The Center for Metaphilosophical Research (CMPHR) is an independent research center and network. It is not affiliated with any state, university, or single national institution. It collaborates with universities in Germany and welcomes international cooperation. The Center aims to promote metaphilosophically informed philosophy as a new paradigm for doing, teaching, studying, and organizing philosophical research and education. CMPHR initiates and supports theoretical, practical, historical, and aesthetic research on philosophy, as well as the application of metaphilosophical knowledge to philosophical inquiry. One of its current major projects is the publication of the first general handbook of metaphilosophy (Handbuch Metaphilosophie, Springer/Metzler, 2025–2026). The Center plans to organize conferences, workshops, summer schools, and courses.
The Center is open to emerging and established forms of philosophical discourse and is not limited to any school or tradition. CMPHR is particularly interested in analyzing and preventing structural epistemic and rational injustice in philosophy in general and in professional academic philosophy in particular.
History
CMPHR emerged from Michael Lewin’s research projects between 2021 and 2023, especially Metaphilosophy as a Unified Discipline and Metaphilosophy and Its Relevance for Philosophical Practice, as well as from the planning phase of the Handbuch Metaphilosophie with Daniel Minkin. Conceived as both a center and a network, the initiative was supported by several scholars working in metaphilosophy, including Nicholas Rescher and Timothy Williamson. The conference What Is Metaphilosophy? (2022), co-organized with Richard Raatzsch, author of Philosophiephilosophie, can retrospectively be regarded as the Center’s first conference. Since 2024, much of the Center’s work has been devoted to the preparation, organization, and completion of the Handbuch Metaphilosophie, a demanding editorial project that has shaped this phase of CMPHR’s formation.
Members
Director: Michael Lewin
Dr. Michael Lewin’s work focuses on metaphilosophy, philosophical terminology, epistemology, metaepistemology, philosophy of language, and the history of philosophy. He founded the Center to provide a platform for systematic research in metaphilosophy, especially for work that has remained insufficiently visible in German-speaking and European contexts as well as internationally. This aim is also reflected in the co-edited Handbuch Metaphilosophie. He held a research fellowship from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation on the question of how metaphilosophy is possible as a unified discipline despite philosophical diversity and disagreement. This work included research stays at the University of Oxford as an Academic Visitor with Timothy Williamson and at the University of Pittsburgh with Nicholas Rescher. He also served as Principal Investigator and Research Group Leader of the projects Metaphilosophy and Its Relevance for Philosophical Practice and Perspectivism as an Epistemological Program at Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Kaliningrad. He teaches and has taught at the University of Potsdam, Goethe University Frankfurt, the University of Wuppertal, and the University of Koblenz-Landau.
Dr. Daniel Minkin received his PhD from the Philipps University of Marburg and has worked at various German universities as a research associate and interim professor. Today, he works as an independent researcher focusing on metaphilosophy, epistemology, and the philosophy of science. His publications on metaphilosophy include the German-language monograph Rationalität philosophischer Forschung (“Rationality of Philosophical Research“) as well as various essays. Furthermore, he is the co-editor of the Handbuch Metaphilosophie (“Handbook of Metaphilosophy”). Alongside his research, he runs the philosophy blog euPHoria, which can be accessed here.
For further information, please visit Daniel Minkin’s website here.
Polina Lewin received her M.A. in Practical Philosophy and Science Communication from Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University. She is currently preparing a doctoral research project in moral metaphilosophy. Her research interests include practical philosophy, philosophy of science, rationality, Kant, Neo-Kantianism, and intuitivism. She was Assistant Researcher in the project Metaphilosophy and its Relevance for the Philosophical Practice and co-authored “Moral Metaphilosophy: The Study of Moral Violations in, Against, and Through Philosophy” (Philosophies, 2026) as well as a review of Shan’s “New Directions in Metaphilosophy” (Aisthesis, 2023). Previously, she was Academic Assistant at Academia Kantiana and Research Assistant at the Kantian Rationality Lab, and worked in several research projects related to Kant and Neo-Kantianism.
Fellows
Octavio García is a PhD student in Philosophy at the University of Manchester and a CMPHR Fellow in 2026. His CMPHR fellowship is devoted to his research project on philosophical progress and includes a short-term research stay at the University of Potsdam. The fellowship provides a framework for discussing his project with Dr. Michael Lewin, while also involving cooperation with Prof. Dr. Logi Gunnarsson at the University of Potsdam. During his research stay, he will present his work at Prof. Dr. Gunnarsson’s research colloquium and contribute to Dr. Lewin’s seminar on theories of progress. In connection with the fellowship, he will also co-organize a CMPHR conference on philosophical progress.
Research Project “A History of the Future: A Functional Account of Philosophical Progress”
Octavio García’s current research develops an account of philosophical progress at the intersection of the history of philosophy, the philosophy of history, and metaphilosophy. He develops what he calls the functional account of philosophical progress, which evaluates philosophical progress by considering how well philosophy performed its function in the past. According to the functional account, philosophy has had different functions depending on the historical context. These functions provide a normative standard to evaluate how progressive philosophy was. The outcome of considering these three dimensions in relation to philosophical progress is a pluralistic and historically informed account of philosophical progress.
He is also interested in the epistemology of disagreement and testimony in the context of philosophical practice.
Network
Our network is open to scholars engaged in metaphilosophical research.