Dr. Dr. Philipp-Alexander Hirsch

Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Jonas Vandieken
Accountability is one of the most significant concepts in both legal theory and moral philosophy, central to understanding the authority of law and the binding force of moral obligations. To be accountable means to be answerable to others for one’s actions, whether in the context of legal… more

Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Patrick Joseph Siegle
The project examines the human rights guarantees of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights, and the fundamental rights of the German Grundgesetz as shaped by the respective case law to determine the extent to which they grant victims of… more

Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Svenja Schwartz, Alexander Heinze
Can a person be blamed for turning a blind eye to the circumstances of his or her conduct? From a criminal law perspective, the concept of “willful ignorance” (“willful blindness” or “conscious avoidance”) exists – in varying forms and terms – in different jurisdictions. more

Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Johannes Weigel
Can we punish people for crimes they didn’t even know they committed? Ul­ti­mately, the answer to this question lies at the core of criminal liability for in­ad­vert­ent negligence. But legal systems respond very differently. Although most civil law jurisdictions seem to have no problem… more

Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Milan Kuhli, Gideon Stiening
Ernst Ferdinand Klein is one of the most prominent figures of the late German Enlightenment. A philosopher, scholar of criminal law, and reformer of the ju­di­ci­ary, he not only played an influential role in shaping academic dis­course in these fields at the end of the 18th… more

Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Martin Brecher
What is the relationship between law and morality? Does legal philosophy merely apply general moral principles to particular circumstances that give rise to the need for law and its institutions? Or does law have its own kind of normativity, which cannot be reduced to morality? more

Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Markus Abraham, Martin Brecher
The aim of this interdisciplinary research project is to evaluate from today’s per­spective the dispute regarding whether punishment ought to be justified on re­trib­u­tive or on preventive grounds – a dispute that has been on­go­ing in Ger­many since the end of the… more

Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Erasmus Mayr
The rise of second-personal or relational conceptions of morality has been one of the most significant devel­op­ments in contemporary ethics in the last 25 years. While many different theories are classified under this label, they generally agree that morality concerns ‘what we owe to each… more

Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, George Pavlakos
In recent years, theories that describe themselves as ‘relational’ have gained importance in both moral and legal philosophy. They all share the basic conviction that norms, obligations, claims and powers arise from our relationships rather than from abstract values alone. According to this… more

Head of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch
In German criminal-law doctrine, deliberate high-risk behavior is strictly di­chot­o­mized as either intentional or neg­li­gent behavior. The border line runs between dolus eventualis (“conditional intent”) and bewusste Fahrlässigkeit (“conscious negligence”), although this is accompanied by problems with… more

Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Markus Kneer, Levin Güver
Both the legal and the everyday attribution of responsibility are based on a rationalist, naive psychology that interprets human action as behaviour caused by epistemic and optative states. The different degrees of legal and everyday attributions of responsibility correspond to… more

Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Hendrik Klinge
That science is non-judgmental in terms of value is generally regarded as a necessary pre­requi­site for the objec­tiv­ity and special value of scientific knowledge. Neither the values of the scientists themselves nor the social pur­poses for which science is used should be a condition for… more

Head of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch
The project is dedicated to the question of whether there was a feminist En­light­en­ment in criminal law in the German-speaking world in the 18th century. Based on an analysis of the gender-specific differentiations to be found in criminal law and criminal prosecution before the advent of Enlightenment… more

Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Matthias Dölling, Jan Rennicke
Richard Martin Honig (1890–1981) is best known in German criminal law as one of the pioneers of the doctrine of objective imputation due to his ground-breaking contribution “Kausalität und objektive Zurechnung” (Causality and objective imputation) in the Festgabe für Frank… more

Heads of project: Philipp-Alexander Hirsch, Elias Moser
The aim of the project is to address the issue of rights in criminal law: Who holds and who should hold a right not to be wronged by others? And is it the violation of rights – rather than the causing of harm – that grounds a prima facie reason for criminalization? more