Habilitation Programme

Topic: Normative Instrumentalism. A Language Philosophical Critique of Practical Reasoning
Dr. phil. Georg Kamp, M.A.

This project undertakes an analysis of those speech acts that constitute rational practical discourses. Discourses are to be called practical insofar as they are targeted on being effective for the action planning of oneself or others (postulate of practical effectiveness). They are to be called rational insofar as their effectiveness depends only on the successive and rule-conform establishing of arguments (postulate of rationality). With the tradition of the enlightenment, it will be supposed that the participants of such discourses ascribe to each other no more epistemic competences than they are disposed to ascribe to themselves (postulate of epistemic symmetry).
It will be shown that rational practical discourses complying with these postulates will always have the interests of their participants as one of their issues. They therefore have the form of counselling and negotiation. This leads to a consiliatory understanding of ethics that does not aim to provide absolute justifications of categorical norms, but rather to interest-relative and therefore instrumental justifications of weakly regulating speech acts such as recommendations and suggestions.

Topic: Autonomy and Consent in Medicine
Priv.-Doz. Dr. med. Felix Thiele, M.Sc.

In January 2009 Felix Thiele became member of the Faculty of Humanities, Institute of Philosophy at the Universität Duisburg-Essen. He achieved the permission to teach (venia legendi “practical philosophy with special regard to medical ethics”).