Profile of the Faculty of Philosophy

Eingang zum Lehrgebäude 4 auf dem Campus der Universität Erfurt

The Faculty of Philosophy sees itself as an academic teaching and research institution that reflects new orientations in the humanities and cultural studies within the framework of the reform university of Erfurt and tests and profiles these new approaches in teaching and research in its own way. The starting point is the insight into the manifold tensions between cultural, i.e., perspective-based world interpretations bound to historical spaces and universally applied, and the symbolic and material orders of their practice (ways of life, religious practices, [self] representations, literature and other representational practices, forms of knowledge, etc.). Interculturality requires and enables dialogical forms of exchange and mediation on the basis of scientifically reflected comparison.

Guiding principles

The guiding principle is the firm belief that an adequate understanding of present and future developments can only be achieved if cultures are empirically investigated

in their historically developed internal complexity,
in their various forms of institutionalization, communication and symbolization,
as well as in their differences and relationships to each other

and these material investigations are scientifically reflected.

A special interest is directed at the media, especially the linguistic, but also the visual media and the new electronic media, and their historical change. This interest is connected with a fundamental reflection on the performances and materialities of the medium of language. This reflection is shaped differently in the various disciplines represented at the faculty in relation to their traditions and their specifically introduced forms of knowledge: from a systematic perspective, from the perspective of cultural and historical differentiation, from the perspective of content as well as from the perspective of the respective logics of representations and media themselves. The goal of the research as well as of the related courses of study and fields of study is the sustainability of the graduates as well as of society as a whole. Fundamental to this is the awareness of the exemplariness, historicity, and perspective-boundness of both the body of knowledge and the concepts and methods of its scientific treatment.

In order to achieve this goal, the Faculty of Humanities encompasses a spectrum of subjects,

which, with religious studies and non-European history oriented towards various regional focal points, has federal emphases
which, with the internationally comparatively oriented linguistics, literature and media studies, materially examines languages, representational media and texts and their own logic, and reflects on the development of their theoretical approaches,
which, with communication studies, has a nationally acclaimed focus on children's and youth media and on health communication and emphasizes interpersonal as well as intercultural communication processes,
which regards philosophy as a core that fundamentally reflects its own questioning and its own speaking, and against which not only European traditions of science are measured in general,
whose disciplines in their internal differentiation represent intra- as well as intercultural differences and relations beyond Europe,
which are capable of interdisciplinary cooperation between historical and systematic subjects and of forming new transdisciplinary research and training foci.

Profile of the Faculty of Philosophy

Guiding principles

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Profile of the Faculty of Philosophy

Guiding principles

Media Interest

Spectrum of subjects