Bio

PD Dr. Ulrich Arnswald, M.A., M.Sc., studied economics, political science and philosophy at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, the Université Paris-Dauphine, the University of Kent at Canterbury and at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), University of London. He received his doctorate "summa cum laude" with a thesis on "Wittgenstein as a Political Thinker. Concepts of the Political Thought of an Unpolitical Philosophy" at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technologie (KIT), Germany, and habilitated with a second monograph on "The Problem of the Normative Foundations of Modern Economics. On the Unreflective Premises of Economic Theory Formation“ at the Leopold-Franzens-University Innsbruck in Austria.

Work experience at Eisai Co. Ltd. in Tokyo and at the German-Irish Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Dublin. Research and visiting lectureships at St. Catharine’s College der Universität Cambridge (1999), at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara (2001), at the Wittgenstein Archive of the University of Bergen (2003), the University of Oslo (2004), at the International Research Center for Social and Ethical Questions (ifz) in Salzburg (2014), the Bauhaus-University Weimar and the Memorials Foundation Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora (2019), and at the Brenner Archive Research Institute, Ernst von Glasersfeld Archive Department, Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck (2021). Lectures in Austria, Czechia, France, Great Britain, Norway, Switzerland, Türkiye (Turkey) and Japan.

From 1997 to 2006 he was founding director of the European Institute for International Affairs Heidelberg (today: Institut für Kulturforschung Heidelberg). He received teaching assignments in economics, business adminstration, international relations and philososphy in Heidelberg, Bruchsal, Darmstadt und Karlsruhe. Until 2020, he was an academic staff member of the Faculty of  Humanities and Social Sciences at the Karlsruhe Institut for Technologie (KIT), where he taught in the European Culture and History of Ideas (EuKlid) program with a focus on practical philosophy. He has been teaching at the Rheinland-Pfälzischen Technischen Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau since the winter semester 2023/24.

He is author of numerous professional articles, author, editor or co-editor of several books: Sind die Deutschen ausländerfeindlich? (first edition Auflage 2000; second edition 2000), Der Denker als Seiltänzer – Ludwig Wittgenstein über Religion, Mystik und Ethik (2001), Gadamer’s Century – Essays in Honor of Hans-Georg Gadamer (Hardcover 2002; Paperback 2002), Herausforderungen der Angewandten Ethik (2002), Die Autonomie des Politischen und die Instrumentalisierung der Ethik (2002), Wittgenstein und die Metapher (2004), Die Zukunft der Geisteswissenschaften (2005), In Search of Meaning (2009), Thomas Morus’ Utopia und das Genre der Utopie in der Politischen Philosophie (2010), Rationalität und Irrationalität in den Wissenschaften (2011), Hermeneutik und die Grenzen der Sprache (2012), Jan Sokol: Philosophie als Verpflichtung (2014), Der Wiener Kreis – Aktualität in Wissenschaft, Literatur, Architektur und Kunst (2019) sowie Ludwig Wittgenstein – Universalgenie, Genie oder Generalist? Ein Leben ruhelosen Denkens (2022).