls' phenomenological descriptions and on Max Weber's notion of "ideal types" and also significantly on the hermeneutics as developed by Wilhelm Dilthey. José Ortega y Gasset called Dilthey "the most important philosopher in the second half of the nineteenth century." This conference aims to explore this influence of Dilthey in the Psychology of Worldviews on Jaspers' attempt to create a typology of worldviews. Dilthey argues that the main task of the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) is the understanding of the organizational structures of human and historical life rather than the causal explanation of it. This also brought about a shift of the methodological focus onto the lived experience. Meaning is historical and the world is given to human beings through symbolically mediated practices. For Dilthey, the aim of the humanities is to comprehend individual experience and the embodied individual's life in its concrete cultural-historical context. Dilthey holds that history is made up of a series of world views that require a process of interpretive inquiry that is unavoidably circular. Thus, for Dilthey, understanding by humans is dependent on past worldviews, interpretations, and a shared world.

Presentations are limited to a maximum of 10 minutes followed by a 20 minutes discussion with each one of the panel members, for a total time period of 30 minutes per presenter. Emphasis is on dialogue; the event will be videotaped and an edited version of the recording will be posted online. All participants are encouraged to submit full-length versions of their final, edited papers for consideration to be published in Existenz. All contributors are welcome regardless of membership. A registration fee of $25.00 applies for all who are not an active member in the Karl Jaspers Society of North America.

Please send your working title and a brief abstract (200 words) to the program chair:

Ruth A. Burch at [email protected] by November 30, 2020. Earlier submissions are appreciated and will be processed in the order as they are received.

Notification of placement will take place by January 10, 2021.