The Institute of Philosophy of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts was founded in 1979 as the Institute of Marxist Studies and was renamed the Institute of Philosophy in 1988.

 

The research carried out by the Institute covers four areas: philosophy as it relates to science, art, and politics, as well as to philosophy itself. Since its foundation the Institute has conducted research contributing to ongoing international philosophical debates.

The fields of research systematically and continuously examined by the Institute's researchers and associates include: ethics, aesthetics, contemporary philosophy, political and legal philosophy, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of history and the history of political thought, the history and philosophy of science, medieval philosophy, the philosophy of Kant, and the philosophical significance of psychoanalysis (particularly of Lacanian psychoanalysis). Some of the fields of research of the Institute form part of the postgraduate program Intercultural Studies - Comparative Studies of Ideas and Cultures, organized jointly by the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the University of Nova Gorica, as well as part of the educational programs of the University of Ljubljana, the University of Maribor, the University of Primorska, and the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis (ISH) – the Ljubljana Graduate School of the Humanities. The Institute's researchers lecture on ethics at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Arts, on aesthetics at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Primorska, on the history and theory of histography at the Faculty of Education of the University of Maribor, and on the epistemology of the humanities at the ISH.