Warwick Continental Philosophy Conference June 2025 – The Oculus, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK. Keynotes: Hanne Jacobs & Joseph Schear.
Warwick Continental Philosophy Conference 2025
‘Thinking intentionality’
20th-21st June 2025, University of Warwick (UK)
Conference venue: OC1.01, The Oculus, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
Confirmed keynote speakers: Hanne Jacobs (Tilburg University), Joseph Schear (University of Oxford)
Call for Papers
The organisers are pleased to announce the seventh meeting of the Warwick Continental Philosophy Conference (WCPC) on “Thinking intentionality”, to be held from 20.-21. June 2025 at the University of Warwick. The WCPC 2025 is a graduate conference that aims to explore the notion of intentionality which lies at the heart of philosophical inquiries into consciousness, meaning and representation, and which has played a central role in philosophical traditions of the past 150 years.
Since the notion of intentionality was famously coined by Brentano and taken up by Husserl, it has sparked controversies both in the tradition of analytic philosophy and the phenomenological tradition. Often understood as the characteristic of minds and mental states to be “about” something or “directed towards” objects, some philosophers have claimed that intentionality is an exclusive mark of the mental. Others have sought to expand this concept to encompass (for instance) situated, embodied, social, or material dimensions (as paradigmatically indicated by Heidegger’s “being-in-the-world” or Merleau-Ponty’s embodied intentionality). Moreover, the organisers believe that the concept of intentionality can be fruitfully applied to thinkers of the philosophical tradition which, while they have not employed this notion themselves, can be read as proposing an account of intentionality. Also, the organisers would like to explore how it can be utilised as a framework to approach systematic philosophical questions.
The organisers invite submissions that engage with the concept of intentionality in relation to thinkers of the “continental” tradition (broadly conceived), including but not limited to phenomenology. The organisers expressly invite contributions that engage in or foster dialogue between “continental” and “analytical” approaches, for instance by confronting thinkers across traditions with one another. In this vein, the organisers also encourage speakers to emancipate from the peculiar idioms of their philosophers in favour of clarity and a “systematic” view on their arguments.
Depending on the number of high-quality submissions received, the organisers aim to arrange responses from faculty members for all graduate speakers. Each graduate speaker will have a time slot of about one hour which is broken up as follows: 30 minutes talk, 5 minutes response, 25 minutes discussion.
Organisers:
Fridolin Neumann
Keigo Shimada
See full CfP on the Warwick Continental Philosophy Conference 2025 website