Research Orientation

As far as the broader philosophical and social theoretical influences are concerned, our research engages regularly with thinkers such as Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, Derrida, Foucault, Habermas, Luhmann, Durkheim, Mauss, Weber, Marx, Nancy, Agamben, Lacan, Lyotard, and Marion.

As far as the more specifically legal and political legal theoretical influences are concerned, we concentrate on well-recognised mainstays of Anglo-American analytical and critical jurisprudence as well as classic topoi of continental European legal philosophy. In other words, in the field of legal and political theory our research interests include key thoughts of Hart, Dworkin, McCormick, Kennedy, Unger, Michelman, Rawls, on the one hand, and Schmitt and Kelsen, on the other.

How do we see our research?

The lists offered here are neither complete nor conclusive. They indicate a general orientation into which other authors often enter. Nor do these lists wish to put forward the pretention of existing high-level expertise with regards to all these fields and theorists.

Our research methodology is:

• historical;
• hermeneutic;
• deconstructive;
• critical;
• and analytical.

We understand these different elements of our methodology to contribute to a broad methodological position that we characterise as fundamentally "phenomenological". For more information on this phenomenology, please read the focus and method section.