Sociedad Española de Fenomenología – ‘Normality, normativity, lifeworld’ – November 12-14, 2025 Palma de Mallorca University of the Balearic Islands.
Call for Papers: XV International Congress of the SEFE
Sociedad Española de Fenomenología
‘Normality, normativity, lifeworld’
November 12-14, 2025
Palma de Mallorca University of the Balearic Islands
The Spanish Society for Phenomenology proposes as the theme for its 15th Congress the topic «Normality, Normativity, Lifeworld.» The goal is to gather proposals and discuss research that addresses the interrelation between some of these concepts. In recent years, philosophical works on the relationship between normativity and the lifeworld have multiplied. Although normativity may initially seem to refer to a concept within the legal and/or moral realm, some research directions have proposed a broader understanding of the concept of «norm». This allows us to include not only rules and mandates of various kinds, but also goals and values, as well as impulses and passive tendencies. The lifeworld would thus be a realm governed by norms, albeit of very different and heterogeneous types, which phenomenological descriptive tools would allow us to discern.
On the other hand, phenomenology also allows the conceptualization of a fruitful demarcation between the field of normativity and the phenomenological concept of «normality,» understood as «self-evident feelings of orientation and familiarity». This concept of «normality» would seem far from being understood as a static or quantifiable category, but rather as a continuous process of normalization. Its relation to the normative realm, insofar as normality points to standards of success or failure or to the ideal of «optimality,» has been a matter of reflection by phenomenologists since Husserl himself.
The relationship between the normal and the normative is thus open to various approaches: on one hand, it seems that the description of normality can never be free of implicit value processes and normative judgments. This argument is at the heart of most postmodern, feminist, and critical phenomenological theories, which show the historical and cultural relativity of norms and their emergence from specific performative discourses or constellations of power. On the other hand, the phenomenological concept of «normality,» in its connection with temporality, might open up a distinction between normality and the realm of «norms.» The discussion between phenomenological and poststructuralist conceptions regarding the genesis of normativity is perhaps one of the most fertile ones in recent decades.
While historically normativity seemed to belong to the realm of ethical theory and was supposed to regulate moral conduct prescriptively, some interpretations place its operation at the deepest levels of perception and passive life, shaping from the limits of appearance the configuration of the «normality» structures of the world we take as completely natural (Husserl 1952; Merleau-Ponty). The phenomenological tradition seems particularly well-equipped to discuss and debate, from the diversity of its approaches and the polyvalence of its methodological applications, the intertiwning between the realm of normativity, the description of normality, and the fundamental structures of the lifeworld and the social world. These aspects have been widely studied within the relationship between the normal and the pathological in the field of medical humanities, as well as in the fields of aesthetics, political and social philosophy, or ethical debates.
To encourage this research and in order to disseminate its results, the Spanish Society of Phenomenology (SEFE) organizes this conference…
Check out the full call for papers: https://sefe.es/xv-congreso-eng/