Due to the wide range of interests among the members of the department, their research activities span several distinct but interconnected speculative-theoretical fields. Three primary areas of research can be identified:
- History of Philosophy, Phenomenology, Neo-Kantianism:
The first fundamental area includes traditional philosophy, primarily in the German-speaking context (German idealism, neo-Kantianism, phenomenology, hermeneutics). Research within this domain extends beyond publishing monographs and articles in reputable journals; it also involves translating important works from the German language. Within this research area, investigations also touch on business ethics, social responsibility, logic, epistemology, and topics in the philosophy of science and philosophy of technology.
Social and Political Philosophy:
- The second area of interest broadly encompasses social and political philosophy.
This includes topics such as political will, social contracts, political ideology and myth, psychoanalysis, and issues developed through socio-historical epistemology. This research is influenced not only by the dominant Anglo-Saxon analytical tradition but also the continental tradition, including contemporary hermeneutics, and epistemology and methodology of history, especially in the Poznań school. The department pays significant attention to analyzing concepts developed within the post-Hegelian social philosophy (e.g., the problem of the universalization of recognition relations) and critical social theory (Horkheimer, Adorno, Habermas, Honneth, Jaeggi), as well as comparative analysis of political systems, cultures, and civilizations based on the work of Braudel, Elias, and Eisenstadt. Research on the dynamics of civilizational transformations is conducted to distinguish and specify the differentia specifica of European civilization (and culture) in comparison to other centers of civilization.
- Political Economy, Distributive Justice, and Global Transformations of Capitalism:
The third important research area involves interdisciplinary reflection that analyzes the mutual conditioning and feedback between the economy, society, politics, and culture. Particular emphasis is placed on the broader field of political economy, encompassing the study of economic processes along with the social, political, and cultural forces shaping and being shaped by them. This political economy extends beyond the paradigms of international political economy (IPE), world-systems theory, or institutional economics. It includes numerous specific topics such as the nature of post-industrialism and changes in the labor market, the dynamics of economic inequality (economic, access, life chances), the political and social consequences of corporate financialization, economic, social, and political consequences of the so-called digital transformation and "platform capitalism" (where digital economy becomes the primary economic infrastructure), as well as contemporary economic challenges arising from the Fourth Industrial Revolution (AI, algorithmization, and datafication of reality, technological unemployment). Research also touches upon the field of libidinal political economy, which examines the relationship between contemporary digital capitalism and semiocapitalism and the structure of drives, desires, and emotions (Illouz, Dean, Byung Chul Han).
In addition to political economy, department members are keenly interested in issues related to the methodology of economics, heterodox economics (especially radical, ecological, and institutional traditions), and the anthropology of economics (Sahlins, Groeber). They are actively involved in the international "Rethinking Economics" project. A significant research area concerns distributive justice (Rawls, Dworkin, Sen, van Parijs) and exploitation (Roemer). Attempts are also made to incorporate geostrategic and geopolitical issues at the intersection of economics, sociology, and political science due to the deepening climate crisis, the contestation of the "Pax Americana" by some influential international actors, and their efforts to build economic-strategic autonomy (e.g., China, India, Brazil, Russia). These processes are accompanied by decoupling and deglobalization trends and the accelerated