Julian Nida-Rümelin

Julian Nida-Rümelin (born 28 November 1954) is a German philosopher and public intellectual.

He served as State Minister for Culture of the Federal Republic of Germany under Chancellor Schröder.

In 1984, he completed his PhD in philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he obtained an assistant professorship, first at the Department of Philosophy and later at the Department of Political Sciences.

In 1989, he was conferred Habilitation, a German post-doctoral qualification from the Philosophy Department of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

After a one-year visiting professorship at Minnesota State University, he was appointed Chair of the Center for Ethics in the Bio Sciences at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.

From 1993 to 2003, he held a Chair of Philosophy at the University of Göttingen, and was then appointed Chair of Political Theory and Philosophy at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

Since 2009, Nida-Rühmelin is Chair of Philosophy and Political Theory at the Department of Philosophy.

He served as Dean of the Philosophy Faculty from 2009 until 2012 and as Deputy Dean after that.

From 2011 until 2016, he was Speaker of the Munich Center for Ethics.

Currently, he is speaker of the executive study program Philosophy, Politics, and Ethics (PPE) and member of board of the Parmenides Foundation that supports multi-disciplinary research between the natural sciences and humanities.

Nida-Rühmelin advises executives and senior managers in ethical questions due to his expertise on risk ethics and philosophy of economics.

He is part of the panel Finance and Ethics of the German Association of Financial Analyst and Asset Managers (DFAV e.V.) and the advisory board Intregity and Corporate Responsibility at Daimler AG.

Nida-Rümelin's non-academic articles have been published in German and European newspapers, including Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, Le Monde, and La Repubblica.

His article, "The Case for a Change of Course in European Policy", co-authored with Peter Bofinger and Jürgen Habermas, was translated and published in 12 languages.

Nida-Rümelin propounds an approach to practical philosophy based on his theory of "Structural Rationality".

As an alternative to consequentialism, it avoids the dichotomy between moral and extra-moral rationality that is typical in Kantian approaches, and is thus able to integrate a vast complexity of practical reasons that result in coherent practice.

Whereas for Kant, rule orientation is constitutive for moral agency, the structural account of rationality extends to the more general idea that rationality consists in embedding situated or point-wise optimization within the broader structure of agency.

The intimate connection between morality and rationality that Kant postulates becomes one aspect of the broader, all-encompassing account of acting in such a way that fits into a desirable structure of agency.

The practice of giving and taking reasons is understood as aiming at both interpersonal and intrapersonal structural coherence.

In this way, the account of structural rationality avoids the dichotomy of reasons – moral versus extra-moral – and allows us to make use of the conceptual frame of decision and game theory in order to clarify some essential aspects of practical coherence.

For example, the postulates of the von Neumann/Morgenstern utility theorem are now interpreted as rules of practical coherence and not as axioms of consequentialist optimization.

The utility function becomes a mere representation of coherent preferences and expected utility maximization can no longer be interpreted as optimizing the consequences of one's actions.

The term “utility” is misleading and should be replaced by “subjective valuation.” The deontological character of structural rationality is compatible with using the conceptual framework of decision theory.

This may come as a surprise, but is only due to a logically stringent interpretation of the utility theorem and other theorems of decision and game theory.

The usual economic interpretation is only one among many others and in fact, this interpretation is incompatible with most of the practical reasons that we take to be indispensable.

The structural account of rationality is embedded in the everyday practice of giving and taking reasons.

Drawing on these considerations, Nida-Rümelin deals with the relationship between philosophy and Lebenswelt (life-world)/ Lebensform (form of life).

His position is inspired by Wittgenstein's philosophy.

In contrary to Wittgenstein, Nida-Rümelin emphasizes the unity of practice, viz.

the unity of the person (the agent) and societal interactions.

Individuals strive for coherence regarding their beliefs, epistemic attitudes, actions and emotive attitudes.

Taking this as a starting point any incoherences can be criticized and are the impetus for philosophy in general, and for ethical theory more specifically.

Philosophical theory has to be careful not to leave the common ground of the human practice of giving and taking reasons.

It cannot reinvent reasons; it cannot postulate some principles and deduce moral duties from them.

Ethical principles can only be systematizations of a given practice of reasoning.

Nida-Rümelin takes the side of pragmatism in its conflict against rationalism.

His theory is characterized as humanism that starts from the conditio humana, i.e. the common elements of the human condition over time and between cultures.

He was professor of philosophy and political theory at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich until 2020.

Nida-Rümelin is vice chairman of the German Ethics Council.

Nida-Rümelin studied philosophy, physics, mathematics and political sciences.