Moral Obligation, Epistemology and Public Health: The Case of Vaccine Hesitancy
The WHO lists vaccine hesitancy as a top ten global threat. This project looks at vaccine hesitancy as an understudied problem at the intersection of ethics and epistemology. The goal is to develop a framework for assessing both the moral and epistemic dimensions of vaccine hesitancy, to improve our understanding of the moral and epistemic risks associated with medical misinformation, and to develop recommendations for the improvement of vaccine science communication.
Digitales Kant Zentrum NRW
2024 feiert die Welt den 300. Geburtstag von Immanuel Kant. Er ist ohne Zweifel einer der größten und einflussreichsten Philosophen aller Zeiten. Dabei ist das Interesse an seiner Philosophie keineswegs auf die philosophiehistorische Auseinandersetzung beschränkt. Vielmehr gilt Kant als ein Denker, der sowohl in Fragen der theoretischen wie auch der praktischen Philosophie wichtige Anregungen und Antworten zu geben vermag.
Das Jubiläumsjahr 2024 soll zum Anlass genommen werden, Grundprinzipien der kantischen Philosophie für drängende Fragen gegenwärtiger Politik und Gesellschaftsordnung geltend zu machen. Ziel des Forschungsprojektes ist die Gründung eines Digitalen Kant-Zentrums NRW, das in kooperativer Weise mehrere Forschungsprojekte verknüpft, deren gemeinsame Grundfrage ist, wie kantische Antworten auf gesellschaftspolitische Fragen ausfallen könnten. Auf diese Weise soll Kant für die Gegenwart fruchtbar gemacht werden.
Normativity and Transformation in Immanuel Kant’s Philosophy of Right
The legal philosophy Kant develops in his 1797 book The Doctrine of Right provides for a powerful system of philosophical concepts and principles. However, what remains largely unanswered there is the question how that system is supposed to apply to real life. In particular, it is unclear how we are to conceive of the historical process by which the ideal of a system of freedom under right he develops there might turn into empirical reality. Kant’s various popular political writings from the same period on the other hand often do engage closely with current historical developments and events. At the same time, these writings offer little about their own theoretical underpinnings.
This project aims to integrate the foundational theory Kant develops in the Doctrine of Right on the one hand and the concrete insights he articulates in his historically minded writings on the other into a unified legal and political philosophy. Kant’s legal and political philosophy as we propose to interpret it allows us to think of the historical development of our national and international legal and political institutions as a matter of their normative transformation over time, where the process of normative transformation is both guided by and directed towards Kant’s normative ideal of freedom under right. The project will focus specifically on the various analogies of which Kant makes use in explaining the nature of the state, such as the state as an organism, of its internal constitution as a contract, and of its relations with other states as forming an international state of nature.