{"id":1112,"date":"2026-04-10T15:18:05","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T13:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projects.unifr.ch\/aesthetics-critique\/?p=1112"},"modified":"2026-04-10T15:18:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T13:18:07","slug":"call-for-papers-aestheticscritique-ix-styles-of-appearing-aesthetics-and-phenomenology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/projects.unifr.ch\/aesthetics-critique\/2026\/04\/10\/call-for-papers-aestheticscritique-ix-styles-of-appearing-aesthetics-and-phenomenology\/","title":{"rendered":"[Call for papers] Aesthetics&Critique IX – Styles of Appearing. Aesthetics and Phenomenology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Aesthetics & Critique IX<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Styles of Appearing. Aesthetics and Phenomenology<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

University of Fribourg<\/p>\n\n\n\n

11-12 June 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Call for papers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January 1907, the founder of phenomenology,  Edmund Husserl, wrote a letter to the Viennese Modernist playwright and poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, suggesting that the phenomenologist\u2019s and the artist\u2019s methods are closely connected. Husserl\u2019s suggestion remains provocative to this day, as its full implications are yet to be fully grasped. Undeniably, for more than a century now, the tradition of phenomenology has cleared a path for philosophy that departs from argument-centric approaches in favor of firsthand corporeal experiences rooted in the lifeworld. This also entailed suspending or \u201cbracketing\u201d the question of whether our metaphysical, ethical, or aesthetic beliefs are justified, focusing instead on the way things appear to us: phenomenology sets aside the \u201cwhat\u201d (the mind-independent nature of things) to home in on the \u201chow\u201d\u2014the mode in which things are given in our experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If this is a valid characterization of the phenomenological method, it aligns it closely with the discipline of aesthetics, as founded by A.G. Baumgarten in the 18th century. Aesthetics too, one might argue, predominantly leaves aside the nature of what is being depicted or expressed to focus on the \u201chow\u201d: on how things are presented to us by artworks or other aesthetic objects and, correspondingly, on what it is like to sense them in aesthetic experience. G\u00fcnter Figal even went as far as to claim that aesthetics could never be anything but phenomenological. Be that as it may: uncontestably, what phenomenology and aesthetics have in common is a shared interest in the \u201cstyle\u201d of appearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Husserl himself hinted at this proximity in his letter to von Hofmannsthal, his own writings on art and literature are remarkably sparse. While Husserl never wrote a formal work on aesthetics, Jacques Derrida<\/p>\n\n\n\n

maintained that his thinking yields a \u201clatent aesthetics.\u201d This claim seems applicable to the phenomenological movement as a whole: while attempts to develop a systematic phenomenological aesthetics are surprisingly rare\u2014with Roman Ingarden and  Mikel Dufrenne as the exceptions that prove the rule \u2014the aesthetic dimension however takes center stage in the work of numerous other authors, from Eugen Fink, Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty through Erwin Straus, Henri Maldiney, and Bernhard Waldenfels. What happens, then, when we look at phenomenology through an aesthetic lens? And in turn, what is the outcome of practicing aesthetics as a kind of phenomenology?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ninth iteration of the Aesthetics & Critique workshop will address the complex and layered relationship between aesthetics and phenomenology. Topics for discussion include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n