HPhil Seminar: October 2, 2025

The HPhil (History of Philosophy) Research Group of the Centre of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon announces the 2025/26 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 work of his, entitled “Community and society in early phenomenology”. (abstract below)

The session will take place on October 2, 2025 at 5 p.m., in the Room 201.J (Room Mattos Romão, Department of Philosophy). Admission is free

Abstract

This paper is a contribution to the project of reconstructing and assessing the early phenomenological reception of Ferdinand Tönnies’ seminal distinction between community (Gemeinschaft) and society (Gesellschaft). After introducing Tönnies’ distinction, I elaborate on three stages of its phenomenological reception: (i) Max Scheler’s and Edith Stein’s interpretation and development of the distinction from an eidetic-realist phenomenological standpoint; (ii) Gerda Walther’s investigation—within a broadly Husserlian transcendental framework—of the essence of social communities, based on the notion of a feeling of unification; (iii) Aron Gurwitsch’s criticism of Walther, his supplementation of Tönnies’ distinction with the category of communion (Bund), and his interpretation of the threefold distinction community-society-communion as a dimensional one, in light of Gestalt- theoretical tools and an existential-phenomenological approach. The main upshot of my discussion is that proper appreciation of the early phenomenological reception of Tönnies’ distinction cannot be decoupled from the different conceptions of phenomenology on which such reception was premised. In the course of arguing for this, I suggest that the progression between the three stages is not only chronological, but also systematic, and that much of the lasting relevance of Tönnies’ distinction for the phenomenology of sociality concerns the contrast between atomistic and socially holistic approaches to the individuation of subjectivity, a contentious issue amongst early (and contemporary) phenomenologists.