Prof. Dr. Nadia Mazouz

Research area

My research interests focus on fundamental questions of practical philosophy as well as on applied problems of morality. I pursue the project of formulating Kantian consent theories of morality in such a way that they can be applied to controversial cultural, social and political questions. The deliberative variant of a consent-theory that I am pursuing renounces substantial theoretical presuppositions. Thus, the deliberative approach can integrate the pluralism of theories in moral philosophy and be understood as an expression of alternative propositions about what is to be accepted as justification. Related to this is also an innovative approach to questions of applied ethics that reckons with persistent dissent in society and politics rather than arguing it away.
In order to elaborate such a deliberative approach, on the one hand the methodological foundations of the theory have to be developed further and on the other hand it has to be applied to different relevant fields of practice. On the methodological level, problems of spelling out and justifying morality arise in particular, such as the question of how to reconstruct what is to be accepted as justification in which context (science, politics, lifeworld, etc.), within the framework of a theory of reasons and its interlocking with a theory of rhetoric; the problem of whether numbers count in morality and, if so, how; the role of solitary as well as communal reflection in a theory of the good life; the status of beings who are incapable (including future generations) or of persons who are unwilling to deliberate (in hostile interpersonal and international relations).
The relevant fields of practice are diverse: environmental ethics and scientific ethics, animal ethics, medical ethics and bioethics, but also the genuinely political practices within and between political communities. In terms of normative issues of interpolis politics, relevant topics include: global justice; morality of war, especially new forms of war; democracy and human rights; international relations and international law.

My research profile thus combines long-term work on the elaboration of a deliberative theory and its applications with more short term projects in which specific theoretical problems are focused and individual fields of application are worked through.
Specifically, I am currently working on: the trolley problem; the numbers problem; how to allocate scarce medical resources; the morality of war, specifically new war technologies; the conceptual and normative analysis of recommender systems and (self-)deception; the normative analysis of the crisis of liberalism and cosmopolitanism; climate justice and the challenge of pluralism; the ethics of artificial intelligence in times of polarization; the consent theory of morality and its application in democracies in crisis.

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