In recent years, phenomenology has shown a renewed interest in the “cosmic” dimension of the lived world: no longer merely as an external object or a field of individual perception, but as a horizon that actively participates in the constitution of sense and experience. This interest — sometimes gathered in the literature under labels such as phenomenological cosmology, phenomenology of nature, or phenomenology of life — is characterized by the effort to rethink the traditional subject/object pair in terms of belonging, participation, and the originary conditions of appearing. The discussion is marked by methodological, ontological, and interdisciplinary questions: how can phenomenology maintain its descriptive rigor when extending its field of inquiry to the “kosmos”? To what extent does phenomenological cosmology propose a revision of the Husserlian reduction? And what are the theoretical and ethical implications of such a redefinition of the human–world relationship? The answers are still in the process of being defined, but several main axes of research and a lively debate can already be discerned, both in monographs and in reviews and edited volumes devoted to these issues.
Contemporary literature reveals at least three distinct orientations, which often overlap and interact with one another.
1) Methodological reformulations of phenomenology. Some authors propose to rethink phenomenological reduction as a tool that does not exhaust the possibilities of encountering the world in its totality. Rather than conceiving reduction as establishing the absolute priority of intentional acts, these approaches suggest considering descriptive practices that bring to light modes of “belonging” or participation in the cosmos — that is, forms of presence that cannot be reduced to subjective intentionality alone. This turn requires precise theoretical work on descriptive procedures and on the technical terminology employed.
2) Phenomenology of life and nature. A substantial body of recent phenomenological work focuses on life as a category mediating between corporeality and world — not simply as biology, but as an existential and temporal phenomenon that articulates the conditions of appearing. This line of inquiry tends to interpret space, time, and the body as nodes within a cosmic relation, reclaiming for phenomenology a vocation to address nature not merely as background, but as an epistemically meaningful dimension. This perspective is often associated with renewed readings of Merleau-Ponty, Minkowski, and other figures in the French phenomenological tradition.
3) Historical-conceptual investigations and interdisciplinary dialogue. Many recent contributions take the form of historical-conceptual studies: they reread classical phenomenological texts (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Patočka, Fink, Minkowski) in light of the cosmological question, seeking to identify latent or overlooked elements that can be reformulated within a cosmological framework. At the same time, there is a growing call for dialogue with non-philosophical disciplines such as scientific cosmology, theoretical biology, and environmental studies — not in order to collapse explanatory frameworks into one another, but to compare distinct modes of access to the “world” and its structure.
In order to move beyond purely speculative reflection, several authors have proposed concrete applied paths. These seem to be the most promising research paths:
a) Phenomenologies of scientific practices: studies analyzing how scientific practitioners — astronomers, cosmologists, biologists — experience, interpret, and produce data. Such analyses reveal that scientific production is historically and culturally mediated, and that the relation between experience and model is more complex than technocratic readings assume. This type of work helps situate phenomenology within dialogue with the sciences without conflating their respective languages.
b) Environmental phenomenologies and the perception of the cosmic landscape: research examining how cultural communities and ritual practices shape the reception of the sky and the cosmos. These studies provide conceptual tools for thinking about cosmological ethos and practices of belonging to the natural world.
c) Connections with studies of the living: intersections with theoretical biology and philosophy of life that make it possible to articulate how biological dimensions influence the conditions of cosmic appearing, and vice versa.
These perspectives show the necessity of maintaining exchange with empirical disciplines without claiming to replace them. Dialogue must be conducted with methodological tools that allow for comparison and critical analysis of the cognitive and technical practices involved in the constitution of knowledge about the cosmos.
A frequently underestimated but decisive aspect concerns the normative and political implications of a phenomenological cosmology. If the world is understood as a field of reciprocal belonging, then radically anthropocentric conceptions are called into question: belonging implies responsibility, forms of recognition, and collective practices of care. This opens the way for normative reflection on ecology, environmental justice, and territorial politics, in which phenomenology can provide conceptual tools for rethinking subjectivity and alterity not only in ethical terms, but also in experiential and practical ones. Here, however, there is a double risk: on the one hand, trivializing the ethical dimension through slogans; on the other, remaining at a purely theoretical level without offering tools for concrete political practice. The most fruitful path appears to be one that combines phenomenological analysis with applied case studies, demonstrating how experiential dimensions condition public choices and decisions.
To contribute to this issue of Discipline Filosofiche, the following thematic lines are encouraged:
1) the state of the debate and research perspectives;
2) methodological questions related to the phenomenological concept of world;
3) phenomenological conceptions of nature, in general or in specific domains;
4) the state of the question and development prospects concerning a phenomenological approach to ecology;
5) the possibility of dialogue, including critical dialogue, between phenomenological approaches and empirical sciences;
6) ethical and political questions arising from a cosmological approach to phenomenology;
7) metaphysical implications of the cosmological perspective in phenomenology.

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Deadline for the submission of manuscripts: June 11, 2027
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