HPhil Seminar: November 14, 2024

The HPhil (History of Philosophy) Research Group of the Centre of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon announces the 2024/25 edition of its permanent seminar on the history of philosophy, devoted to the presentation of conferences by renowned specialists while also creating opportunities to emerging scholars, aiming to promote advanced studies in groundbreaking debates and the permanent training of its academic community.

In this session of the seminar, Felipe Léon  (CFUL) will present a paper, entitled “K. E. Løgstrup’s second-personal phenomenology of social life”, (abstract below)

The session will take place on November 14 2024 at 5 p.m., in the Room C201.J (Room Mattos Romão, Department of Philosophy). Admission is free.

Abstract

In spite of the increasing attention that it has gained in the context of analytic moral philosophy (e.g., Stern, 2019; Darwall, 2024), the work of the Danish philosopher and theologian K. E. Løgstrup remains largely absent in phenomenological discussions about sociality and community. However, Løgstrup’s documented contact with classical phenomenology in his formative years (Løgstrup, 1993, p. 159), his description of his own investigations as phenomenological (e.g, Løgstrup, 2007, pp. 10, 20, 2020, p. 15), as well as his detailed engagement with topics like interpersonal trust, love, communication, and openness in speech (Løgstrup, 2020, 2007) suggest that this neglect is an unfortunate omission. The aim of my talk is to locate Løgstrup’s investigation of social life in a phenomenological context, and, in doing so, to bring out some of Løgstrup’s contributions to phenomenological research about interpersonal relatedness and the foundations of sociality. After clarifying Løgstrup credentials as a phenomenologist, I will elaborate on the basic contours of Løgstrups second-personal phenomenology of social life, by focusing on his analyses of trust and love. According to Løgstrup, trust and love are interpersonal and normative attitudes that human beings spontaneously direct to one another, and which aim at the other’s acknowledgement and response (therefore their ‘second-personal’ character). I will argue, on the one hand, that in contrast to authors like Husserl, Stein, and Schutz—who in different ways maintain that sociality and I-thou relations are ultimately grounded in evidential relations (see also (Zahavi, 2014))—according to Løgstrup the kind of normativity exemplified by phenomena like trust and love constitutes an irreducible bedrock of the social world. On the other hand, in contrast to the Heideggerian impersonal normativity of “the One [das Man]” (Heidegger, 2001, p. 164), the normativity that Løgstrup is primarily interested in is a distinctively interpersonal and second-personal normativity.

References

Darwall, S. (2024). The heart and its attitudes . Oxford University Press.

Heidegger, M. (2001). Being and time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). Blackwell.

Løgstrup, K. E. (1993). Solidaritet og kaerlighed: Og andre essays (2. udgave). Gyldendal.

Løgstrup, K. E. (2007). Beyond the ethical demand. University of Notre Dame Press.

Løgstrup, K. E. (2020). The ethical demand (B. Rabjerg & R. Stern, Trans.). Oxford University Press.

Stern, R. (2019). The radical demand in Løgstrup’s ethics. Oxford University Press.

Zahavi, D. (2014). Self and other: Exploring subjectivity, empathy, and shame. Oxford University Press.