Philosophy

Jakob’s doctoral thesis presents a groundbreaking interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of knowledge by drawing on the phenomenology of nature developed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He argues that Goethe’s phenomenological science of nature provides an interpretative paradigm that allows one to dissolve a number of fundamental problems traditionally associated with Aristotle’s theory of scientific knowledge, by showing them to be pseudo-problems, generated by the misapplication of modern epistemological assumptions.

One of the examiners, Professor Frederick Amrine (University of Michigan) wrote:
“In thirty years of teaching at two elite universities (Harvard and Michigan), I have not seen a dissertation that can compare…Although principally an interpretation of Aristotle, I do not hesitate to assert that the thesis represents a major contribution to scholarship on Goethe as well. It exhibits full command of the scholarship on both of these figures, and it offers an account of Aristotle’s philosophy that can only be described as magisterial.”