Prof. Knud Haakonssen, Ph.D.

Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Sussex and founding director of the Sussex Centre for Intellectual History.

He is a proven expert in the legal philosophy of the early modern period and the intricate relations between religion and enlightenment. The history of human rights and tolerance also belong to this field. In his publications, he has dealt extensively with the modern natural justice tradition (particularly Grotius and Pufendorf), the moral philosophy of the Scottish enlightenment and the tradition of liberalism (John Locke, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill).

Knud Haakonssen is coming to Munich from the end of April until the middle of May 2010. His visit will serve to intensify cooperation between the historians of political thought from the LMU and the University of Sussex, particularly with regard to the LMU Excellence Project on the "Science of the Political" around 1800 led by Prof. Dr. Eckhart Hellmuth and the Forum Ideengeschichte connected to it.