Dietmar von der Pfordten is a Full Professor of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and Director of the Division of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy since 2002. He holds two doctoral degrees in law and philosophy from LMU Munich and habilitated in Göttingen in 1998 with a book on Legal Ethics. Afterwards, he held the chair for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy at Erfurt from 1999 till 2002. He has been hosted as a visiting scholar at Harvard and in New York, as a visiting professor in Brussels, Groningen, Cagliari and Vienna and as a fellow at the Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study. He is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and of the Academy of Sciences in Thuringia at Erfurt. Based on normative individualism, he has published numerous works on normative and legal ethics as well as legal theory; among others he has written about the theory of concepts (“Concepts in Law”, ed. with Jaap Hage, Springer 2009), the concept of law, general ethical theory. His book on legal philosophy (“Rechtsphilosophie”, Beck 2013) is translated into Chinese, Brazilian and Persian. His book on human dignity (“Menschenwürde”, Beck 20253) is now in the third edition and translated in many other languages, e. g. Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Italian. A translation into English, Japanese and Korean is in preparation. He has recently finished a book on legal theory with the title “Law as Mediation+. What Law is and what it Distinguishes from other Social and Cultural Phenomena”.
