Research unit


Transcendental research in dialogue with recent ways of thinking

A large part of our transcendental research is developed in dialogue with more recent ways of thinking, be it from a more continental or analytical side, existentialist or postmodern. Derrida is often used by Helena de Preester, Filip Kolen and Gertrudis Van de Vijver as a specific way of deconstructively accessing Husserl. Elisabeth Van Dam studies Derrida in line with her study of the moving body and its embedment in the différance of language. To trace the neo-Kantian inspiration in the works of Frege and Wittgenstein, in contradistinction to Russel’s empiricist background, is important for Gertrudis Van de Vijver. Wittgenstein’s philosophy, and in particular the transcendental threads of his viewpoint on ethics and aesthetics, serve Elisabeth Van Dam to articulate a theory of the freedom of the subject in relation to its moving body. Anton Froeyman develops his ethical theory of historiography in dialogue with analytical virtue ethics and with the contemporary philosophers of history Frank Ankersmit and Eelco Runia.