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Josef Mitterer (born 1948) is an Austrian philosopher, and a professor emeritus at the University of Klagenfurt Institute for Philosophy.
Mitterer studied psychology and sociology in Innsbruck and Linz and philosophy in Graz. His studies also took him to the London School of Economics (Imre Lakatos), to Heidelberg University (Richard Rorty), IUC Dubrovnik (Michael Dummett, Willard Van Orman Quine) and in 1976 to Berkeley where he studied with Paul Feyerabend. Mitterer received his doctorate at the University of Graz in 1978. He then worked as a Tour Director in Europe and Asia and as a Management Consultant for the Travel Industry in the USA. Since 1990 Mitterer has been teaching philosophy at the University of Klagenfurt; he held guest lectureships at the universities of Innsbruck, Linz, Ljubljana and Siegen.
In his book Das Jenseits der Philosophie (The Beyond of Philosophy), based on his dissertation, he developed a Non-dualizing Philosophy of Change, which foregoes the categorical distinction between language and language-distinct reality. In Die Flucht aus der Beliebigkeit (The Flight from Contingency) (2001) he critically examines the epistemological goal of truth. His critically acclaimed books have been translated into Polish and the A&HCI-Journal Constructivist Foundations has published two special issues on Mitterer's philosophy, The Non-dualizing Philosophy of Josef Mitterer (2008) and Non-dualism: A Conceptual Revision? (2013).
Josef Mitterer is a member of the scientific advisory board of the European Forum Alpbach, of the board of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, of the advisory board of the Karl Popper Foundation and is one of the literary executors of Ernst von Glasersfeld. He was co-organizer of the 38th International Wittgenstein Symposium "Realism - Relativism - Constructivism". In 2018 Mitterer delivered the Heinz von Foerster Lecture at the University of Vienna.