Interview Prof. Dr. Julian Nida-Rümelin, Berlin, 12.10.2015 (engl.)

• published: 01 Dec 2015
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Julian Nida-Rümelin is one of Germany’s best-known contemporary philosophers, along with Jürgen Habermas and Peter Sloterdijk. He studied Philosophy, Physics, Mathematics and Political Sciences, acquiring his doctorate in the field of Philosophy under Wolfgang Stegmüller. There followed a period as a research fellow at Munich, where he obtained a post-doctoral degree in 1989. After a guest lectureship in the United States, he was appointed first to a Chair in the Ethics of Bioscience at the University of Tübingen, then to another in Philosophy at the University of Göttingen. Later he was called to the Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für Politikwissenschaft at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, and he headed this institute from 2004 to 2007. In 2009 he moved to the Philosophy Faculty, accepting a Chair in Philosophy. From 2009 until 2012 he was Dean of the Philosophy Faculty. In 2011, as President of the German Society of Philosophy, he organised its congress “A World of Reasons” in Munich, with 400 lectures and 2700 participants. He chaired the Board of Trustees of the Deutscher Studienpreis from 2004 to 2012. He is spokesperson for the extra-mural M.A. in Philosophy, Economics and Politics which he co-founded at Munich University. Since 2011 JNR has been running Munich’s interdisciplinary Competence Centre for Ethics. In 2014 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Trieste. Since 2014 he has served on the advisory committee of the Institute of Law, Politics and Development (Dirpolis Institute) at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa. Julian Nida-Rümelin is an honorary professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and also an Ordinary Member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, and the Academy for Ethics in Medicine. For five years (1998-2002) JNR switched to the world of cultural politics, first as Cultural Secretary for the Bavarian capital Munich, and then as Commissioner for Culture in Gerhard Schröder’s first cabinet. Nida-Rümelin works with the German Society For Financial Analysis and Asset Management (DVFA) towards ethically aware training for financial managers. He also serves on the Daimler AG Advisory Board for Integrity and Corporate Responsibility and chairs the scientific advisory board at Parmenides Academy GmbH, a think tank that trains and advises executives around philosophical and ethical issues. JNR has written many books about issues of practical philosophy and political theory, including Kritik des Konsequentialismus (1993), Economic Rationality and Practical Reason (1997), Ethische Essays (2002), Angewandte Ethik (2005)², Demokratie und Wahrheit (2006), Philosophie und Lebensform (2009) and the Reclam trilogy devoted to Rationality (2001), Freedom (2005) and Responsibility (2011). His latest publications are: Die Optimierungsfalle – Philosophie einer humanen Ökonomie (2011), Risikoethik (2012), Der Sokrates-Club – Philosophische Gespräche mit Kindern and Philosophie einer humanen Bildung (2013), Akademisierungswahn – zur Krise beruflicher und akademischer Bildung (2014) and Auf dem Weg in eine deutsche Bildungskatastrophe – Zwölf unangenehme Wahrheiten (2015). Some of his political speeches are contained in the compilation Humanismus als Leitkultur (2006). 2012 saw publication of Vernunft und Freiheit – zur praktischen Philosophie, in which the editor Dieter Sturma discusses key aspects of JNR’s philosophical work.