Venue: Vilnius University\, Faculty of Philosophy\, Vilnius\, Lithuania
\nDate: 25-27 August 2027
\nOrganized by: \;Vilnius University\, The Faculty of Philosophy\, Lithuanian Society for Phenomenology \;&\; \;Central and East European Society for Phenomenology
\nIn his later writings\, Husserl diagnosed a crisis of the European sciences\, which he understood as a crisis of reason and of meaning\, rooted in an objectivism that had lost touch with the world of lived experience. His reflections gave the concept of crisis a central place in phenomenological philosophy and influenced subsequent developments within the tradition. Since then\, phenomenologists have approached the question of crisis from different perspectives\, examining what happens when our familiar ways of understanding ourselves\, others\, and the world are called into question.
\nBeyond its historical and cultural register\, crisis names a structural possibility of renewal as such. Every constitution of sense rests on a horizon of anticipations that can be disappointed\, disrupted\, or overturned\; every habitual\, taken-for-granted world can lose its self-evidence and become questionable. Phenomenology is uniquely equipped to describe this dynamic of rupture and reconstitution&ndash\;the disorientation that follows the collapse of a horizon\, and the subsequent work of reorientation\, reinterpretation\, and renewed sense-making through which experience recovers\, or fails to recover\, its coherence.
\nCrisis touches the embodied subjectivity no less than the world of meaning. Illness\, disability\, aging\, and the approach of death expose the fragility of embodied existence and disclose dimensions of experience that ordinarily remain hidden behind the body&rsquo\;s silent functioning. Boundary situations of this kind&ndash\;moments of extremity in which habitual ways of being-in-the-world no longer hold&ndash\;have long served phenomenology as privileged occasions for uncovering the deep structures of subjectivity\, anxiety\, finitude\, and freedom.
\nCrisis also unsettles the shared\, intersubjective texture of the world. Experiences of alienation\, loneliness\, and the erosion of common ground raise questions about what holds a community&rsquo\;s world together and what happens when it comes apart. Migration\, exile\, displacement\, and statelessness bring the distinction between homeworlds and alienworlds into sharp relief\, prompting phenomenological reflection on foreignness\, hospitality\, and the possibility of a shared world across difference.
\nOn the political plane\, crisis takes the form of violence\, war\, oppression\, and the breakdown of institutional and normative order\, but also of the solidarity\, resistance\, and care that arise in response to it. Phenomenology&rsquo\;s attention to lived\, first-person experience offers distinctive resources for understanding how political crises are felt\, resisted\, and endured\, and how new forms of collective action and responsibility emerge from them.
\nThe ecological crisis poses a further\, urgent challenge: what happens to the world\, nature\, human place within it\, once the natural environment itself becomes a site of instability and loss? Ecophenomenological reflection on landscape\, environment\, and the more-than-human world takes on new significance in this context\, as does the broader question of how phenomenology can contribute to thinking the Anthropocene.
\nTechnological transformation brings its own forms of crisis: the mediation and fragmentation of attention\, the proliferation of virtual and digital worlds\, and the destabilization of familiar boundaries between the natural\, the artificial\, and the human. These developments invite phenomenological analysis of how technology reshapes perception\, embodiment\, and our sense of a common world.
\nFinally\, crisis can be turned reflexively upon phenomenology itself: upon the crisis of truth and epistemic authority in public life\, as well as upon phenomenology&rsquo\;s own methods\, presuppositions\, and capacity for self-renewal. Every crisis\, on this view\, is also an occasion for the kind of radical questioning from which phenomenology first arose.
\nThe goal of this conference is to bring together these many senses of crisis and explore how phenomenology can illuminate the experience of crisis in its many forms\, both within the phenomenological tradition and in current research that extends beyond it. We invite participants to discuss the meaning of crisis and its new applications stemming from phenomenological philosophy.
\nThe contributions can\, for example\, focus on the following themes:
\n&bull\; \; \; The phenomenological concept of crisis: its meaning\, structure\, and method
\n&bull\; \; \; The crisis of the sciences and of rationality
\n&bull\; \; \; Boundary situations\, anxiety\, finitude\, and death
\n&bull\; \; \; Illness\, disability\, aging\, and the vulnerable or fragile body
\n&bull\; \; \; Phenomenological psychiatry and psychopathology: breakdown and recovery
\n&bull\; \; \; Trauma\, memory\, and the temporality of crisis
\n&bull\; \; \; Homeworlds and alienworlds: migration\, exile\, displacement
\n&bull\; \; \; Violence\, war\, and the phenomenology of political crisis
\n&bull\; \; \; \; \; \;Solidarity\, resistance\, care\, and collective responsibility in crisis
\n&bull\; \; \; \; \; \;Ecological crisis\, the Anthropocene\, and ecophenomenology
\n&bull\; \; \; \; \; \;Technology\, digitalization\, and the crisis of mediated experience
\n&bull\; \; \; \; \; \;Institutions\, normativity\, and the breakdown of social order
\n&bull\; \; \; \; \; \;Crisis and creativity: art\, literature\, and aesthetic responses to rupture
\n&bull\; \; \; \; \; \;Historical crisis\, generational rupture\, and the phenomenology of tradition
\n&bull\; \; \; \; \; \;Anxiety\, fear\, uncertainty as phenomenological responses to crisis
\n&bull\; \; \; \; \; \;Hope\, peace\, resilience\, and the phenomenology of renewal after crisis
\nConfirmed keynote speakers: Nicolas de Warren (Penn State)\, Saulius Geniu&scaron\;as (CUHK)
\nLanguage: The conference will be held in English
\nDeadline for submissions: 18 April 2027
\nNotifications of acceptance: 18 May 2027
\nE-mail: \;tomas.sinkunas@fsf.vu.lt
\nRegistration fee: 70 EUR
\nSubmission types: \;
\nIndividual papers: Please submit an anonymized abstract of the proposed contribution (max. 300 words) and a cover letter with affiliation and contact information. A regular time slot is 30 minutes (20 minutes for presentation and 10 for questions).
\nThematic panels: The proposal should consist of abstracts for 3 papers as part of one panel (max. 300 words per abstract)\, as well as a separate cover letter with the affiliations of the panelists and contact information. The panelists will have 90 minutes in total for the discussion of the proposed topic.
\nOrganizing committee: Tomas &Scaron\;inkūnas (head of committee)\, Mintautas Gutauskas\, Kristina Simanaitė\, Benediktas Vachninas
ORGANIZER;CN=Tomas Sinkunas;CN=Mintautas Gutauskas;CN=Benediktas Vachninas: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR