Bernhard Waldenfels

Bernhard Waldenfels (17 March 1934 – 23 January 2026) was a German philosopher and academic teacher. He is regarded as one of the leading phenomenologists of his era. He researched and taught at the Ruhr University Bochum from 1976 to 1999.

Based on the foundation of classical Greek philosophy, Waldenfels was influenced by Edmund Husserl's phenomenology and studied for two years in France, introducing then the ideas of French philosophers to German-speaking philosophers. Central themes of his writing are questions and answers, as well as phenomenological studies on experience, alterity, foreignness, and physicality (Leiblichkeit).