Curriculum vitae
| 1981 | Born in Bremen |
| Married | |
| since 2002 | Catholic Theology at WWU Münster Focus on: Christian social ethics; fundamental and moral theology |
| since 2004 | Interdisciplinary degree programme for Christian Social Sciences at the WWU Münster Focus on: Business ethics |
| 2006-2007 | Catholic Theology at Unversidad Pontificia Comillas Madrid under the EU scholarship programme “Erasmus” |
| Juli 2008 | Degree in Catholic Theology (thesis: Methodologischer Individualismus als gesellschaftliches Leitbild? Kritik des homo oeconomicus aus der Sicht der Christlichen Sozialethik und des Capabilities Approach.) |
| 2004-2007 | Member of the committee for teaching and student affairs at the Catholic Theological Faculty of WWU Münster |
| 2005-2006 | Student assistant at the Institute of Theological Women’s Studies of the Catholic Theological Faculty of WWU Münster |
| 2007-2008 | Tutor in Moral Theology |
Research interests:
- Strategies of handling deficits in certainty – the certainty of belief and the problem of violence
- "Beyond interpretation" – the "weak thought" of Gianni Vattimos
- Fundamentals of procedural and results-oriented theories of justice (Rawls/Nussbaum)
Function within the cluster/Membership in projects and groups:
- Research assistant, Project D12: A Comparative Study of Strategies for the Pacification of Religious Legitimacy Claims, sub-project: “The relativist stereotype. Possibilities of the rationale inherent in the theory and of the criticism of a derogatory labelling by others”
- Member of the study group Conflicts Arising from the Competing Interests of Religion and Politics
The speech on the dictatorship of relativism accompanied the papacy of Benedict XVI from the beginning and also played an important role in previous writings. Benedict’s diagnosis is: a relativism setting itself without limits clouds the inner linking of reason to truth and affirms a zeitgeist of arbitrariness, denying the possibility of objective perception of truth and, thus, denaturing human reason. The term as used by Benedict XVI is not defined precisely, it is rather an umbrella term for contemporary systems of thought and attitudes, which Benedict classifies as mistaken. He meets such misconduct by setting and pointing up alternatives: either metaphysical truth or post-metaphysical arbitrariness.
The research project is to show how the reproach for relativism is a reaction to an experience of uncertainty which was caused by the loss of plausibility of epistemically guaranteeable truths of faith as well as the accompanying pluralisation and individualisation of religious assurance in Western secular societies. Benedict’s reaction is designed as a dual strategy: outwardly, the setting and pointing up alternatives meets the loss of plausibility by relating all systems of thought that are not shared to relativism; inwardly, the dangers and falsities of this relativism, against which the authority of the Catholic truths of faith can be the only remedy, are dramatised. Beyond highlighting the church political dimensions of the diagnosis of relativism, it will generally be investigated whether relativism can be formulated as a consistent and justifiable option.
So far, it could be demonstrated that the reproach for relativism was raised on the basis of a static cognitive realism. Benedict pursues an essentially correspondence-theoretical model: ontological truth precedes the cognitive process as an independent factor and can be perceived objectively and claimed as an entity against all relativisms. Benedict’s declarative alternative is problematic as regards the philosophy of science; among other things, it does not do justice to the epistemic state of religious beliefs in Western secular societies. Neither can the different religious assurance dynamics, which are shaped by pluralisation and individualisation, be adequately taken into consideration that way, nor can alternative claims to truth be met with other than disapprovingly on the theoretical level in this static cognitive realistic perspective.
According to the first intermediate findings, Benedict’s declarative alternative cannot do justice to that challenge of the philosophy of science to take the “unfoundedness” of religious belief seriously and, at the same time, to be able to justifiably retain a medial attitude between relativism and fundamentalism.
Publications:
- Über die Köpfe hinweg? Überlegungen, Einwände und Thesen aus der Perspektive Studierender, in: Jahrbuch für Christliche Sozialwissenschaften: Kindheit und Jugend in alternder Gesellschaft. Vol. 49/2008 (with V. Goertz, P. Meiners, E. Schroer, S. Upgang)
Contact
Daniel Sebastian BugielInstitute for Apologetics
Johannisstraße 8-10
D-48143 Münster
Germany
Tel.: +49 251 83-22631
daniel.bugiel@uni-muenster.de
