Biographical Note
Since 2019 I work at the chair of practical philosophy (Prof. Sophie Loidolt) at TU Darmstadt.
From 2004-2010 I studied philosophy and political science at the University of Vienna. 2016 I finished my doctorate in philosophy at the University of Vienna. From 2017-2018 I was an Erwin Schrödinger Fellow of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) at Free University of Berlin and associated with the Collaborative Research Center 1171 Affective Societies.
Since 2015, I have been part of the editorial team of the Journal of Social Ontology (opens in new tab). From 2023 to 2025, I served as Secretary General of the German Society for Phenomenological Research (opens in new tab), since 2025 I am a member of the society’s advisory board.
Contact
Please contact me via Email to make an appointment: thonhauser@phil.tu-…
Research Profile
- Social and Political Philosophy
- Phenomenology
- Philosophy of Emotions
- Social Ontology
- Philosophy of Action
- Political Theory
- 19th and 20th century philosophy
- Philosophy of Sports
News
Network „Critical Emotion Theory (opens in new tab)“
Lecture Series „Political Phenomenology in Debate (opens in new tab)“
Conference „Auf der Suche nach einer neuen Orientierung. Religiöse und philosophische Diskurse in Österreich und Deutschland, 1918–1938“
Events at the Austrian Institute for Daseinsanalysis (opens in new tab)
Publications
Monographs
Heideggers “Sein und Zeit”. Einführung und Kommentar, Heidelberg: Metzler, 2022.
The Politics of Affective Societies: An Interdisciplinary Essay, gemeinsam mit 13 Co-Autor_innen vom SFB Affective Societies, Bielefeld: transcript, 2019. Link (PDF file) (opens in new tab)
Ein rätselhaftes Zeichen. Zum Verhältnis von Martin Heidegger und Søren Kierkegaard, (Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series, vol. 33) Berlin: DeGuyter, 2016.
Über das Konzept der Zeitlichkeit bei Søren Kierkegaard mit ständigem Hinblick auf Martin Heidegger, Freiburg/München: Alber, 2011.
Edited Volumes and Special Issues (selection)
Gerhard Thonhauser und Sophie Loidolt (Hg.) Schwerpunkt „Krisis und Kritik“, Journal Phänomenologie, 64, 2025.
Steffen Herrmann, Gerhard Thonhauser, Sophie Loidolt, Tobias Matzner and Nils Baratella (Hg.): The Routledge Handbook of Political Phenomenology, New York: Routledge, 2024.
Martin Huth und Gerhard Thonhauser (Hg.), Special Issue “Dimensions of Vulnerability”, Philosophy Today, 64 (3), 2020, 537-650 and 65 (1), 2021, 1-68.
Hans Bernhard Schmid und Gerhard Thonhauser (Hg.): From Conventionalism to Social Authenticity. Heidegger’s Anyone and Contemporary Social Theory, (Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality, vol. 10), Berlin: Springer, 2017.
Journal Articles (selection)
Gerhard Thonhauser: „Racist or Anti-Racist Phenomenology: Contrasting Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss’s ‚Rassenseelenkunde‘ with the Critical Phenomenology of Race“, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2026, 1-17. Link (opens in new tab)
„Feeling Together across Group Boundaries: Exploring the Case of Emotional Matching“, Washington University Review of Philosophy, 4, 2025, 27-44. Link (opens in new tab)
“Collective Emotions and the Distributed Emotion Framework”, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2024. Link
“Phenomenological Reduction and Radical Situatedness: Merleau-Ponty and the Method of Critical Phenomenology”, Genealogy+Critique, 9 (1), 2023, 1-18. Link
“Competitive Team Sport Without External Referees: The Case of the Flying Disc Sport Ultimate”, Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 2023. Link Pre-Print (PDF file) (opens in new tab)
“Being a Team Player: Approaching team coordination in sports in dialogue with ecological and praxeological approaches”, Frontiers in Psychology, 13 (1026859), 2022, 1-10. Link
“Emotionale Fähigkeiten in (neo-)existenzialistischer Perspektive: Moran und Sartre”, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 70 (6), 2022, 910-922, Link
“Towards a Taxonomy of Collective Emotions”, Emotion Review, 2022. Link
“A Critique of the Crowd Psychological Heritage in Early Sociology, Classic Phenomenology and Recent Social Psychology”, Continental Philosophy Review, 2022. Link
“Approaching Collectivity Collectively: A Multi-Disciplinary Account of Collective Action”, together with Martin Weichold, Frontiers in Psychology, 12 (740664), 2021. Link
“Beyond Mood and Atmosphere: A Conceptual History of the Term Stimmung”, Philosophia, 49 (3), 2021, 1247-1265.Link
“Shared emotions and the body”, Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, 54, 2021. Pre-Print (PDF file) (opens in new tab)
“A Multifaceted Approach to Emotional Sharing”, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 27 (9-10), 2020, 202-227. Link
“Zum Verhältnis von Phänomenologie und Massenpsychologie anhand von Max Schelers Unterscheidung von Gefühlsansteckung und Miteinanderfühlen”, Phänomenologische Forschungen, 2020 (2), 195-216.Pre-Print (PDF file) (opens in new tab)
“Collective Affordances”, together with Martin Weichold, Ecological Psychology, 32 (1), 2020, 1-24.
“Emotional Sharing in Football Audiences”, together with Michael Wetzels, The Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 46 (2), 2019, 224-243.Link
“Shared Emotions: A Steinian Proposal”, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 17 (5), 2018, 997-1015. Link
“Shared Emotions and Collective Affective Intentionality”, I Quaderni della Ginestra, 22, 2018, 100-113. Pre-Print (PDF file) (opens in new tab)
“Martin Heidegger Reads Søren Kierkegaard – or What Did He Actually Read?”, Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2016, 281-304.
Handbook Entries (selection)
“Martin Heidegger and Otto Friedrich Bollnow”, in: Thomas Szanto and Hilge Landweer (eds.): The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Emotions, London/New York: Routledge, 2020, 104-113. Pre-Print (PDF file) (opens in new tab)
“Feeling”, in: Jan Slaby and Christian von Scheve (eds.): Affective Societies – Key Concepts, London/New York: Routledge, 52-60. Pre-Print (PDF file) (opens in new tab)
“Existenzialistischer Marxismus”, gemeinsam mit Hans Bernhard Schmid, in: Michael Quante and David Schweikard (eds.): Marx-Handbuch: Leben – Werk – Wirkung, Stuttgart: Metzler, 2015, 313-320.
Other Articles (selection)
Gerhard Thonhauser: „Unfelt Political Emotions: The Case of Ontological Terror“, in: Lucy Osler and Thomas Szanto (Hg.): For, Against, Together: Rethinking Antagonistic Political Emotions, Cambridge UP, 2026
„Husserl und Heidegger zur Phänomenologie der Gefühle“, in: Hilge Landweer (Hg.): Philosophie der Gefühle: Zukunftsperspektiven, Springer, 2025, 37-56.
„Habits and (Un)Familiarity: A Political Phenomenology of the ‚I can' and the ‚I cannot'”, in: Line Ryberg Ingerslev and Karl Mertens (eds.): Phenomenology of Broken Habits: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives on Habitual Action, 2024, 243-258.
“Engaging with Life Mindfully”, in: Christos Hadjioannou and Susi Ferrarello (eds.): Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Mindfulness, New York: Routledge, 2023, 445-456.
"Tuning the World: A Conceptual History of the Term Stimmung Part Two“, in: Dylan Trigg (ed.): Atmospheres and Shared Emotions, New York: Routledge, 2021, 40-56.
„Ist eine existenzphilosophische Sozialtheorie möglich? Antwortversuche mit Sartre und Merleau-Ponty“ in: Dennis Sölch and Oliver Victor (eds.): Geschichte und Gegenwart der Existenzphilosophie, Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2021, 201-226.
“Von der Unmöglichkeit der Institutionalisierung des Politischen zur ambivalenten Kraft politischer Imagination: Ein Streifzug mit Marchart, Hochschild und Castoriadis”, in: Mattias Flatscher and Steffen Herrmann: Institutionen des Politischen, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2020, 379-402.Pre-Print (PDF file) (opens in new tab)
“Authenticity and Critique. Remarks on Heidegger and Social Theory”, in: James Thompson and Matthias Kaufmann (eds.): Regelfolgen, Regelschaffen, Regeländern – die Herausforderung für Auto-Nomie und Universalismus durch Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger und Carl Schmitt, Wien: Lang, 2020, 115-131.Pre-Print (PDF file) (opens in new tab)
“The Power of Public Assemblies: Democratic Politics following Butler and Arendt”, in: Thomas Bedorf and Steffen Herrmann (eds.): Political Phenomenology: Experience, Ontology, Episteme, New York: Routledge, 2019, 202-219.Pre-Print (PDF file) (opens in new tab)
„Heidegger and the affective (ungrounding) of politics“, together with Jan Slaby, in: Christos Hadjioannou (ed.): Philosophers in Depth: Heidegger on Affect, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2019, 265-289. Pre-Print (PDF file) (opens in new tab)
“Plurale Performativität. Butler und Arendt über die Macht spontaner Versammlungen”, in: Gerald Posselt, Tatjana Schönwälder-Kuntze, and Sergej Seitz (eds.): Dimensionen des Politischen. Zur politischen Philosophie Judith Butlers, Bielefeld: transcript, 2018, 251-267.
“Thinker Without Category. Kierkegaard in Heidegger’s Thinking of the 1930s”, in: Arne Grøn, K. Brian Soderquist, René Rosfort (eds.): Kierkegaard’s Existential Approach, (Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series, vol. 35), Berlin: DeGruyter, 2017, 27-48.
“Karl Löwith’s Understanding of Sociality”, in: Hans Bernhard Schmid and Alessandro Salice, (eds.): The Phenomenological Approach to Social Reality. History, Concepts, Problems, (Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality, vol. 6), Berlin: Springer, 2016, 121-141.
“Butler’s Social Ontology of the Subject and its Agency”, in: Diego D’Angelo, Sylvaine Gourdaine, Tobias Keiling, and Nikola Mirkovic, (eds.): Frei sein, frei handeln. Freiheit zwischen theoretischer und praktischer Philosophie, Freiburg: Alber, 2013, 144-157.
“Judith Butler: Kierkegaard as her early teacher in rhetoric and parody”, in: Jon Stewart (ed.): Kierkegaard's Influence on Social-Political Thought, (Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, vol. 14), Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing, 2011, 53-72.
