I am professor of philosophy and hold the chair of practical philosophy at TU Darmstadt. My work centers on issues in the fields of phenomenology, political and legal philosophy, and ethics, as well as transcendental philosophy and philosophy of mind. I also have a strong interest in feminist philosophy and gender studies.
My last book from 2018 (paperback 2020) was awarded the Edward Goodwin Ballard Book Prize and investigates the philosophy of Hannah Arendt which I conceive mainly as a phenomenology of plurality. You can find a review here: [Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews]
Currently I am working on a book on “Public Experiences. On Being, Appearing and Acting in Public” which develops a phenomenological theory of the public realm.
Before coming to Darmstadt, I worked as a visiting professor at the philosophy department of the University of Kassel (Germany) (2016-2018) and was an assistant professor at the philosophy department of the University of Vienna (Austria) (2011-2016), where also most of my own education (M.A., PhD) took place. Research and study abroad have brought me to the New School of Social Research in New York, St. Denis University in Paris, the Husserl-Archives in Leuven, and the Center for Subjectivity Research in Copenhagen.
My current cooperations continue with the CFS in Copenhagen, where I am a “Recurrent Visiting Professor” (2020-2025), affiliated with the ERC-project “Who are we? Self-Identity, Social Cognition and Collective Intentionality”. Furthermore, I am the current president of the German Society of Phenomenological Research (DGPF) and co-editor of the books series „Phenomenology" at the publishing house Alber/Nomos.
Research Profile
- Phenomenology and existential philosophy
- Political philosophy, philosophy of law, ethics, social philosophy, social ontology
- Transcendental philosophy, philosophy of mind, classic epistemology
Current Research
- Phenomenology of the public realm and publicness
- Intersubjectivity, alterity, plurality (esp. Husserl, Levinas, Arendt); phenomenological approaches in ethics and social philosophy
- The political and political theories of action/agency, subjectification and subjectivity in the context of first-, second-, and third-person-perspective
- Experience, normativity, and justification (epistemic and normative)
- Existential dimensions of law: experiences and structures of rightlessness
- Phenomenological conceptions of personal identity
- Intentionality and consciousness, mind-world-relation, conceptual and non-conceptual experience
- Transcendental philosophy and transcendental idealism (esp. Husserl and Kant), theories of new realism
Office Hours
Wednesdays from 3 – 4 p.m., Room: S315/201 (Schloss/Glockenbau). Please schedule via E-mail.
Team
Staff Members
Luis Basler (since 2022)
Gerhard Thonhauser (since 2019)
Philipp Schmidt (2018-2021)
Christian Sternad
(2018-2019)
Visiting Researchers
Anto Varghese, PhD candidate at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India. Dissertation project: „Dialogue and Sociality. A Contemporary Phenomenological Reading“. (Nov. 2023 – March 2025)
Giovanni Battista Armenio, PhD candidate at the University Federico II, Neapel. Dissertation project: “Phenomenology and Practice of Dwelling in Heidegger's Thought”. (April – Dezember 2024)
Tristan Hedges, PhD Fellow at the Centre for Subjectivity Research (University of Copenhagen) in the ERC-Project “Who are we?” Dissertation project: “Us and Them: A Phenomenological Approach to Collective Identity”. (April 2023 – Juni 2023)
Nayana Bibile, PhD (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia)
Future Talent Short-Term Scholarship by TU Darmstadt (May 2022 – July 2022)
Jing Zhang, PhD candidate at Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China. Dissertation project: “Adolf Reinach‘s Phenomenology of Law“. Research stay (Oct. 2019 – April 2021)
Adrian Bueno Junquero, PhD candidate at U.N.E.D University, Madrid, Spain. Dissertation project: “A phenomenology of Property“. Research stay (Aug. 2018 – Jan 2019)
PhD Candidates
Pezhman Golchin (seit 2024): „Soma. An Introduction to the definition of the body as an abstract object drawing from Aristotle’s work De Anima and Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the body subject”
Letizia Konderak (seit 2023): “Primitive Accumulation and the Consumption of the Common World. A reading between Arendt and Marx”
Mareike Thies (seit 2023): „Das Sich und das Subjekt. Die unendliche Leere des Individuums als Voraussetzung für Subjektivation“
Marlin Mayer (seit 2023): „Perspektivität“
Cengiz Kotan (seit 2021): “‘Neighbourhood’: A contribution to Heideggerian social ontology”
Yan He (seit 2020): “Eine Analyse der personalen Habitualität in der Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls”
Margarita Varava (seit 2018): „The political via negativa in Western democracies: challenging political rationality and the notion of truth“
Student Assistants
Matthias Heß (2021-2023)
Luis Basler (2021-2022)
Sven Thomas (2018-2021)
Julia Zaenker (2018-2021)
