Prof.Ronald Bruzina

Prof. Ronald Bruzina (PhD, University of Notre Dame 1966, Doctorat de 3e cycle, Universite de Paris-Nanterre 1970), professor of philosophy at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, has been concentrating on the fuller details of phenomenology in Edmund Husserl's final years, 1928-1938, by linking Husserl's late-period manuscripts with Eugen Fink's complete research notes from those years. The implications of this for understanding post-war phenomenology, especially the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jan Patocka, are indicated in Bruzina's more recent papers.

The two largest projects coming from Bruzina's primary research interest, however, are: Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink, Beginnings and Ends in Phenomenology, 1928-1938 (Yale University Press, 2004); and Phanomenologische Werkstaat, in 4 Vols comprising Part 3 of the Eugen-Fink-Gesamtausgabe under way from Alber Verlag (Freiburg/Munchen). (Volumes 3.1 and 3.2 of Phanomenologische Werkstaat have now been published.) More recently Bruzina has been developing the radical recasting of the nature-culture divide on the basis of openings to its possible overcoming one can find in the writings of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty (with essential critique contributions from Fink).

Prof. Hans-Reiner Sepp

Hans Rainer Sepp is senior lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities of the Charles University Prague and Director of the Eugen Fink-Archive in Freiburg. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Munich writing a dissertation on the relation between praxis and theory in the context of a critical discussion of Husserl’s philosophical position and two degrees of Habilitation from the Charles University Prague and the Technical University of Dresden. In the 80s he was a fellow at the Husserl-Archive in Freiburg, and in the 90s he co-founded the Centre for Phenomenological Research in Prague.

His specialities are history and problems of phenomenological philosophies; theories of knowing in overlapping areas of philosophy, science, religion, and art; genealogies of knowing in intercultural comparisons; aesthetics and philosophy of art; ethics and moral philosophy, and philosophies of the XIX and XX centuries. Recently he is dealing with the conception of a renewed phenomenology of the human body that intends as prima philosophia the goal of combining both aesthetical and ethical questions towards an intercultural cosmic-ecological thinking.

He published more than 30 books and 160 articles on the topics of his speciality. Among his recent book publications are: Über die Grenze. Prolegomena zu einer Theorie der Transkulturalität, 2009; Bild. Phänomenologie der Epoché I, 2009. – As editor: with Jürgen Trinks: Phänomenalität des Kunst­werks, 2006; with Ichiro Yamaguchi: Leben als Phänomen. Die Freiburger Phänomenolo­gie im Ost-West-Dialog, 2006; with Jaromir Brejdak, Reinhold Esterbauer, and Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl: Phänomenologie und System­theorie, 2006; with Ludger Hagedorn: Andere Wege in die Moderne. Forschungsbeiträge zu Jan Patočkas Genealo­gie der Neuzeit, 2006; with Ion Copoeru: Phenomenology 2005, Bd. II: Selected Essays from the Euro-Mediterra­nean Area und Bd. V: Selected Essays from the Northern Europe, http://www.zetabooks.com, 2007; with Dietrich Gottstein: Polis und Kosmos. Perspektiven einer Philosophie des Politischen und einer Philosophischen Kosmologie, 2008; with Ada Neschke: Philosophische An­thropologie. Ursprünge und Aufgaben, 2008; with Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz and René Kaufmann: Europäische Menschenbilder, 2009; with Helga Blaschek-Hahn: Heinrich Rombach. Strukturontologie – Bildphilosophie – Hermetik, 2009; with Armin Wilder­muth: Konzepte des Phänomenalen: Heinrich Barth – Eugen Fink – Jan Patočka, 2009; Bildung und Politik im Spiegel der Phänomenologie, 2009; Nietzsche und die Phänomenolo­gie, 2009; with Lester Embree: Hand­book of Pheno­menological Aesthetics, 2009.

Together with Kah Kyung Cho and Yoshihiro Nitta he founded the book series Orbis Phaenomenologicus (1993–); together with Karl-Heinz Lembeck and Wolfgang Orth he edited the book series Phänomenologie Texte und Kontexte (1997-2001); with Joachim Fischer, Ada Neschke, and Gérard Raulet he edits the book series Phänomenologische Anthropologie – Themen und Positionen (2008–). He also edits the Eugen Fink Gesamtausgabe in cooperation with colleagues from the University of Mainz (2006–), and at present he is founding the book series conFrontatio. He is member of numerous advisory boards of journals and organisations around the world.