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Being We: Phenomenological Contributions to Social Ontology – A Dialogue with Dan Zahavi
Upcoming EventAbout This Event
Poorvam International Journal of Creative Arts and Cultural Expressions invites you to a philosophical conversation with Prof. Dan Zahavi — one of the foremost phenomenologists of our time — on his landmark new work exploring what it means, philosophically and existentially, to belong to a we.
What does it mean to be a "we"?
We say it so casually — we believe, we decided, we suffered — and yet behind this small word lies one of the deepest puzzles of human existence. When two or more individuals constitute a we, something genuinely new comes into being. But what, exactly? Is the we a mere sum of its parts, or does it carry its own irreducible weight? And what does it do to you — to your sense of self, your relation to others, your experience of the world — to be folded into one?
These are the questions at the heart of Being We: Phenomenological Contributions to Social Ontology (Oxford University Press, 2025), Prof. Zahavi's bold and ambitious contribution to social philosophy. Drawing on the rich but often underread tradition of early phenomenology — from Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein to Max Scheler, Gerda Walther, Aron Gurwitsch, and Alfred Schutz — Zahavi takes up one of modernity's most pressing philosophical challenges: the ontology of collective life.
Being We is not merely a work of historical retrieval. It breaks new ground at the intersection of phenomenology, social cognition, and collective intentionality, weaving together questions of first-personal experience and selfhood with the broader concerns of sociology, anthropology, and social psychology. At its centre is a novel account of the complex, irreducible interrelation between I, you, and we — and the surprising ways in which each transforms the others.
Does individual subjectivity require a communal grounding? Or does any we presuppose a prior plurality of selves? What kind of understanding — what kind of openness to the other — must be in place before a we can emerge at all? And once it does emerge, can it endure, dissolve, be betrayed?
This event promises a rich and searching conversation on:
The phenomenological tradition and its resources for social ontology
How we-experience transforms selfhood, perception, and world-orientation
The relationship between individual subjectivity and collective life
What Husserl, Stein, Scheler, and their contemporaries saw that we are still catching up to
The dialogue between phenomenology and the social sciences
The ethics and fragility of we — how a we forms, and how it falls apart
Join us for an evening of rigorous and generous philosophical dialogue — a conversation that asks not merely who I am, but what it means that I am never entirely alone in being so.
Date: Sunday, 17 May 2026 Time: 6:00 PM IST onwards Format: Free online event (Microsoft Teams) RSVP: editor@poorvam.com
Curated by Poorvam International Journal of Creative Arts and Cultural Expressions
What does it mean to be a "we"?
We say it so casually — we believe, we decided, we suffered — and yet behind this small word lies one of the deepest puzzles of human existence. When two or more individuals constitute a we, something genuinely new comes into being. But what, exactly? Is the we a mere sum of its parts, or does it carry its own irreducible weight? And what does it do to you — to your sense of self, your relation to others, your experience of the world — to be folded into one?
These are the questions at the heart of Being We: Phenomenological Contributions to Social Ontology (Oxford University Press, 2025), Prof. Zahavi's bold and ambitious contribution to social philosophy. Drawing on the rich but often underread tradition of early phenomenology — from Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein to Max Scheler, Gerda Walther, Aron Gurwitsch, and Alfred Schutz — Zahavi takes up one of modernity's most pressing philosophical challenges: the ontology of collective life.
Being We is not merely a work of historical retrieval. It breaks new ground at the intersection of phenomenology, social cognition, and collective intentionality, weaving together questions of first-personal experience and selfhood with the broader concerns of sociology, anthropology, and social psychology. At its centre is a novel account of the complex, irreducible interrelation between I, you, and we — and the surprising ways in which each transforms the others.
Does individual subjectivity require a communal grounding? Or does any we presuppose a prior plurality of selves? What kind of understanding — what kind of openness to the other — must be in place before a we can emerge at all? And once it does emerge, can it endure, dissolve, be betrayed?
This event promises a rich and searching conversation on:
The phenomenological tradition and its resources for social ontology
How we-experience transforms selfhood, perception, and world-orientation
The relationship between individual subjectivity and collective life
What Husserl, Stein, Scheler, and their contemporaries saw that we are still catching up to
The dialogue between phenomenology and the social sciences
The ethics and fragility of we — how a we forms, and how it falls apart
Join us for an evening of rigorous and generous philosophical dialogue — a conversation that asks not merely who I am, but what it means that I am never entirely alone in being so.
Date: Sunday, 17 May 2026 Time: 6:00 PM IST onwards Format: Free online event (Microsoft Teams) RSVP: editor@poorvam.com
Curated by Poorvam International Journal of Creative Arts and Cultural Expressions
Speakers
Prof Dan Zahavi
Speaker
Dan Zahavi is a Professor of Philosophy and director of the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen. Zahavi’s primary research area is phenomenology and philosophy of mind, and their intersection with empirical disciplines such as psychiatry, psychology, sociology and anthropology. In addition to various scholarly works on the phenomenology of Husserl, Zahavi has mainly written on the nature of selfhood, self-consciousness, intersubjectivity, empathy, and most recently on topics in social ontology. His most important publications include Self-awareness and Alterity (1999/2020), Husserl’s Phenomenology (2003), Subjectivity and Selfhood (2005), The Phenomenological Mind (together with Shaun Gallagher) (2008/2012/2021), Self and Other (2014), Husserl’s Legacy (2017), Phenomenology: The Basics (2019/2025), and Being We (2025). His work has been translated into more than 30 languages.
Moderator
Nilambar Chakrabarti
Moderator
Phd research scholar at Jadavpur University, Sylff fellowship recipent, Former Research fellow at Smith College, south Asian studies.
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