Síntesis Activa – Part II. Intersections between phenomenology and anthropology
*** A collaborative project between the Husserl Archives Cologne, the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School, the Chilean Association for Phenomenology and the Universidad Diego Portales ***
What does it mean to be human? Thinkers from both the phenomenological tradition and the anthropological discipline have attempted to answer that question, resulting in tendencies of affinity and opposition between the two approaches. Given the vast diversity of projects inside anthropology and phenomenology, the varied nature of their relationship, sometimes even effacing their very distinction, should not come as a surprise.
This complex relation has played out in very diverse ways in the long history of their mutual engagement: One can find synergies and cooperation, as in the dialogue between philosophical anthropology and phenomenology, incarnated in the works of Max Scheler or Helmuth Plessner, and again in the mobilization of phenomenological insights for ethnomethodology, in the vein of Harold Garfinkel; but one equally finds conflicts and confrontations, for example in the rejection of phenomenology as Eurocentric in the works of contemporary anthropologists like Viveiros de Castro, or Husserl‘s own rejection of “anthropologism” in his Logical Investigations.
This workshop aims to open this tense, but fruitful field between both currents of thought, in order to discuss questions such as: How does phenomenology conceptualize the human and his world, particularly in relation to and in distinction from animals? What are the insights of social and cultural anthropology that can inform contemporary phenomenological research? But also, to what extent can phenomenology still claim its ambition to found the social sciences, including anthropology?
Modality: Hybrid
Wednesdays at 10:00 am – 12:00 (Chile); 16:00 – 18:00 (Germany); every two weeks via Zoom.
https://zoom.us/meeting/register/gLdC1fMUTte2ShKm-DBt1A
| Session 1: 18.06.2025 | Key Note: Thiemo Breyer “Experience in Phenomenological Anthropology” | |
| Session 2: 02.07.2025 | Julian Lünser “The Social Genesis of the Habitus: A Husserlian Critique of Bourdieu” | Cristián Martínez Bravo“Teleology in autopoiesis? Varelian Autopoietic Theory, the Jonasian Turn, and the Need to Philosophically Reformulate Autopoiesis from Helmuth Plessner”
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| Session 3: 16.07.2025 | Key note: Jagna Brudzinska: TBA | |
| Session 4: 30.07.2025 | Felipe Guerrero “Playing as an experience of suspension. A phenomenological description of the example of Huizinga” | Camila Ramírez Clavería “Intertwined Constitution in Husserl’s Phenomenology: Between Normality and Normalization” |
| Session 5: 13.08.2025 | Marco Cavallaro: „The Displaced Body: Phenomenological Reflections on Embodiment and Loss of Place“ | Valeria Campos Salvaterra: “Des-subjectivation of transcendental phenomenology” |
| Session 6: 27.08.2025 | Key Note: Roberto Rubio: „Christian Fate as Urglaube: Developing Heidegger’s Insight into Christian Faith in a Husserlian Theoretical Framework“ | |
Sponsored by
Instituto de Filosofía UDP
University of Cologne
Husserl Archives Cologne
a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities
Asociación Chilena de Fenomenología
Fondecyt Postdoctoral Nº 3250052