Stefan Gosepath

Stefan Gosepath (* 1959 in Mainz ) is a German philosopher and university professor at the Institute for Philosophy at the Free University of Berlin . In addition, he is director of the college research group "Justitia Amplificata: Extended Justice - Concrete and Global". Gosepath's main research interests are local, global and applied justice, equality, human rights, responsibility, democracy, theories of reason and rationality, moral philosophy, ethics and the theory of action.

Live and act

Stefan Gosepath attended the ancient language grammar school Petrinum in Recklinghausen . In 1978 he passed the Abitur there. Then he studied philosophy at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen until 1980 , taking history and literary studies as minor subjects. He moved to the Free University of Berlin , where he completed his master's degree in philosophy, history and German studies in 1984. This was followed by a stay abroad as part of a DAAD scholarship as a special student in the Philosophy Department of Harvard University .

From 1985 to 1988 Gosepath was a PhD student with Ernst Tugendhat at the Institute for Philosophy at the Free University of Berlin . He had a doctoral scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation . From 1988 to 2000 he worked initially as a research assistant, after completing his doctorate in 1992 as a research assistant for philosophy at the Berlin University of the Arts .

In 1995 he spent a year abroad at the Philosophy Department at Columbia University ( New York ) and at the Philosophy Department at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA). This was followed by project work at the University of St. Gallen from 2001 to 2002. In 2002 Gosepath completed his habilitation in philosophy at the Free University of Berlin.

Stefan Gosepath then took up a private lectureship in philosophy at the Free University of Berlin and held substitute professorships in Giessen, Vienna and Potsdam. In 2004 he became professor for practical philosophy at the Center for Philosophy and Fundamentals of Science at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen . From 2007 to 2009 he was professor for political theory and philosophy at the University of Bremen . In the summer semester of 2009, Gosepath took over the professorship for international political theory and philosophy at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main within the framework of the cluster of excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”. Since the winter semester of 2012 he has been professor for the field of "Practical Philosophy with a focus on ethics, applied ethics and politics including their theories" at the Institute for Philosophy at the Free University of Berlin.

In 2020 Gosepath was elected to the Academy of Sciences and Literature .

rationality

For Stefan Gosepath there is a comprehensive meaning of rational, namely: well-founded. Primarily opinions and actions, secondarily people, desires, norms, expressions, etc. would be called rational, if they are justified by reasons. Rationality can be divided into as many types as there are ways of justification. Two modes of justification play an obvious role: firstly, relative versus absolute justifications, and secondly, theoretical justifications for opinions versus practical justifications for actions. According to Gosepath, these two distinctions collapse upon closer examination. If a person's opinion is well founded, it is theoretically rational. If one's own benefit is optimized and an “optimal prospect of achieving their goals” is offered, then a person's action is practically rational. According to Gosepath, all theoretical rationality is motivated by practical rationality.

"Something (opinion, action, wish, goal, norm, etc.) is rational if it is justified, ie justified by reasons"

- Stefan Gosepath

Egalitarianism

Gosepath represents a constitutive egalitarianism . Only equality can bring about justice in a free and just society. “Equality only realizes or constitutes social justice” All people should be treated equally. In doing so, Gosepath makes five postulates of equality: formal, proportional and moral equality, the presumption of equality and the principle of responsibility. Unequal treatment must be justified by relevant differences.

“Regardless of their descriptive differences, all those affected are to be given numerically or strictly equal shares of the goods to be distributed, unless certain (types of) differences are relevant in the relevant respect and successfully justify an unequal distribution for generally acceptable reasons. "

- Stefan Gosepath

Only such reasons should serve as a justification for an unequal distribution, for which one can do something. According to Gosepath, disadvantages suffered by people through no fault of their own should be equalized as far as possible and normatively justifiable.

Fonts

• (Ed.) Philosophy of Morals . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2009
• Equal justice . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2004
• (Ed.) World Republic . Beck, Munich 2002
• (Ed.) Motives, reasons, purposes . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1999
• (Ed.) Philosophy of Human Rights . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1998
• Enlightened self-interest . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1992
• (Ed.) Handbook of political philosophy and social philosophy . De Gruyter, Berlin
• numerous essays on practical reason, justice and equality, human rights and global justice

Web links

• Literature by and about Stefan Gosepath in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gosepath, Stefan, Prof. Dr. • Institute for Philosophy • Department of Philosophy and Humanities ( Memento from April 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ Prof. Dr. Stefan Gosepath - Justitia Amplificata. Retrieved June 21, 2020 . 
3. ↑ Stefan Gosepath - Goethe University ( Memento from August 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ Stefan Gosepath: A uniform conception of rationality , in: Protosociology, Vol. 6, 1994, Rationality I, p. 106
5. ^ Stefan Gosepath: Enlightened self-interest. A theory of theoretical and practical rationality , 1992, p. 271
6. ^ Stefan Gosepath: Enlightened self-interest. A theory of theoretical and practical rationality , 1992, p. 49
7. ^ Stefan Gosepath: Defense of egalitarian justice . In: German Journal of Philosophy , Issue 2, 51st year (2003), p. 284
8. ^ Stefan Gosepath: Defense of egalitarian justice . In: German Journal for Philosophy , Issue 2, Volume 51 (2003), p. 291