Organized by Abbed Kanoor and Leon Krings
Phenomenology did not begin with a doctrine but with a method: the epoché and phenomenological reduction. Husserl’s rallying invitation – Zu den Sachen selbst! – signalled not merely a theoretical shift but a transformation in how one lives, attends, and relates to phenomena.
At its origin, phenomenology was as much a praxis as a philosophy: a chain of conscious acts that promised to reorient our relation to things, others, nature, the world, and ourselves. More than a century later, we can ask: does the phenomenologist still practice the epoché? Is phenomenology today merely the name of a historical-philosophical tradition or is it a living method capable of adapting to the exigencies of a changing world? What happens when we “do phenomenology”? Do we simply apply a body of established concepts? Do we import old theories into new situations? Or do we perform the epoché anew each time as a fresh interruption, a renewed opening? And finally: can the epoché be practiced collectively, or is it irreducibly individual?
This philosophical summer academy, conceived as a phenomenological retreat, places the phenomenological method itself, not its accumulated doctrine, at the centre. It proposes an environment in which the epoché is explored, exercised, and interrogated in its practical, experiential, and intercultural dimensions.
More information: https://www.uni-hildesheim.de/glophi/2026/05/18/practices-of-epoche/
