Jan Völker, born in 1976, holds a professorship in philosophy at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. His work focuses on aesthetics, post-Marxist philosophy, and psychoanalysis. He studied philosophy, comparative literature, and cultural studies in Leipzig, Berlin, and Paris. He served as a research assistant at the SFB Aesthetic Experience in the Context of the Dissolution of Artistic Boundaries at the Free University of Berlin and, concurrently, was a member of the Graduate College “Forms of Life and the Know-How of Living.” He subsequently worked as a research assistant to Prof. Alexander García Düttmann at the Berlin University of the Arts and served for several years as a visiting lecturer at Bard College in Berlin. From 2018 to 2023, he was also an associate professor of philosophy at the ZRC SAZU Graduate School in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Before coming to Vienna, he served as a visiting professor of philosophy and aesthetics at the Bauhaus University Weimar for several semesters. His latest book is titled Äußerung des Denkens: Marx-Freud-Kant-Hegel [The Expression of Thought: Marx, Freud, Kant, Hegel] and was published in 2025 by Turia + Kant in Vienna. Ein Weltall des Kapitals. Die Überwindung der terrestrischen Vernunft [A Universe of Capital: Overcoming Terrestrial Reason] was also published in 2025, by Matthes & Seitz in Berlin. Other publications: Alain Badiou / Jean-Luc Nancy: German Philosophy (ed. 2017), An Introduction to New Philosophies of the Political (Laclau, Lefort, Nancy, Rancière, Badiou) (2012, with Uwe Hebekus), Ästhetik der Lebendigkeit. Kants dritte Kritik (2011) [Aesthetics of Vitality: Kant’s Third Critique].
