This Element provides an introduction to the hiddenness argument, as presented by John Schellenberg, and its up-to-date discussion in a comprehensible way. It concludes with a brief assessment of where things stand, from the author's point of view, and why divine hiddenness should not reduce a reflective theist's confidence in theism.

Kant's relation to religion and theology is complex since he tries both to delimit theology's influence and to inherit its discursive power. The essay explores the different critical strategies and rhetorical means that Kant uses to deal with theology: theological analogies and metaphors in his systematic thought, a new kind of,philosophy of religion,' a political theology of civil society, and finally a specific way of reading the Bible.

The paper analyzes Christmas Eve, a short dialogue by the protestant romantic Friedrich Schleiermacher published in 1806, as an attempt to translate the traditional language of Christmas into the idiom of the modern, gendered family life. The central message of Christmas is rearticulated in the realm of private family life, the division of gender, the naïve happiness of the children etc. At the same time, the form of the dialogue among the family members and some close friends is used to (...) raise different interpretations of Christmas, including moments of suffering and national identity. The text thus both reflects and actively shapes a shifting interpretation of religious traditions in the modern word precisely by enacting the translation of Christian language into a modern vernacular (that of family, intimacy, nation) as an ongoing process among the different partners of the dialogue. (shrink)

The so-called Kulturkampf, the conflict between the German Reich and the Catholic Church in the 1870s and 1880s, is one of the most important ideological conflicts of the late nineteenth century and reveals a political theological dynamic characteristic of the modern (German) nation state. This paper analyzes the paradoxes of this conflict along the lines with Eric Santner’s analysis of political representations. During the Kulturkampf, Catholic citizens were publicly suspected of not being loyal Germans, and the Catholic Church is widely (...) figured as an (inner) enemy in the liberal press and in modern caricatures. In these polemics, numerous political theological figures emerge: images of a gendered relation of domination of the (female) church by the (male) state, phantasies of the body politic and its precarious unity as well as of its purification respectively of the extermination of its others that continue to determine other ideological conflicts in the twentieth century. (shrink)

This article examines the widespread diagnosis of a »crisis of rhetoric« around 1800 from the hitherto largely neglected perspective of the sermon. Four exemplary cases are used to show how rhetoric continues and transforms itself. Franz Theremin reaffirms the function of rhetoric and represents the largely unbroken continuity of rhetorical knowledge in 19th century homiletics and preaching practice. Johann G. Fichte develops the format of a philosophical sermon supposed to serve precisely as a propaedeutic of critical philosophy, which is in (...) itself anti-rhetorical. Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher develops a new conception of the sermon and also a highly influential conception of religion from the problem of the communicability of religious knowledge. Karl P. Moritz proclaims a religion of art in the form of a sermon and narrates the comical failure of this proclamation, thus exposing the very limits of a sacralization of art. Through these four case studies we can gain a more precise understanding of the »crisis of rhetoric« and envision an interdisciplinary research on the sermon in which literary studies and theology would cooperate closely. (shrink)

Aging of the organism is associated with highly reproducible DNA methylation (DNAm) changes, which facilitate estimation of donor age. Cancer is also associated with DNAm changes, which may contribute to disease development. Here, we speculate that age‐associated DNAm changes may increase the risk of tumor initiation. Notably, when using epigenetic signatures for age‐estimations tumor cells are often predicted to be much older than the chronological age of the patient. We demonstrate that aberrant hypermethylation within the gene DNA methyltransferase 3A (DNMT3A) (...) – which may contribute to initiation of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) – is particularly observed in AML samples that reveal significantly more age‐associated DNAm changes. The functional relevance of age‐associated DNAm changes remains to be elucidated, but they occur genome wide, in a highly reproducible manner, and most likely influence chromatin organization – and hence may favor acquisition of aberrant DNAm patterns contributing to cancer in the elderly. (shrink)

The c‐ros, c‐met and c‐neu genes encode receptor‐type tyrosine kinases and were originally identified because of their oncogenic potential. However, recent progress in the analysis of these receptors and their respective ligands indicate that they do not mediate exclusively mitogenic signals. Rather, they can induce cell movement, differentiation or morphogenesis of epithelial cells in culture. Interestingly, the discussed receptors are expressed in embryonal epithelia, whereas direct and indirect evidence shows that the corresponding ligands are produced in mesenchymal cells. In development, (...) signals given by mesenchymal cells are major driving forces for differentiation and morphogenesis of epithelia; embryonal epithelia are generally unable to differentiate without the appropriate mesenchymal factors. The observed activities of these receptor/ligand systems in cultured cells and their expression patterns indicate that they regulate epithelial differentiation and morphogenesis also during embryogenesis and suggest thus a molecular basis for mesenchymal epithelial interactions. (shrink)

Um 1800 verstärkt sich das Problembewusstsein für eine der wissenschaftlichen Reflexion adäquate Darstellung, da sich die Überzeugung durchsetzt, die Sprache sei nicht nur ein Werkzeug, sondern vielmehr ein »bildendes Organ des Gedankens«. Das enge Verhältnis von Aussage und Ausdruck rückt die Wissenschaft in der deutschen Tradition geradezu zwangsläufig in die Nähe zur Literatur. Dabei zeigt sich das wissenschaftliche Selbstverständnis dieser Jahre in der Frage v.a. seiner Adressierung von einer interessanten Paradoxie geprägt. So soll der jeweilige Sprachgebrauch überhaupt erst den szientistischen (...) Anspruch wissenschaftlicher Projekte beglaubigen und diese gleichsam als Spezialdiskurse legitimieren, zugleich muss der ideale Adressat der Wissenschaft solche Spezialdiskurse aber immer auch überschreiten. J. G. Fichte etwa weist den Vorwurf der »Unverständlichkeit« seiner »Wissenschaftslehre« als implizites Verlangen nach »Seichtigkeit« seitens der Leser zurück, zugleich aber erlegt er dem Wissenschaftler die Aufgabe auf, einen Beitrag zum »Fortgang des Menschengeschlechts« zu leisten. Derartigen Spannungen spürt der Band im Kontext vornehmlich des Niedergangs der Rhetorik und der Neubegründung der Universität nach. (shrink)

Adults’ intentionality judgments regarding an action are influenced by their moral evaluation of this action. This is clearly indicated in the so-called side-effect effect: when told about an action (e.g. implementing a business plan) with an intended primary effect (e.g. raise profits) and a foreseen side effect (e.g. harming/helping the environment), subjects tend to interpret the bringing about of the side effect more often as intentional when it is negative (harming the environment) than when it is positive (helping the environment). (...) From a cognitive point of view, it is unclear whether the side-effect effect is driven by the moral status of the side effects specifically, or rather more generally by its normative status. And from a developmental point of view, little is known about the ontogenetic origins of the effect. The present study therefore explored the cognitive foundations and the ontogenetic origins of the side-effect effect by testing 4-to 5-year-old children with scenarios in which a side effect was in accordance with/violated a norm. Crucially, the status of the norm was varied to be conventional or moral. Children rated the bringing about of side-effects as more intentional when it broke a norm than when it accorded with a norm irrespective of the type of norm. The side-effect effect is thus an early-developing, more general and pervasive phenomenon, not restricted to morally relevant side effects. (shrink)

Cultural Intersections in Later Chinese Buddhism. Edited by Marsha Weidner. University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu 2001. ix, 234 pp. US$44.00. ISBN 0-8248-2308-7.

In order to cure the social sciences of many of their inveterate diseases, it seems to me extremely important and useful to support and develop in some measure A.S. Tsipko's ideas on the doctrinal preconditions of our difficulties and failures in the building of socialism, ideas that have provoked such wide-ranging responses.

This article examines the technique and legality of induced abortion of one or more fetuses in a multiple pregnancy, where the aim is the destruction of some but not all of the fetuses present (selective reduction of pregnancy). It concludes that since the legal status of the procedure in English law is unclear, it may be a criminal offence to perform selective reduction even where there is an ostensible clinical need. Moreover if the procedure is carried out negligently, and any (...) infant damaged as a result is subsequently born alive, he or she may have a civil claim against the practitioner who carried out the procedure. (shrink)

Tom 1. Rannekhristianskiĭ gnosticheskiĭ tekst v rossiĭskoĭ kulʹture (21 i︠a︡nvari︠a︡ 2011 g.) -- Tom 2. Sudʹby religiozno-filosofskikh iskaniĭ Nikolai︠a︡ Novikova i ego kruga (15-17 okti︠a︡bri︠a︡ 2012 g.).

Russell’s distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description has been recently re-examined in frequently controversial epistemo-logical contributions. The present essay reflects upon the pertinent papers by D. F. Pears, J. Hintikka, R. Chisholm, W. Sellars, A. J. Ayer, and others, but is pri-marily founded on Russell’s significant formulations from his writings published between 1910 and 1918. By employing an auxiliary device of a late-Wittgen-steinian language game, I explore at first the situation in which human subject is “experiencing” and (...) naming particular objects and later the subject’s acquaintance with universals. The reconstruction of such situations shows that, contrary to Russell’s assumptions, even the “purest” acquaintance cannot function without knowledge by description, i.e. without sta-ting propositions about the object of acquaintance . Then the only “descriptionless” alternative would be a kind of intuitive knowledge of such objects which is difficult to reconcile with the position held by Russell in the 1910s. Whatever the consequences, this topic retains its fundamental epistemological significance. (shrink)

v. 1. Edinyĭ i︠a︡zyk chelovechestva. --.