Filosofie ( research )

In Metaphysics and Epistemology you focus on the development of the hermeneutic tradition – key figures being Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur and Derrida. Metaphysics deals with basic philosophical questions such as: What is being? What is truth? What is the essence of something? Is reality one or many? In Nijmegen, the Department of Metaphysics and Epistemology focuses mainly on the question of how these metaphysical questions are affected by hermeneutical philosophy as it has been developed in the 19th and 20th century. This specialisation covers the classic metaphysical tradition from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to Hegel, but more particularly the hermeneutic philosophical tradition of the 19th and 20th centuries. The hermeneutic tradition is studied from a metaphysical and ontological point of view, with particular attention to hermeneutic philosophers of the 19th century (Schleiermacher, Dilthey) as well as to the 20th-century authors who continued this tradition in a phenomenological framework (Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Derrida). Research in this line mainly focuses on the meaning and status of being, truth and subjectivity in the hermeneutic tradition. Those authors in the continental tradition who were critical of these hermeneutic developments in philosophy are also included.

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 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.