Dan Zahavi - ‘Pure and Applied Phenomenology’

<p>Season five of our podcast features presentations from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. In this episode we release one of our keynote talks, that of Professor Dan Zahavi. Zahavi is Professor of Philosophy, University of Copenhagen, Professor of Philosophy, University of Oxford, and Director of the Center for Subjectivity Research (CFS).</p> <p> </p> <p>ABSTRACT: At its core, phenomenology is a philosophical endeavour. Given its distinctly philosophical nature, one might reasonably wonder whether it can offer anything of value to positive science. Can it at all inform empirical work? There can, however, be no doubt about the answer to these questions. For more than a century, phenomenology has provided crucial inputs to a variety of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities, including psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Within the last few decades, phenomenology has also been an important source of inspiration, not only for theoretical debates within qualitative research but also for ongoing research within the cognitive sciences. But what is the best way to practice, use and apply phenomenology in a non‐philosophical context? How deeply rooted in phenomenological philosophy must the empirical research be in order to qualify as phenomenological? How many of the core commitments of phenomenology must it accept? In my talk, I will discuss and assess some different answers to these questions.</p> <p> </p> <p>BIO: Dan Zahavi is Professor of Philosophy at University of Copenhagen and University of Oxford, and director of the Center for Subjectivity Research in Copenhagen. In addition to a number of scholarly works on the phenomenology of Husserl, Zahavi has mainly written on the nature of selfhood, self-consciousness, intersubjectivity, and social cognition. His most important publications include Self-awareness and Alterity (1999), Husserl’s Phenomenology (2003), Subjectivity and Selfhood (2005), The Phenomenological Mind (together with Shaun Gallagher) (2008/2012