Professor Dr. Andrea Esser

Alfried Krupp Senior Fellow
(October 2018 - March 2019) 

  • Born 1963
  • Studied philosopy, politic sciences, psychology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
  • Professor for practical philosophy at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

Fellow project: „Politische Urteilskraft – Neubestimmung eines traditionellen Begriffs“

In contemporary political discourse as well as in Political Philosophy a call for judgement has, after a lengthy interval, made itself heard again. It might be in some way clear to us what is meant by political judgement, and maybe too, that it is useful for political actors or institutions to have political judgement at their disposal. Yet it is, nevertheless, difficult to specify the concept precisely. What can we, and what should we, understand by “political judgement”? My project adresses itself to this topic; as might be expected it takes a look at conceptions of judgement which have been tried out, at least, in the philosophical tradition so far (Aristoteles, Kant, Hegel, Hannah Arendt). In my view, however, we should not be content to leave the matter at these theories. For this reason, I attempt, in addition, a pragmatist transformation of their ideas and try to indicate the productive consequences which this might have for the way in which theories are formulated in political philosophy.