Philosophy and Crisis: Perspectives from Critical Phenomenology

The unfolding authoritarian descent of the United States, the spiralling violence in Gaza and neighbouring regions, the war of aggression against Ukraine, the ‘culture wars’ against marginalised groups and science, unstable global markets, the impending collapse of our planet’s climate, etc.—our time is mired in crises. Moreover, these crises seem interdependent; choosing a course of action to battle one crisis has repercussions for navigating another. At the latest since the second Trump Administration, philosophy and academia have become aware of their role in these phenomena; in practising philosophy, the questions that we try to answer—and how we try to answer them—have an irreducibly political dimension. But does philosophy have the resources to help conceptualise (and solve) crisis?

The dual character of crisis—its oscillating dynamic between society and academia—has long informed and motivated the phenomenological programme. Husserl’s Crisis, for instance, sought to reestablish the epistemic significance of the lifeworld for the sciences and save European civilisation in the process. With francophone thinkers like Beauvoir, Fanon, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas, phenomenology became increasingly involved in addressing social and political themes such as gender, colonialism, antisemitism, class struggle, and justice. In recent years, philosophers in North America and increasingly also in Europe have tried to make sense of this political programme through the lens of what they call ‘critical phenomenology’. In classical Marxist fashion, critical phenomenology is not only interested in describing the world but in changing it. Going beyond the transcendental project of ‘classical phenomenology’, its goal is to analyse how power differentials manifest in ordinary experience and find avenues for being-in-the-world differently. Can critical phenomenology help tackle crisis?

This workshop, marking the close of the Excellence Strategy-funded project ‘Virtual Battlefields’, invites you to join us in debating the role of philosophy, and especially critical phenomenology, to come to terms with the many faces of crisis. We are excited to welcome three exceptional speakers, i.e., Lisa Guenther (Queen’s University, Canada), Matthias Fritsch (Concordia University, Canada), and Marieke Borren (Open University, Netherlands), who will deploy critical phenomenology to make sense of the coloniality of international law, climate disobedience, and the securitisation of public spaces. You can join either in person or virtually via Zoom.