The Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: Events

Tuesday, 27 January 2026, 18:15
Venue: Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Am Wingertsberg 4, 61348 Bad Homburg

Research Group »Polycentricity and Plurality of Premodern Christianities« (POLY)
Lecture

Petra Gehring (Technische Universität Darmstadt)
»World Time, Lifetime, Existence: Philosophical Perspectives«

About the lecture
The keynote discusses modern concepts of time. It builds on the distinction proposed by philosopher Hans Blumenberg between worldtime—which tends to be continuous and infinite—and lifetime, which is marked by breaks and the fact of mortality. These two measures of time, or rather perspectives on time, are in tension with each other, according to Blumenberg. The keynote assumes that modern concepts of time seek to answer the question of existence in order to resolve these tensions. In concrete, three paradigms are discussed: that of life, that of a reality of »sense« (i.e. of cultural meaning systems) and that of narration.

About the speaker
Petra Gehring is Professor of Philosophy at the Technical University of Darmstadt. Her research interests include the history of philosophical concepts and the performativity of signs, voice, text and sound, as well as biotechnologies, digitality and digital infrastructures. She is co-editor of the German Journal of Philosophy (Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie) and a number of other academic journals, and has published numerous anthologies, monographs and articles. In addition to her research, she is active in various academic committees, including the German Council for Scientific Information Infrastructures of the Joint Science Conference of the Federal Government and the States, where she became chair in 2017. Since 2020, Gehring has also been the managing founding director of the Hessian Centre Responsible Digitality (Zentrum verantwortungsbewusste Digitalisierung – ZEVEDI). Her most recent publication is Biegsame Expertise. Geschichte der Bioethik in Deutschland (Suhrkamp, 2025).

Organizers
The lecture is organized by the Frankfurt DFG Research Group »Polycentricity and Plurality of Premodern Christianities« (POLY) in cooperation with the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften.

Registration
Participation on-site
For better planning, we kindly ask you to register in advance at:
anmeldung@forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de. You will receive a confirmation of registration.

Participation online
Please use this link to participate online: https://uni-frankfurt.zoom-x.de/j/63205330076?pwd=ayNeFdktPpfhK4e8KqyZ5So5NM0GBv.1.