Daniel Kurzmann

PELP - a decision for life

During my bachelor's degree in philosophy, I became more interested in questions of practical philosophy, specifically ethics and political philosophy. I wrote my Bachelor's thesis with Lukas Meyer in the field of climate justice. The decision to study for a Master's degree in Political, Economic and Legal Philosophy (PELP) was quickly made to fit in harmoniously with my parallel studies in law. During this time, I also got to know the university from a different perspective, namely as a student assistant and tutor for several lectures with Lukas Meyer and later with Harald Stelzer. Thanks to the appealing interdisciplinary orientation and the associated multi-layered perspectives on socially relevant issues, the PELP Master's program enriched my intellectual horizon and my creative thinking. I wrote my Master's thesis in English on the problem of 'dirty hands' in democracies, again under the supervision of Lukas Meyer. The PELP Master's program also helped me with the interdisciplinary part of my legal thesis on digital copyright and the music industry, in which I was able to contribute not only legal, but also economic and philosophical points of view on the topic.

The exchange with students and lecturers from other disciplines, their different approaches and values, as well as the curiosity they conveyed about the opinions of others, had a great impact on me as a person for my entire life. Inspired by this breeding ground of tolerance and this legitimate feeling of assisting the good - figuratively speaking - by listening and understanding, I refined my two studies with mediation training at the Center for Social Competence. After part-time excursions into journalism, I completed my court practice in Graz and Feldbach after completing my university studies and gained valuable insights into legal conflicts and their legal solutions at the district court and regional court. Since then I have been working as a lawyer in data protection coordination at Graz University of Technology. As an important fundamental right, data protection as a cross-sectional subject is home to many ethical issues as well as legal ones. In my day-to-day legal work, I benefit from the interdisciplinary approach that I learned to appreciate so much on the PELP Master's program.

For me, being political or acting politically in a more abstract sense means taking responsibility for the common, successful life in a community, in a state, in a society, detached from the pursuit of mere individual interests. This often goes hand in hand with difficult distribution decisions by those politically responsible: who gets which and how many goods in a society? What criteria are used to distribute these goods? For example, according to individual need, individual performance or even membership of a particular group? For me, acting politically in a broad sense means taking care of the good life in a society, taking responsibility for others and looking after the common good. On a smaller scale, political action for me means standing up for others, in concrete terms: civil courage. In this sense, we can all act politically or be political actors for our fellow human beings every day.