The history of the department
After the founding of the University of Graz (1585/1586), philosophy was taught and researched within the Faculty of Philosophy, initially in form of the Second Scholasticism of the Jesuits, who had already been active in the teaching of philosophy in Graz since 1573. This activity came to a standstill due to the Josephinian shutdown of the university (1773 abolition of the Jesuit order; 1780-1782 demotion of the university to a lyceum) at a time when the philosopher and physicist Leopold Biwald was of great importance here.
After the reestablishment of the university (from 1826/1827), the names of Joseph Wilhelm Nahlowsky (professor 1862-1878) and Alois Riehl (professor 1870-1882; then Freiburg i.Br., Kiel, Halle, Berlin) should be mentioned. Nahlowsky came from the Herbartian school, which dominated Austria in the 19th century, while Riehl belonged to Kantianism, which he represented in a realist-positivist version. With Riehl's successor Alexius Meinong (1853-1920), who was appointed to Graz from Vienna in 1882, an independent Graz school of object theory and Gestalt psychology developed, which also left a strong international impression, in particular in the form of controversy with Bertrand Russell in Mind.
The legal predecessor of today's Department of Philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities was the Philosophical Seminar at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Graz at the beginning of the academic year 1897/1898, founded by Meinong, who established a Psychological Laboratory as early as 1894. In addition to Meinong, other prominent figures in the Graz school include Alois Höfler and Christian von Ehrenfels in the early phase, later Stephan Witasek, Vittorio Benussi, Ernst Mally (deceased 1944), the latter of whom, as Meinong's successor, modified the object theory ontologically and then even life-philosophically. Rudolf Ameseder, Ernst Schwarz, Auguste Fischer, Wilhelm M. Frankl, Wilhelmine Liel-Benussi and Franz Weber as well as the psychologist Fritz Heider should also be mentioned.
Alongside Meinong, Hugo Spitzer held the second Chair of Philosophy from 1906 on, focusing on the history of philosophy and practical philosophy. Spitzer founded the Seminar for Philosophical Sociology in 1920 and retired in 1925. He was succeeded in 1927 by Carl Siegel, who retired in 1937 and lectured again after March 1938, mainly on the history of philosophy, until 1943. After Meinong's death in 1920, Ernst Mally succeeded him as professor in 1925, a position he held until 1942. He was also interim director of the Psychological Laboratory until he was replaced by Otto Tumlirz, also in 1942. Together with Eduard Martinak and Carl Siegel, he held the position of Institute Director until 1930; after Martinak's retirement in 1930 and Siegel's retirement in 1937, he remained the sole director of the department, to which the Pedagogical Seminar was also affiliated before 1927 and after the summer term 1941. In addition to Mally, Spitzer and Martinak, Hans Pichler (only in the summer term 1921), Otto Tumlirz and Othmar Sterzinger taught there from the summer term 1921 onwards, Konstantin Radaković, Karl Sapper, Carl Siegel from the summer term 1925 and Otto Julius Hartmann from the winter term 1932/33 onwards. After the Anschluss, Radaković voluntarily resigned in the fall of 1938, with Mally, Sapper and Hartmann still teaching, from 1941 onwards in addition Wolfram Steinbeck, Franz Kröner from 1941 on and Franz Häußler for two semesters. In November 1944, Ferdinand Weinhandl succeeds Mally in the vacant Chair of Philosophy. With Weinhandl's temporary dismissal in July 1946 and the dismissal of the lecturers Kröner, Sapper, Steinbeck, Tumlirz and Häußler, who were burdened by their affiliation with the Nazis, only the reactivated Radaković and Hartmann, Karl Birzele in Psychology and Karl Köchl in Pedagogy taught in the winter semester 1946/47.
After the end of the Second World War, the first professors were Konstantin Radakovic (who worked as a historian of philosophy until 1965) and Amadeo Silva-Tarouca, who represented systematic philosophy in the form of an own system known as ontophenomenology. In addition, there has been an interest in logical-analytical philosophy since the early 1950s, which, alongside the cultivation of neo-positivism and Wittgenstein, also means a resumption of the similarly oriented Meinongian tradition and has subsequently manifested itself in the hiring rationale since the 1960s: Rudolf Freundlich (active in Graz since 1949; he is appointed back to Graz from Hanover at the end of 1965) and Rudolf Haller (Dr.phil. 1953, habilitation 1961 in Graz), who attains a newly established chair for basic philosophical research in 1967, stand for this development. Ernst Topitsch, who was called to Graz from Heidelberg in 1969 and developed an independent worldview analysis and ideology criticism on an empiricist basis, should also be included here. Haller succeeded in creating an international center for analytical and empiricist philosophy in Graz, with a special focus on Austrian philosophy. Here, the names of visiting professors such as Roderick Chisholm, who partly followed on from Meinong, Stephan Körner and Keith Lehrer should be mentioned, as well as a whole series of internationally renowned thinkers who cannot be listed here in detail. Freundlich's successor, Reinhard Kamitz, came to Graz from Berlin in 1984 and was mainly responsible for logic, while Malte Hossenfelder succeeded Ernst Topitsch in 1991 and represented the history of philosophy and ethics. In the eighties and nineties of the 20th century, young academics were awarded three associate professorships; other members were habilitated and transferred to permanent employment, so that as of January 1, 1996, three plus three professors and eight habilitated assistants were active in research and teaching, with the youngest member, Gerhard Streminger, retiring from active service in 1998 due to serious illness. The retirements of Rudolf Haller (1997, deceased 2014) and Malte Hossenfelder (2003, deceased 2011), who initially remained without a successor, marked a turning point.
In March 2009, Lukas Meyer took up the Professorship of Practical Philosophy, in September 2009 Udo Thiel the Professorship of History of Philosophy, followed by Ursula Renz in February 2020. In July 2012, Marian David took up the Professorship of Theoretical Philosophy and, since March 2018, Sonja Rinofner has also held the Professorship of Classical Phenomenology.
Women Philosophers in the Stairwell
A project of the Philosophy Student Council, based on Dr. Barbara Reiter's initiative and carried out together with the Department of Philosophy. Portraits of female philosophers were hung up; the selection was made democratically on the basis of the suggestions received.
Kant in Graz
Under the heading "Kant in Graz", events on the topic of Kant were held from 2014 to 2019. Following a major conference on the concept of the unity of apperception, regular lecture series were organized on various topics of Kantian philosophy, in which internationally renowned Kant experts gave various presentations and, where appropriate, also led a workshop with students and interested parties.
Special lecture winter semester 2018/19
Georg Mohr - What is 'understanding music'?
Doctoral student workshop October 2018
Special lecture summer semester 2018:
Rainer Enskat - Kant's analytical philosophy of experience
Kant conference March 2018
with Werner Euler, Pietro Kobau, Gualtiero Lorini, Rudolf Meer, Udo Thiel, Fernando Moledo, Ursula Renz, Radka Tomečková, Giuseppe Motta, Richard Creek, Apaar Kumar, Henny Blomme, Stefan Heßbrüggen-Walter, Katharina T. Kraus
Special lecture winter semester 2017/18:
Lothar Kreimendahl - News from Kant. The notes on Baumgarten's rational theology
Lecture series May 2017:
Scott H. Stapleford - Seeing a Flower in the Garden: Common Sense, Transcendental Idealism
Fernando Moledo - The Deduction of the Categorical Imperative in Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)
Bernd Dörflinger - Zero-dimensional time. Gerold Prauss' attempt to improve Kant's theory of time
Michael Wolff - Autonomy as the sole principle of morality
Lecture series winter semester 2016/17:
Theo Kobusch - The Good and the Evil. On the idea of the univocality of the moral
Gabriele Tomasi - Kant and the Objectivity of Aesthetic Evaluations
Dietmar Heidemann - Kant's Theory of Wealth
Special lecture summer 2016
Kiichiro Fukuda - Knowledge and SYNKATATHESIS
Lecture series summer semester 2016:
Manfred Baum - Apperception and Nature in Kant's B-Deduction
Manfred Baum - The Two Proof Steps of the B-Deduction of the Pure Concepts of Understanding in the Critique of Pure Reason
Henny Blomme - Kant's Table of Nothingness
Günther Zöller - Conditions of Objectivity. Kant's Critical Conception of Transcendental Logic
Kant traveling exhibition Detours. Approaches to Immanuel Kant in Vienna, Austria and Eastern Europe, from 27.01. to 15.03.2016 in Graz
Lecture series winter semester 2015/16:
Reinhard Brandt - Kant's systems
Reinhard Brandt - Seminar for students: Kant's systems Dieter Hüning - Kant and the doctrine of doux commerce
Paola Rumore - Kant on the immortality of the soul in the context of the debate in Germany at the time
Tobias Rosefeldt - Seminar for students: Kant on things in themselves and their subject-dependent properties
Tobias Rosefeldt - The identity of the subject and the unity of time
Dennis Schulting - In Defense of Reinhold's Kantian Representationalism
Ernst-Otto Onnasch - Karl Leonhard Reinhold's role in the dissemination of Kantian philosophy
Lecture series summer semester 2015:
Kurt Walter Zeidler - Kant's Problem: The Unity of Reason
Zdravko Kobe - The paralogical nature of Kant's paralogisms
Kant Conference 2014
with Henny BLOMME (Bruxelles) | Bernd DÖRFLINGER (Trier) | Corey DYCK (Western Ontario) | Piero GIORDANETTI (Milano) | Dietmar HEIDEMANN (Luxembourg) | Thomas HÖWING (Frankfurt a. M.) | Toni KANNISTO (Oslo) | Heiner KLEMME (Mainz) | Rudolf MÖSENBACHER (Graz) | Giuseppe MOTTA (Graz) | Dennis SCHULTING (Munich) | Camilla SERCK-HANSSEN (Oslo) | Thomas STURM (Barcelona) | Udo THIEL (Graz) | Violetta WAIBEL (Vienna) | Falk WUNDERLICH (Mainz)