Content: The focus of this seminar is on didactical aspects of teaching philosophy. Starting from the concept of ideas in early modern philosophy (end of the 18th and first half of the 19th century), we will discuss teaching aids, deepen our knowledge of didactic theories and work with teaching simulations. Accompanying the course there will be a conference with the title “Idee. Entwicklungsgeschichte eines Begriffs von Kant bis Fries”.

Objective: Participants should be able to recognize the nature of philosophical problems and to transfer them into lessions.

Content: Hermann von Helmholtz is one of the key figures in the history of science and philosophy in the 2nd half of the 19th century. Besides his criticism of speculative natural philosophy (Schelling, Hegel), of Kant’s transcendental philosophy as well as of apriorism and deductivism, he develops his own philosophical position which can be called metaphysical realism and is characterized by a consistent empiricism and inductivism. In the proseminar, we analyze the metaphysical presuppositions of Helmholtz’s philosophy. In particular, we will focus on his transformation of Kant’s transcendental philosophy as well as his Kant critique.

Objective: The students shall

- be able to reproduce the discussed philosophical questions in own terms.

- be acquainted with and understand fundamental problems, concepts and methods of philosophical analysis.

- be able to critically state, reflect and discuss their own positions.

- be able to present one of the text passages and write a scientific paper.

Content: The question how we can gain knowledge about a reality independent of consciousness has been discussed intensively in philosophy since the 18th century. In this debate, scientific realism has a specific function, since it assumes that well-supported scientific theories describe real entities and properties. Mostly unconsidered in these discussions is the philosophical tradition of critical realism at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. In this lecture, we will elaborate the critical realism of Riehl, Wundt, Külpe, and Schlick and discuss their main theses based on current positions.

Objective: The students shall

˗ be able to reproduce the discussed philosophical questions in own terms.

˗ be acquainted with and understand fundamental problems, concepts and methods of philosophical analysis.

˗ be able to critically state, reflect and discuss their own positions.

˗ be able to present one of the text passages and write a scientific paper.