Das Phänomen des Amateurkünstlers und Dilettanten zählt zu den bisher kaum beachteten Gegenständen der kunsthistorischen Forschung. Das Werk dieser Schaffenden darf gleichwohl als ein entscheidender Beitrag zur Kunst- und Künstlergeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts verstanden werden. Unter einem Dilettanten versteht man gemeinhin einen Laien und Stümper, welcher dem Metier, in dem er sich versucht, eher Schaden als Nutzen bringt. Dabei wird ausser Acht gelassen, dass sich künstlerisch begabte Personen vor allem deshalb als Dilettanten bezeichneten, um sich vom professionellen Künstler abzugrenzen. Dilettieren (...) wurde als eine dem Adel vorbehaltene exklusive Form der Kunstausübung verstanden, die sich weder finanziellen Interessen noch dem Geschmack eines grösseren Publikums unterwerfen musste und sich somit kreative Freiräume ermöglichte. (shrink)

This investigation examines several key factors believed to promote human flourishing, specifically: Factor 1: Age, Education, & Healthcare, Factor 2: Labor Force Participation, Factor 3: Crime, Factor 4: Income, Factor 5: Youth Unemployment and Factor 6: Voting Behavior. Data was examined at the county level, and collected from a variety of US government and non-governmental organizations. Our investigation into the conditions necessary to promote human flourishing uses internal migration within the United States as the indicator of “unhappy” communities. The findings (...) reveal that all factors are important in emigration somewhere, but the factors vary for different counties. As a result, attempts to address the ills of society require an appreciation of geography and context. (shrink)

Anscombe claims that whenever a subject is doing something intentionally, this subject knows that they are doing it. This essay defends Anscombe's claim from an influential set of counterexamples, due to Davidson. It argues that Davidson's counterexamples are tacit appeals to an argument, on which knowledge can't be essential to doing something intentionally, because some things that can be done intentionally require knowledge of future successes, and because such knowledge can't ever be guaranteed when someone is doing something intentionally. The (...) essay argues that there are apparently sensible grounds for denying each of these two premises. (shrink)

Modern sovereignty is anthropocentric, constituted and organized by reference to human beings alone. Although a metaphysical assumption, anthropocentrism is of immense practical import, enabling modern states to command loyalty and resources from their subjects in pursuit of political projects. It has limits, however, which are brought clearly into view by the authoritative taboo on taking UFOs seriously. UFOs have never been systematically investigated by science or the state, because it is assumed to be known that none are extraterrestrial. Yet in (...) fact this is not known, which makes the UFO taboo puzzling given the ET possibility. Drawing on the work of Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, the puzzle is explained by the functional imperatives of anthropocentric sovereignty, which cannot decide a UFO exception to anthropocentrism while preserving the ability to make such a decision. The UFO can be "known" only by not asking what it is. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin's influence on Theodor Adorno centers on the former's early philosophy of language, which drew on manifold sources, including importantly the theological writings of Johann Georg Hamann. Adorno adapts this “expressivist” philosophy of language as part of a critique of Hegel's dialectic that forms the basis for Adorno's understanding of epistemology and social criticism. The result of this tempered influence is that Benjamin's and Adorno's projects share a great deal of common ground and vocabulary, but diverge in fundamental ways. (...) These tensions come to the fore in Adorno's 1930s criticisms of Benjamin's unfinished Arcades Project. Of particular import are their respective understandings of Benjamin's notion of a constellation. For Adorno the constellation is a response to the dialectical tension in the relation between subject and object, while for Benjamin it transcends that relation. (shrink)

Theocritus' twenty-second idyll is cast in the form of a hymn to the Dioscuri, who are addressed in the proem as saviours of men, horses, and ships. This opening section of the idyll is modelled loosely on the short thirty-third Homeric hymn, and like that hymn contains an expanded account of the twins' rescue of ships about to be lost in a storm. As is hardly surprising, Theocritus in reworking the Homeric hymn draws on other literary antecedents as well, and (...) like other Alexandrian poets makes prominent use of diction borrowed and adapted from the Homeric epics. At the same time, the proem also shares several points of contact, largely overlooked or disputed by previous scholarship, with the poetry of Theocritus' own contemporaries. In the present paper, I shall suggest that in the storm scene of the proem references to Aratus' Phaenomena and Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica occur in a carefully arranged pattern with potentially significant implications for our understanding of the proem and the idyll as a whole. (shrink)

Following recent debates on the New Neoclassical Synthesis, the theory of monetary policy has been renewed. The prevailing method, illustrated by Woodford's version of Interest and Prices, is a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model in which the old LM curve is voluntarily substituted by an optimal monetary rule. Such a turning point requires a peculiar set of assumptions, especially regarding monetary prices. The recent debate pays attention to de-emphasis on the nominal monetary aggregate, which does not play any explicit role (...) in monetary policy deliberations. Following Calvo's model, Woodford's neo-Wicksellian framework only considered monetary prices in equilibrium. This article demonstrates that even though the New Neoclassical Synthesis considers it essential to have a monetary theory for policymaking, the former offers the same answers as the traditional static macroeconomics. More precisely, it shows that the use of dynamic optimisation – such as the one developed by Woodford's approach – does not contribute in a decisive way to improving our understanding of the role that money prices play in monetary theory. Woodford's canvas is silent about the mechanisms whereby monetary policy induces agents to adjust individual money prices to the values that generate an equilibrium price level. Thus, if we want to close this gap, it may be useful to consider a 'forward guidance' strategy. By means of such a tool, central bankers are able to shape the public's expectations on economic outcomes by pre-announcing the time path of future policy actions. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Necessity and Essence Naming and Reference Rules and Meaning Conclusion References.

Can we have a posteriori knowledge of modal facts? And if so, is that knowledge fundamentally a posteriori, or does a priori intuition provide the modal component of what is known? Though the latter view seems more straightforward, there are also reasons for taking the first option seriously.

Metaphors involve immense explanatory power and positive impact predominantly in the scientific education and popularization. Still the use of metaphors in science might be a double-edged sword. Introduction of the computer metaphor to many scientific fields in the last century resulted in reductionist approaches, oversimplifications and mechanistic explanations in science as well as in humanities. In this short commentary we developed further the computer metaphor by prof. Noble and the illusions this metaphor led to in genetics, linguistics and consequently DNA (...) linguistics. (shrink)

For Protosociology the "Diskurs "-theory has a special significance. Validity-dimensions of speech and their evaluation in the procedure of argumentation indicate generalized presuppositions of interactive processes. These validity-dimensions can be reconstructed in lingusitic characterisations of "normative language" (P.W. Taylor). Thus it is possible to make first steps to a theory of validity. Protosociology provides a special reconstruction of argumentative speech on the level "interpersonality, structure of communicative acting and collective identity". The aim of Protosociology within a context of problems of (...) "Diskurs"-theory would have to establish normative values for an evaluation of such validity-dimensions. A logic of "Diskurs" would have to be developed as a kind of logic of "relevance". (shrink)

At first place the article should serve as clarification of the term "lifeworld" ("Lebenswelt) by means of selected lifeworld-conceptions of 20th. century philosophy.I would like to explikate the attempts of reflexive reference to lifeworld which exist in the concept of Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Searle. According to the explanations of Husserl and Heidegger my main interest lies in the problematic of validity. The relation between lifeworld and reflection shall be dealt with in the light of the philosophy of language (Wittgenstein, (...) Searle).At least I would like to discuss the relation between tifeword and science. (shrink)