Projects
Sociological Theory - Theory Comparison
My understanding of sociology is multi-paradigmatic both in research and in teaching. I offer a broad spectrum of sociological theories (Systems Theory, Symbolic Interactionism, Phenomenological Sociology, Structuralism, Feminism, Critical Theory, Philosophical Anthropology, Post-Structuralism, Cultural Studies, Figurational Sociology, historical-sociological approaches of theories of power [Elias, M. Mann]) – which also include history of sociology, sociological classics (Durkheim, Tönnies, Simmel, Weber, Mannheim) and older pre-sociological authors of social theory...
Social Ontology: Turn to the Third
The research project (Habilitation 2007-2009) reconstructs social theory as an instance of reflection in which cultural and social sciences reflect their autonomy as a group of sciences (against sciences of nature and life, philosophy and theology) – both ontologically and epistemologically. Social theories, as the basis of all humanities and cultural- and social sciences, understand self- and complex social-relations as emerging from a basic encounter/interaction of ego and alter. They presuppose a particular logic behind every pattern of interaction, which they designate for example as “trans-subjectivity” or “inter-subjectivity”. They reconstruct how dyadic structures or “reciprocities”...
Theory of Society - Theory of Bourgeois-Civil-Creative Society
It might be helpful to distinguish, within General Sociology, between social theory and societal theory: the theory of the social is devoted to the question of how sociality generally functions and the theory of society asks about the nature of the society in which we live.
The subject of this project is the appropriate theory for the entirety of contemporary society. The concept of ‘society’ for the contemporary sociological diagnostics of modernity seems at present to be disintegrated into descriptions of various forms of societies: postmodern-, multicultural-, media-, risk-, knowledge-, event-, responsibility-, world-, etc.- society. In contrast to that it shall be asked if and for what reasons “bourgeois society” is still a coherent concept for a sociology of modernity...
Cultural Sociology
Cultural Sociology is a key discipline of the cultural and social sciences. This research project conducts cultural sociology both according to classical and neo-classical sociologies of culture and knowledge (Scheler, Mannheim, Horkheimer, Plessner, Luhmann), and in line with the paradigm of cultural studies (Phenomenological Sociology, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Cultural Studies, and ‘Studies’ at large). Here, the double perspective is decisive: to operate with a Culturology of the Social (symbolically produced and culturally mediated social differentiations, cultural turns)...
Sociology of Architecture, Sociology of Space and Urban Sociology
The second aim of the Potsdamer Platz Research Project (developed in various stages from 2001 to 2004 together with Michael Makropolous) is to develop a sociological diagnostics oriented towards a sociology of space. Here, the question of a sociology of space has been conceptualized (because of the omnipresence of built environment) as a sociology of architecture and specified as Urban Sociology. In order to sidestep any premature commitment to a single theoretical direction, various sociological paradigms have been summoned...
Sociology as socioprudence
Sociology as a discipline is constituted from various pre-sociological lines of tradition that are not reducible to each other: next to the genealogies from social statistics, social criticism, social reporting, and analytics of society runs a long pre-sociological tradition of thought of “world wisdom” through to sociology. Seen this way, sociology would (always also) be the academic training of “social intelligence”. Sociology can also be understood as the academic study of “dealing with the human being” (A. v. Knigge), differentiated by contexts, constellations, and classifications...
Philosophical Anthropology
“Philosophical Anthropology”, which will be reconstructed historically and systematically in this project, does not concern common “philosophical Anthropology” as a philosophical sub-discipline, but is a unique theory, which was developed in twentieth century German philosophy. If one wants to elucidate the cognitive resources of philosophical-anthropological thinking in the twentieth century, it might make sense to go back to the German philosophy of the 1920s, distinguishing two events in the philosophical discourse of the time: 1. the development of “philosophical Anthropology” in a broader sense, which claims...
Helmuth Plessner
Helmuth Plessner (1892-1985) taught both philosophy and sociology, published in both professions and represented both associations of philosophy and sociology. In that respect he belonged to a type of thinker who – similar to Max Scheler and Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno and Arnold Gehlen, René König and Helmut Schelsky – developed a strong presence in twentieth century German intellectual history. In addition, Plessner was a zoologist, a fact that lends authority to his conceptual interventions in natural science and the life sciences on the one hand, and the humanities and social sciences on the other...
Nicolai Hartmann
DFG-Project "Nicolai Hartmann – Cirkel-Protokolle (1920-1950)-Edition" ("Nicolai Hartmann – Circle-Protocols (1920-1950)-Edition")
In 2016 the DFG approved a three-year research project of the TU Dresden and the University of Wuppertal. Project leaders are Prof. Joachim Fischer (TU Dresden) and Prof. Gerald Hartung (University of Wuppertal). Research assistants are the philosopher Dr Friedrich Hausen in Dresden and the philosopher Dr Thomas Kessel in Wuppertal.
This is an edition project which is relevant for the history of philosophy and theory, as well as for the intellectual history of the 20thcentury...