Project description
Women’s role in Scandinavian existentialism
In 19th-century Scandinavia, existential philosophy had an impact on the early women’s movements. The ERC-funded REEXIST project aims to study this relationship. It shows how people such as Søren Kierkegaard influenced the writings and activism of women reformers. The project uses ideas from intellectual history, philosophy, feminist theory, and literary study to examine various sources, such as letters, biographies, and political writings, through hermeneutics and narrative study. REEXIST shows how existential thought informed women’s activism and how women helped develop existential philosophy and theology. The project redefines main narratives in Scandinavian thought, culture, and society, giving new insights about intellectual history and women’s contributions to philosophy.
Objective
The project will address a significant gap in nineteenth-century Scandinavian intellectual history by exploring for the first time the connection between two influential moments: an existential movement in Scandinavian philosophy of religion and the first women’s movements. Even though many key women writers and reformers were early readers of existential philosophy of religion, like that of Søren Kierkegaard, no study has reconstructed this relation.
This oversight reflects historical and conceptual challenges in existential thought and methodological challenges in the recovery of women’s contributions to historical canons. REEXIST confronts these challenges through an interdisciplinary research design with analytical tools from intellectual history, existential philosophy of religion, feminist philosophy and theology, and literary theory. I will first conduct a detailed source-historical study to outline a Scandinavian existential movement and its network. This will lay the ground for characterising women’s contributions to existential thought by reading a diversity of texts— from literature, biography, letters to explicitly political, proto-feminist tracts—through existential-phenomenological hermeneutics, narrative analysis, and thematic-conceptual comparative study. These analyses will demonstrate how existential thought informed women’s activist writings as well as how women contributed to existential philosophy and theology.
The project will thus break new ground through systematic exploration identifying novel, overlooked sources in existential thought and showing how women’s writings can be considered existential philosophy. This enables REEXIST to reassess entrenched, paradigmatic narratives in the history of existentialism and its role in nineteenth century Scandinavian thought, culture, religion and society, and present new methodological considerations in the ongoing work of recovering women’s contributions in reflective disciplines.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities history and archaeology history
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion philosophy history of philosophy modern philosophy
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion religions
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
1165 KOBENHAVN
Denmark
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