CfA Workshop Group Agency and Metaethics
\nWe invite submissions for the workshop Group Agency and Metaethics. Metaethics concerns the study of the metaphysical\, epistemological\, semantic and psychological presuppositions and commitments of moral thought\, talk and practice. However\, the answers to these various questions are typically developed with a focus on individuals. The possibility that groups are normative or moral agents in their own right is rarely considered within metaethics. The aim of this workshop is to explore the significance of the possibility of group agency for debates in metaethics\, and vice versa. The workshop will focus on group agency in connection to topics such as naturalism/non-naturalism\; realism/anti-realism\; cognitivism/non-cognitivism\; the nature of normativity and norms\; normative reasons\; rationality\; and experimental metaethics. We further welcome submissions on related issues that may be significant for these topics. By exploring groundbreaking topics at the intersection of metaethics and social ontology\, the workshop hopefully will set the stage for future debates.
\nThe workshop will feature four keynote speakers:
\n·\; \; \; \; \; \; \; \; Prof. Carla Bagnoli (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia)
\n·\; \; \; \; \; \; \; \; Prof. Bart Streumer (University of Groningen)
\n·\; \; \; \; \; \; \; \; Asst. Prof. Asya Passinsky (Central European University)
\n·\; \; \; \; \; \; \; \; Prof. Hans Bernhard Schmid (University of Vienna)
\nThe workshop will take place at the University of Vienna from 9 to 11 September 2026. If you are interested in presenting at the workshop\, please send your anonymized abstract to niels.de.haan@univie.ac.at with the subject line: Abstract Group Agency and Metaethics. The anonymized abstract should be approximately 500 words. Each speaker will be allotted 1 hour (incl. Q&\;A). The deadline for submissions is 31 May\, 2026. We aim to send out the notifications of acceptance around 15 June\, 2026.
\nThere are bursaries available for students or precariously employed participants with a lack of available funding to (partially) cover accommodation and flights. If you would like to be considered for one of the bursaries\, please indicate this in the email. If your submission is successful\, you will be asked to provide a short description of your funding situation to ensure we can distribute the bursaries fairly.
\nThe workshop is sponsored by the International Social Ontology Society (https://isosonline.org/) and the University of Vienna.
\nWe look forward to your submissions.
\nKind regards\,
\nOlof Leffler and Niels de Haan
ORGANIZER;CN=Olof Leffler;CN=Niels de Haan: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20260810T040229Z DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Vienna:20261008T090000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/Vienna:20261010T170000 SUMMARY:5th Central European Graduate Conference in Ancient Philosophy UID:20260810T040231Z-iCalPlugin-Grails@fe80:0:0:0:3cca:14ff:fe3c:a4c3%3 TZID:Europe/Vienna LOCATION:Vienna\, Austria DESCRIPTION:Keynote Speakers at this event are:
\nKaterina Ierodiakonou (University of Athens)
\nRobert Roreitner (Charles University\, Prague)
ORGANIZER: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20260810T040229Z DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Vienna:20261008T090000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/Vienna:20261009T170000 SUMMARY:Myth and the More-than-Human Community in the Twenty-First Century UID:20260810T040232Z-iCalPlugin-Grails@fe80:0:0:0:3cca:14ff:fe3c:a4c3%3 TZID:Europe/Vienna LOCATION:Vienna\, Austria DESCRIPTION:Workshop Topic
\nCan community&mdash\;and\, more specifically\, the more-than-human community&mdash\;be conceived as anything other than a myth? The term myth itself embodies a fundamental ambivalence: it can signify a lie\, fabrication\, or ideological fiction\, yet it simultaneously refers to a primordial\, sacred\, and potentially non-hierarchical form of speech through which worlds are disclosed and relations instituted. Rather than seeking to resolve this tension\, the workshop places it at the centre of its inquiry\, examining the processes through which community is enacted\, reflected upon\, and mediated. It asks how more-than-human forms of coexistence might be conceptualised through engagement with relational and Indigenous ontologies\, without romanticising or appropriating them. Ultimately\, the workshop questions whether myth can serve not merely as an object of critique but also as a resource for rethinking community beyond identity\, hierarchy\, sovereignty\, and mastery.
\nAgainst this backdrop\, the question of belonging emerges as the political and religious articulation of community: who belongs and on what terms. Contemporary debates oscillate between nationalist and exclusionary imaginaries grounded in identity\, sovereignty\, and closure\, and emerging concepts of more-than-human communities shaped by interdependence\, exposure\, and entanglement in the face of ecological crisis. This workshop starts from the premise that what these formations share is not a stable foundation\, but a constitutive mythic dimension that determines who can speak\, act\, and share responsibility. It asks how the institutionalisation of community through myth can enact an immunitarian logic\, simultaneously protecting certain members while delimiting others\, rendering belonging both a safeguard and a justification for exclusion or even sacrifice.
\nAgainst this background\, the workshop also asks how more-than-human community can be thought politically beyond the logic of sovereignty and moral universalism. How might concepts of vulnerability\, exposure\, becoming-animal\, and ecological entanglement challenge dominant political imaginaries of protection\, mastery\, and immunisation? In this sense\, the workshop seeks to open a space for rethinking community not as a moral or juridical project of inclusion\, but as a fragile\, conflictual\, and transformative field of shared life across species.
\nContent of Submission
\nBracketing the binary between the real and the fictive\, and drawing on thinkers such as Derrida\, Nancy\, Latour\, Haraway &mdash\; as well as Nietzschean and post-Nietzschean critiques of humanism\, morality\, and political sovereignty &mdash\; the workshop explores community as poised between impossibility and inevitability\, between rupture and relational becoming. Focusing on myth as both a totalising and interruptive form\, it investigates how communities take shape through narratives\, practices\, and institutions&mdash\;such as taboo\, sacrifice\, ritual\, law\, technology\, and regimes of purity and pollution&mdash\;and how these determinations are legitimised\, naturalised\, and contested. Centering on the consequences for interspecies relations and ecological entanglements\, the workshop examines how the stabilisation of community simultaneously establishes boundaries and exclusions.
\nRecognising the wide spectrum of questions encompassed by the workshop&rsquo\;s theme\, we invite contributions that engage with\, but are not limited to\, the following questions:
\n \; \; &bull\; Can myth operate as an interruptive rather than totalising form\, enabling non-identitarian\, non-sovereign modes of coexistence?
\; \; &bull\; How can community be approached as a process of exposure and relation rather than a stable foundation\, particularly in more-than-human contexts?
\; \; &bull\; How can Nietzschean critiques of humanism\, morality\, and political sovereignty help to rethink community beyond liberal inclusion and moral universalism?
\; \; &bull\; How might diverse modes of relationality&mdash\;such as kinship\, companion species\, sympoiesis\, and Terrestrials&mdash\;shape\, extend\, or even rethink the notion of community?
\; \; &bull\; How do narratives and practices relate to one another\, and in what ways do myths both reflect and enable practices of eating\, killing\, sacrifice\, care\, mediation\, and automation while drawing lines of inclusion and exclusion?
\; \; &bull\; In what ways can dialogue between postmodern thought and Indigenous knowledge generate productive insights for understanding community\, relationality\, and practice?
Forms of Submission
\nPresentations may take the form of individual papers. To be considered\, proposals must include the presenter&rsquo\;s name\, paper title\, and full contact details (email address and institutional affiliation)\, along with an abstract (500 words) and a brief biographical note. The workshop will take place in Vienna on 8&ndash\;9 October 2026. Presentations will be 20 minutes in length and will be followed by 30 minutes of discussion. Submissions should be sent electronically as a single PDF file. Scholars at all stages of their academic careers are warmly encouraged to apply.
\nContact
\nPlease submit proposals to: myth.community@lists.univie.ac.at until the 17.7.2026 \;
The organizers are exploring publication options\; however\, participation in the workshop does not imply a promise of publication.
Actual problems and critical situations &ndash\; such as ecological crisis and political disruption &ndash\; have more and more shown the need for a thought that can be effective\, but nonetheless not all-encompassing.
\nThis conference proposes &ldquo\;experimenting philosophy of religion&rdquo\; as field\, method and a performative mode of exchange: a practice of inquiry that acknowledges precarity and embraces provisional possibilities of thinking. We treat &ldquo\;experiment&rdquo\; in its full sense: trial\, risk\, and iterative testing\, where concepts are articulated\, confronted\, and\, when necessary\, allowed to fail.
\nExperimentation is not external to philosophy of religion but constitutive of it\, insofar as the field opens possibilities for creating what is other &ndash\; new conceptual and practical configurations &ndash\; while attending to how these emerge within existing disciplines. \;
\nWe convene multiperspective approaches to pressing questions in politics\, ecology\, and aesthetics: What perspectives does the philosophy of religion offer on the climate crisis? How can these insights inform political and social practice? How do aesthetic experiences and approaches reflect philosophical-religious research\, and vice versa? \;
\nWe want to provide a room for young voices in order to express their research and test the capacities\, practical and theoretical\, of philosophy of religion.
\nThe conference will have a three parts format\, divided in three days (planned days are 21&ndash\;23 October 2026). The section are the followings:
\n1. \; \; \; \; \;Podium discussion with Vienna‑based senior scholars on the field&rsquo\;s trajectories and futures\;
\n2. \; \;Three thematic panels (organized by VDTR members): Politics &\; Society\; Ecology &\; Nature\; Arts &\; Aesthetics. Contributions by postdocs and PhD candidates\; strong peer‑to‑peer format\;
\n\n3. \; \;Active\, non‑conventional session (e.g.\, reading and discussion group\, collective writing\, method try‑outs) that goes beyond lecture/listen formats.
ORGANIZER;CN=Christian Faber;CN=Marco Fiorletta: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR