Fields of expertise

Philosophy sees itself as a science of reflection. Its task is to reflect on the fundamental concepts and procedures of everyday and scientific understanding of the world. Philosophy does this by explicating and systematizing the relevant strategies of justification and explanation as well as the corresponding claims to meaning and knowledge. In doing so, philosophy has developed a subject-specific identity as well as subject-specific quality standards for research and teaching.

Philosophy is distinguished from other disciplines by the fact that the history of the subject falls within its own scientific-systematic responsibility. On the one hand, it is one of the tasks of the discipline to constantly reopen its own tradition - and that means: to reconstruct it as philosophy. On the other hand, it belongs to the methods of philosophical research to explicate its systematic questions in constant confrontation with tradition. This twofold reference to tradition can only be achieved in constant contact with research in the history of philosophy. At the same time, the interdisciplinary orientation of Kassel Philosophy prohibits the separation of the connection between the history of philosophy and the history of science.

The structural and content-related profile of the Institute of Philosophy corresponds to the traditional systematics of the subject, which is oriented towards the objects and forms of knowledge. It comprises Theoretical and Practical Philosophy, Aesthetic Theory and Philosophy of Language as well as the History of Philosophy. In addition to the interdisciplinary orientation, a close interweaving of systematic and historical aspects of philosophical research and teaching corresponds to the outlined self-image of the subject.