Position

Academic Director of the Institut de Sciences Sociales, Économiques et Politiques (ISSEP) in Madrid. University Professor at the Postgraduate Diploma in Social Communications of the Pontifical University of Salamanca.

Areas of competence

In the Spanish university I would belong to the area of knowledge known as Moral and Political Philosophy (I am a founding member of the association that gathers most of the scholars of this area, the AEEFP, where I was a member of its Board of Directors in 2013-2014). My research career has spread from the realm of Metaethics (occasionally getting into Epistemology) to the area of Political Philosophy, including many topics on Ethics and, more recently, on Applied Ethics as, for instance, Communication Ethics, Environmental Ethics, Architecture Ethics or Criminology Ethics. I have also developed part of my researches in the fields of Philosophy of Religion, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Gender and Queer Studies and, in general, on Contemporary Philosophy.

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Key points of my research

I have been keenly interested for years in wondering about what does it mean to be a rule. Most of the questions and answers that I have found in this area put a strong emphasis on the notion of interpretation, so I have made some research on this as well. The reflections of Ludwig Wittgenstein have been greatly useful for me at this point, and I was lucky enough to enjoy a whole year of research on this philosopher at the University of Vienna, Austria (by the way, he’s the guy on top of the above “Simpsons style” picture). I have also learned a lot from Gianni Vattimo, who was patient enough to be my post-doctoral director for two years at the University of Turin, Italy. Lately I have been engaged on the notion of post-truth (from a philosophical point of view), of nihilism and on the hypermoralism of our societies. Moral psychology and evolutionary psychology have been part of my researches as well. I also care quite a lot about notions like cultural or gender “identity” and “rite”.

Debates I am interested in

I have devoted some of my time trying to crack the code of such a slippery idea as Postmodernity, and I have found a lot of help in this sense with the tools provided by Philosophical Hermeneutics. I have been also worried by questions that I see strongly connected with all that: the discussions among multiculturalists and liberals, for instance, or the theoretical analysis of contemporary mass media, or some recent developments of Social and Moral Psychology. Lately I have noticed some tendency in me towards contemporary cultural struggles or “Kulturkämpfe”, like the ones related to relativism, animalism, feminism or nationalism.

What others have said about me

“We cannot forget in this list the name of such a disturbing and prolific author as M. Á. Quintana Paz, and his intense reception of the philosophy of G. Vattimo…”

(J. M. García Gómez-Heras: Comprender e interpretar: la recepción de la filosofía hermenéutica en la España democrática, page 43)

“We cannot consider Miguel Ángel Quintana Paz as part of the core of the studies on analogical hermeneutics, but his interesting and prolific proposal entitles him to have a place among the most remarkable Spanish hermeneuts. This author has explored the possibility of a hermeneutics clearly influenced by Wittgenstein and Vattimo, developing what we could call a ‘hermeneutics of epistemic rules’. This enables us to focus on the possibilities that Wittgenstein’s work gives to this Spanish philosopher, as long as we think that this is the most thought-provoking part of his contributions”.

(Juan R. Coca and Jesús A. Valero Matas: “Entre la filosofía y la sociología. El «Grupo de Hermenéutica de Valladolid»” in Comprender e interpretar, page 315)

A 2 minute presentation of my CV

The rest of this site attempts to give a closer view of my intellectual and academic work. But in case the reader just wants a general outlook of it in just one page, maybe this resumé (as of August 2022) can be useful.