Philosophy and Crisis: Perspectives from Critical Phenomenology

Friday 26 Jun 2026, 14:00 → 18:30 Europe/Berlin

ESA W 221 (Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1)

Niclas Rautenberg (Universität Hamburg)

 

The unfolding authoritarian descent of the United States, the spiralling violence in Gaza, Israel, 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?

With this workshop, marking the close of the Excellence Strategy-funded project ‘Virtual Battlefields’, we invite 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 radical democratic potential of walking-with-others. Participation is free of charge and possible either in person or virtually via Zoom.

 

1 Welcome and Introduction

Speaker: Niclas Rautenberg (Universität Hamburg)

2 ‘The Coloniality of International Law: A Critical Phenomenology’

Peruvian scholar Aníbal Quijano coined the term coloniality to name the deep imbrication of colonial violence with modernity itself. In this paper, I examine the coloniality of international law, which emerged in the early modern period as a legal framework for managing European colonial exploits. Drawing on Vitoria’s 1539 lecture, De Indis, and Merleau-Ponty’s 1959-60 lecture notes on the philosophy of history, I reflect on the conditions under which the philosophical tradition and political history of international law may be reclaimed, reactivated, and reoriented for decolonial philosophy and politics.

Speaker: Prof. Lisa Guenther (Queen's University, Canada)

15:25 Coffee Break

3 Democracy, Sustainability, and Climate Disobedience—Refracted Through Sophocles’ Antigone

This talk argues that Sophocles’s tragedy Antigone can help our times respond to ecological destabilization and the associated injustices between generations. I suggest that the play centrally revolves around civil disobedience in the face of a political power that that does not fully recognize obligations to non-present generations despite its constitutive dependence on ancestors and descendants as well as on ecological conditions. Scholars have often remarked upon the contrast between monarchy and democracy in the play, especially in view of Creon’s authoritarian lack of counsel, which democracy should have been able to prevent. This lack of counsel, I suggest, also extends to Creon’s inability to grasp the democratic significance of rotation among governed and governing, which Aristotle would soon argue is central to democratic constitutions. Aided by phenomenological accounts of time, I then seek to show that democratic rotation entails fair turn-taking among generations. In the Capitalocene, governments similarly disrespect fair turns, rendering them liable to climate disobedience.

Speaker: Prof. Matthias Fritsch (Concordia University, Canada)

16:50 Coffee Break

4 Walking-with in Public Spaces in Times of Political Crisis: Phenomenological Reflections

In this paper, I explore the contours of a phenomenology of walking-with that addresses the transformation of collective embodied movement in public urban space under current conditions of political crisis, particularly the erosion of radical democratic possibility. Revisiting the alleged tension between so-called political and critical phenomenology, I bring into dialogue accounts of capable-mobile bodies (Arendt, Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, Sheets-Johnstone) and vulnerable, precarious bodies (Butler, Ahmed, Salamon). I argue that the phenomenological figures of “we can” and “we cannot” bodies must be rethought in light of intensified anticipatory repression, securitization, and obstruction that pre-empt collective appearance—not only in authoritarian regimes, but also in so-called liberal democracies. Drawing on these sources alongside contemporary feminist reworkings of psychogeography, I analyze differential radical-democratic practices of walking-with in public spaces, focusing on (1) pro-Palestine protest marches in the UK, Germany, and the US, and (2) everyday feminist collaborative walking. Perhaps the radical democratic potential of walking-with under present conditions of crisis consists in nothing more—and nothing less—than the enactment of fragile, contested, and dispersed spaces of appearance.

Speaker: Dr Marieke Borren (Open University, Netherlands)

5 Concluding Remarks