Dietmar von der Pfordten

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Dietmar von der Pfordten

Dietmar von der Pfordten (born January 21, 1964 in Munich ) is Professor of Legal and Social Philosophy at the Georg-August University in Göttingen .

Scientific career

From 1983 , von der Pfordten studied philosophy , law and political science in Munich , London and Tübingen . After his first state examination in 1988, he was a research assistant at the Institute for Legal Philosophy at the University of Munich with Arthur Kaufmann . In 1991, with the legal-philosophical-metaethical work Description, Evaluation, Prescription - Trialism and Trifunctionalism as the linguistic basis of ethics and law, he was awarded a Dr. jur. PhD. In 1993 he passed the second state examination in law.

From 1993 von der Pfordten was a research assistant at the Philosophical Seminar of the University of Göttingen with Julian Nida-Rümelin . He became there in 1994 with the philosophical work on natural ethics, ecological ethics. To justify human behavior towards nature to the Dr. phil. PhD. In 1998 he completed his habilitation in philosophy with the thesis Legal Ethics - For the Ethical Justification of Legal Norms , also at the University of Göttingen.

In 1999, one followed by the Pfordten call on the Department for Legal and Social Philosophy at the newly founded political science faculty of the University of Erfurt . In 2002 he accepted the professorship for legal and social philosophy at the University of Göttingen.

Von der Pfordten was a visiting scholar at Harvard University (1996/1997) and at Columbia University and New York University (2003). He taught at the European Academy of Legal Theory in Brussels in 2006 and 2007 . He was also visiting professor at the University of Groningen (2010/11) and the University of Cagliari (2011/12).

Since 2001 he has been a member of the Thuringian Academy of Sciences in Erfurt and since 2003 a member of the Advisory Commission of the German Federal Government in connection with the return of cultural assets seized as a result of Nazi persecution, in particular from Jewish property. In 2007 he organized the Holberg Prize Colloquium in honor of Ronald Dworkin together with Stephen Guest (London) .

Research priorities

Dietmar von der Pfordten's research focuses on practical philosophy, in particular legal and social philosophy. In ethics he has made a name for himself as a representative of “normative individualism”. The term “normative individualism” stands for a normative ethic according to which the ultimate ethical justification of primary normative orders such as morality and law can only be made with reference to all affected individuals. In his book "Normative Ethics" he pleads on this basis for a third way between deontology or Kantianism and consequentialism or utilitarianism. To this end, he suggests five elements of adequate normative ethics: first, the individual people or living beings as a starting point, second, their goals, wishes, needs and strivings, i.e. their concerns, third, the relation of these concerns to all parts of the action in the broader sense, not just to Individuals such as goodwill or the consequences, fourthly, the need to weigh up, and finally, fifthly, as a criterion for this weighing up, the relative independence of the interests from the others or the community.

On this basis of normative individualism, Von der Pfordten has presented many works on applied ethics and legal ethics, for example on abortion, natural ethics, animal ethics, genetic engineering, paternalism, rescue torture of the state, euthanasia, human dignity, etc. he especially to Kant, but also to Hobbes, Thomas v. Aquin and Wittgenstein worked. His writings were u. a. translated into Persian, Portuguese and Polish.

In the philosophy of law Dietmar von der Pfordten pleads for an understanding of the legal term, for which both the goals of law and its means are necessary. According to his thesis, law has as a necessary goal and therefore as a necessary feature of its concept the goal of mediating between possibly opposing, conflicting concerns. Law is distinguished from conventions, morals, politics and religion through its means of categoricity, externality, formality and immanence.

Another research focus is on concept theory, with an essential application in the theory of legal concepts and their meaning for law.

Fonts (selection)

Monographs

  • Description, evaluation, prescription - trialism and trifunctionalism as the linguistic foundations of ethics and law. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1993.
  • Ecological ethics. To justify human behavior towards nature. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1996.
  • Legal ethics. CH Beck, Munich 2001; 2nd edition 2011.
  • Human dignity, state and law in Kant. Five studies. Mentis, Paderborn 2009.
  • Normative ethics. de Gruyter, Berlin 2010.
  • Seeking insight. On the task and value of philosophy. Meiner, Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-7873-2125-4 .
  • Legal philosophy. An introduction. CH Beck, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-406-64484-9 .
  • Human dignity. Beck-Wissen, CH Beck, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-406-68837-9 .

Editorships

  • with Julian Nida-Rümelin : Ecological ethics and legal theory. Nomos, Baden-Baden 1995.
  • with Annette Brockmöller , Delf Buchwald, Katja Tappe: Ethical and structural challenges of law (= ARSP supplement. No. 66). Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1997.
  • Great thinkers of Erfurt and the Erfurt University. Wallstein, Göttingen 2002.
  • Alber series of texts on philosophy, texts on legal philosophy. Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg 2002.
  • with Volker Lipp, Christoph Möllers : Heinrich Heine. Poet and lawyer in Göttingen. Universitätsverlag Göttingen, Göttingen 2007.
  • with Jaap Hage: Concepts in Law. Springer, Heidelberg 2009.
  • with Okko Behrends , Eva Schumann , Christiane Wendehorst: Elementa iuris. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2009.
  • with Lorenz Kähler : Normative individualism in ethics, politics and law. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-16-153629-8 .
  • Moral realism? On Julian Nida-Rümelin's coherent metaethics. Mentis, Münster 2015, ISBN 978-3-95743-023-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dietmar von der Pfordten: Rechtsethik , 2nd edition 2011, pp. 249 ff., 461 ff .; ders., Normative Ethik, 2010, p. 17 f.
  2. ↑ Dietmar von der Pfordten: Normative Ethik, 2010, p. 17 f.
  3. ↑ Dietmar von der Pfordten: What is right? Goals and means. In: Legal journal. 2008, pp. 641-625.
  4. ^ Dietmar von der Pfordten: About Concepts in Law. In: Jaap Haage, Dietmar von der Pfordten (Ed.): Concepts in the Law. 2009, pp. 17-33.
personal data
SURNAME Pfordten, Dietmar von der
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1964
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich