Experiencing Environments
– Discussing Environmental Aesthetics with Ted Toadvine and Mădălina Diaconu
Time: Monday, June 9, 2025, 17—19
Venue: Think Corner, Yliopistonkatu 4, Helsinki
Link to live stream: TBA
In the foreseeable future, human living conditions are expected to undergo radical changes due to global warming and technological developments. How are we to cope within the constantly changing living conditions? Are there certain interpretive strategies that help us to navigate the complexities of the world? What can we learn from human perspectives to encountering changing environments? We humans see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, and in this way, are engaged with the environment, first and foremost, with our senses. Clearly, we also try to make sense of our perceptions and orient ourselves with the environment. What is the role of aesthetic values in all this?
The event brings together in a dialogue Nancy Tuana Director of the Rock Ethics Institute and Professor of Philosophy Ted Toadvine (Pennsylvania State University) and philosopher Mădălina Diaconu, who is Dozentin at the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Intercultural Philosophy of Religion of the University of Vienna. The discussion will be facilitated by philosopher Sanna Lehtinen who is the Senior University Lecturer in History and Theory of Contemporary Art at the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture (AaltoARTS) and a Docent in Aesthetics at the University of Helsinki.
Ted Toadvine is a leading voice in the field of ecophenomenology – a term he introduced – and well-known for his work on the fundamental dimensions of the human relationship to nature. He is the author of Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature (Northwestern University Press, 2009) and The Memory of the World: Deep Time, Animality, and Eschatology (University of Minnesota Press, 2024) as well as over fifty peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on environmental ethics and aesthetics, biodiversity, climate change, and the human-animal relation.
Mădălina Diaconu holds two PhD degrees from the University of Bucharest and the University of Vienna, as well as the venia legendi for Philosophy from the latter. She is member of the editorial boards of Contemporary Aesthetics, Studia Phaenomenologica and polylog. Zeitschrift für interkulturelles Philosophieren. She has authored eleven monographs and (co)edited several books on Kierkegaard, Heidegger, the ontology of art, the phenomenology of the senses, the aesthetics of touch, smell and taste, urban sensescapes, environmental ethics, the phenomenology of place, environment and atmosphere, the philosophy of animality, etc., and is currently editing the issue 25 of Studia Phaenomenologica on “Eco-Phenomenology.”
The event is organized as a pre-event to the International Institute of Applied Aesthetics’ (IIAA) XVI international summer conference entitled “Experiencing Environments – Human Perspectives in the Changing World” and taking place in the City of Lahti. The IIAA organizes the event in collaboration with the University of Helsinki and its Lahti University Campus and the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS), and the Finnish Society for Aesthetics.