Filosofie ( research )

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.

Philosophy of Language and Logic involves the study of linguistic expressions such as words, sentences, texts and dialogues, where the emphasis is on the context in which these expressions are being interpreted. In its teaching, the section "Philosophy of Language and Logic" focuses on the development of analytical philosophy from Frege onwards and the rise of modern semantics in the last decades of the 20th century. Its main research interests are the context-dependence of interpretation and its relation to formal semantics and pragmatics, on the one hand, and philosophy of mind, on the other. Typical themes that are addressed are context-dependence and presupposition, dynamic theories of meaning, discourse and discourse structure, the analysis of propositional attitudes and their relation to mental states, and the relation between interpretation and psychological processes.

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 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 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 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.