faculty profile

Michael Steinmann

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, PHILOSOPHY
Building: Peirce
Room: 217
Phone: 201.216.5394
Fax: 201.216.8245
Email: msteinma@stevens.edu
Education

Privatdozent, University of Freiburg, 2006
Ph.D., University of Tübingen, 1998
M.A. University of Tübingen (including B.A.), 1993

Research

Ethics, Bioethics
19th- and 20th-Century Continental Philosophy

General Information

Michael Steinmann is currently working on the forms of rationality that are used in bioethics. As a reflection crossing the borders of disciplines bioethics constantly has to deal with the clash of different rationalities. Scientific, medical, or legal reasoning stands against ethical, cultural, religious and even existential narratives. These forms of discourse do not always communicate well between each other. This makes it necessary to determine what the rational nucleus in each of them is. One way to reach that goal is to reflect on the link between narrativity and justification.

In another project Steinmann is working on an introduction to Heidegger's Being and Time. Particular importance is laid on the idea of negativity. The introduction will elucidate the necessary function of the negative for the constitution of selfhood.

Experience

Lecturer for Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University, 2007-2008
Visiting Professor at the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2007
Co-Director of the Program for Basics in Ethics and Philosophy, 2005-2007
Research Fellow, Interdepartmental Center for Ethics in the Sciences and in the Humanities and Institute for Ethics and History of Medicine, University of Tübingen, 2003-2005
Research Fellow and Lecturer, from 2006 as Privatdozent, Department of Philosophy, University of Freiburg 2002-2007
Research Fellow and Lecturer, Department of Philosophy, University of Tübingen, 1999-2002

Selected Publications
Books
  1. Michael Steinmann, Peter Sykora, Urban Wiesing (eds.). (2009). Altruism Reconsidered. Exploring New Approaches to Property in Human Tissue (in preparation), Ashgate.
  2. Michael Steinmann. (2008). Die Offenheit des Sinns. Untersuchungen zu Sprache und Logik bei Martin Heidegger (Engl.: The Openness of Meaning. Investigations on Language and Logic in Martin Heidegger), Mohr Siebeck.
  3. Michael Steinmann (ed.). (2007). Martin Heidegger und die Griechen. Schriften der Martin-Heidegger-Gesellschaft, Bd. 8. (Engl.: Martin Heidegger and the Greeks), Vittorio Klostermann.
  4. Cathrin Nielsen, Michael Steinmann, Frank Topfer (eds.). (2007). Das Leib-Seele-Problem und die Phanomenologie (Engl.: The Mind-Body-Problem and Phenomenology), Konigshausen & Neumann.
  5. Heiner Raspe, Angelika Raspe, Michael Steinmann. (2005). Empfehlungen zur Begutachtung klinischer Studien durch Ethikkommissionen (Engl.: Recommendations for the Survey of Clinical Studies through Ethics Committees), Deutscher Arzteverlag .
  6. Michael Steinmann. (2000). Die Ethik Friedrich Nietzsches (Engl.: Friedrich Nietzsche's Ethics), Walter de Gruyter.
Courses
  • HPL 111 Philosophy I: Theories of Human Nature
  • HPL 112  Knowledge, Reality and Nature