I have studied medicine and philosophy in Munich and London. After working for one year as an assistant physician at Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich, I took up PGR studies in philosophy and received my PhD from the University of Sheffield in 2024. Since May 2024, I am working as a research associate within the project "Existence after Kant" at King's.

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Kant and German idealism
• Metaphysics
• History of philosophy

My research is in post-Kantian philosophy with a focus on metaphysics in Hegel and later period Schelling. In my thesis (supervisor Robert Stern), I analysed how Hegel hopes to account for the reality of individual beings within his metaphysics of the concept – and how Schelling criticises this project. I am also interested in how the German idealists appropriate and transform the ideas of other thinkers like Kant, Leibniz, or Aristotle and how they theorise the very idea of a history of philosophy in the first place. As part of my current position at King's (research project "Existence after Kant") I explore the notion of being in lesser known post-Kantians like J.F. Herbart or H. Lotze.

Teaching

I have taught seminar courses on the history of teleology (from Plato to Hegel) and the philosophy of love at LMU Munich. During my PhD at Sheffield I have tutored modules on environmental ethics and history of philosophical ideas. 

Expertise and public engagement 

Communicating philosophy is important. I therefore run a podcast project called the Rabbit Hole of Ideas on Youtube. I also serve as a social media manager for the Hegel Society of Great Britain.

Selected publications

Weiss, Leonard. “Kant and Schelling on Metaphysical Disagreement.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2024, 1–22. doi:10.1080/09672559.2024.2418599.

Weiss, Leonard. “Schelling versus Hegel on Individuation.” Hegel Bulletin, 2024, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1017/hgl.2024.50.

Stern, Robert, and Leonard Weiss. “The Feebleness of the Concept in Nature: A Challenge to Conceptual Realism?” Chapter. In Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature: A Critical Guide, edited by Marina F. Bykova, 15–35. Cambridge Critical Guides. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.

“Žižek’s Enjoyment Within the Limits of Reason Alone” & “Objet petit a” in: Dominik Finkelde (ed.), Žižek-Handbuch, Stuttgart: Metzler (invited contribution, forthcoming)

Hegel, Freud und der Begriff der Erinnerung” in: Lang, Dybel, & Gerda Pagel (eds.), Hermeneutik und Psychoanalyse: Perspektiven und Kontroversen. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2016.