Doktorand

Malakos, Dr. Apostolos

Titel

Practical reason and the will: the ideal and real possibility of morality in Kant.

Abstract

Kant’s distinguishing of two uses for the capacity to reason, a theoretical and a practical use, is of seminal importance both for the development of his critical enterprise and the philosophical foundation of modern conceptions of morality. Whereas he conceives of theoretical reasoning as a capacity to know from principles, he conceives of practical reasoning as the capacity to determine the will according to principles. This thesis first examines the faculty of reason in its two distinct capacities, their differentiating qualities and independence from each other. At the same time, it asks how these distinct capacities of the same human agent operate in the same subject. Based on this, the project goes on to examine the way practical reason can determine the rational but sensible human will, the possibility of humans for moral improvement despite the ubiquitous tendency to moral failing. The project aims to reestablish the critical foundations of a broadly Kantian ethics, as a cornerstone for the legitimacy of modernity.

Betreuer

Prof. Dr. Kristina Engelhard


Doktorand

Murtha, Colin, M.A.

Titel

„Avicenna on Inanimate Sublunary Nature: The Fifth Natural Science of The Healing

Abstract

My dissertation focuses on a previously edited, but understudied treatise in Avicenna’s (d. 1037) monumental work The Healing, one which has not yet been fully translated into any modern language. The treatise, comprising the fifth science of natural philosophy, is composed of two parts, the first of which details his theory of minerals (maʿādin), and the second, his theory of meteorological phenomena (aṯār ʿulwiyya) including clouds, wind, rainbows, thunder and lightning, meteors and comets. In addition to producing an English translation of the treatise in its entirety, and aside from the research involved in contextualizing Avicenna’s theories and their origins in Aristotle, my dissertation will mostly concern itself with the relation between Avicenna’s mineralogy and meteorology and specifically will attempt to understand Avicenna’s justification for combining the study of minerals and meteorological phenomena into a single science, a strategy that constitutes what I argue is Avicenna’s most novel contribution to the discipline.

Betreuer

JProf. Dr. Andreas Lammer

 


Doktorand

Persia, Marco, M.A.

Titel

Xenophanes of Colophon: New Translation and Commentary of the Ancient Testimonies

Betreuer

Prof. Dr. Benedikt Strobel


Doktorand

Probst, Katharina, M.A.

Dissertationsprojekt zur Kritik der Urteilskraft

Die Kritik der Urteilskraft ist ein außergewöhnliches Buch. Sie ist an und für sich außergewöhnlich, allein durch das große Themenspektrum, welches durch sie abgedeckt wird. Darüber hinaus ist sie es aber auch im Hinblick auf die Rolle, die sie binnen der kantischen Werke, speziell binnen der kantischen Kritiken, einnimmt. Es ist zunächst unklar, wie sich die Hauptteile (Vorreden, Kritik der ästhetischen und teleologischen Urteilskraft) aneinanderfügen und was durch sie in Bezug auf Kants kritisches Projekt im Ganzen geleistet wird. Was zu fehlen scheint, ist ein Lehrstück, welches die verschiedenen Textteile verbindet und die Kritiken miteinander aussöhnt. Den Versuch, ein solches Lehrstück aus der Schrift zu rekonstruieren, möchte ich in meinem Dissertationsprojekt unternehmen.


Doktorand

Settegast, Sascha, M.A.

Titel

„Vernünftiges Leben: Zum Naturbegriff in der neo-aristotelischen Tugendethik / Rational Life: On the Concept of Nature in Neo-Aristotelian Virtue Ethics“

Abstract

My thesis focuses on the various concepts of nature at play in the debate surrounding Neo-Aristotelian Naturalism. I maintain that much of the opposition to the Neo-Aristotelian project is motivated by a scientistic conception of nature, which simply offers no space for the essentialist and teleological concept of life-form that is central to the views of Foot and Thompson. Defenders of the Neo-Aristotelian project, however, typically reject scientism and instead embrace a broadly idealist conception of nature, where human nature in particular is not discovered via natural scientific methods but subject to a largely autonomous and culturally mediated self-positing. In different ways, this is equally true of McDowell, Hursthouse, Foot, and Thompson. I argue that this idealist approach runs into its own problems, and that ultimately a truly Aristotelian ethics can be based neither on scientism nor idealism. Instead, it requires what at present remains a desideratum: a genuinely Aristotelian realist epistemology.

Betreuer

Prof. Benedikt Strobel, Prof. Peter Welsen