About

I am Professor of Practical Philosophy at Bielefeld University and Principal Investigator of the ERC project "The Structure of Normativity". My research focuses on foundational questions in moral philosophy, metaethics, and the theory of reasons and rationality. I also work on issues in  normative and applied ethics, political philosophy and epistemology.

Vita

I studied philosophy, early modern and modern German literature, and cultural studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin (M.A. 2007), where I also received my doctorate in philosophy (2014). My dissertation examined the normativity of rationality (published 2017 by Oxford University Press, awarded with the Humboldt Prize 2014 and the Stegmüller Prize 2018). I was a visiting student at the University of Nottingham (2003-2004), as well as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley (2009-2010) and the Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires (2011). I worked as a lecturer and research assistant at the HU Berlin (2009-15), as a research associate at the Australian National University in Canberra (2014), as a visiting professor at the University of Hamburg (2016-17), as a postdoctoral researcher at the Technical University Dresden (2020-21), and as a research fellow of the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities "Human Abilities" at the FU and the HU Berlin (2021-22). In 2022, I received an ERC Starting Grant for my research project "The Structure of Normativity", which will run for five years. I joined the philosophy department at Bielefeld University in March 2023. In 2024, I received the German Award for Philosophy.

 

You can download my CV here.

 

 

Contact

 

Prof. Dr. Benjamin Kiesewetter

Chair of Practical Philosophy

Universität Bielefeld

Abteilung Philosophie

Postfach: 100131, 33501 Bielefeld, Germany

 

Email: [firstname] [dot] [lastname] [at] uni-bielefeld [dot] de

 

 

Book


 

The Normativity of Rationality, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2017, paperback  2021).

 

 


 

Reviews and discussions in Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, Ethics, Journal of Moral Philosophy, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Mind, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, PEA Soup, The Philosophical Review, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, Zeitschrift für philosophische Literatur.

 

 

Selected Articles

 

1. "Are Epistemic Reasons Normative?",  Noûs 56 (3): 670–695, 2022. (Original Article, Preprint)

 

2. "How Do Reasons Transmit to Non-Necessary Means?" (with Jan Gertken), Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 99 (2): 271–85, 2021. (Original Article, Preprint)

 

3. "Contrary-to-Duty Scenarios, Deontic Dilemmas, and Transmission Principles", Ethics 129 (1): 98–115, 2018. (Original Article, Preprint)

 

4.  “You Ought to Φ Only If You May Believe that You Ought to  Φ, The Philosophical Quarterly 66 (265): 760-782, 2016. (Original Article, Preprint)
 
5. “Instrumental Normativity: In Defense of the Transmission Principle”, Ethics  125 (4): 921-946, 2015. (Original Article)
 

See Publications for full list.

See here for my PhilPapers and GoogleScholar profiles.

 

 

Work in Progress

 

1. "How To Be a Nonconsequentialist and Still Save the Greater Number".

 

2. "What We May Expect of Each Other: A Theory of Moral Obligation".

 

3. "Exclusionary Reasons and the Balancing View of Ought".

 

4. "Epistemic Oughts and the Balance of Reasons".