Since 2024: Research Associate at GRK 2638: Normativity, Critique, Change

2021-2023: M.A. in Philosophy at the University of Leipzig. Master's thesis on Walter Benjamin’s critique of violence ("On the Violence of Law: From the Critique of Violence to the Critique of Law"). Tutor for the introductory lectures in practical and theoretical philosophy by Prof. Thomas Kater and Prof. Sebastian Rödl.

2020-2021: Studies in Philosophy at the University of Leipzig

2016-2020: B.Sc. in International Physics Studies Program at the University of Leipzig. Bachelor's thesis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research on the behavior of tipping elements in complex networks.

2012-2016: B.Eng. in International Industrial Engineering at Bremen University of Applied Sciences.

Law and Nature: An Attempt at an Aesthetic Critique of Law

This project starts from the observation that in current debates aboutrights of nature, the relationship between law and nature itself is brought to the forefront. In the face of the climate crisis, the legal status of nature as a mere object is problematized. According to the fundamental demand underlying the discourse on rights of nature, nature should no longer be a mere object at the disposal of legal subjects. Legal relations to nature, in the form of subject-object relations, are recognized as a significant driver of nature’s destruction. The call to overcome these relations is addressed by declaring nature as a whole, or natural entities, as legal subjects in an increasing number of legal systems. As a legal subject, nature is to receive legal protection, thereby establishing fundamentally different legal relations to nature.

Based on the legal philosophies of Kant and Hegel in particular, this project aims to explore the distinction between law and nature as constitutive of law. Law constitutes itself by differentiating itself from nature. This means that nature is by no means a mere externality to law that can be integrated through an extension of law. Instead, as the Other of law, nature is always already part of it. However, if the distinction from nature is constitutive of law in this sense, then this relationship cannot be overcome by merely expanding the status of the legal subject. The contradiction between law and nature lies deeper—it is inherent in the very form of law itself.

Thus, overcoming this contradiction between law and nature requires stepping outside the legal sphere. This project claims that aesthetic relation open up the possibility of such a perspective. Aesthetic relations to nature are understood both as a possible alternative form of nature relations and as fundamentally a critique of existing relations to nature. Through this dual character, the consideration of aesthetic relations to nature enables an immanent critique of law, which transcends it without being entirely external to it. This dual character of aesthetic relations to nature is to be explored in consideration of the aesthetic theories of Kant, Hegel, and Adorno in particular.

Starting from such an (aesthetic) critique of law, this project seeks to unpack the radical content of the demand for rights of nature, which aims at overcoming the contradiction between law and nature that is essential to the form of law. In this way, aesthetic relations to nature point toward a fundamentally different form of law. The exploration of such an alternative form of law represents the focal point of this research project.

Research Interests:

• Philosophy of Right
• Social Philosophy
• Aesthetics
• German Idealism
• Critical Theory