Closed Research Projects
Critique of commonplaces [working title]
Jérôme Léchot's dissertation project
If one wants to get acquainted with the world, commonplaces here loosely conceived of as 'gotten-used-to ways of thinking and acting' (kognitive Üblichkeiten) play a constitutive role: only in a largely familiar and thereby 'foreknown' (e.g. Gail Fine) world are the paths to enlarged or more refined or correcting knowledge sketched out. However, such commonplaces best work in the dark: as soon as they themselves are put to light for critical scrutiny, we may see that not much more than the fact that we have gotten used to them speaks in their favour. That by itself is not yet a problem (unless one is skeptically minded), but it can turn into one in cases of conflict where one’s 'reasonable/sensible presupposition' turns out to be another’s 'has-grown-fond-of prejudice.' Are such conflicts best conceived of as colliding 'positive orders' (Foucault/Waldenfels), or may such a description curtail reason’s ability to push back the boarder of the 'gotten-used-to' (Eingewöhntes) in favour of the (more) reasonably treatable precisely because it knows about its operating presuppositions?
The Stability of Modern Democracies.
Normative Aspects and Social Presuppositions
Raphael Meyer's dissertation project
Democracies can undermine democratically the conditions of their functioning. In my PhD-project I will examine the answers which democratic theories give to this problem of democratic instability. And I will defend the assumption, that pre-political ways of acting in civil society are of high relevance for the prospect of democratic stability.
On the Nature of Moral Judgments
Silvan Moser's dissertation project
Moral judgments are answers to certain kinds of practical questions, that is practical questions we face as social beings who live together. Understanding their claim to validity in this way allows us to incorporate seemingly contradictory aspects of moral judgements into a general, coherent metaethical view.
Dealing with Ignorance
Dr. Nadja El Kassar
How are we to deal with our own ignorance and that of other people? If Aristotle is right in suggesting that human beings naturally strive for knowledge, then the obvious suggestion is that we need to turn ignorance into knowledge. But immediately this answer runs into various formal and structural obstacles, and therefore we have to ask ourselves whether this suggestion is correct. The project approaches this question by developing a broad conception of ignorance and asking at the general level which ways of dealing with ignorance are rational ones.
What are Moral Beliefs?
Laura Hinn’s dissertation project
What are the different ways of entertaining moral beliefs? Are moral beliefs necessarily connected with a motivation to act? Answers to these questions will be elaborated with reference to externalism and internalism in ethics.
How are Justifications Established and Made Possible?
On the Functioning and Structure of Rationality
Romila Storjohann's disseration project
Generally speaking, rationality or reason is the main object of study of this thesis. On the one hand, the function of rationality - understood as the practice of giving and asking for reasons - will be examined in detail (I). On the other hand, based on this analysis, the structural components of, as well as the enabling and constituent requirements for rationality shall be considered (II). Two questions, therefore, are at the center of this dissertation and they are: I) How are reasons formed? II) How is the formation of reasons generally possible?
Unfolding the Northern Archives; A case of Integrated Knowledge
Dr. Xenia Vytuleva
Trained as an art historian, with a background in philosophy and semiotics, Dr. Vytuleva is examining new translations of the North into visual codes, connected to new ecologies of knowledge production and knowledge transfer. This research project seeks to interrogate the entanglement of cultural and cognitive studies along political conflicts and environmental thresholds. North remains one of the most complex cultural and political constructs in history of humanity. An extreme, distant, symbolically charged territory, where myth and Gestalt, political ambitions and ecological challenges collide. North - is a utopian land for human futures, a tabula rasa for architectural fantasies and a battlefield for resources and territorial power. The exploration of North is compared to the exploration of Cosmos. It features eternity, solitude, and frost. North is where the boundaries of the visual apparatus are radically extended: from complete darkness – to blinding light, so blinding that nothing can be seen. Serving as a realization of planetary limit and limit at large: it is a representation of death and abyss, a sub-script of the sublime. It includes, but also transcends, the duration of anthropogenic climate change.
The ambition of this project is to draft a new atlas of Northern archaeologies, to identify the connectedness of different domains of knowledge by communicating traditional northern archives with the unconventional ways to explore the new data. Northern archives – appears to be a rare mode of the integrated knowledge, knowledge as the whole, with a special emphasis on the medical archives of the most common polar human diseases: snow blindness, amnesia and insanity. These archives may become the foundation of a new form of media, providing a methodological toolbox for looking at radically ‘other’ territories, namely a politically and ideologically charged global pole. Reading the phenomenon of the Northern archives on the shared territory of natural sciences, governance and humanities, cultural mapping and future visions, might allow to establish an experimental, yet solid platform for new modality of thinking.
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The Endangered Citizen.
Normative and Empirical Investigations of the Relationship between Democracy, the Market, and the Welfare State
Lukas Adams’s dissertation project
Normative and Empirical Investigations of the Relationship between Democracy, the Market and the Welfare State. Further information to follow.
"Prozesse und Funktionen des Erkennens in ästhetischer Erfahrung"
Dr. Anna Kreysing
Further information about the project