Humanities

The current main areas of research in philosophy at the Chair of Prof. Carl Friedrich Gethmann lie in three interrelated areas:
The philosophy of language and the philosophy of logic. An anthology dedicated to the roleof philosophy in interdisciplinary research will be published in 2009; the publication of “Einführung in die Sprachphilosophie” [Introduction to the Philosophy of Language] is also planned for this year.
Phenomenology as a focal point in the history of philosophy.
Practical philosophy and applied philosophy (medical ethics / environmental ethics / assessment of the consequences of new technologies). Work in this area is currently being condensed for presentation in a monograph scheduled to appear in 2010.
Questions arising in the areas of epistemology and the philosophy of the natural sciences, mathematics, proof theory, and language philosophy are the ongoing focus of research conducted by Prof. Dirk Hartmann and his research group. Since 2004, new fields of research have been established and are reflected in publications and projects relating to ethics, the philosophy of the individual, the philosophy of the humanities, and political philosophy.
Intervening in the Brain. Changing Psycheand Society, the new study of the Europäische Akademie GmbH, is the result of two-and-a-half years of work by an interdisciplinary project team consisting of neuroscientists, medics, philosophers and a jurist. The outcome of the pro­ject, which culminated in 2007 with the above publication, is a detailed presentation of current applications and a critical evaluation of foreseeable developments relating to all the named intervention protocols; it is supplemented by an analysis of the possible consequences of their use at individual as well as social level.
The main areas of research of Prof. Thomas Spitzley and his research group are “Rethinking the Philosophy of Action” (European network project; sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust,UK), “The Authority of the First Person”,which follows on from the proceedings of “First Person Authority: Its Nature, Source,Limits and Use”, a conference sponsored by the Thyssen Foundation and held at the University of Duisburg-Essen in September 2007; theories of rationality, Wittgenstein’s Philosophy ofPhilosophy, and recollection and representa­tionalism.