Agenda

WORKSHOP
Ontological Pluralism International

1-2 october 2026

Organized by PlONat (NICHE Centre for Environmental Humanities, Ca' Foscari University of Venice) and COSMOS (Husserl-Archives: Centre for Phenomenology and Continental Philosophy, KU Leuven)

Aims and topics
Over the past two decades, Ontological Pluralism has become an influential idea across the social sciences, most visibly within anthropology, but increasingly beyond it. It argues that a single, unified ontology is insufficient to account for the multiplicity of human practices, knowledge systems, and forms of life. Instead, it suggests that different collectives may inhabit or enact distinct ontological configurations. This proposal has generated substantial debate within anthropology, but not so much in philosophy, despite the fact that it appears to challenge long-standing philosophical commitments to universality, objectivity, and shared categories of thought.

This workshop seeks to examine how Ontological Pluralism raises questions that extend well beyond disciplinary boundaries, in particular concerning the status and scope of philosophical inquiry itself. If empirical disciplines claim that multiple worlds are enacted rather than merely interpreted, what follows for metaphysics, phenomenology, or the philosophy of science? Can the proliferation of ontological claims be accommodated within existing philosophical traditions, or does it require a revision of classical philosophical concepts, or even constitute a challenge to philosophy's traditional authority over the question of what there is?
At stake is not only the validity of pluralist proposals, but also philosophy's own self-understanding: its aspiration to universal categories, shared standards of rationality, and a unified conception of reality. Does the rise of ontological pluralism signal a genuine transformation in philosophy's relation to the human sciences, or is it a moment of conceptual confusion?

Programme

Thursday 1st October 2026
09:30–10:00 Coffee break (welcome)
10:00–10:30 Presentation, Roberta Raffaetà - Gabriel Barroso
10:30–11:15 David Ludwig, “Ontological Syndicalism. Roles of Coalition Building for World Building”
11:15–12:00 Aurélie Névot, “Putting an End to "the Ontological Turn" Returning to the Foundational Gesture of Structuralism”
12:00–13:00 Discussion
13:00–14:30 Lunch
14:30–15:15 Julián García-Labrador, “On Indeterminacy: How the Phenomenology of Givenness meets the Ontological Turn”
15:15–16:00 Jeanne Etelain, “One Earth, Many Worlds, and Contact Zones between them”
16:00–17:00 Discussion

Friday 2nd October 2026
09:30–10:15 Patrice Maniglier, “Active relativism, or Dionysian structuralism in practice”
10:15–11:00 Julia Turska, “Ontological pluralism in practice”
11:00–11:15 Coffee break
11:15–12:00 Davide Scarso, “The Look from Somewhere: Ontological Pluralism and Its Ghosts”
12:00–13:00 Discussion
13:00–14:30 Lunch
14:30–15:15 Patrick Flack, “Ontological Pluralism or Cosmogonic Threshold? - How Nature and Culture were Divided at Mekone”
15:15–16:00 Emanuele Caminada, “Anthropology of Plural Ontologies: A Phenomenological Challenge”
16:00–17:00 Discussion
17:00–17:15 Ending remarks, Gabriel Barroso - Ramon Mistral