Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Theoretical Philosophy / History of Philosophy

Dominik Perler is Professor of Philosophy at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Co-Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities Human Abilities.

He studied at the Universities of Fribourg (Dr. phil. 1991), Bern and Göttingen (Habilitation 1996), was Fellow of All Souls and Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Oxford (1996-97), and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Basel (1997-2003). He has had visiting appointments at several universities, among them UCLA, Tel Aviv University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Université libre de Bruxelles, the École Normale Supérieure and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. He was Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute for Advanced Study) in Berlin, Fellow at the Istituto Svizzero di Roma, and Global Scholar at Princeton University.

In 2006 he was awarded the Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Preis. He is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Arts and Science and the Academia Europaea. In 2014 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Louvain. He served as President of the European Society for Early Modern Philosophy and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Philosophie (German Society for Philosophy). He was member of the steering committee of a number of larger research projects, among them the European Science Foundation Project “From Natural Philosophy to Science” and the Excellence Cluster “Topoi.”

His research focuses on medieval and early modern philosophy, mostly in the areas of philosophy of mind, epistemology, and ontology. He serves on the editorial or advisory board of a number of journals, among them Journal of the History of Philosophy, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, History of Philosophy Quarterly, Vivarium, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy.

Curriculum Vitae

Publications

Recent books

• Powers and Abilities in Early Modern Philosophy, London: Routledge 2024 (ed. with Sebastian Bender).

• 笛卡尔论表征, Bejing: The Commercial Press 2023.

• Eine Person sein. Philosophische Debatten im Spätmittelalter, Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann 2020. (book-symposium in Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 69.3 (2021), 465 - 505).

• Causation and Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy, London: Routledge 2020 (ed. with Sebastian Bender).
• Feelings Transformed. Philosophical Theories of the Emotions, 1250-1750, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018.
• Теории интенциональности в Средние века, Moskva: Izdatelskii dom delo 2016.
• The Faculties: A History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015 (Ed.).
• Partitioning the Soul. Debates from Plato to Leibniz, Berlin: W. de Gruyter 2014 (ed. with Klaus Corcilius).
• Selbstbezug und Selbstwissen. Texte zu einer mittelalterlichen Debatte, Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann 2014 (with Sonja Schierbaum).

Recent papers (selection)

• “Real Stuff: Suárez on Prime Matter,” in: A Philosophical History of Prime Matter, ed. by N. Polloni, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (forthcoming).

• “Turning Inward and Outward: Two Medieval Approaches to the Self,” in: The Premodern Self, ed. by J. Bermudez & C. Conybeare, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (forthcoming).

• “Reductive Realism: Suárez on the Categories,” in: Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputations: A Critical Guide, ed. by S. Duharte & S. Penner, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (forthcoming).

• “Gibt es Fähigkeiten? Überlegungen zu Spinoza,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung (forthcoming).
• “Suárez on Powers and Abilities as Inner Causes,” in: Powers and Abilities in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. by S. Bender & D. Perler, London: Routledge 2024, 23-42.
• “Does Voluntarism Lead to Irrationalism? A Medieval Case Study,” in: Varieties of Voluntarism in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy, ed. by J. Müller & S. Schierbaum, London: Routledge 2024, 27-45.
• “Suárez’s Compositional Account of Substance,” in: A History of Hylomorphism, ed. by D. Charles, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2023, 351-375.
• “Ist eine analytische Geistesgeschichte möglich? Vier Thesen,” in: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 97 (2023), 223-235.
  
• “Complexity and Unity: Peter of John Olivi and Henry of Ghent on the Composition of the Soul,” in: Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales 89.2 (2022), 335-392 (with Can Laurens Löwe).
• “Ockham on Memory and Double Intentionality,” Topoi 41 (2022), 133-142.
• “Can We Know Substances? Suárez on a Sceptical Puzzle,” Theoria 88.1 (2022), 244-269.
• “Productive Thoughts: Suárez on Exemplar Causes,” Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy 9 (2021), 246-289. 
• “Is Our Happiness up to Us? Elisabeth of Bohemia on the Limits of Internalism,” in: Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618-1680): A Philosopher in her Historical Context, ed. by S. Ebbersmeyer & S. Hutton, New York: Springer 2021, 177-192.
• “Spinoza on Diachronic Identity,” in: A Companion to Spinoza, ed. by Y. Melamed, Oxford: Blackwell 2021, 170-178.
• “Suárez on the Unity of Material Substances,” Vivarium 58 (2020), 143-167.
• “Rational Seeing: Thomas Aquinas on Human Perception,” in: Medieval Perceptual Puzzles: Theories of Sense Perception in the 13th and 14th Centuries, ed. by E. Baltuta, Leiden: Brill 2020, 213-237.
• “Suárez on Intellectual Cognition and Occasional Causation,” in: Causation and Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. by D. Perler & S. Bender, London: Routledge 2020, 18-38.
• “Disembodied Cognition and Assimilation. Thirteenth-Century Debates on an Epistemological Puzzle,” Vivarium 57 (2019), 317-340.
• “Mind and Method,” in: Philosophy of Mind in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. by S. Schmid, London: Routledge 2019, 22-40.
• “The Alienation Effect in the Historiography of Philosophy,” in: Philosophy and the Historical Perspective, ed. by M. van Ackeren, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018, 140-154.
• “Spinoza on Skepticism,” in: The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza, ed. by M. Della Rocca, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2017, 220-239.
• “Emotions and Rational Control: Two Medieval Perspectives,” in: Thinking about the Emotions. A Philosophical History, ed. by A. Cohen & R. Stern, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2017, 60-82.
• “Self-Knowledge in Scholasticism,” in: Self-Knowledge, ed. by U. Renz, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2016, 114-130.
• “Was ist eine Person? Überlegungen zu Leibniz,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 64 (2016), 329-351.
• “Spinozas Theorie der Universalien,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 70 (2016), 163-188.
• “Anneliese Maier and the Study of Medieval Philosophy Today,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 53 (2015), 173-184.
• “Perception in Medieval Philosophy,” in: The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Perception, ed. by M. Matthen, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015, 51-65.
• “What is a Dead Body? Richard of Mediavilla and Dietrich of Freiberg on a Metaphysical Puzzle,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 82 (2015), 61-87.