Debate
Phenomenology today – what is it good at?
- Date
- Friday 9 October 2026
- Time
- Location
-
Kamerlingh Onnes Building
Steenschuur 25
2311 ES Leiden - Room
- A0.08
Workshop of the Dutch Society for Phenomenology,
in collaboration with the Leiden Centre for Continental Philosophy LCCP
at the Institute for Philosophy of Leiden University
Phenomenology is undoubtedly one of the main currents of philosophy in the 20th century – but what has happened to it in the 21st century?
Judging by the programs of big international phenomenological conferences, the main currents of 20th century phenomenology have revolved around Husserl, Heidegger, and modern French phenomenology – although in reality, phenomenology was divided into numerous subfields and it spread over all continents. In the 20th century, phenomenology sharpened its ideas in intense and sometimes ferocious debates with analytical philosophy on the one hand, poststructuralism on the other hand. In the 21st century, various new debates have emerged. Some have their origin in the challenge of hard sciences of consciousness and medicine to the phenomenological first-person point of view. Others have their origin in the critique of phenomenology’s “correlationism” by the proponents of the so-called new materialism.
Where has all of this brought us today? Has phenomenology been overcome by these challenges or has it on the contrary been consolidated against them? Has it evolved while responding to its philosophical interlocutors? Has it changed its form when realizing that consciousness cannot be limited to Western, male, monotheist, human consciousness, and when realizing that lifeworld cannot be limited to the historical lifeworld of a people anymore?
In short: What good is phenomenology today? What is good phenomenology today?
The newly re-established Dutch Society for Phenomenology organises a workshop in which a discussion on these admittedly wider-ranging matters is opened by the board members of the society. The society aims at bringing together people working on phenomenology in the Netherlands and Belgium, providing a forum for discussions and a context for new developments. The workshop is intended to all who are interested in the future of phenomenology.
The workshop is free of charge but please register by c.w.sombroek@phil.leidenuniv.nl
Programme
10:30 |
Opening |
Gert-Jan van der Heiden (Dutch Society for Phenomenology) and
|
10:45-11:30 |
Prof. Vincent Blok (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam) |
Ecological Phenomenology: reflections on the need and necessity of the epoché of phenomenology in times of climate crisis |
11:30-12:15 |
Prof. Susanna Lindberg (Universiteit Leiden) |
The world of global warming 1: Beyond the world, the elemental |
12:15-13:30 |
Lunch |
|
13:30-14:15 |
Prof. Julia Jansen (KU Leuven / Husserl-Archiev Leuven) |
Against post-truth with a phenomenology of evidence |
14:15-15:00 |
Dr. Maren Wehrle (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam) |
(All) Phenomenologies Are Made of This? Doing phenomenology between own and other, general and concrete, necessity and contingency |
15:00-15:30 |
Coffee/tea |
|
15:30-16:15 |
Prof. Eddo Evink (Open Universiteit) |
Horizon, Play, Narrative. Towards a Hermeneutical Metaphysics |
16:15-17:00 |
Prof. Gert-Jan van der Heiden (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen) |
The Renewed Interest in Metaphysics in Hermeneutic Phenomenology: Some Considerations |
Prof. Eddo Evink: Horizon, Play, Narrative. Towards a Hermeneutical Metaphysics
Abstract: Inspired by Jan Patočka’s asubjective phenomenology, I would like to sketch the highlights of a hermeneutical metaphysics that reaches beyond the traditional onto-theological metaphysics. ‘Metaphysics’ is the name for a realm of, for lack of a better word, fundamental questions. We can also still call it ‘first philosophy’. The hermeneutical approach of this realm does not search for foundations, principles or other sorts of highest beings. It also does not pretend to practice a radical doubt in order to find absolute certainty. Reflection on the basic limits of our experiences shows us our being embedded in partly traceable structures that we cannot survey. In phenomenological terms: the phenomenological epochè does not result in a phenomenological reduction. The suspension of judgments by a phenomenological epochè opens up worldly structures in which we find ourselves always already embedded. These structures can be understood in terms of horizon, play and narrative. All our experiences are situated in horizons that we are aware of but that we can never survey. All our actions take place, more or less strategically, in dynamic structures of play, in which we cooperate, but that we can never control. All our reflections on this worldliness are embedded in narratives that are also beyond any overview and control. This embeddedness limits both radical doubt (like Wittgenstein showed in On Certainty) and the answers and worldviews that a radical doubt might find as its results. Thus we can call this hermeneutical way of thinking ‘metaphysical’ because it opens a realm of fundamental questions; it is not ‘metaphysical’ in the sense of a plea for an absolute principle or foundation, nor in the sense of a negative absence of such a principle.
Bio: Eddo Evink is Professor in Philosophy of Technology, Media and Culture at the Faculty of Humanities at the Open University in the Netherlands. His main areas of research contain phenomenology, hermeneutics, metaphysics, philosophy of the humanities, philosophy of religion and philosophy of technology.
Prof. Gert-Jan van der Heiden: The Renewed Interest in Metaphysics in Hermeneutic Phenomenology: Some Considerations
Abstract. This talk takes up themes from van der Heiden’s recently published book Metafysica: Getuigenissen van het zijn. In phenomenology and hermeneutics, in the last two decades, a clear turn to or reappreciation of metaphysics is taking place as, for instance, works of Tengelyi, Figal, and Grondin show. In this talk some aspects of this renewed interest in metaphysics are discussed, especially why this turn might require both a reinterpretation of the theoretical and of the principle of reason.
Bio: Gert-Jan van der Heiden holds the Chair of Metaphysics at Radboud University in Nijmegen and recently published Metafysica: Getuigenissen van het zijn.
Prof. Julia Jansen: Against post-truth with a phenomenology of evidence.
Abstract: After much talk, during the last ten or more years, about a new ‘post-truth’ era, and after an equally long period of intellectual perplexity regarding it, the political shifts that have come in the wake of it, have turned from undeniable to blatant. Philosophers who find these shifts dangerous and intolerable wonder what they can contribute, as philosophers, to an understanding of these developments—an understanding that might aid the devising of antidotes and countermeasures. However, not all philosophers who feel responsible in this way, are specializing in social or political philosophy. The obvious connection between the dramatic political shifts and the social phenomenon of ‘post-truth’ also calls for epistemological clarification. It thus provides but one example for how other philosophical disciplines are also crucial to the task. In this paper, I offer elements of a phenomenological take on evidence (inspired by relevant Husserlian reflections) that show why strategies of ‘fact-checking’ and ‘lie-shaming’ must by themselves fall short of being socially and politically effective.
Bio: Julia Jansen has published on systematic issues in transcendental and critical phenomenology, imagination, aesthetics, and on the relation between Kantian and Husserlian approaches. She is the director of the Husserl Archives and Vice-Dean Research of the Institute of Philosophy in Leuven.
Dr. Maren Wehrle: (All) Phenomenologies Are Made of This? Doing phenomenology between own and other, general and concrete, necessity and contingency
Bio: Dr. Maren Wehrle Associate Professor at Erasmus School of Philosophy
Prof. Vincent Blok, Ecological Phenomenology: reflections on the need and necessity of the epoché of phenomenology in times of climate crisis
Bio: Vincent Blok is Professor in Philosoph at the School of philosophy of Erasmus University Rotterdam
Prof. Susanna Lindberg, The world of global warming 1: Beyond the world, the elemental
Bio: Susanna Lindberg is Professor of Continental Philosophy at the Leiden University Institute for Philosophy.