Research            

What does it mean to orient oneself ethically - as an individual person and as a (political) commu-nity? What does it mean to enlighten, to advise, to criticize individuals and groups ethically? What role does normative validity play? And what is normative validity- if there should be such a thing? How historical are these questions and how historical are their answers?

These fundamental questions of practical philosophy certainly have general as well as historical-contextual dimensions. In order to elucidate the general aspects, we draw on the state of the art of scientific research, so that the biological, psychological and collective mechanisms that play a role in ethical (self-)orientation can be explicitly included in philosophical considerations. We also conduct conceptual and normative analyses to make explicit and reflect on the concepts, values, and principles employed in such orientation exercises. In order to deal with the historical-contextual aspects of ethical orientation, it is also necessary to draw on scientific results and to apply philosophical methods. Historically specific characteristics of individuals and (political) communities determine what ethical orientation can look like. For example, a certain concept of individual freedom, which is attributed to persons, or an understanding of democracy, by which a political community is described. And our time is characterized by a deep uncertainty of a new kind - on very different levels: for example, socially and culturally through technical innovations and the radical questioning of cosmopolitan values and identity formation processes, or politically through the crisis or even regression of democracy. A prominent feature of this uncertainty is the pluralization - even polarization - of fundamental normative convictions.

Both aspects - the general and the historical-contextual ones, as well as their interconnection in particular - are core themes of the working group on practical philosophy. One main line of re-search is thereby to respond to the challenges of the present by further developing ethical theory, especially normative pluralism and, as the case might be, normative polarization.

One focus is on the analysis, critique and further development of applied ethics as it has estab-lished itself as a sub-discipline of philosophy over the last few decades. Methodological and nor-mative foundations of ethics of technology, climate justice, morality of war, bioethics and animal ethics are dealt with as well as specific topics in these fields. After all, the classical methods of ap-plied ethics are strongly consensus-oriented - how can they be further developed to respond to pluralism?

Another focus is on the methodological and normative analysis of descriptions of our times as they are made in various humanities and social sciences.