The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy

The phenomenology of desire

Band XXVII

herausgegeben vonEmanuela CartaAlexis DelamareSara Dameno

About the volume Over the past decade, phenomenology has emerged as a central interlocutor in the philosophy of emotions, and it is now well established that it offers distinctive resources for understanding the structure, intentionality, and normativity of emotional life. By contrast, its contribution to the analysis of desire remains comparatively underdeveloped, if not neglected. This is so even though reflections on desire can be found throughout the phenomenological tradition, broadly understood—from the Brentano School and early phenomenology, including figures such as Alexius Meinong, Christian von Ehrenfels, Edith Stein, Max Scheler, and Dietrich von Hildebrand, to later French developments, including thinkers such as Simone de Beauvoir, Paul Ricœur, Emmanuel Levinas, Frantz Fanon, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Renaud Barbaras. In addition, recently published materials from Edmund Husserl’s manuscripts—most notably the third volume of the Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins—offer important analyses that remain largely unexplored and invite further systematic development. Against this background, the volume has a twofold aim. On the one hand, it seeks to clarify and critically examine phenomenological accounts of desire across the tradition, from the Brentano School and early phenomenology to contemporary approaches. On the other hand, it aims to assess how phenomenology can contribute to current debates on desire, including its nature, its relation to value and normativity, its role in agency, and its social and political dimensions. In this regard, we especially welcome contributions that examine how desire is shaped by structures of power, including race and coloniality, as well as those that explore how desire can be transformed and reoriented when freed from oppressive environments. In this way, the volume seeks to advance the philosophical understanding of desire while further developing phenomenological approaches to it.