Information for current students

This page provides students at the faculty with a constantly updated overview of important dates and deadlines. Moreover, students will find information on assessments, final examinations and introductory events, as well as general guidelines for studies.

A lecture in the main auditorium of the LMU main building filled with many students.

Disclaimer for our English websites

We need to point out that the official and legal effective language of the information about our studies, the current semester and forthcoming examinations is German (except the information about the Master in Logic and Philosophy of Science). To be safe, we recommend our students to compare the English with the German websites.

Main language during the studies

The main language of most of our studies including the teaching language, related examinations in different forms and the final theses is German. Although some courses are held and examinations are written in English, there is no legal claim for courses, examinations and final theses in English. If you want to write exams and theses in English please ask the particular examining lecturer.

Winter semester 2024/25

  • General exam registration period (on LSF) for the Bachelor and Master in Philosophy: 20 January to 31 January 2025. (Exception: block seminars in the vacation [= registration only during the seminar period]) and second examination dates in the BA overview lecture courses [= extra registration periods shortly before the second examination dates]).
  • Final, global submission deadline for term papers and other written work in the Bachelor and Master in Philosophy (insofar as LSF does not say anything different when registering for the exam):
    Friday, 28 March 2025 (submission deadlines prior to this can apply to individual essays, midterms, etc.)

More information can be found via these links:

Winter semester 2024/25

  • General exam registration period (on LSF) for the Bachelor and Master in Philosophy: 20 January to 31 January 2025. (Exception: block seminars in the vacation [= registration only during the seminar period]) and second examination dates in the BA overview lecture courses [= extra registration periods shortly before the second examination dates]).
  • Final, global submission deadline for term papers and other written work in the Bachelor and Master in Philosophy (insofar as LSF does not say anything different when registering for the exam):
    Friday, 28 March 2025 (submission deadlines prior to this can apply to individual essays, midterms, etc.)

More information can be found via these links:

Guidance on producing academic work

This collection of previous handouts and advice (in German) about academic work from the Chair of Metaphysics is meant to offer undergraduate and graduate students at Faculty 10 an initial orientation. These are not fixed standards, but rather recommendations.

Guidelines for the Bachelorarbeit (BA thesis)

The Bachelorarbeit (BA thesis) should normally be completed in the final semester of your program and should run to approximately 80,000 characters according to the examination regulations (so, approximately 35-40 pages). This is a guideline: your thesis may be shorter, or longer, by a certain amount. Work on the Bachelorarbeit can be started in an earlier semester and also even if you have not yet passed all other assessments in your major and minor subjects.

  • Official registration of the thesis (when you wish to, or have to, write it in a summer or winter semester):
    a) in a summer semester: around the beginning of May (in any academic year)
    b) in a winter semester: around the beginning of November (in any academic year)
  • Writing period: 10 weeks. Submission in a summer semester is usually around mid-July. Submission in a winter semester is usually around mid-January.
  • The following teaching staff at the faculty in the relevant semester may supervise a thesis: professors, Prviatdozenten (private lecturers) and wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter (reserach associates) who are members of Faculty 10 and teach philosophy at the faculty.
  • It is recommended that the student should make first contact with possible supervisors, and consider possible thesis topics in this context, by the end of March (at latest), if registering and writing a thesis in the upcoming summer semester, or the end of September, if registering and writing a thesis in the upcoming winter semester.
  • The supervisor and student must agree on a topic, but the topic is ultimately provided by the supervisor. There is no entitlement on the part of the student to work on a specific topic. It is also possible to further explore a topic which you already worked on in previous assignments and essays. However, you may not reproduce verbatim a text, or parts thereof, which you have already written (without citing it). Your BA thesis must be an original piece of work. The thesis topic does not have to be identical to the final title of the thesis, but it must be related in any case. You can find a list of selected BA thesis topics from previous years here, which may also serve as possible inspiration or a rough orientation.
  • From around the end of January (in relation to following summer semester) and from around the end of July (in relation to the following winter semester), an up-to-date information page about the Bachelorarbeit will be available on the "Information for current students" page, which will contain the precise deadlines and details of submission, an up-to-date list of (most) eligible supervisors and further detailed information.

If you have further questions (including about eligible supervisors), feel free to contact the degree program coordinator Dr. Thomas Wyrwich at any time.

Theoretical philosophy

  • Der ideentheoretische Gottesbeweis bei René Descartes
  • John Lockes Theorie personaler Identität
  • Grundsatzphilosophie – Die Anforderungen an eine „Begründung“ des Wissens anhand der frühen Schriften Fichtes
  • Nietzsches Perspektivismus – ein aporetisches Konzept?
  • Wittgenstein über Selbsterkenntnis
  • Adorno und Liessmann über Bildung
  • Davidson und das Lügnerparadoxon
  • Arthur Dantos These vom Ende der Kunst
  • Belief Revision Theory and the link to Nonmonotonic Reasoning
  • Disagreement from a Logical Perspective
  • Preface Paradox
  • Kritische Analyse von Putnams „brains in a vat“

Practical philosophy

  • Pflicht zu leben? Untersuchungen zur Konzeption der Person
  • Was leisten Dammbruchargumente in der Bioethik?
  • Welche Rolle spielt das Mitleid bei tierethischen Argumentationen und wie plausibel ist diese?
  • Climate change and personal responsibility for justice
  • Verteilungsgerechtigkeit bei Rawls & Nozick – Gegenüberstellung und Kritik
  • Willensfreiheit und Verantwortung bei Harry G. Frankfurt
  • Ethische Aspekte des Neuroenhancements

History of philosophy

  • Verantwortung für Charaktertugenden in Aristoteles‘ „Nikomachischer Ethik“
  • Freiheit und Determinismus bei den Stoikern
  • Plotin, Enneade IV.8: Abstieg der Seele
  • Christine de Pizan und Moderata Fonte: Ein Vergleich
  • Das Menschenbild bei Hobbes und Hume
  • Die Rolle der Spontaneität des Verstandes in der transzendentalen Deduktion der „Kritik der reinen Vernunft“
  • Freiheit in Kants praktischer Philosophie
  • Identität und Differenz. Das Problem der Erkenntnis im Ausgang von Kant in den Frühschriften Hegels
  • Der Solipsismus im Tractatus logico-philosophicus
  • Der Begriff des „Humanismus“ bei Heidegger und Sartre

Note: some of the topics could be categorised under multiple disciplines, for example under "practical philosophy" as well as "history of philosophy" (and are distributed here accordingly for illustrative purposes).

Note on the usage of AI (ChatGPT etc.) in academic theses

Recent developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence, for instance ChatGPT, have raised questions among many students as to whether and how they can or should use these tools in their academic work.

First, the faculty would like to remind all students that all work submitted to earn ECTS credits must be written independently by the student, as must be assured in the statement of authorship (Eigenständigkeitserklärung). This clearly excludes that texts produced by Artificial Intelligence are silently integrated into the papers.

It should also be kept in mind that ChatGPT is basically an unreliable source of information and explanations: it uses a probability calculation for text production, which can lead to automatically generated texts containing inaccurate or false information even in the case of simple facts, never mind something as advanced as philosophical analysis.

We therefore advise using such AI tools with extreme caution, if at all. If you do use them, you should clearly state and document exactly how you used them. This should then be done, for example, in a footnote at the beginning of the paper or in individual footnotes.

signed Prof. Dr. Peter Adamson, Studiendekan

Lecture recordings and sample student essays

The faculty website contains a media section for students and teaching staff at Faculty 10. In addition to recordings of lectures from current and past courses, students of the faculty can also find exemplary term papers and essays, which may be downloaded for viewing. Philosophy students at LMU are warmly invited to contribute to this section.