Michiel Meijer assistant professor - senior researcher

Research Michiel Meijer

Research team

Expertise

I studied philosophy from 2006 to 2010 at Tilburg University, Leiden University, and Radboud University Nijmegen. I completed my FWO-funded PhD in 2016 with a dissertation on the relation between ethics, philosophical anthropology, and ontology in the philosophy of Charles Taylor at the University of Antwerp. I was also a FWO-postdoctoral researcher from 2017 to 2020 at the University of Antwerp. My teaching and research interests are situated at the intersections of ethics, hermeneutics, philosophical anthropology, metaphysics, and phenomenology.

Moral Realism in Context: Disenchantment and Narrative Ontology. 01/06/2024 - 31/05/2028

Abstract

This project explores recent cultural-philosophical approaches to ethics and ontology in reflecting on contemporary debates on moral realism. In metaethics, cultural contexts have been largely neglected on methodological grounds. Metaethics is said to involve a step back from culturalhistorical backgrounds and social-political contexts, and to offer a crucial neutral background against which normative issues need to be understood. However, philosophers outside metaethics have been defending views that explicitly invoke cultural-historical contexts in developing novel approaches to moral realism. This project will study how authors such as Jane Bennett, Akeel Bilgrami, Charles Taylor, and Stephen White explicitly combine cultural-philosophical analysis with metaphysical inquiry in the debate on disenchantment as a world-making narrative. The project starts by investigating philosophical views which explicitly connect cultural diagnoses to issues of moral realism in developing such diverse concepts as "metaphysical imaginary," "ontostories" (Bennet 2001), "secular enchantment" (Bilgrami 2010, 2016, 2020), "moral ontology," "social imaginary" (Taylor 1989, 2007) and "weak ontology" (White 2000). Using these different concepts as heuristic devices for widening the current realist debate, the project continues to examine how the cultural-philosophical debate on disenchantment displays a highly original approach to the metaphysics of value, namely one that acknowledges the key role of narrative for metaphysical inquiry. Understanding moral metaphysics narratively is to understand it not as a mere "theory," that is, as a set of descriptive claims about certain states of affairs, but as a way of interpreting the world in seeking moral orientation. One major advantage of such "narrative ontologies" as compared with mainstream realisms is that they allow for cultural difference and historical development while still sustaining the realist claim that value is part of the world by understanding narrativity as a worldmaking practice. The upshot of developing this approach in full would be a deeply normative account of ethics duly informed by the philosophy of culture, yet without sacrificing a metaphysical understanding of moral truth, objectivity, and knowledge.

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  • Research Project

Moral Realism as a Normative Doctrine: Rethinking Politicized Realism. 01/03/2024 - 29/02/2028

Abstract

In metaethics, normative questions have been largely avoided on methodological grounds. Metaethics is said to involve a step back from substantive normative debates and to offer a crucial neutral background against which normative issues need to be understood. However, moral philosophers outside metaethics have been defending views that explicitly invoke normative questions in developing novel approaches to moral realism. This PhD project will study how authors such as John McDowell, David Wiggins, Ronald Dworkin, Alan Thomas, and Matthew Kramer take the realist debate outside value-neutral metaphysics into the normative domain of politics. Questions the PhD could address include: How has the normative ethics/metaethics distinction been challenged in ethical theory? How to renew moral realism after dispelling its alleged neutrality? Is "politicizing" moral realism enough? What is the role of political theorizing for understanding moral metaphysics?

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  • Research Project

Re-assessing Human Agency in a More-Than-Human World. Towards a New Materialist Anthropology. 01/11/2023 - 31/10/2025

Abstract

In what way should we conceive of the material world as the source of normativity, interconnectivity, and value? How does the recognition that non-human entities have agency enable ethical motivation? How should we conceive of the human agent when her exceptional status has done so much damage? These questions take centre stage in new materialist theory, but are paradoxically accommodated for in relation to an implicit and weak anthropological framework. The paradox resides in (1) an ethical dimension implicated in an ontological revaluation of reality wherein the human agent is simultaneously deprived from its superior agential capacity, yet manifestly addressed as the very being who has to take up a specific stance towards the material world; (2) in the way this human agent is ultimately addressed in order to respond more adequately to issues in the ethico-political realm: through a limited set of capacities at odds with the normative appeal of the very ethico-political issues new materialists pursue. This project addresses and overcomes this double paradox by developing a strong anthropological framework that is both more consistent with new materialism's own theoretical commitments and thereby potentially reinforces its normative pursuit. This framework is outlined as a new materialist anthropology.

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  • Research Project

Towards an Object-Oriented-Anthropology. Re-assessing Human Agency in New Materialist Ethics. 01/11/2022 - 31/10/2023

Abstract

In what way should we conceive of the material world as the locus of normativity, interconnectivity, and value? How enables the recognition that nonhuman entities have agency ethical motivation? How should we conceive of the human agent when her exceptional status is being overthrown for causing so much havoc? These questions take centre stage in new materialist ethics, but are paradoxically accommodated for in relation to a disavowed and implicit anthropological framework. The paradox resides in (1) an ethical dimension implicated in an ontological revaluation of reality wherein the human agent is simultaneously banned from its superior agential capacity, yet manifestly addressed as the very being who has to take up a specific stance towards the material world; (2) in the way this ethical dimension is ultimately accounted for, namely, via a counterintuitively subjectivist understanding of ethics. Taking both points together, a double paradox in new materialist ethics can be discerned. Although the refutation of exclusively human agency is the underlying motif of new materialist thinking, this project addresses this double paradox by shifting focus towards an object-oriented-anthropology as a hermeneutical framework to combat these theoretical difficulties and reinforce the normative force akin to new materialist ontological narratives.

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Ethics With or Without Ontology: The Taylor-Putnam Debate. 01/10/2017 - 30/09/2020

Abstract

Is the attribution of value compatible with the physical, biological, and psychological explanations of the empirical sciences? The philosophical reflection on this question is often divided into two approaches: "naturalistic" doctrines that take empirical science as our best guide to understanding reality and "hermeneutical" views, which argue that the empirical sciences do not provide human beings with their primary and most significant access to the world. This project explores a novel form of ethics in between hermeneutical and naturalistic approaches by confronting Charles Taylor's moral philosophy with the pragmatist ethics of Hilary Putnam. On the one hand, their shared concern is that crucial features of human life – especially moral ones – precisely disappear by adopting a scientific stance. On the other hand, Taylor and Putnam are of different minds on the question of how to defend the autonomy of morality with regard to empirical science. The Taylor-Putnam debate starts from the observation that most people are reluctant to embrace naturalism fully and yet remain highly skeptical of all things that do not fit the naturalist model. Reflecting on this debate, this project develops a position that does not assume that the autonomy of morality must be defended from within a naturalistic framework. Instead, it seeks to show that the most fundamental problems of ethics and ontology arise in the border regions between hermeneutical and naturalistic approaches.

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Cross pressures. Charles Taylor on strong evaluation, morality, and Nietzsche. 01/10/2014 - 30/09/2016

Abstract

This project aims to come to grips with the rich philosophy of Charles Taylor by focusing on his concept of 'strong evaluation'. I argue that a close examination of this term brings out more clearly the continuing concerns of his writings as a whole. I trace back the origin of strong evaluation in Taylor's earliest writings, and continue by laying out the different philosophical themes that revolve around it. I further distinguish the separate arguments in which strong evaluation is central, uncovering several methodological conflicts in Taylor's strategies. Arguing against most of his commentators, I suggest that a distinction should be drawn between the philosophical anthropological, moral, and ontological implications of strong evaluation.

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  • Research Project

Cross pressures. Charles Taylor on strong evaluation, morality, and Nietzsche. 01/10/2012 - 30/09/2014

Abstract

The topic of moral pluralism has become an important issue within secular, post-modern societies. However, in the struggle to deal with conflicting values, the philosophical reflection has come up with strategies that undervalue, avoid or simply neglect the tensions within contemporary moral culture. Against this background, this project intends to develop a philosophical understanding of morality which does recognize the felt 'cross pressures,' the permanent tensions between competing values within Western culture. First, by reconstructing Charles Taylor's view on contemporary moral culture through a close examination of the concept of 'strong evaluation'. Second, by exploring the potential of Nietzsche's diagnosis of nihilism for Taylor's analysis.

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The cross pressures of morality. Friedrich Nietzsche and Charles Taylor on meaning, morals and post-modernity. 01/10/2011 - 30/09/2012

Abstract

This project provides, for the first time, a confrontation between Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), the herald of nihilism who claimed that all previous foundations of morality have been undermined, and Charles Taylor (*1931), the advocate of strong evaluation and the inevitability of meaning. The basic thought, however, is not the clash between Nietzsche and Taylor, but rather the idea that, despite several differences, there is an important level of agreement between both thinkers as well. Central to this discussion is the morally pluralistic context of post-modern Western society. How do Nietzsche and Taylor understand and evaluate the post-modern moral context, and in what respects does the dialogue between them allow for a normative account on how to move among the cross pressures of morality? Can Nietzsche's and Taylor's positive moral views be viewed as adopting a 'third' position between fundamentalism and moral relativism? This question is explored by focussing on one of the most important moral ideals of post-modernity: authenticity.

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