The course provides an overview of theories of judgement and intuition as distinct from procedures of inference and measurement common to most empirical sciences or applications of artificial intelligence. Judgment and intuition are especially important in the realm of the political and aesthetic as distinct from disciplines such as physics and biology.

The module deals with different forms of knowledge and their relationship to one another from a historical and comparative perspective. The spectrum ranges from attempts to gain and define certainty to radical skepticism. Text testimonies from the Islamic world as well as from Europe and other knowledge traditions will have their say.

Already 16 years ago, Peter Thiel said: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” (Cato Unbound, April 2009)One might dismiss this sentence as the seemingly simple anti-democratic statement of a lone entrepreneur. Yet it appears to conceal a political programme, which this seminar will examine from both a historical and a philosophical perspective.

Scientific paradigms of philosophising.

Introduction into the philosophy of technology

Since 1800 Schelling developed a philosophical conception according to which the philosophies of nature and of human freedom should complement each other. This conception will first be studied and then some of its continuations during the 19. and 20. century will be looked at (Peirce, Weyl).

Paul K. Feyerabend characterized his magnum opus “Against method” as an “anarchistic theory of knowledge”. In this book, he crusaded against analytical philosophy of science and critical rationalism. Feyerabend’s advocating for a variety of forms of knowledge has been debated heatedly, but is still relevant for contextualizing the role of science in society.

The lecture gives an overview of the philosophical currents of the present within the framework of "western" philosophy, such as pragmatism, analytical philosophy of mind, analytical philosophy of language, phenomenology, critical theory, deconstructivism, new materialism, etc. It places them in relation to developments in physics, biology and other empirical sciences.

This lecture-course gives in its first art an overview and introduction into the philosophical problems of biology. In its second part graduate students can discuss their research work against the background of this introduction.

In the mid-17th century, Spinoza proposed a unique philosophy, offering a novel conception of nature. Though modern biology did not exist then, his framework provides a metaphysical basis for understanding life. This seminar explores a biological reading of Spinoza to illuminate and critically engage questions relevant to contemporary biology.

Already Schelling used the concept of "evolution" in his philosophy of nature. But after Darwin the concept gains an enormous relevance. In this seminar we will read and analyse of conceptions of philosophy of natur starting from Schelling (1800) to the present time (Nagel, Latour).

From its beginnings, physics was dealing with theories of space and time. The course will give an overview of these theories from Aristotle to Descartes, Leibniz, Newton and Einstein and also look at new developments that consider space and time as not fundamental to nature but as emerging in nature from something else in nature.

Science and technology are projects that are usually described as “progressing". Earlier findings and inventions are used to create new ones. Later researchers stand on the "shoulders of giants" of those who worked before them. But is this a development toward truth and for the better?

This module is meant for additional reading, reflection, and project work on the course 'Psychological Typologies: Its History, Uses and Dangers from a Philosophical Perspective'. The precise content and outputs will be decided by the teacher and students.

This course looks at the history and philosophy of psychological typologies. Important authors will be C.G. Jung and Theodor W. Adorno. We will look at the function of typologies in every-day life, its former use in the science of psychology. We will ask why typologies became more and more unimportant in scientific psychology and why they are popular in some digital discourses.