From 1970, he studied philosophy and mathematics in Graz, Goettingen, Edinburgh with G.E.Davie and Oxford with J. L. Mackie.
In 2006 he gained the David Hume Award of the Kellmann Society for Humanism and Enlightenment.
He is a member of the Giordano Bruno Stiftung,[2] a society to promote evolutionary humanism.
His biographies and commentaries on Hume and Adam Smith are seen as the standard of research on the Scottish Enlightenment in the German-speaking world.
His philosophically most important work Gottes Guete und die Uebel der Welt deals comprehensively with Theodicy (the Problem of evil).