Presentation

Jon Wittrock is Doctor of Political and Social Sciences and Associate Professor (Docent) in political science. He completed his PhD at the European University Institute and has been active as a researcher and teacher at several universities, in Sweden and abroad. Wittrock's research has explored the ambiguous borderland between the religous and the secular, but also focused on the connections between dignity and freedom. He is currently developing a theory of multidimensional autonomy and has traced potential implications of this framework for questions concerning justice and human rights, pertaining to controversial issues such as involuntary loneliness, sexual deprivation, and assisted dying.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

“A human right to assisted dying? Autonomy, dignity, and exceptions to the right to life” Nursing Ethics 32:7, 2025.

“A human right to pleasure? Sexuality, autonomy and egalitarian strategies” Journal of Medical Ethics 50:4, 2024.

“A human right to friendship? Dignity, autonomy, and social deprivation” International Journal of Human Rights 26:9, 2022.

“Liberalism, nationalism and religion: Multidimensional autonomy, trade-offs and analogies” Nations and Nationalism 28:3, 2022.

“All that is Holy: The Role of Religion in Postcapitalist Communities" Rethinking Marxism 32:4, 2020.

“Constituent Power and Constitutive Exceptions: Carl Schmitt, Populism and the Consummation of Secularisation” in Matilda Arvidsson, Leila Brännström & Panu Minkkinen (eds.) Constituent Power: Law, Popular Rule and Politics, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020.

Contemporary Democracy and the Sacred: Rights, Religion and Ideology, London: Bloomsbury, 2018.

“Which Way I Fly: Reforming Nihilism in the Anthropocene” in Richard Polt & Jon Wittrock (eds.) The Task of Philosophy in the Anthropocene, London: Rowman & Littlefield 2018.

“The EU as a ‘Large Space’? Carl Schmitt and the Contemporary Dilemmas of Political Rituals and Cultural Borders” in Mats Andrén, Thomas Lindkvist, Ingmar Söhrman & Katharina Vajta (eds.) Cultural Borders of Europe: Narratives, Concepts and Practices in the Present and the Past, New York: Berghahn Books, 2017.

“Sacred Nature and the Nature of the Sacred: Rethinking the Sacred in the Anthropocene” Telos 177, 2016.

“Heidegger within the Boundaries of Mere Reason? ‘Nihilism’ as a Contemporary Critical Narrative” in Sven Eliaeson, Lyudmila Harutyunyan & Larissa Titarenko (eds.) After the Soviet Empire: Legacies and Pathways, Leiden: Brill, 2015.

“Processes of order and the concreteness of the sacred: on the contemporary relevance of Carl Schmitt's critique of nihilism” in Matilda Arvidsson, Leila Brännström & Panu Minkkinen (eds.) The Contemporary Relevance of Carl Schmitt: Law, Politics, Theology, New York: Routledge, 2015.

“Nihilism and the Resurrection of Political Space: Hannah Arendt's Utopia?” in Elena Namli, Jayne Svenungsson & Alana Vincent (eds.) Jewish Thought, Utopia, and Revolution, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014.

“The Social Logic of Late Nihilism: Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt on Global Space and the Sites of Gods” European Review 22:2, 2014.