On Monday, the 4 May 2026, from 4.15 to 6.30 pm, Prof. Dr. Rolf Elberfeld and Dr. Leon Krings (University of Hildesheim) will give a guest lecture on the topic “Hildesheim Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sources (HePS): An open-access digital infrastructure for the documentation, interconnection, and visualization of philosophical sources and traditions from around the world” (Venue: Room 201, Philosophikum, Domplatz 23, 48143 Münster):
The central aim of the Hildesheim Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sources (HePS) is to create an open-access, multilingual database and associated platform designed to map the richness and diversity of modes of philosophizing worldwide. Instead of presenting a fixed canon, HePS offers a dynamically growing knowledge graph that brings together sources, thinkers, traditions, practices, concepts, places, and institution, together with the historical, systematic and cultural relations that connect them.
The project will contribute to making marginalized and underrepresented traditions visible – from African and Latin American philosophies to Indigenous knowledge systems worldwide, women philosophers, oral traditions, and embodied practices such as meditation. In doing so, HePS challenges the long-standing Eurocentrism of conventional references and contributes to the decolonization of knowledge.
HePS is built on the principles of open science and knowledge commons: all data will be freely accessible, openly licensed, and linked to other public knowledge bases. This ensures that the encyclopedia is not an isolated archive but part of a wider, collaborative ecosystem.
At its core, HePS fosters intercultural and polylogical dialogue. By enabling readers to encounter ideas from traditions beyond their own, the platform creates an open space of interconnection where diverse approaches can coexist, overlap, and sometimes diverge, thereby expanding our collective understanding of what it means to philosophize in a globalized and polycentric world.
Prof. Dr. Rolf Elberfeld is a professor of philosophy at the University of Hildesheim and the spokesperson for the Centre for Advanced Study “Philosophizing in a Globalized World.” In the field of philosophy of culture, he combines phenomenological approaches with a broad intercultural perspective. A major focus of his research is the history of philosophy from a global perspective. As part of the Reinhart Koselleck Project “Histories of Philosophy in a Global Perspective” (2019–2024), he has, among other things, developed and published online a multilingual database on “Histories of Philosophy in a Global Perspective”.
Dr. Leon Krings is a research associate in the Centre for Advanced Study “Philosophizing in a Globalized World” at the University of Hildesheim and project coordinator of the Hildesheim Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sources. His research focuses on Buddhist philosophy, particularly 20th-century Japanese philosophy, the phenomenology of corporeality, as well as intercultural philosophy and the history of philosophy. He is a founding member and board member of the European Network of Japanese Philosophy and, since 2019, has served as publisher and editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Japanese Philosophy.