Dear colleagues,
It is our great pleasure to invite you to the public lectures at Sofia University by two of the leading figures in contemporary phenomenology. Prof. Dan Zahavi (University of Copenhagen) and Prof. Sophie Loidolt (Technical University Darmstadt) will deliver lectures on October 24, 2025, in Lecture Hall 1 of the Rectorate.
Programme:
Dan Zahavi
13:30–14:30 | Lecture: Minds in the World: Collective Intentionality and the Problem of Internalism
14:30–15:00 | Discussion
Sophie Loidolt
15:30–16:30 | Lecture: Phenomenology of the Public Realm
16:30–17:00 | Discussion
The event will be followed by a Round Table featuring the guest lecturers and Bulgarian scholars.
All interested are warmly welcome to attend!
Organizers: Assist. Prof. Dr. Boris Pantev, Department of Philosophy & Faculty of Philosophy, Sofia University
Abstracts of the lectures and bios Dan Zahavi
Minds in the World: Collective Intentionality and the Problem of Internalism
(October 24, 13:30–14:30, Rectorate, Lecture Hall 1)
The aim of my talk is to offer an interpretation of Husserl’s theory of collective intentionality that will make it clear that he is not an internalist or methodological solipsist. Critics like Hubert Dreyfus, Taylor Carman, and Ron McIntyre contend that Husserl’s transcendental method, including the epoché and transcendental reduction, commits him to focusing solely on internal mental representations, thereby neglecting external reality and intersubjectivity. Carman, for instance, asserts that the reduction involves „methodically turning away from everything external to consciousness“. I have on previous occasions argued that the claim that Husserl’s phenomenology involves a turn away from objects transcendent to consciousness rests on a misunderstanding of his transcendental idealism and his notions of epochéand reduction. On this occasion, however, I will supplement my previous arguments by instead considering Husserl’s extensive, yet often overlooked, work on collective intentionality.
Husserl’s work on this topic is primarily to be found in his analysis of communicative acts; acts that Husserl considers crucial for the constitution of an objective world, sociality, and the personal self. More specifically, Husserl defines communicative acts as „social acts“ that involves a particular kind of intentional intertwinement and which ultimately results in what Husserl calls a being-within-one-another.
In his analysis, Husserl distinguishes various modalities of this intertwinement, the highest of which is the emergence of a personality of higher order. Despite the somewhat ominous label, Husserl does not advocate the existence of some kind of group consciousness or hive mind, but takes personalities of higher order to be communicative unities that are grounded in individual acts. Nevertheless, and decisively, we are on his account dealing with a form of collective intentionality that presupposes intertwined or suitably interrelated individual subjects, which precisely is a view that rules out methodological solipsism. In fact, what we find in Husserl, and what I will belabour in my talk is precisely a position that is equally distinct from the internalism of Searle and the collectivism of Brandom.
Sophie Loidolt
Phenomenology of the Public Realm
(October 24, 13:30–14:30, Rectorate, Lecture Hall 1)
What does it mean to be, appear, and act in public? These questions are rarely asked when it comes to the often-diagnosed „structural transformation“ (Habermas) of the public sphere. Yet people have a wide variety of „public experiences“ every day: from the simple experience of leaving the house and moving on the street to highly networked and technologically mediated public communication and concerted action. In the project I would like to present in its outlines, I try to shed light on the quality and structure of such „public experiences“ using a phenomenological approach. In this way, I want to reclaim public space as an experiential space and argue that experiences matter for the constitution of different kinds of public spheres and public spaces.
How, for example, do phenomena like visibility, attention, relevance, reality, trust, or their opposites emerge in public contexts? And how can our individual and collective experiences of the public retain its high democratic ideals while facing the constant threat of superficial entertainment and self-commercialization? In contrast to theories that view the public sphere primarily as a system of information, coordination, or discourse, a phenomenological approach aims to reveal the ways in which experiences constitute spaces of meaning. Such a disclosure of the world-building function of experience is crucial if we are to understand how people can relate to their public existence and a public world, how they can integrate into it or fall away from it, gain or lose trust, and how a shared world is either built or destroyed.
If we turn to the treatment of the public and publicness in the phenomenological tradition itself, including its hermeneutical, existentialist, and anthropological branches, this reveals an interesting picture that has not been examined yet in its coherence and context. One insight stands out right at the beginning: Explicit phenomenological investigations of the public realm are surprisingly rare, the big exception being Hannah Arendt’s work. The aim of the paper is therefore to identify different strands in the phenomenological tradition that address the topic—or fail to address it—, to relate them to one another, and to extract valuable ideas, debates, and concepts for a more comprehensive phenomenological theory of the public realm.
Prof. Dan Zahavi is one of today’s foremost figures in phenomenology and a leading philosopher of mind. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen, where in 2002 he founded the Center for Subjectivity Research, which he has directed ever since. His work explores selfhood, intersubjectivity, social cognition, and the relation between phenomenology and the cognitive sciences.
He is the author of a number of influential monographs, including Self-Awareness and Alterity, Subjectivity and Selfhood, and Self and Other. Among his most widely read works is The Phenomenological Mind (co-authored with Shaun Gallagher), a foundational text in the re-framing of the relationship between phenomenology and analytic philosophy. His more recent books include Phenomenology: The Basics (2nd ed., 2025) and Being We: Phenomenological Contributions to Social Ontology (OUP, 2025). In addition, he has (co-)edited numerous volumes, bringing the total of his authored and edited books to more than 30.
Across these projects, Zahavi shows how consciousness is inherently relational, and how “we-experiences,” emotional sharing, and second-personal engagements shape our understanding of the world, other persons, and communities. His research also engages classical sources—especially Husserl and other key figures of the phenomenological tradition—while contributing to contemporary debates in social ontology and philosophy of cognitive science.
Zahavi has delivered invited lectures and keynotes worldwide. He has served on multiple editorial boards and was co-founder and long-term editor-in-chief of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. His current work develops a nuanced account of collective intentionality and the dynamics of interpersonal experience.
Prof. Dr. Sophie Loidolt is professor of philosophy and chair of practical philosophy at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. She was president of the German Society for Phenomenological Research (2023-2025) and a recurrent visiting professor at the Center for Subjectivity Research in Copenhagen (2020-2025). Most of her education took place at the University of Vienna. Research stays brought her to the Husserl-Archives in Leuven, St. Denis University in Paris, and the New School for Social Research in New York.
Her work centers on issues in the fields of phenomenology, political and legal philosophy, and ethics, as well as transcendental philosophy and philosophy of mind. Her book Phenomenology of Plurality. Hannah Arendt on Political Intersubjectivity (Routledge 2018) won the Edward Goodwin Ballard Book Prize. Other books include: Anspruch und Rechtfertigung. Eine Theorie des rechtlichen Denkens im Anschluss an die Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls (Springer 2009) and Einführung in die Rechtsphänomenologie | Introduction to the Phenomenology of Law (Mohr Siebeck 2010; Japanese translation appeared in 2025). She is co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Political Phenomenology which came out in 2025. Currently, she is preparing a book with the working title Public Experiences. A Phenomenological Theory of the Public Realm.
The event is made possible with the support of Sofia University Marking Momentum for Innovation and Technological Transfer (SUMMIT) project, contract № BG-RRP-2.004-0008