Visiting Doctoral Student - Jan Werner

Jans Werner (Göttingen) will be visiting the Department of Philosophy in February 2012

Jans Werner was born in 1982 in Kassel (Germany). From 2002 he has studied philosophy, history of science and German language and literature at the University of Geottingen (Germany). Since 2010 he has been a member of the interdisciplinary PHD programme Theory and Methodology of Textual Analysis and their History in Goettingen.

Jan speaks about his research: "My main research interests lie within the philosophy of art, the philosophy of language and metaphysics. In my PhD thesis I investigate the question whether interpretive statements as they are common in literary studies can be true. What is at issue is whether semantical realism is correct with regard to interpretive statements. As it can be shown, an answer to this question depends on several theoretical decisions. One's conceptions of the nature of literature and literary works, of the aims and practices of interpreting literature, of truth and truth-aptness, and of the epistemology and metaphysics of interpretation have strong implications for a theory of the “logic of interpretation”. I want to argue for a broadly realist interpretation of interpretative statements."