Nikolaus Knoepffler

Nikolaus Knoepffler (born 1962 in Miltenberg, Bavaria) is a philosopher and theologian. He currently holds the Chair of Applied Ethics and is the Director of the Ethics Center (Ethikzentrum) at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany. Knoepffler is founder and president of the Global Applied Ethics Institute a think tank and consortium that is mainly involved in research on bioethics and business ethics.

Knoepffler studied Philosophy and Theology in Würzburg and Rome (1981–1990) where the Pontifical Gregorian University awarded him a Licentiate in Theology (1989), in Philosophy (1990), and a doctorate in Philosophy (1992). He received his habilitation in 1998, further doctorates in Political Science (Lueneburg) and Theology (Bern).

He was a Fellow at the Institute for Technology, Theology and Natural Sciences (TTN) from 1996 to 2000 and was appointed Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Munich in 1998. He then became Deputy Manager at TTN (2000–02) and received an appointment with the Commission for Bioethics with the Bavarian Government in 2001. Since 2011 he serves as member of the.

In 2002, he was a Visiting Professor at Georgetown University, Washington DC. He was then appointed Professor of Applied Ethics at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, where he also leads the Center of Applied ethics (Ethikzentrum) and the Department of Ethics in Sciences.

He is the second Vice President of the German Academy for Transplantation Medicine and since 2005 has served as Chair of the Ethic Commission of Department of Social and Humanistic Studies, University of Jena. From 2006-2013 he was speaker of the graduate school on human dignity and human rights of the German Research Foundation (DFG). Since 2013 he is member in the trilateral project "Hearts of Flesh - not Stone" of the DFG among Israel, Palestine, and Germany.

Among other things, he lectured at the “Wissensforum 2007” of the Süddeutsche Zeitung on the topic "Kant and the Stock Exchange" and his research specialties include human dignity, values and management", German philosophy (esp. Kant), and conflicts in bioethics.

• Schlüsselbegriffe der Philosophie Immanuel Kants: Transzendentalität und Menschenwürde, 2014
• Der Beginn der menschlichen Person, 2012
• Angewandte Ethik: Ein systematischer Leitfaden, 2010
• Der neue Mensch?: Enhancement und Genetik, 2009 (together with Julian Savulescu)
• Humanbiotechnology as a Social Challenge, 2007 (together with Dagmar Schipanski and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner)
• Menschenwürde in der Bioethik, 2004