Prof. Dr. Dr. Norman Sieroka

Again and again philosophy is concerned with contradictions and with a systematic understanding of the concept of contradiction. What these concerns ultimately have in common is the exploration of the limits of what can be thought, said or experienced.

My own research focuses on the concept of time and on the philosophy of the individual sciences. My latter interest is due to the fact that I also have an academic background in physics and mathematics and have been working for a long time in interdisciplinary contexts and think tanks. (Further information and news from my research group can be found here: www.uni-bremen.de/theophil)

Limits, tensions, and contradictions figure prominently within my own fields of research: time as experienced and time as measured are not always in sync or “in-tact”; the time concepts of our most fundamental physical theories (quantum physics and relativity) do not fit together; sometimes theories and models are used together even though they formally contradict each other; and so on. Accordingly, PhD projects in philosophy in the context of the graduate school “Contradiction Studies” could, for instance, address the question of exactly how far or in what sense individual scientific theories might contradict each other; how contradictions might drive conceptual developments; in what sense there can be conflicting (contradictory) experiences of time; whether or in what sense there can be contradictions in perception; and many more. The overarching goal of philosophy would then be to provide a relevant and sound overview of phenomena of contradiction and of their role in and for society and science.

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hierarchy of norms

“If social contradictions are reflected in law, law cannot form a hierarchy of norms free of contradictions.”

Andreas Fischer-Lescano
paradox

“The basis of law is not an idea as a systematic unified principle but a paradox.”

Andreas Fischer-Lescano
Is contradiction eurocentric?

“Is contradiction a eurocentric concept, operational phenomenon, and instrument of power?”

Kerstin Knopf
Bhabha on enlightenment and coloniality

“Homi Bhabha says about the contradiction between the ideals of the enlightenment, claims to democracy and solidarity and simultaneous colonization and ongoing coloniality: ‘That ideological tension, visible in the history of the West as a despotic power, at the very moment of the birth of democracy and modernity, has not been adequately written in a contradictory and contrapuntal discourse of tradition.’”

Kerstin Knopf
problem to be solved

“Contradiction is not primarily a problem to be solved but a motor we cannot do without.”

Martin Nonhoff