A corpus of 360 distinct early modern printed editions containing Johannes de Sacrobosco’s Tractatus de sphaera is “dissected” into a corpus of 540 text-parts, 241 of them re-occurring at least once. Through the exploration of the data, we recognized a relevant position for four anonymous authors in their social network. We demonstrate that the text-parts originally assigned to the anonymous authors were authored or edited by Georg Rheticus. By means of data analysis, we conclusively establish that Rheticus profoundly impacted the (...) content of such textbooks for the introductory class in geocentric astronomy all over Europe between 1538 and 1629. (shrink)

The Capitalocene is a critical alternative to the concept of the Anthropocene, conceived to replace it. The article discusses the reasons why scholars from the social sciences and the humanities defend this alternative version of the “human epoch”, and dismiss the narrative that comes with the Anthropocene. This terminological quarrel expresses a tension between two postures that are frequently expressed in political and academic debates on environmental issues.

This new book by Beate Rossler is a work of real quality and originality on an extremely topical issue: the issue of privacy and the relations between the private and the public. Rossler investigates the reasons why we value privacy and why we ought to value it. In the context of modern, liberal societies, Rossler develops a theory of the private which links privacy and autonomy in a constitutive way: privacy is a necessary condition to lead an autonomous life. (...) The book develops a theory of freedom and autonomy which sees the ability to pose the "practical question" of how one wants to live, of what a person strives to be, at the centre of the modern idea of autonomy. The question of privacy is emerging as an increasingly important topic in social and political theory and is central to many current debates in law, the media and politics. The Value of Privacy will be widely recognised to be a classic contribution to the subject. (shrink)

The article presents the concept of the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch that follows the Holocene, characterized by human impact. While this scientific concept is rather new and still debated among geologists, the idea that humans have a significant and lasting impact on the planet is almost as old the discipline of geology. Various interpretations of the Anthropocene are then presented, and some philosophical consequences of the idea explored.

La philosophie peut-elle changer le monde? À en écouter Wittgenstein, la réponse est non. La philosophie laisse le monde tel qu’il est. Sa tâche consiste en la résolution des « pseudo-problèmes » qu’elle s’est elle-même posée. Pour Hans Jonas, au contraire, cette manière de philosopher est vaine. Oui, la philosophie peut et doit changer le monde, elle doit même s’emparer des problèmes du moment. Après être devenu un érudit du gnosticisme, Jonas comprend les limites de sa tour d’ivoire et rép...

English summary: Beate Bengard deals with the ecumenical hermeneutics of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur. His theory is of interest for ecumenical theology particularly in the area of ecumenical reception. The specificity of ecumenical reception is that it requires the acceptation of otherness - of the alterity - of the ecumenical partner. Obviously, this process goes far beyond the ratification of ecumenical documents. In order to clarify the process of reception, a hermeneutical model is needed which explains the interrelation (...) of the interpersonal recognition of otherness, the reception of texts, as well as of changing collective identities. A complex model of the reception process is deduced from the theory of Paul Ricoeur and Ricoeur's model is compared with three concrete ecumenical processes in France. This shows there is a high degree of accordance between these ecumenical examples and Ricoeur's hermeneutical process. The conclusion points to ways in which this contributes to building an ecumenical culture inspired by Ricoeur's philosophy. German description: Beate Bengard stellt erstmals der Beitrag des franzosischen Philosophen Paul Ricoeur zum okumenischen Dialog detailliert vor. Die Studie, die im Rahmen eines deutsch-franzosischen Promotionsprojekts entstanden ist, beruht auf teilweise bisher unveroffentlichten Zeugnissen. Fur die okumenische Theologie ist Ricoeurs Beitrag primar fur die Frage der 'okumenischen Rezeption' interessant. Die Besonderheit der okumenischen Rezeption gegenuber anderen Rezeptionsprozessen besteht darin, dass sie die Annahme des Anderen, d.h. die Rezeption der Alteritat des okumenischen Partners verlangt. Was das im Einzelnen bedeutet, kann nicht durch eine Rezeptionsforschung geklart werden, die sich nur auf die Ratifikation von okumenischen Dokumenten konzentriert. Zu seiner Klarung braucht es vielmehr ein hermeneutisches Modell, das den Zusammenhang von interpersonaler Anerkennung, Textrezeption und dem Wandel kollektiver Identitaten erklart. Eine solche komplexere Rezeptionstheorie rekonstruiert Bengard aus der Fulle von Ricoeurs philosophischem Werk und uberpruft dieses anschliessend auf ihre Plausibilitat hin. Dazu untersucht Bengard drei sehr unterschiedliche okumenische Rezeptionssituationen aus Frankreich: die Rezeption der Leuenberger Konkordie in den evangelischen Kirchen, die unabhangig fur den katholisch-evangelischen Dialog arbeitende Groupe des Dombes und die Communaute de Taize. Abschliessend gibt sie Anregungen fur eine Okumenekultur, die Inspiration aus dem Werk von Paul Ricoeur bezieht. (shrink)

In this 1999 study, Beat Wyss provides a critical analysis of Hegel's theories of art history. Analogous to his philosophy of history, Hegel viewed the history of art in dialectical terms: with its origins in the Ancient Near East, Western art culminated in Classical Greece, but began its decline already in the Hellenistic period. Yet, as Wyss posits, art refuses its programmed demise. He highlights the political dimension of this contradiction, showing the implication of theories which subordinate art to the (...) will of absolute rule. Wyss follows his analysis of Hegel's theories with a discussion of the work of four modern successors - Nordau, Spengler, Sedlmayr and Lukacs - all of whom adapted Hegel's dialectical model, in an effort to demonstrate the central contradictions of twentieth-century aesthetics. (shrink)

The paper focuses on processes of normalization through which dis/ability is simultaneously produced in specific collectives, networks, and socio-technological systems that enable the construction of such demarcations. Our point of departure is the cochlear implant, a neuroprosthetic device intended to replace and/or augment the function of the damaged inner ear. Unlike hearing aids, which amplify sounds, the CI does the work of damaged hair cells in the inner ear by providing sound signals to the brain. We examine the processes of (...) the CI’s genesis as well as its specific uses by and interrelations to the different and divergent actors that the CI assembles. We argue that the technological device and the implicated normalization process mobilize complex effects in varying socio-technical arrangements. The CI is conceived as a “boundary object” [89] or a “quasi-object” [49, 83], i.e., a metastabilized medium of translation that coordinates social, cultural, and technological action. Although intended to transform non-hearing or hard of hearing people into competent and “normal” hearing subjects, the CI system reproduces the asymmetrical structures of the disability discourse [14] through its function of “developing and maintaining coherence between intersecting social worlds” [89, 393]. Additionally, it initiates controversial discourses that have resulted in new forms of biosocial collectivities ranging from cochlear implantees with normal human hearing to human configurations who have passed through human enhancement. Our approach is thus situated at the intersection of disability and media studies and tackles the particular conditions technological media configurations impose upon the production of dis/ability. (shrink)

By analysing the cumulated usage of the Greek loan word daedalus in De rerum natura it can be shown that the mythological artist Daedalus functions as a poetological model for the didactic narrator. The narrator presents himself as a poet-Daedalus. As with Daedalus’ statues who were said to see and walk around like human beings, De rerum natura adds to the poetic mimesis a formal one such as to stand as a model for the nature it describes. Likewise, as Daedalus’ (...) most characteristic feature in classical literature is his astuteness the muse of poetry in De rerum natura is called callida. The craftsman’s work finally is reflected in the ordering of elements, i.e. in word order. The Epicurean position is furthermore elucidated by comparison with the Platonic view on Daedalus. (shrink)

Das Buch weist in exemplarischen Fallstudien von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart die zentrale Rolle von Bildern für Prozesse der Vergemeinschaftung auf. Gegen Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts setzt in der akademischen Diskussion eine verstärkte Rückwendung zum Konzept der Gemeinschaft ein.

Quel est le substrat de la conscience? Qu'est-ce qui la fait? Poser la question signifie ne pas se satisfaire de la position naturaliste qui affirme que c'est le cerveau qui produit la conscience. En fait, toute explication qui situe son substrat dans le monde objectif est confrontée à une forme de circularité à la fois ontologique (la conscience est dans le monde qui est dans la conscience) et épistémique (la conscience explique le monde qui explique la conscience). La phénoménologie transcendantale (...) n'échappe pas à cette circularité. Et le caractère circulaire d'une vision globale de la réalité s'avère rédhibitoire dès lors qu'on est prêt à considérer subjectivité et objectivité sur le même niveau de dignité ontologique. Reste alors l'option d'aborder, sans préjugés, la question du substrat comme problème philosophique. Il s'agit de concevoir le substrat de la conscience comme un domaine d'être à part, situé en amont de toute objectivation. Un tel substrat est transcendantal, puisqu'il est condition de possibilité de toute connaissance. (shrink)

The processing, representation, and perception of bodily signals (interoception) plays an important role for human behavior. Theories of embodied cognition hold that higher cognitive processes operate on perceptual symbols and that concept use involves reactivations of the sensory-motor states that occur during experience with the world. Similarly, activation of interoceptive representations and meta-representations of bodily signals supporting interoceptive awareness are profoundly associated with emotional experience and cognitive functions. This article gives an overview over present findings and models on interoception and (...) mechanisms of embodiment and highlights its relevance for disorders that are suggested to represent a translation deficit of bodily states into subjective feelings and self-awareness. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 111 Heft: 1 Seiten: 157-212.

his monograph examines the metaphysical commitments of the new mechanistic philosophy, a way of thinking that has returned to center stage. It challenges a variant of reductionism with regard to higher-level phenomena, which has crystallized as a default position among these so-called New Mechanists. Furthermore, it opposes those philosophers who reject the possibility of interlevel causation. Contemporary philosophers believe that the explanation of scientific phenomena requires the discovery of relevant mechanisms. As a result, new mechanists are, in the main, concerned (...) solely with epistemological questions. But, the author argues, their most central claims rely on metaphysical assumptions. Thus, they must also take into account metaphysics, a system of thought concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world around it. This branch of philosophy does indeed matter to the empirical sciences. The chapters investigate the nature of mechanisms, their components, and the ways in which they can bring about different phenomena. In addition, the author develops a novel account of causation in terms of activities. The analysis provides the basis for many further research projects on mechanisms and their relations to, for example, the mind-body problem, realization, multiple realization, natural kinds, causation, laws of nature, counterfactuals, and scientific levels. (shrink)

Constitutive mechanistic explanations are said to refer to mechanisms that constitute the phenomenon-to-be-explained. The most prominent approach of how to understand this constitution relation is Carl Craver’s mutual manipulability approach to constitutive relevance. Recently, the mutual manipulability approach has come under attack (Leuridan 2012; Baumgartner and Gebharter 2015; Romero 2015; Harinen 2014; Casini and Baumgartner 2016). Roughly, it is argued that this approach is inconsistent because it is spelled out in terms of interventionism (which is an approach to causation), whereas (...) constitutive relevance is said to be a non-causal relation. In this paper, I will discuss a strategy of how to resolve this inconsistency, so-called fat-handedness approaches (Baumgartner and Gebharter 2015; Casini and Baumgartner 2016; Romero 2015). I will argue that these approaches are problematic. I will present a novel suggestion of how to consistently define constitutive relevance in terms of interventionism. My approach is based on a causal interpretation of mutual manipulability, where manipulability is interpreted as a causal relation between the mechanism’s components and temporal parts of the phenomenon. (shrink)

Written by a select international group of leading privacy scholars, Social Dimensions of Privacy endorses and develops an innovative approach to privacy. By debating topical privacy cases in their specific research areas, the contributors explore the new privacy-sensitive areas: legal scholars and political theorists discuss the European and American approaches to privacy regulation; sociologists explore new forms of surveillance and privacy on social network sites; and philosophers revisit feminist critiques of privacy, discuss markets in personal data, issues of privacy in (...) health care and democratic politics. The broad interdisciplinary character of the volume will be of interest to readers from a variety of scientific disciplines who are concerned with privacy and data protection issues. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 109 Heft: 2 Seiten: 943-994.

Immer mehr Menschen verbringen ihren Lebensabend in Einrichtungen der Altenpflege. Zusätzlich zur Sorge um physische, psychische und soziale Belange gilt es, deren spirituelle Bedürfnisse zu berücksichtigen. Ziel dieser Arbeit war es, die spirituellen Bedürfnisse von alten Menschen in Langzeitpflegeeinrichtungen zu erfassen. Gleichzeitig wurde untersucht, welche spirituellen Bedürfnisse Pflegende bei den ihnen anvertrauten Bewohner/-innen wahrnehmen. Dabei wurden Übereinstimmungen bzw. Unterschiede identifiziert. Daten aus 28 Einzelinterviews mit Bewohnerinnen und Bewohnern und 9 Fokusgruppeninterviews mit Mitarbeitenden wurden mittels Qualitativer Inhaltsanalyse ausgewertet und unter die (...) Kernkategorien „Sinn“, „Verbundenheit“, „Transzendenz“ kategorisiert. Die Kategorien beider Befragtengruppen wurden einem Vergleich unterzogen. Trotz zahlreicher Übereinstimmungen in den Aussagen beider Gruppen bleiben Defizite in der Wahrnehmung von Pflegenden. Aus den Ergebnissen der Arbeit werden Schlussfolgerungen für die Einbeziehung der spirituellen Dimension der alten Menschen in die pflegerische Arbeit im Seniorenheim gezogen und Empfehlungen ausgesprochen. (shrink)

Die obligaten Kapital-Kurse in Studentenkreisen um 1968 bilden den Anfang einer Entwicklung in den Geisteswissenschaften, die den positiven Wissenskanon der einzelnen Fächer dem Zerfall überlässt. Ob Germanist, Philosoph oder Kunsthistoriker - Hauptsache, man hat seinen Marx, und später all die anderen gelesen. Der vorliegende Essay verfolgt die Leitwährungen der modisch variierenden Metadiskurse. Beginnend historisch mit der Frankfurter Schule, endend mit Derrida als Meisterdenker wird ihre Funktion beschrieben: Die postmoderne Monokultur erfüllt die politisch korrekte Aufgabe, aus den Geisteswissenschaften das genuine Wissen (...) um je eigene Gegenstände und Methoden auszutreiben. (shrink)

Responding to bivalent stimuli slows subsequent performance. In prospective memory research, prospective memory targets can be considered as bivalent stimuli because they typically involve features relevant for both the prospective memory task and the ongoing task. The purpose of this study was to investigate how responding to a prospective memory target slows subsequent performance. In two experiments, we embedded the prospective memory task in a task-switching paradigm and we manipulated the degree of task-set overlap between the prospective memory task and (...) the ongoing task. The results showed consistent after-effects of responding to prospective memory targets. The specific trajectory of the slowing depended on the amount of task-set overlap. These results demonstrate that responding to prospective memory targets results in after-effects, a so far neglected cost on ongoing task performance. (shrink)

L’article étudie les implications de l’éponymie dans les domaines religieux et politique en examinant l’identité et le contexte des officiels éponymes. Le point central est le titre de stéphanéphore, qui n’est pas seulement l’un des quarante titres éponymes connus, mais qui mérite une attention particulière dans le cadre de l’éponymie. On remarque que, dans bon nombre de cités, cette charge imposait ses caractéristiques à ceux qui l’assumaient quels que soient leur titre ou leur fonction de départ. Ces caractéristiques étaient de (...) nature religieuse et elles étaient essentielles pour la « chorégraphie » religieuse et, dès lors, pour l’identité religieuse d’une polis particulière. Étant donné que le profil des officiels éponymes (au moins à la période hellénistique) n’était pas dessiné par le titre qui s’attachait originellement à eux, une distinction entre officiels éponymes « séculiers » ou « religieux » n’a aucun sens. Au contraire, dans beaucoup de cités d’Asie Mineure, le titre de stéphanéphore – accepter et porter la couronne d’une divinité particulière – reflète la réelle importance de la charge qui était comparable à, modelée sur, et souvent combinée à la prêtrise. (shrink)

Many authors have turned their attention to the notion of constitution to determine whether the hypothesis of extended cognition (EC) is true. One common strategy is to make sense of constitution in terms of the new mechanists’ mutual manipulability account (MM). In this paper I will show that MM is insufficient. The Challenge of Trivial Extendedness arises due to the fact that mechanisms for cognitive behaviors are extended in a way that should not count as verifying EC. This challenge can (...) be met by adding a necessary condition: cognitive constituents satisfy MM and they are what I call behavior unspecific. (shrink)

Argentine tango has been investigated by scholars of various disciplinary backgrounds. A broad range of empirical methods has been used in this research. But little attention has been paid to the artefacts which participate in the practice of Argentine tango. Following the programmatic claims of the ‘practical turn’ in the social sciences and in cultural studies, practices are always linked with the materiality of the practising bodies and of the artefacts participating in practices. Thus materiality is indispensable for the analysis (...) of any practice. How materiality can be included into the generating of data and the analysis is little discussed in practice theories. High heels in Argentine tango are the example to demonstrate the necessary application of various qualitative research instruments to investigate the role of artefacts in practice. High heeled female dancing shoes as used in Argentine tango are analysed with respect to their gendered performative and symbolic impact. (shrink)