I understand the ethics of research broadly as the ethos of the researcher, which means a concentrated study of things and the world through investigation and analysis. I have an internal urge for this kind of practice and so research is for me vocational occupation. All research is based on our lack of understanding and has the philosophical task to search knowledge, as well as to critically question and test the knowledge and understanding we already have. Research is the art of asking meaningful and interesting questions and research work is an effort to provide material and knowledge to this art of questioning. I am a “philosophical” researcher, which does not only mean that I have done much research on political philosophy, but that I also try to include theoretical and critical reflection to all research. For research is not some mechanical or automatic procedure, but instead takes place as a reflective and problem-based movement of thought.
There is “much ado about” different methodologies in social sciences and yet this is often “much ado about nothing” substantial since the methodologies are understood as merely technical applications of some ready-made procedure and the real methodological questions are totally ignored. I think that the most important question here should be the method as the general way (ὁδός) of the research and this question should be always included in the primary research question, to which the specialized qualitative or quantitative methods, theories and materials should be subordinated. This broader and more profound reflection of the method is particularly important in the human sciences, where the subject and object of knowledge coincide and interact reflexively. I have done research on numerous subjects using various kinds of methodologies, yet the primary question of all my research is what the conditions and approaches of critical social sciences are. This general approach critical political and philosophical anthropology.
Under this general critical approach, I have always tried to be open-minded to various research approaches and methodologies, without making some dogmatic commitment to some school of thought or doctrine. Manifold and so common academic fights between theoretical or methodological cliques and fractions do not really advance any fertile research questions, but instead, transform all research work into the narrow-minded power-politics.
The field of my research interests is very broad and encompasses the history and actuality of continental philosophical and political thought. I have a keen interest in different occidental systems of thought whether scientific, economic, artistic or religious. However, as a philosophically orientated political and social scientist, I have tried to search the connections of these thought-systems to the historical embedded cultural forms as to the politics, governance and practice of power. Indeed, one of my main interests is to search how political thought-patterns historically structured in western political experience and what has been their role in the different practices of power directing the conduct of men. I have designated this general research question as the problem of political anthropology.
Even though methodologically interested in the different historical conceptualizations, metaphors and thought-patterns, my broader interest is, however, to relate philosophical questions to the historical and social research. Here I have tried to develop an approach named critical political anthropology, which would differ both from the political philosophy practised as normative moral philosophy as also from political science practised in the form of unreflective empirical studies.
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Research and Teaching 