Senate House, London, September 13-14, 2019
Deadline for 300-word abstracts: APRIL 30
The term ‘possibility’ (Mulighed) and its variants occur with curious frequency across Kierkegaard’s writings. Key to Kierkegaard’s ontology of the self, possibility is linked to imagination, anxiety, temporality, transition, the moment, and a number of other core ideas in his works. The term is also central to Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegelian actuality, in which the underlying questions seem to be: What does freedom have to do with history? How is change possible? What does it mean to begin?
This conference is intended to address these and other questions that fall out of Kierkegaard’s treatment of possibility. Basic approaches to the problem in his works include:
1) an ontology of possibility that involves the structure of existence/self
2) a rhetorical strategy that seeks to awaken a sense of possibility
3) a lived experience of possibility that involves ethical decisions of how to orient oneself
4) God as absolute possibility
We welcome papers exploring these or other approaches—whether in Kierkegaard’s writings alone or in comparative studies. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
the phenomenology of possibility
possibility and ontology
possibility and concrete others
subjectivity and possibility
possibility and horizon
living in uncertainty
imagination
contingency
hope
faith
anxiety
probability/calculation vs possibility
radical change or conversion
Possibility and irony
We welcome submissions from researchers at all levels. Please submit abstracts of 300 words for papers of 30 mins by APRIL 30 to Erin Plunkett e.plunkett2@herts.ac.uk with subject ‘Kierkegaard conference abstract’. We will aim to process all submissions by mid-May.