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This podcast is for the British Society for Phenomenology and showcases papers at our conferences and events, interviews and discussions on the topic of phenomenology.
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6 hours ago
6 hours ago
Season 8 continues with a recording from our 2021 annual conference, The Future as a Present Concern.
This episode features a presentation from Roberto Wu
Abstract:
The future is usually taken from the perspective of an absence, as a horizon that is continually projected from the present, but which is not already there. As present centered, this temporal relationship attempts to bridge the future fulfilling it with our expectations and accordingly subordinating it to us. However, a phenomenology of temporal responsibility challenges this dynamic. On the one hand, it does not consider the “absence” of the future as a sheer void to be fulfilled, for it is already meaningful to us. On the other hand, it does not take the future as something present-at-hand merely delivered by human actions, but rather, as an instance of time that resists to be determined by the present, a resistance that is related to the alterity of the future ones. Future events, as enacted by forms of alterity, are unpredictable and elude dominion and calculation. The inadequacy of conceiving future practices as mere extension of ours consists in the failure in recognising that our responsibility to contemporary others differs from that to futural others. Considering that the future presents distinct instances of world that will inevitably collide with structures, arrangements, values and meanings as employed today, and also that different communities and individuals will perform distinct courses of action, one may ask how phenomenological investigation may elaborate a temporal responsibility without making violence to the alterity of the futural ones. In order to develop these issues, this proposal focuses primarily on two subjects: first, the elaboration of phenomenological categories that render future people as meaningful in their alterity, and second, the suggestion of minimal conditions of achieving a temporal community based on the openness to distinct forms of alterity in time.
Biography:
Roberto Wu is Professor of Philosophy, Federal University of Santa Catarina (Brazil), author of numerous paper and book chapters on Heidegger, Gadamer, Levinas, and phenomenology.
Further Information:
This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2021, co-organised with University of Galway and The Irish Philosophical Society. This conference was held online consisting of live webninars with keynote presents and pre-recorded presentations from panel speakers. Biographical information of speakers is taken from the programme of that event and therefore may not be up-to-date.
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.
About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/
About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/
4 days ago
4 days ago
Season 8 continues with a recording from our 2021 annual conference, The Future as a Present Concern.
This episode features a presentation from Spyridon Kaltsas
Abstract:
The main aim of this paper is to explore the conceptual relations between hope and the concept of the future in the neo-pragmatism of Richard Rorty. My presentation is divided into two main sections. In order to establish my position, I will first undertake a reconstruction of Rorty’s thought with a focus on the concept of hope. Rorty’s neo-pragmatism centers on the need to rethink freedom after the collapse of foundationalism and seeks to understand the possibility of building a common future without accepting the absolutist and authoritatian pretensions of essentialist metaphysics. Rorty aims to substitute hope for knowledge and replace objective certainty with a new relation to the future of a better common world. In this respect, hope is not understood as an objective ideal, but is rather to be seen as a practical achievement. However, Rorty’s view on the relation between hope and the future is far from being without problems. In the second section of my paper, I will try to further elucidate my argument by turning to the contradiction between two different conceptions of the future in Rorty’s thought. The first one understands the future as the fulfillment of the potential of the present, while the second one regards the future as wholly different from the present, as an alternative to present constraints in knowledge and social practice. I conclude by arguing that these conceptions of the future are mutually exclusive and cannot be reconciled in Rorty’s argument.
Biography:
Spyridon Kaltsas holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). His main research interests are in the fields of moral philosophy, social theory, and the theory of communicative action. He is currently teaching social theory and epistemology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Further Information:
This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2021, co-organised with University of Galway and The Irish Philosophical Society. This conference was held online consisting of live webninars with keynote presents and pre-recorded presentations from panel speakers. Biographical information of speakers is taken from the programme of that event and therefore may not be up-to-date.
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.
About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/
About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/
6 days ago
6 days ago
Season 8 continues with a recording from our 2021 annual conference, The Future as a Present Concern.
This episode features a presentation from Tris Hedges
Abstract:
Edmund Husserl’s The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1936) was arguably his most socio-politically influential work. Although this is mostly indebted to his conceptualisation of the Lebenswelt (life-world), Husserl also provided an important account of the epoché as a praxis rather than the more abstract conception outlined in Ideas I. In the Crisis, Husserl’s project is to show how ‘the total phenomenological attitude and the epoché […] are destined in essence to effect […] the greatest existential transformation which is assigned as a task to mankind.’ This paper aims to demonstrate how the epoché, as a habitual attitude, can be practically carried out in order to effect an existential transformation. I will argue that personal pronouns offer an avenue through which Husserl’s phenomenological reorientation can be demonstrated as a practical, methodological, blueprint for the future. Husserl’s ‘humanistic’ phenomenological project most likely had social categories such as nationality and religion in mind. However, this paper will employ the methodology provided in the Crisis to critically reflect on the taken-for-grantedness (Selbstverständlichkeit) of sex and gender.The paper will proceed by first outlining the task of Husserl’s Crisis and its concern for the objective sciences, before characterising the epoché as a habitual attitude in need of constant renewal. Following this, I will examine how cultural and scientific traditions, and the fixed typology of language fetter the subject to life in the naïve ‘natural attitude’. By showing that sex and gender are linguistically, culturally, and performatively determined ‘types’, their bracketing will be exposed as vital for a genuine phenomenological reorientation. Finally, to avoid the danger of what Husserl calls the ‘seduction of language’, I will show the reactivation and transformation of the personal pronoun ‘they/them’ to be exemplary of the radical praxis at the heart of the Crisis.
Biography:
Tris Hedges is a philosopher based in Berlin working at the intersections of phenomenology, social ontology, affect studies, and queer feminist philosophy. Their work explores themes of sexuality, normalisation, affect, gender, and group identity, and has been published in numerous academic journals as well as literary and scientific magazines. They are currently working as a postdoctoral fellow between Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Copenhagen with a project on the politics and affects of doubt.
Further Information:
This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2021, co-organised with University of Galway and The Irish Philosophical Society. This conference was held online consisting of live webninars with keynote presents and pre-recorded presentations from panel speakers. Biographical information of speakers is taken from the programme of that event and therefore may not be up-to-date.
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.
About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/
About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/
Monday Apr 27, 2026
Monday Apr 27, 2026
Season 8 continues with a recording from our 2021 annual conference, The Future as a Present Concern.
This episode features a presentation from Lorenzo Buti.
Abstract:
This paper reconceptualises the phenomenon of depoliticisation as the materially closing off of alternative future possibilities on the basis of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Marxist-existentialist theory of human praxis. Traditionally, political theorists have defined depoliticisation as a symbolic mutation at the level of ‘the political’. In this account, a state of depoliticisation occurs when a contingent situation appears as immutable or the expression of a more foundational (theological, cultural, technocratic) logic. The future in any society is radically open, but this ontological fact is symbolically covered up. The task of political theory therefore is to show that a particular situation is politically instituted and that a society should acknowledge its own constitutive openness towards an undefined future. This paper criticises this exclusive emphasis on the symbolic conditions of futurity in the theorisation of depoliticisation. By turning to Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason, it argues that next to a symbolic closure, the future can also be practically or materially closed. Practico-inert ensembles can impose a specific directionality on the future by formulating exigencies or imperatives that human praxes must fulfil. By reconstructing Sartre’s conceptual framework, this paper reformulates the phenomenon of depoliticisation as a future which cannot be transcended. In a word, a depoliticised society is one where the future becomes a fate which one cannot escape. This reformulation carries significant consequences for the critical analysis of contemporary 9 societies. It implies that depoliticisation can occur even in situations where there is a high level of political contestation (protests, riots, social polarisation) but where groups lack the practical capacity to redirect the imperatives that are imposed on society. Finally, it shows that confronting depoliticisation not only entails revealing the contingency of a specific situation, but also dismantling the exigencies that dominate our praxis.
Biography:
Lorenzo Buti is a doctoral candidate at RIPPLE (Research Institute in Political Philosophy Leuven), KU Leuven. His research interests lie in continental political philosophy (Lefort, Balibar, Rancière) and the tradition of critical theory (Marx, the Frankfurt School and, somehow, Sartre). Lorenzo works on a research project that aims to rethink the character of democratic action along insurgent lines, in the face of material conditions that structure the stakes of the political stage.
Further Information:
This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2021, co-organised with University of Galway and The Irish Philosophical Society. This conference was held online consisting of live webninars with keynote presents and pre-recorded presentations from panel speakers. Biographical information of speakers is taken from the programme of that event and therefore may not be up-to-date.
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.
About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/
About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/
Friday Apr 24, 2026
Friday Apr 24, 2026
Season 8 continues with a recording from our 2021 annual conference, The Future as a Present Concern.
This episode features a presentation from Tanay Gandhi
Abstract:
The future is often cast in terms of images of progress or ruin, but can we imagine a future that escapes such dichotomies? What does such a radically reimagined future look like? Crucially, how can we as subjects institute a shared world building on such an imagination? I develop an answer in two parts by arguing for an ontology of the future as precarious calling for cultivated modes of response that are distinctly democratic. I analyse connections between discourses that amplify the possibilities for thinking a precarious future. First, artistic practices among Bhil indigenous communities in India that reveal relations to a world of complexity. Second, a tradition of western philosophy moving through Nietzsche and Deleuze that highlights elements of uncertainty and play 16 in the world. Third, discourses that upend the “ontological priority of the human” in terms of an account of dispersed agency. Building on complementarities between these perspectives, I argue for an ontology of the future as inescapably precarious; uncertain, susceptible to uncanny twists and turns. A future that is Zarathustra’s dance floor; composed of multiple actants in relations of collusion and conflict that escape human ordering or control; a future that we must embrace precisely as precarious. In the second part, I argue that such a relation calls for cultivating a democratic sensibility. Following post-foundational perspectives, I identify democracy as an openness to heterogenous possibilities of instituting society; democracy as a recognition of ontological pluralism. This is not simply in terms of an openness to difference, but, I argue, also receptivity to subterranean modes of activity and agential forces. Activating political possibilities on the basis of an ontologically precarious future, therefore, calls for a democratic cultivation; modes of political enactment that express a sensitivity to the multiple sites of agency in a complex world.
Biography:
Tanay Gandhi is a graduate in political theory, having recently completed a Master’s degree (MA) in Ideology and Discourse Analysis from the University of Essex in 2020. He is currently an independent researcher based out of Mumbai, India. His core research interests include radical democratic theory, philosophical aesthetics, and theories of populism, in particular the works of Laclau, Connolly, Deleuze, Adorno, Menke and Rancière. Previously, Tanay was a human rights lawyer in India, working on issues of forest land tenure rights, self-governance and traditional knowledge systems and cultural practices.
Further Information:
This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2021, co-organised with University of Galway and The Irish Philosophical Society. This conference was held online consisting of live webninars with keynote presents and pre-recorded presentations from panel speakers. Biographical information of speakers is taken from the programme of that event and therefore may not be up-to-date.
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.
About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/
About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/
Wednesday Apr 22, 2026
Wednesday Apr 22, 2026
Season 8 continues with a recording from our 2021 annual conference, The Future as a Present Concern.
This episode features a presentation from Martin Ritter
Abstract:
From the perspective of the past, the future is now: tomorrow never comes – it is already here. Walter Benjamin draws attention to this fact and his late, politically engaged thought strives to do justice to it. In contrast to prevailing traditions of revolutionary theories oriented predominantly on the future (i.e. on changing the world for the sake of the future better one), Benjamin puts emphasis on human relation to the past. Whereas Heidegger identifies the forgetfulness of being as the source of our misery, Benjamin is worried about our forgetfulness of the barbaric side of the tradition we live in: about the suffering it was, and still is, built on. The past, with its suppressed hopes, is not simply gone: it reaches for the present, or, as Benjamin himself puts it, it “has a claim” on us. It is in this (uncomfortable) sense that, as Husserl would have it, both the future and the past are “parts” of the present. And we need to do justice to this experience not (only) out of respect for past generations but (primarily) because without our doing so everything threatens to remain the same, or as it has – traditionally – been. In other words, we are – and need to be – responsive to and responsible for the past not (only) for the sake of the past itself but for the future’s sake, or simply for the sake of the present. It is our relation to the past which makes us sensible, according to Benjamin, to the future in the present, calling us to break through the tradition and to reconstruct, or reimagine, its different future. This way, we save the future, not as something which will happen, but as a possibility in the present.
Biography:
Martin Ritter is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. From 2007 to 2020, he taught continental philosophy at the Charles University in Prague. Currently, he realises a two-years research project at the University of Vienna (http://oskf.flu.cas.cz/technology-as-medium). Martin specializes in phenomenology and critical theory. He edited (and translated) three volumes of the Czech Selected Writings of Walter Benjamin. Recently, he has published two monographs: To liberate the future by an act of cognition. Walter Benjamin's theory of truth; Filosofia 2018, in Czech), and Into the World. The Movement of Patočka’s Phenomenology (Springer 2019).
Further Information:
This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2021, co-organised with University of Galway and The Irish Philosophical Society. This conference was held online consisting of live webninars with keynote presents and pre-recorded presentations from panel speakers. Biographical information of speakers is taken from the programme of that event and therefore may not be up-to-date.
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.
About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/
About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/
Monday Apr 20, 2026
Monday Apr 20, 2026
Season 8 continues with a recording from our 2021 annual conference, The Future as a Present Concern.
This episode features a presentation from Alexandra S. Ilieva
Abstract:
If taking “the future as a present concern” is to generate tangible effects regarding our responsibilities towards the future— in light of the ecological and humanitarian crises facing the world today—it warrants utopian thinking. Such a claim emerges when we bring together the distinct socio-historical-cultural perspectives of the Madhyamaka school of Buddhism and the Pragmatist Richard Rorty. Despite their temporal distance, both share pragmatically-oriented dialectical styles and complementary utopian visions—whether they be Rorty’s liberal utopia or the Buddhist soteriological aspiration to eliminate the suffering of all sentient beings—which together reveal that discussions of ‘the future’ are only relevant in their pragmatic relation to our specific economic and political goals and humanitarian visions for the future. Indeed, Buddhism is often accused of being world-renouncing, yet the Madhyamaka provide a useful example of how a utopian vision, even if “otherworldly”, can provide an ethically rigorous framework that can guide us to make changes in the here and now. It also suggests that discussions of the future and its relation to the present need not be underpinned by a linear model of time, as the Buddhist belief in the cyclical existence of the material world does not preclude them from offering a distinct utopian vision with direct, pragmatic implications for our present conduct. Indeed, on these intercultural planes, what emerges is that “the future is a present concern” means nothing more than “there are pragmatic steps we can take to get closer to the goal of eliminating cruelty and suffering across the globe”. The upshot of such an intercultural approach is that it can help guide discourse in both external (political, economic) directions, but also internal (ethical, spiritual) paths. How exactly to achieve this end is for further discussion, but I hope the present paper at least opens this conversational door.
Biography:
Alexandra is a final year PhD candidate at the Faculty of Divinity in the University of Cambridge. She received her BA from New York University in Philosophy and Psychology. Her MA '22 was in ‘Transcultural Studies’ at the University of Heidelberg, where she focused on early Buddhist philosophy. Her current research examines the intersections between Rortyan Pragmatism and Madhyamaka Buddhism in relation to their peculiar non-positions relative to philosophical dialectical spaces. She is interested in the promotion of ‘fusion’ philosophy, and is especially concerned with reconceptualising what ‘philosophy’ means in light of intercultural investigations and Pragmatist critiques.
Further Information:
This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2021, co-organised with University of Galway and The Irish Philosophical Society. This conference was held online consisting of live webninars with keynote presents and pre-recorded presentations from panel speakers. Biographical information of speakers is taken from the programme of that event and therefore may not be up-to-date.
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.
About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/
About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/
Friday Apr 17, 2026
Friday Apr 17, 2026
Season 8 continues with a recording from our 2021 annual conference, The Future as a Present Concern.
This episode features a keynote presentation from Dr Alessandro Salice
Abstract:
A spectre is haunting the phenomenological community—the spectre of phenomenological realism. All the powers of old phenomenology have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger and Sartre, post-structuralist radicals and analytic spies.
But what is phenomenological realism? The talk aims at answering this question in three steps.
In the first part, I give a brief historical overview of the Munich and Göttingen circles of phenomenology, while highlighting some methodological considerations on how to approach the study of this complex tradition of philosophy.
In the second part, I focus on phenomenological realism as a metaphysical position consistently embraced by the members of the two circles. I argue that phenomenological realism is characterized by (a specific form of) correlationism and by essentialism and I show how these two principles have informed some specific positions in phenomenological psychology and social phenomenology.
Finally, the last part rejects various attempts to assess realist phenomenology in relation to its convergence or divergence with the Husserlian project. Realist phenomenology, so the claim goes, deserves to be assessed in its own right because it is a unique, fertile, and autonomous form of phenomenology. Doing that—i.e., philosophically engaging with early phenomenologists, while historically uncovering their insights—promises to impact different strands of the current philosophical debate and to substantially enrich the received picture of the phenomenological movement.
Biography:
Alessandro Salice is Lecturer at the Department of Philosophy of University College Cork and a Research Associate at the Center for Subjectivity Research (CFS) in Copenhagen. Previously, Alessandro held postdoctoral positions at the Universities of Graz, Basel, Vienna, and at the CFS. He mainly works at the intersection of phenomenology, philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology, and moral psychology, by paying particular attention to the social capacities of the mind.
Alessandro has edited The Phenomenological Approach to Social Reality. History, Concepts, Problems (2016), together with Hans Bernhard Schmid. He is co-editor of Journal of Social Ontology and his papers have been published in several journals including: Emotion Review, European Journal of Philosophy, Frontiers in Psychology, Frontiers in Psychiatry, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Review of Philosophy and Psychology, Phenomenology and Cognitive Sciences, Philosophical Psychology, and Synthese.
Further Information:
This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2021, co-organised with University of Galway and The Irish Philosophical Society. This conference was held online consisting of live webninars with keynote presents and pre-recorded presentations from panel speakers. Biographical information of speakers is taken from the programme of that event and therefore may not be up-to-date.
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.
About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/
About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/
Wednesday Apr 15, 2026
Wednesday Apr 15, 2026
Season 8 continues with a recording from our 2021 annual conference, The Future as a Present Concern.
This episode features a keynote presentation from Prof. Sara Heinämaa
Abstract:
In The Crisis, Husserl argues that transcendental phenomenology must be understood as a scientific vocation with radical philosophical aims. However, The Crisis also gives a curiously ambiguous characterization of the phenomenological vocation which emphasizes its similarities with other life vocations but, at the same time, problematizes this analogy. On the one hand, Husserl argues that we can conduct phenomenological inquiries in the same manner as we manage other projects, scientific and non-scientific. On the other hand, he also argues that phenomenology requires a radical and fundamental abandonment of all worldly interests – theoretical as well as practical, positive scientific as well as critical. If this holds, phenomenology cannot be practiced in the manner of any worldly projects (everyday, scientific or philosophical). So, we find a fundamental tension in Husserl’s characterization of his own philosophy: it seems that phenomenology must be understood as a dual vocation which, on the one hand, allows periodic practicing like worldly vocations but, on the other hand, demands a permanent abandonment of everything that is worldly. My presentation gives a novel account of Husserl’s understanding of the phenomenological vocation, one that helps us understand and alleviate this tension. I will argue that Husserl’s conceptualization of phenomenology as a scientific vocation must be understood in the light of his theory of the habituation and institution of intentional acts, and that special attention must be paid to the habituation of the conative acts of willing. For this purpose, I will offer explications of Husserl’s concepts of habituation and institution and introduce the main parameters of his analysis of the intentionality and temporality of volition.
Biography:
Sara Heinämaa is Academy Professor (2017–2021 Academy of Finland) and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She specialises in phenomenology, existentialism, philosophy of mind and history of philosophy, and has published extensively in these fields, especially on normativity, emotions, embodiment, personhood, intersubjectivity and gender. She is an expert of Husserlian phenomenology but has also contributed broadly to our understanding of existential phenomenology and its methods, especially the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir and Sartre.
Heinämaa is co-author of Birth, Death, and Femininity (2010) and author of Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference (2003), and has co-edited several volumes, including Why Method Matters: Phenomenology as Critique (forthcoming 2021), Phenomenology and the Transcendental (2014), and Consciousness (2007)
Further Information:
This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2021, co-organised with University of Galway and The Irish Philosophical Society. This conference was held online consisting of live webninars with keynote presents and pre-recorded presentations from panel speakers. Biographical information of speakers is taken from the programme of that event and therefore may not be up-to-date.
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.
About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/
About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/
Monday Apr 13, 2026
Monday Apr 13, 2026
Season 8 continues with a recording from our 2021 annual conference, The Future as a Present Concern.
This episode features a keynote presentation from Prof. Shaun Gallagher
Abstract:
How should we act to address climate change, racism, sexism …? These are large important problems that call for serious actions on both individual and collective scales. To think about actions on these scales one needs to think about future or distal intentions – that is intention formation that involves deliberation, action planning and decision, much of which can involve communication with others. My aim is not to address these large questions – so I won’t be offering any advice about how we should address climate change, etc. My aim is rather to dig down into the phenomenology of the possibility of taking action, and indeed the possibility of deliberating, planning, decision-making and communicating – all of which are themselves actions. My analysis will address a version of what has been called the ‘scaling up’ problem.
I will argue that in regard to processes on the scale at which Husserl addresses time-consciousness – which I want to call intrinsic temporality, because it applies not just to consciousness, but to action and performance, and perhaps to life processes in general – the rule is not passivity, as a sort of waiting for the future to happen, but enaction. We enact the future on the most basic scale, and if this were not the case, we would not be able to take action, to deliberate, to decide, or to communicate, or solve any of the problems concerning climate, racism, or sexism. The latter processes involve a narrative scale. I’ll argue, however, that rather than ‘scaling up’ to narrative (understanding it as higher-order cognition), one should think of ‘scaling out’, and understanding narrative as a kind of performance. In this regard, although this kind of formal analysis does not give us any answers to these larger questions, it should tell us how it’s possible to act.
Biography:
Shaun Gallagher is the Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Excellence in Philosophy at the University of Memphis, and a Professorial Fellow at the School of Liberal Arts, University of Wollongong. He was a Humboldt Foundation Anneliese Maier Research Fellow (2012-18), and has held Honorary Professorships at Tromsø University (Norway); Durham (UK) and Copenhagen (DK), and visiting positions at Cambridge, Lyon, Paris, Berlin, Oxford and Rome.
His areas of research include phenomenology, philosophy of mind, embodied cognition, social interaction, self/personal identity and hermeneutics. His publications include Action and Interaction (2020); Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind (2017); A Neurophenomenology of Awe and Wonder (2015); Phenomenology (2012; new edition 2021); The Phenomenological Mind (with Dan Zahavi, 3 rd edition 2021); How the Body Shapes the Mind (2005); editor: Oxford Handbook of the Self and Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition. He is the editor-in-chief of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
Further Information:
This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2021, co-organised with University of Galway and The Irish Philosophical Society. This conference was held online consisting of live webninars with keynote presents and pre-recorded presentations from panel speakers. Biographical information of speakers is taken from the programme of that event and therefore may not be up-to-date.
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.
About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/
About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/