two 2-year postdocs, Kant and/or Kantian Ethics (EXPIRED)

The Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, offers two postdoctoral fellowships within the research program, ‘Universal Moral Laws: A New Approach to Kant and Kantian Ethics,’ funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and directed by Pauline Kleingeld. 

Short description of this research program:

Immanuel Kant is the paradigmatic defender of the idea that there are unconditionally binding moral principles that are based in human reason and universally valid. He prominently defended human dignity, moral autonomy, and the freedom of the will. Although the importance of Kant’s ethics is uncontested, his core arguments face a number of standard objections and are widely considered unsuccessful. The guiding idea behind this research program is that many of these objections stem from a failure to recognize that crucial elements of Kant’s ethics, as developed in his main works on the subject of the 1780s, should be read in light of the legal and political theory he defended at the time (e.g., in the Feyerabend lectures). The research program aims to shed new light on central notions of Kant’s ethics, such as ‘law,’ ‘autonomy,’ and ‘freedom,’ and his core arguments. It also aims to assess whether the resulting interpretations yield new philosophical avenues for defending a Kantian universalist ethics and for specifying its application in moral practice. We are looking for two postdocs with a background in Kant and/or Kantian theory who can contribute to (parts of) this project.