Filosofie ( research )

In Social and Political Philosophy you study 'the political' as an essential but conflict-ridden aspect of the human condition, and politics as a way of coping with this.

Social and political philosophy is part of a practical philosophy that aims for fundamental questions regarding human society: What is a political order? How do institutions come into being? What are the differences between a community and a society? In what type of society should we live? What is justice? What is the relation between morality and politics? In Nijmegen we pay a lot of attention to interpreting, problematising and actualising classical texts that are part of the European political philosophy - from Plato to Habermas. At the same time we focus on actual discussions on the crisis and conceptualisation of democracy. Also important are studies concerning spacial and metaphorical imaginations (city, garden, desert) in core political philosophical texts. Regarding these different fields our research in Nijmegen does not only want to take a descriptive perspective; we offer a normative perspective as well.

In Philosophy of Mind and Science you study problems such as mental causation and phenomenal consciousness from the viewpoint of neurophenomenenology and the embodied embedded cognition paradigm.

Philosophy of mind and cognition touches on some of the most profound questions about ourselves: What is it to have a mind? How is our mind realized by our brain? What is consciousness? How can our mental states drive our actions? Do we have free will? What is that makes (most) human beings persons? Traditionally philosophy of mind is part of the analytical tradition in philosophy. Recently, however, a more phenomenological approach to typical questions in the philosophy of mind has provided a refreshing new look on old topics. Also, the advance of cognitive neuroscience is leaving its trace in the way old questions are posed and answered. Philosophy of Mind and Cognition in Nijmegen combines traditional analytical theorizing with insights from phenomenology and the empirical sciences.

In Philosophical Anthropology you study the philosophical significance of psychoanalytical hermeneutics as developed by Freud and followers (Lacan, Klein, et. al.).

Philosophers usually assume that philosophy is important for psychoanalysis (and psychotherapy in general) in that it can elucidate and analyse the foundations of the latter, but that psychoanalysis can contribute little or nothing to philosophy as a consequence. Yet, a long-standing tradition at the Radboud University and the Catholic University Leuven emphasises the role of psychoanalysis and Freudian metapsychology as critical tools for philosophy. According to this school of thought, the Unconscious (language, the Other) generates a radical alienation in the human subject, which is of the utmost importance for philosophical theorising about human nature. However, it would be wrong to reduce the philosophical implications of psychoanalysis to this aspect of alienation. The methodology of psychoanalysis as applied to an understanding of human thinking, feeling and behaviour through psychiatric concepts and phenomena appears to be equally important, harbouring the possibility of a theory of human nature, in which different pathological variants are understood as intrinsic possibilities of human existence.

In Philosophical Ethics you investigate the moral implications of human actions from the point of view of virtue ethics, phenomenology, and hermeneutics.

Philosophical Ethics is the part of practical philosophy that aims for the question about what makes human life and living together good, useful or worthwhile, and what we must do to act morally right. In Nijmegen Philosophical Ethics pays a lot of attention to the history of ethics. Methodically she is guided mainly by phenomenology and hermeneutics. Among ethical theories the main focus is on virtue ethics. Authors that are being discussed extensively include: Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer and MacIntyre. Regularly our education and publications are devoted to the relation between literature and ethics. Besides, there is much expertise on a few domains of applied ethics, especially on administrative ethics, business ethics, military ethics, and the ethics of upbringing and education.

In History of Philosophy you explore the development of natural philosophy and metaphysics from the late Middle Ages to early modern and modern times.

Exploring the development of philosophy from Antiquity to early modern and modern times, with a particular emphasis on the genesis of modern scientific disciplines such as psychology, physics or chemistry out of the traditional body of Aristotelian natural philosophy. There is no other academic discipline in which the past is so important as in philosophy: today's philosophers are still responding to, and conversing with, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Wittgenstein. For this reason, the philosophy curriculum at Radboud University consists of a great number of historical courses. The specialisation History of Philosophy covers the entire history of philosophy from the Presocratic philosophers up to today, divided into four periods: ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary. Key authors for this specialisation are, in alphabetical order, Aristotle, Descartes, Epicurus, Galileo, German idealists, Hegel, Hobbes, Hume, Leibniz, Lucretius, Merleau-Ponty, Plato, Pomponazzi, Sartre, and Thomas Aquinas.

In Philosophy of Mind and Science you study problems such as mental causation and phenomenal consciousness from the viewpoint of neurophenomenenology and the embodied embedded cognition paradigm.

In History of Philosophy you explore the development of natural philosophy and metaphysics from the late Middle Ages to early modern and modern times.

In Metaphysics and Epistemology you focus on the development of the hermeneutic tradition – key figures being Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur and Derrida.

In Social and Political Philosophy you study 'the political' as an essential but conflict-ridden aspect of the human condition, and politics as a way of coping with this.

Philosophy of Language and Logic involves the study of linguistic expressions such as words, sentences and texts, where the emphasis is on the context in which these expressions are being interpreted.