Winter term 2024/25

• Antagonism and freedom: Enlightenment in I. Kant and F. Schiller
• Critical theory of the 1930s: Th. W. Adorno, W. Benjamin, M. Horkheimer, H. Marcuse
• Scepticism, knowledge, faith and reason: R. Descartes and P. Bayle
• Colloquium: Supervision of final theses

Summer term 2024

• Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx: Theory and practice in the early writings
• Giambattista Vico: Writings on the philosophy of history and law
• Ralph Waldo Emerson and David Henry Thoreau: Knowledge of nature and cultural criticism
• Colloquium: Supervision of final theses

Winter term 2023/24

left of absence

Summer term 2023

• Cognition and Language: The Lineage of Plato, Augustine and Dante
• 125 years of Herbert Marcuse: Cross-sections - What remains?
• Ludwig Feuerbach: New Philosophy - Works and Letters
• Walter Benjamin: Language, Violence, Art, History
• Colloquium: Supervision of final theses

Winter semester 2022/23

• Immanuel Kant: Sapere aude, cosmopolitanism. Freedom and peace
• Critique of the authoritarian character: Sigmund Freud, Siegfried Kracauer, Leo Löwenthal and Theodor W. Adorno
• Johann Wolfgang v. Goethe: artist of "borrowed existence" and natural philosopher of "delicate empiricism"
• Colloquium: Supervision of final theses

Summer semester 2022

• René Descartes and Blaise Pascal: Rationality and religion
• Georg Lukács: Classics of Marxism - 100 years of "History and Class Consciousness"
• Colloquium: Supervision of final theses

Winter term 2021/22

• Introduction to Stoic philosophy
• Models of language theory; Herder, v. Humboldt, Engels, Vossler, Benjamin, Vygotsky, Krauss
• Colloquium: Supervision of final theses

Summer term 2021

• Historical-philosophical hermeneutics: B. Croce, E. Auerbach, K. Löwith and R. Bultmann
• Ludwig Feuerbach: New Philosophy
• Nature and democracy in America: R.W. Emerson, W. Whitman and D.H. Thoreau
• Colloquium: Supervision of final theses

Winter semester 2020/21

• Educational issues: human dignity and freedom in Lessing, Kant and Schiller
• Revolt and eco-socialism: Herbert Marcuse's late work
• Friedrich Engels as a critic of modernity: religion, nature, language, science, social issues
• Colloquium: Supervision of final theses

Summer semester 2020

• Philosophy in letters: The letter as a form of reflection and commentary on works in the 20th century
• Language, the art of memory, reading and interpreting the Bible, the meaning of writing: Hugo von St. Viktor and Dante Alighieri
• Aesthetic theory of narrative: G. Lukács, E. Auerbach and Th. W. Adorno
• Colloquium

Winter semester 2019/20

• Philosophical aesthetics in the Turkish modernist novel: A. Tanpinar, N. Hikmet, O. Pamuk, Z. Livaneli, A. Altan and A. Erdogan
• Genesis, Idea and Critique of Violence: G. Vico, A. Labriola, G. Sorel and W. Benjamin
• Colloquium for doctoral students and theses

Summer term 2019

• Transcendental nature and civil disobedience: R.W. Emerson and H.D. Thoreau
• Introduction to Stoic Philosophy

Winter semester 2018/19

• Critical theory: basic writings of the 1930s (Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Benjamin)
• Spinoza, Sufism and the birth of Islamic Studies (together with Tilman Hannemann)
• Messianism: E. Bloch, W. Benjamin, W. Nigg
• Sigmund Freud: Psychopathological and cultural-critical writings

Summer term 2018

• Humanism and Reformation: Erasmus of Rotterdam and Philipp Melanchthon
• Blaise Pascal: Image of man, ethics and religion in the Pensées and Essays
• Short writings by Kant and Schiller: history, morals, aesthetics and politics

Winter semester 2017/18

• Nietzsche: Giant and dwarf
• Knowledge and practice: Descartes and Vico
• Human dignity

Summer term 2017

• Paths to the self: Boetius and Augustine
• Siegfried Kracauer: Mass ornament, cultural criticism and the philosophy of history
• Judaism, Christianity and Marxism
• Art and society in Erich Auerbach, Walter Benjamin and Bert Brecht
• Colloquium for final theses

Winter semester 2016/17

• Introduction to pre-Socratic philosophy
• Herbert Marcuse: Cultural criticism as social criticism

Summer semester 2016

• Ludwig Feuerbach: History of his impact on Engels, Marx and Nietzsche
• Benedetto Croce and Antonio Gramsci: Philosophy of practice
• Modern hermeneutics: Bultmann, Gadamer, Jaspers
• Colloquium for final theses

Winter term 2015/16

• Ethics of the Roman Stoa: Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus and the New Testament
• Aristotelian leftism, Islam and the Enlightenment
• Ludwig Feuerbach: Philosophy of the future - sensuality, love, criticism of religion and materialism

Summer term 2015

• Sigmund Freud: Writings on the philosophy of culture
• "Mimesis" (Part 2) - Marx, Nietzsche, Auerbach, Benjamin, Gadamer and Marcuse
• Werner Krauss: Thinkers between Marxist philosophy and critical philology

Winter term 2014/15

• Kant's religious writings: Secular-enlightened perspectives on interpretation
• Adorno's aphorisms "Minima Moralia" and the late reflections "Marginalien zu Theorie und Praxis" in comparison
• "Mimesis" (Part 1) - Lecture seminar on theories of imitation from Plato to Hegel
• Erich Auerbach: Works and letters

Summer term 2014

• Introduction to practical philosophy (lecture)
• Moral-aesthetic education. Selected writings by Kant, Schiller, Goethe and Wilhelm v. Humboldt
• Georg Lukács as an ethicist: "History and Class Consciousness" (1923) - Kantian and Hegelian roots and Marxist practice
• Giambattista Vico's "New Science" (Scienza Nuova, 1725/44) and smaller writings as practical philosophy

Winter term 2013/14

• "Doctrines of virtue, morality, freedom and education in Stoic thought: Epicurus, Seneca, Musonius Rufus and Epictetus"
• "Herbert Marcuse's ethics of the promise of happiness (promesse du bonheur)"

Teaching at other universities

Here you can find the courses at other universities.