From the outside, one might indeed be forgiven for thinking that ethics remains at or beyond the limits of phenomenology. Phenomenology focuses on epistemological or metaphysical themes that appear outside the scope of traditional ethical concerns. Moreover, brandishing a rigorously descriptive methodology, phenomenological research would seem to be an unlikely candidate for making a significant contribution to normative ethics. And when phenomenologists or continental philosophers more generally do turn their attention to ethical concepts, the results are often difficult to bring into dialogue with more mainstream ethical discourses.
Viewed from the inside, however, phenomenology appears to the initiated reader to be shot through with ethical questions and concerns – and this is hardly limited to the more explicit ethical developments in Husserl, Scheler, Levinas, Sartre, or Beauvoir. Phenomenological investigations and phenomenology-inspired continental philosophy propose reinterpretations of classical notions or the invention of new concepts that have important consequences for ethical reflection and that regularly communicate a normative urgency, if not an explicit ethical argument.
The Laboratoire de philosophie continentale at Université Laval proposes to provide the space to discuss and further the possibility of a phenomenological ethics.
Keynote Speakers : Anthony Steibock, Laurent Perreau, Gail Weiss
Abstract proposal deadline: JULY 1 2018
English: https://www.donaldlandes.com/blog/call-for-papers
French: https://www.donaldlandes.com/blog/appel-%C3%A0-communication