Ralf Stoecker

Ralf Stoecker (born June 1, 1956 in Chicago , USA ) is a German philosopher and professor of practical philosophy at Bielefeld University .

education

After studying philosophy in Hamburg and Heidelberg , Stoecker received his doctorate in 1990 from the University of Bielefeld under Peter Bieri with a thesis on the question What are events? . 1987–1990 Stoecker was assistant to Bieri and from 1990 to 1997 assistant to Rüdiger Bittner . 1997–1998 and 2000–2003, Stoecker was a research assistant with Jens Kulenkampff (* 1946) at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg . In 1999 he completed his habilitation at Bielefeld University with the work Der Hirntod. A medical ethical problem and its moral philosophy transformation .

In 2005, Stoecker became professor of philosophy with a focus on applied ethics at the University of Potsdam . Since 2013 he has been Professor of Practical Philosophy at Bielefeld University.

Stoecker is a member of the board of the Academy for Ethics in Medicine (AEM) and a deputy member of the Central Ethics Committee for Stem Cell Research .

Focus of work

Action theory

Stoecker has been dealing with questions of the philosophical theory of action since the early 1990s . In a critical examination of Donald Davidson's philosophy , he developed a concept for action that essentially explains action from the social practice of responsibility . The conception promises to solve classical action theory problems, such as the incorporation of passive actions, the problem of the oblique causal processes (wayward causal chains) or the side effect effect. Due to its ontological restraint, it also offers approaches for resolving various areas of the mind-body problem and the problem of the compatibility of free will and determinism .

brain death

In applied ethics, Stoecker has developed a proposed solution to the brain death problem since the mid-1990s, which treads a third path between the supporters and opponents of the concept of brain death. Due to the insurmountable difficulties of applying traditional vague and at the same time evaluatively charged ('thick') terms to new, previously unknown situations, one should accept that brain-dead people are neither alive nor dead in the conventional sense , but that they have their own third way of existence admit. The medical-ethical question of how to treat them and whether organs can be removed from them should be asked directly on the basis of the properties that they have.

human dignity

Based on Niklas Luhmann's conception of human dignity , Stoecker explains their character of dignity . The commandment to respect human dignity is the commandment to respect his or her fundamental worthiness, that is, to have dignity. This results in at least three moral obligations: the negative duty not to degrade and humiliate other people, the absolute negative duty never to treat a person in such a way that he no longer has the opportunity to maintain a viable individual identity , and the positive duty to support other people in maintaining their individual dignity. In a series of essays, Stoecker applied this understanding of dignity to very different areas of applied ethics: psychiatry , the death penalty , dying with dignity , lie detectors , dealing with children, embryo research and pre-implantation diagnostics , casting shows on television, care for the elderly , honor killing .

Publications

• What are events? A study in analytical ontology , Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 1992.
• Reflecting Davidson (editor), Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 1993.
• The brain death. A medical-ethical problem and its moral-philosophical transformation , Freiburg (Breisgau), Munich: Alber, 1999.
  • New edition: The brain death. A medical-ethical problem and its moral-philosophical transformation , Freiburg (Breisgau), Munich: Alber, 2010.
• Grazer Philosophische Studien 61 (2001), main focus: Agents and Their Actions , edited together with John Hyman and Rüdiger Bittner , 2001.
• Philosophy à la carte , edited together with Thomas Spitzley , Paderborn: Mentis, 2002.
• Actions and reasons for action (editor), Paderborn: Mentis, 2002.
• Human Dignity - Approaching a Concept (Editor), Vienna: öbv and hbt, 2003.
• First Person Authority , finding 71.1, published together with Thomas Grundmann and Thomas Spitzley, Berlin a. a .: Springer, 2009.
• Handbook of Applied Ethics , published jointly by Christian Neuhäuser and Marie-Luise Raters, Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 2011.
• Theory and Practice of Human Dignity , Paderborn: Mentis, 2019.

Web links

• Homepage Stoeckers at the University of Bielefeld
• Literature by and about Ralf Stoecker in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ cf. Stoecker, Ralf; Neuhäuser, Christian (2013): Explanations of human dignity from its dignified character , in: Jan C. Joerden, Eric Hilgendorf, Felix Thiele (ed.), Human dignity and medicine. An interdisciplinary handbook , Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 69.
2. ↑ cf. Stoecker, Ralf (2014): Philosophy of Human Dignity and the Ethics of Psychiatry , in: Psychiatrische Praxis , Issue 41, 19-25.
3. ↑ cf. Stoecker, Ralf (2007): Death Penalty and Human Dignity , in: Helmut C. Jacobs (Ed.), Against Torture and Death Penalty , Frankfurt / M. 2007, 265-304.
4. ↑ cf. Stoecker, Ralf (2010): In dignity , in: Dresdener Hefte für Philosophie , Heft 12, 141–162.
5. ↑ cf. Stoecker, Ralf (2014): My thoughts from afar - mind reading as a neuroethical problem , in: Applied Philosophy. An international journal , issue 1/2014, 102–120.
6. ↑ cf. Stoecker, Ralf (2013): Children's rights and child dignity , in: F. Bornmüller, T. Hoffmann, A. Pollmann (Eds.), Menschenrechte und Demokratie. Georg Lohmann on his 65th birthday. , Freiburg im Breisgau: Alber, 187–407.
7. ↑ cf. Stoecker, Ralf (2002): The dignity of the embryo , in: Dominik Groß (ed.), Between theory and practice: ethics in medicine in teaching, clinic and research , Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 53–71.
8. ↑ cf. Stoecker, Ralf (2006): A question of honor , in: Berliner Debatte Initial , issue 1/2006, 147–155.