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I am a philosophy scholar by training (Master’s in 2019 at Vienna University with honours) with specialisation in ethics and aesthetics, worked as scientific assistant at University of Regensburg in the Theology Department (Systematic Theology) and am currently working as philosopher in adults education in Regensburg and Vienna.
In 2019, after completion of my studies, I was junior fellow at University of Graz, engaged in an interdisciplinary fellowship in which we addressed the coalition currently strenghtening between religious fundamentalism and right-wing populism. During my studies in Vienna back in 2018, I was student assistant and tutor in Ancient Philosophy and Philosophy of Language. Besides philosophy courses, I took courses in Catholic Theology (Fundamental Theology) as well as in Jewish and Scandinavian studies (that is why I speak - or should be able to speak - a bit of Hebrew and Norwegian).
My main research fields are phenomenology (with special regard to Martin Heidegger and his continental reception), social epistemology, Ancient philosophy, philosophy of religion (esp. dialogue between Christianity, Ancient philosophy, and Jewish Thought), and continental political philosophy (like: Arendt, Foucault, and Agamben). Besides that, I have an interest in the philosophical dimensions of mental illness.
I discovered my love for radio in 2022, especially because I do love to work next to music, which always inspires, sometimes overrules my thought. Anyone allergic to jazz should keep proper distance.
This is part of the way I went so far…
For the longest time, the event of Auschwitz was decisive to my thinking; to my view, the problem of dehumanization will - or: should - remain an important issue to be addressed by philosophy scholars. Living in Austria in the third generation after the Shoah, it was of special meaning to me to work on testimonies, trying to make “sense” of the silence we sometimes are confronted with in survivor’s testimonies. I thought it was of great importance to make sure this silence is being heard - and accepted as silence.
Another problem I was concerned about was the case of Martin Heidegger. What is it that made him think National Socialism was an attractive choice to make? What is it we could tell about philosophy - if a philosopher of this “size” could go astray like he did?
I did not find an answer really fitting - and I do not think there should be one doing away this troubling question. Quite the contrary, I believe that Heidegger’s case should remain something which puzzles us, which stops us from being all too sure about things. But yet, I became friends with the idea of dedication which I found in Ex 3,12 (אהיה עמך, “I will be with you”). It is this existential dedication of human beings to others I assume Heidegger could not detect and thus forgot about the other(s) in his thinking.
This figure of thought did not find its way to our present really. If we understand that our existence is dedicated to the others, humans can never seem to be superfluous and thus possibly precarious. But as Hannah Arendt suggests, the traditions of thinking which enabled humanity to take into account this existential dimension of humankind, have died. (According to Arendt, these were the tradition of Eros in Ancient philosophy and the doctrine that human is created to God’s image in Christianity, see Arendt, Denktagebuch, Dec 1951, [7])
To my view, by taking this moment of dedication seriously - as an existential in the Heideggerian sense - I think we can avoid forgetting about the other, her needs and her feelings, and, especially, her thoughts.
If I am right, we need to create a different picture of thinking in order to accomplish that claim and I think one needs to understand more thoroughly how thinking and being related to others are intertwined. Thinking traditionally is regarded as lonesome activity - the I being alone with its Self (which Hannah Arendt calls a “tyranny of rationality”), but one could try to think thinking differently, as an event taking place between me and others… - Even if I might be sitting alone at my desk, my thoughts are dedicated, focussed essentially on others.
This led me to start my current research on vulnerability which is closely linked to Arendt’s idea of natality as she finds a counter-principle against the lonesomeness of occidental rationality in the figure of beginning and creation. The possibility condition of beginning - of a child, or a political movement - is the existence of others. [To be continued…]