Kurt Remele

Kurt Remele (born September 17, 1956 in Bruck an der Mur ) is an Austrian Roman Catholic theologian and ethicist. He is head of the Institute for Ethics and Christian Social Studies at the Catholic-Theological Faculty of the Karl-Franzens University Graz .

Life

Remele studied theology and English / American studies in Graz and Bochum . In his theological dissertation he dealt with civil disobedience. In his habilitation thesis in the subject of ethics and Christian social theory, he dealt with the question of how self-realization and common good relate to one another in an individualized society (“Dance around the golden self?”). For this Remele received the Kardinal Innitzer Promotion Prize and the Leopold Kunschak Prize . From January to June 2003 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC In the winter semester (fall semester) 2007/08 Remele taught as a visiting professor at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He held another visiting professorship from September 2011 to May 2012 at the Department of Religious Studies at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington State (USA). From early March to mid-June 2018, Remele was a Visiting Fellow at the McDonald Center for Theology, Ethics and Public Life at Christ Church College, Oxford University.

Remele's research interests are Catholic social ethics , political ethics, cultural ethics, ethics and religions, sociology of religion, environmental and animal ethics. In numerous lectures and publications he advocated animal-friendly theological ethics, in which animals are not instrumentalized but rather respected as sentient beings. In this sense he also criticizes a one-sided Christian anthropocentricity and calls on the Christian churches to rediscover their own animal-friendly traditions and to learn from other religions and more recent philosophical ethical approaches. His animal ethics is based on the controversial premise that the moral status of animals is equal to that of humans. Remele has been a Fellow of the Oxford Center for Animal Ethics led by Prof. Andrew Linzey since 2009 .

Remele is married to Cordula Fischer. The two have three children. Remele followed a vegetarian diet for over two decades and has been a vegan since 2016 . In his private life he mainly reads English-language literature, especially works by PG Wodehouse .

Works

• Civil Disobedience: An Inquiry From the Perspective of Christian Social Ethics. Aschendorff, Münster 1992, ISBN 3-402-04532-X (dissertation).
• with Peter Inhoffen, Ulrike Saringer: Democratic processes in the churches? Styria, Graz 1998, ISBN 3-222-12638-0 .
• Dance around the golden self? Therapy society, self-realization and common good. Styria, Graz 2001, ISBN 3-222-12909-6 (habilitation thesis).
• Between apathy and compassion. Religious teachings from an animal ethical perspective. In: Interdisciplinary Working Group on Animal Ethics (Hrsg.): Tierrechte. An interdisciplinary challenge. H. Fischer, Erlangen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89131-417-3 , pp. 254-270.
• About ermines, people and God: Christian animal ethics. In: Edith Riether, Michael Noah Weiss (ed.): Animal - Human - Ethics (= series of publications by the Global Ethic Initiative Austria. Vol. 5). Lit, Münster 2012, ISBN 978-3-643-50301-5 , pp. 169-188.
• The dignity of the animal is inviolable. A new Christian animal ethic. Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker 2016. ISBN 978-3-7666-2233-4

Web links

• Literature by and about Kurt Remele in the catalog of the German National Library
• Kurt Remeles page at the Karl-Franzens-University Graz

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Theological Review 113 (2017) col. 249.
2. ^ List of fellows at the Oxford Center for Animal Ethics
3. ↑ Self-presentation on the website of the University of Graz
4. ↑ Book review on: The dignity of the animal is inviolable: A new Christian animal ethic on vegan.at