Bernhard Waldenfels, professor emeritus of Philosophy at the Ruhr University in Bochum and an influential figure in contemporary phenomenology, has died.

Professor Waldenfels was known for his phenomenological approaches to a variety of topics, including attention, the foreign, embodiment, nature, migration, the unconscious, and more. He wrote over 30 books, edited many others, and translated works by Merleau-Ponty and Husserl. An archive of his papers is housed at the University of Freiburg. You can learn more about his work here and here.

He joined the faculty at Ruhr University in Bochum in 1976, retiring in 1999. Prior to that, he taught at the University of Munich. He earned his PhD in Munich in 1959. Over the years, he held visiting appointments at several institutions.

Professor Waldenfels died on January 23, 2026.

(via Sebastian Luft)

Obituaries elsewhere: Frankfurter Rundschau, Suhrkamp