One of the first Swiss performance artists, Manon has fashioned a career for herself out of the identities of others. Whether exploring the limits of gender or the beauty of decay, Manon—through her personas, installations, and performance pieces—continually foregrounds the instability of place and self. Her most recent project, She Was Once MISS RIMINI, is one of her most brutal and touching. Here, she literally depicts imagined futures for an aging beauty queen. Each exquisite image in this pictorial essay teases (...) out the possible paths Miss Rimini—an alter-ego for Manon who “happened” upon a beauty pageant in the early 1970s and walked away with the crown—could have taken. A small-town diva? A hypersensitive viola player? Perhaps even a psychiatric patient? She Was Once MISS RIMINI is a trenchant meditation on the art, or artifice, of growing older. Costume, lipstick, lighting, attitude—all aspects of self-presentation are in concert here with quiet critiques of social and economic systems that limit the options of older women. Accompanied by an enlightening introduction by art theorist Brigitte Ulmer, She Was Once MISS RIMINI is the first and only documentation of Miss Rimini and one of the first books in English on Manon. (shrink)

The physics of condensed matter, in contrast to quantum physics or cosmology, is not traditionally associated with deep philosophical questions. However, as science - largely thanks to more powerful computers - becomes capable of analysing and modelling ever more complex many-body systems, basic questions of philosophical relevance arise. Questions about the emergence of structure, the nature of cooperative behaviour, the implications of the second law, the quantum-classical transition and many other issues. This book is a collection of essays by leading (...) physicists and philosophers. Each investigates one or more of these issues, making use of examples from modern condensed matter research. Physicists and philosophers alike will find surprising and stimulating ideas in these pages. (shrink)

This book, first published in 2000, offers translations of the initial critical reactions to Kant's philosophy. Also included is a selection of writings by Kant's contemporaries who took on the task of defending the critical philosophy against early attacks. The first aim of this collection is to show in detail how Kant was understood and misunderstood by his contemporaries. The second aim is to reveal the sorts of arguments that Kant and his first disciples mounted in their defense of the (...) theoretical philosophy. The third aim of the book is to contribute to an understanding of the development of Kant's critical philosophy after its initial formulation in the Critique of Pure Reason, and in particular why Kant made the changes he did in the second edition of the work in 1787. This collection, which includes a glossary of key terms and biographical sketches of the critics on both sides of the debate, is a major addition to Kant scholarship and should be seen as a companion volume to the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. (shrink)

Through a detailed account of the history of online chat devices, this article shows the emergence, over time, of two distinct interactional formats underlying these social media. They may be captured by two generic metaphors of synchrony: conference (a gathering in a virtual place where unfocused interactions and group sociability occur) and copresence (where practices are centered on the sustainment of contact between individuals who know each other). Internet Relay Chat (IRC) appears as the archetype of the conference format. This (...) notion of chat involves the existence of a relatively persistent shared space—conjured up by various specific metaphors: room, channel, and so on—inside which users get together and through which they are able to find other users, with whom they may weave electronic social ties that may possibly lead to offline relationships. The other format is associated with instant messaging (IM) devices, on the model of “ICQ” software. Although there seems to be a decline in interest for devices based on the former format, those based on the latter benefit from a growing popularity, possibly indicating deeper sociological implications. (shrink)

It has been hypothesized that our believing that, or its seeming to us as though, the world is in some way dynamical partially explains (and perhaps rationalizes) future-bias. Recent work has, in turn, found a correlation between future-bias and near-bias, suggesting that there is a common explanation for both. Call the claim that what partially explains our being both future- and near-biased is our believing/it seeming to us as though the world is dynamical, the dynamical explanation. We empirically test two (...) versions of the dynamical explanation. The first is the moving ego explanation—according to which it is our belief that the ego moves, or our phenomenology as of the ego moving, that jointly (partially) explains future- and near-bias. The second is the moving time explanation—according to which it is our belief that time robustly passes, or our phenomenology as of robust passage, which jointly (partially) explain future- and near-bias. We found no evidence in favour of either explanation. (shrink)

This is the first day of our confinement here in Paris, which soon will feel a bit like house arrest. So, to help cheer you up, in these times of doom and gloom, I have decided to bring the museum to you in the form of a virtual exhibition thrice weekly. I have picked 25 photos from a work in progress I started years ago. The photos are portraits of visitors or guards in museums. It's candid photography, capturing life on (...) the run, a moment in time. I hope you will find many other ways to - Résidence numérique - Brigitte Cavanagh. (shrink)

The roots of pragmatics reach back to Antiquity, especially to rhetoric as one of the three liberal arts. However, until the end of the 18th century proto-pragmatic insights tended to be consigned to the pragmatic, that is rhetoric, wastepaper basket and thus excluded from serious philosophical consideration. It can be said that pragmatics was conceived between 1780 and 1830 in Britain, but also in Germany and in France in post-Lockian and post-Kantian philosophies of language. These early ‘conceptions’ of pragmatics are (...) described in the first part of the book. The second part of the book looks at pragmatic insights made between 1830 and 1880, when they were once more relegated to the philosophical and linguistic underground. The main stage was then occupied by a fact-hunting historical comparative linguistics on the one hand and a newly spiritualised philosophy on the other. In the last part the period between 1880 and 1930 is presented, when pragmatic insights flourished and were sought after systematically. This was due in part to a new upsurge in empiricism, positivism and later behaviourism in philosophy, linguistics and psychology. Between 1780 and 1930 philosophers, psychologists, sociologists and linguists came to see that language could only be studied in the context of dialogue, in the context of human life and finally as being a kind of human action itself. (shrink)

Does incommensurability threaten the realist’s claim that physical magnitudes express properties of natural kinds? Some clarification comes from measurement theory and scientific practice. The standard (empiricist) theory of measurement is metaphysically neutral. But its representational operational and axiomatic aspects give rise to several kinds of a one-sided metaphysics. In scientific practice. the scales of physical quantities (e.g. the mass or length scale) are indeed constructed from measuring methods which have incompatible axiomatic foundations. They cover concepts which belong to incomensurable theories. (...) I argue, however, that the construction of such scales conmmits us to a modest version of scientific realism. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin, der Traum und das Bild des Weiblichen Geschichtsphilosophie aus gendertheoretischer Perspektive. 0Karin Stögner: 0Beschädigtes Leben und antisemitische „Schiefheilung". Freud und Adorno revisited.0Ljiljana Radonic: 0Autonomie versus Engagement? Über Adorno und Brecht. 0Gerhard Scheit: 0„Une promesse de bonheur". Herbert Marcuses „Über den affirmativen Charakter der Kultur".0Daniela Berner und Florian Wagner: 0Gebrochene Geschichte, Bedrängte Gegenwart. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen eines fremdgestellten Blicks 0auf die nationalsozialistische Vergangenheit im Film. 0Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann: 0Das drastische Medium. Über Adornos Kritik des Films. 0Christoph Hesse: 0Träumerinnen im Wachen. (...) Die „Kollektivträume" der Comics und die Kritische Theorie. 0Barbara Eder : 0Verehrte Unsichtbare!"0Über die Kunst des Hörens bei Walter Benjamin und Theodor W. Adorno 0Christine Ehardt: 0Exkursion 0Shopping Mall, mit Walter Benjamin u.a. 0Anette Baldauf : 0Zum Einbruch des.Realen' in die Gegenwart 0Eingedenken, Erinnern, Katharsis 0Sara Vorwalder und Veronika Zangl : 0„Alles wirklich Brauchbare besteht in Aushilfen". Zwei Lektüren zu Oskar Negt und Alexander Kluges Geschichte und Eigensinn 0Valentin Mertes und Michael Paninski : 0„Die Nord-West-Passage der Revolution" 0Herrschaftsverhältnisse und die situationistische Kartographierung 0der Stadtlandschaft 0Brigitte Marschall: 0. (shrink)

Welche Erkenntnisse bietet Michel Foucaults Ansatz der Gouvernementalität für eine politische Theorie, die Geschlecht als zentrale Kategorie setzt? In diesem Band werden Grundbegriffe aus Foucaults Spätwerk aus feministischer Sicht beleuchtet, z.B. Gouvernementalität, Macht, Staat, Subjekt, Sicherheit, Wissen und Kritik. Diese Re-Lektüre möchte zum einen Foucaults Ansatz geschlechtertheoretisch weiterentwickeln und vertiefen, zum anderen Anstöße für eine politische Theoretisierung von Geschlecht geben.

This book provides a comprehensive account of Kant’s development from the 1755/56 metaphysics to the cosmological antinomy of 1781. With the Theory of the Heavens (1755) and the Physical Monadology (1756), the young Kant had presented an ambitious approach to physical cosmology based on an atomistic theory of matter, which contributed to the foundations of an all-encompassing system of metaphysics. Why did he abandon this system in favor of his critical view that cosmology runs into an antinomy, according to the (...) Critique of Pure Reason (CPR)? This book answers this question by focusing on Kant’s methodology and the internal problems of his 1755/56 theory of nature. A decisive role for Kant’s critical turn plays the argument from incongruent counterparts (1768), which drew much attention among philosophers of science, though not sufficiently in Kant research. Furthermore, the book analyses the genesis of the cosmological antinomy in the 1770s, the logical structure of the antinomy in the CPR, its relation to transcendental idealism, as explained in the “experiment of pure reason” (1787), and its role for the teleology of human reason. The book is addressed to Kant scholars, philosophers of science, and students of Kant’s philosophy. (shrink)

Selbstgerechtes Wohlwollen in der Psychoanalyse - J. Körner: Mitleid. Das Ende der Empathie - II. Moral und das Böse - P. Stoellger: Lesarten des Bösen - R. Bittner: Verwüstung durch Moral? - III. Moral als Gewalt?

This paper deals with some structural properties of the sequent calculus and describes strong symmetries between cut-free derivations and derivations, which do not make use of identity axioms. Both of them are discussed from a semantic and syntactic point of view. Identity axioms and cuts are closely related to the treatment of negation in the sequent calculus, so the results of this article explain some nice symmetries of negation.

La Renaissance commence vraiment avec Pléthon, contemporain de Nicolas de Cues et qui se voulait comme lui romain, mais du point de vue de Constantinople. Pléthon a conçu le modèle d'une constitution qui permettrait à tous les peuples de coexister en paix. Au temps où l'Occident latin est largement aristotélicien, il plaide pour le retour à Platon, l'idéalisme, la théologie affirmative.

Entrepreneurs who start a business to serve both self-interests and collective interests by addressing unmet social and environmental needs are usually referred to as sustainable entrepreneurs. Compared with regular entrepreneurs, we argue that sustainable entrepreneurs face specific challenges when establishing their businesses owing to the discrepancy between the creation and appropriation of private value and social value. We hypothesize that when starting a business, sustainable entrepreneurs feel more hampered by perceived barriers, such as the institutional environment and have a different (...) risk attitude and perception than regular entrepreneurs. We use two waves of the Flash Eurobarometer survey on entrepreneurship, which contains information on start-up motivations, start-up barriers, and risk perceptions of approximately 3000 business owners across 33 countries. We find that sustainable entrepreneurs indeed perceive more institutional barriers in terms of a lack of financial, administrative, and informational support at business start-up than regular entrepreneurs. Further, no significant differences between sustainable and regular entrepreneurs are found in terms of their risk attitudes or perceived financial risks. However, sustainable entrepreneurs are more likely to fear personal failure than regular entrepreneurs, which is explained by their varied and complex stakeholder relations. These insights may serve as an important signal for both governments and private capital providers in enhancing the institutional climate. (shrink)

Currently, affect and emotions are a widely discussed political topic. At least since the early 1990s, different disciplines—from the social sciences and humanities to science and technoscience—have increasingly engaged in studying and conceptualizing affect, emotion, feeling, and sensation, evoking yet another turn that is frequently framed as the “affective turn.” Within queer feminist affect theory, two positions have emerged: following Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's well-known critique, there are either more “paranoid” or more “reparative” approaches toward affect. Whereas the latter emphasize the (...) potentialities of affect, the former argue that one should question the mere idea of affect as liberation and promise. Here, I suggest moving beyond a critique or celebration of affect by embracing the political ambivalence of affect. For this queer feminist theorizing of affective politics, I adapt Jacques Rancière's theory of the political and particularly his understanding of emancipation. Rancière takes emancipation into account without, however, uncritically endorsing or celebrating a politics of liberation. I draw on his famous idea of the “distribution of the sensible” and reframe it as the “distribution of emotions,” by which I develop a multilayered approach toward a nonidentitarian, nondichotomous, and emancipatory queer feminist theory of affective politics. (shrink)

The paper presents a logical treatment of actions based on dynamic logic. This approach makes it possible to reflect clearly the differences between static and dynamic elements of the world, a distinction which seems crucial to us for a representation of actions.Starting from propositional dynamic logic a formal system (DLA) is developed, the programs of which are used to model action types. Some special features of this system are: Basic aspects of time are incorporated in DLA as far as they (...) are needed for our purpose. Names for states and for instants are simulated by formulas. It is possible to express formally that a formula is satisfiable or valid. A special program is introduced to reflect developments which are not caused by an official agent but by external influences. (shrink)