Ross's Kritik der sogenannten praktischen Erkenntnis pertains more to moral philosophy than to the philosophy of law, even if its contents are important for the latter, too. Its main objective is to show the theoretical groundlessness of any evaluative judgment. This happens when Ross takes the behaviourist approach of reducing psychology to physiology, which opens up fruitful comparisons with Marxist materialism, and in particular with that of Georges Politzer. Another fundamental question concerns the assumption that theoretical nihilism would lead to (...) practical nihilism, as argued by Theodor Geiger (but denied by Ross). And yet, if Geiger is right, can this have no effect on people's everyday lives? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE START OF METAPHYSICS* THEODORE J. KoNDOLEON Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania I N HIS RECENTLY published book, John F. X. Knasas seeks to answer this twofold inter-related question: What, according to Saint Thomas's expressed teaching, is the subject of metaphysics and how does the human mind proceed to attain it for the purpose of study? While he acknowledges a debt to Joseph Owens for certain of his basic positions, (...) Knasas will claim that the book's argument is original in the way in which it opposes what he takes as realistically the subject of metaphysics at its initial stage (or with the only understanding of beingens -metaphysics requires to begin) to what will become this science 's subject at its later, more mature stage. Moreover, although he may contradict himself on this point, he will reject, as Saint Thomas's view, the position that a physical demonstration can establish the existence of immaterial being, be it God or angels. He will also argue at some length what he evidently considers a crucial epistemic procedure for the start of metaphysics, viz., that a series of judgments relating individuals back to their acts of existence (from whence they were originally abstracted) is required for the "judgmentally constituted multitude" from which the mind attains common being. Finally, since he will insist that abstraction must be controlled by the data, he will allow no room in Thomistic metaphysics for a beginning metaphysical intuition in which being is seen as not necessarily linked to matter and motion, nor for an a priori approach to its subject which would start *John F. X. Knasas, The Preface to Metaphysics: A Contribution to the N eo-Thomist Debate on the Start of Metaphysics. New York: Peter Lang, 1990. Pp. 193. 121 122 THEODORE J. KONDOLEON from the nature of the knowing subject, viz., the human intellect, as open to and directed toward infinite being and intelligibility. In what follows I will discuss (and critically assess) each of these features of this book as well as address myself briefly to certain things the author has to say about the Thomistic " five ways." In the first three chapters Knasas is primarily concerned with showing that metaphysics cannot begin with a notion of being understood in the sense of ens commune. This sense of the notion traditionally includes both material and immaterial being. However, he argues, since (according to his reading of Aquinas) only metaphysics can demonstrate the existence of immaterial being, its subject cannot, at least at its outset, encompass such being, not even as something conceivable. He therefore opposes the view of Neo-Thomists who, basing themselve? on the now famous and frequently cited text from Saint Thomas's Expositio on Boethius's De Trinitate (Question 5, article 3), insist that metaphysics begins with the recognition that being is something separate from matter and motion (and not merely so in the mind's consideration by abstraction). This separation is understood in the so-called negative judgment of separation: " it is not of the nature of being to be in matter and motion (even though it is sometimes found therein)." On this point Knasas finds fault with " Natural Philosophy" Thomists, among whom he includes the Dominicans L.-B. Geiger (although this writer is barely mentioned and only in a footnote discussion) and James Weisheipl, both of whom have argued that the subject of metaphysics presupposes a demonstration from natural philosophy that immaterial, unchanging being exists (otherwise, they maintain, the separation of which Saint Thomas speaks in the De Trinitate Commentary would have no fundamentum in re). Again, his main argument with these Thomists is that no textual justification can be found for their view-indeed there is counter-textual evidence against it-that physical philosophy proves the existence of immaterial being and that, in the eyes of Aquinas, metaphysics awaits such a demonstration in order to begin. He equally rejects the position, one which he at- THE START OF METAPHYSICS 123 tributes above all to Maritain, that, prior to any argument that would establish the actual existence of God, being can be understood -and this thanks to an existential judgment in which existence is restored to the essence... (shrink)

This paper explores Moritz Geiger’s work on the role of emotions in aesthetic appreciation and shows its potential for contemporary research. Drawing on the main tenets of Geiger’s phenomenological aesthetics as an aesthetics of value, the paper begins by elaborating his model of aesthetic appreciation. I argue that, placed in the contemporary debate, his model is close to affective models which make affective states responsible for the apprehension of the aesthetic value of an artwork, though Geiger also (...) makes important concessions to the intellectualist. Indeed, like proponents of the affective model, Geiger argues that a work’s aesthetic values are extracted by means of an affective state though the affective state in question is neither an emotion nor a feeling but a “liking”. In fact, like the intellectualist, he considers that a focus on the emotions might on certain occasions interfere in the aesthetic appreciation of the artwork. Next, I reconstruct Geiger’s distinction between surface and depth effects in terms of a distinction between two types of emotional responses to artworks. It is argued that Geiger’s distinction offers a powerful tool to distinguish those emotions that are intrinsically related to aesthetic values from those that are not and that this distinction can be useful to understand how different kinds of emotions contribute to aesthetic appreciation. I proceed to examine the historical sources of Geiger’s distinction between surface and depth effects in Theodor Lipps’s aesthetics and compare Geiger’s account with the works of other early phenomenologists working on values. In the final part, I illustrate the place of Geiger’s model in the contemporary discussion by means of an example. (shrink)

At first glance, Moritz Geiger’s reaction to Husserl’s Ideas I appears to be neither systematically articulated nor particularly original. Geiger talks about Husserl’s idealism in Ideas I in just a few passages from his book Die Wirklickheit der Wissenschaften und die Metaphysik, and in a short essay in praise of Alexander Pfänder, Alexander Pfänders Methodische Stellung. There, Geiger seems to follow a general line of criticism shared by several so-called early phenomenologists, and most fully articulated by Jean (...) Hering, Roman Ingarden, Theodor Celms and Max Scheler. In this paper I argue that Geiger’s reaction to Ideas I contains some well-developed and original contributions to phenomenological thought. In particular, I defend three theses. First, Geiger’s criticism of Husserl’s idealism is much more original and sophisticated than it at first appears, because it rests on a complex phenomenology of “attitudes” [Einstellungen]. Second, Geiger offers a unique account of phenomenology as a variation of “stance” [Haltung], rather than a variation of attitude. Third, Geiger points to an alternative kind of phenomenology, which I call certainty-based phenomenology as opposed to an evidence-based phenomenology. Elements of this certainty-based phenomenology can be found in thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur, but many of their views are significantly anticipated by Geiger. (shrink)

Theodor Geigers Studie ist eine gesellschafts- und geistesgeschichtliche Einführung in einen zentralen philosophischen und soziologischen Grundbegriff. Sie gibt eine höchst originelle Antwort auf die alte Grundfrage der Gesellschaft: Welchen sozialen Normen und Werten sollte das menschliche Zusammenleben und Zusammenarbeiten unterliegen?

Mit der Begründung dieser Schriftenreihe im Jahre 1966 ging es dem Berliner Handels- und Wirtschaftsrechtler Ernst E. Hirsch, wie er damals schrieb, um den Nachweis, »daß die Wiederaufnahme der durch die nationalsozialistische Herrschaft unterbundenen Bemühungen von Arthur Nussbaum um Erforschung der Rechtstatsachen für eine Rechtswissenschaft stricto sensu ebenso unentbehrlich ist wie die im deutschen Rechtskreis von Eugen Ehrlich begründete, aber noch immer vor allem von Juristen teils abgelehnte, teils beargwöhnte Rechtssoziologie.« Entsprechend dieser (unveränderten) Aufgabenstellung ist die Schriftenreihe zum einen der (...) Beschäftigung mit den Klassikern der Vergangenheit und ihrer Relevanz für das Heute und zum anderen aktuellen Fragestellungen der Gegenwart gewidmet. (shrink)

Theodor Geiger (1891-1952) zählt zu den vernachlässigten Klassikern der deutschen Soziologie. Realismus und Ideologiekritik bilden die Klammer für ein Opus, das von der Schichtungs-, Rechts- und Erziehungssoziologie über Fragen zur Eugenik bis hin zur Erkenntnis-, Modernitäts- und Demokratietheorie reicht. Die vorliegende Studie ist der Versuch, trotz der zahlreichen Wechselfälle in Geigers Leben eine Gesamtwürdigung seines umfangreichen und heterogenen Werkes vorzulegen. Berücksichtigt werden die zum Teil schwer zugänglichen Schriften aus dem skandinavischen Exil sowie einige bislang unveröffentlichte Arbeiten aus dem (...) Nachlass. Dies erlaubt es, wissenschaftsbiographisch aufschlussreiche Aspekte aus der Zeit der nationalsozialistischen Machtergreifung zu erhellen. Der Vergleich mit alten und neuen Klassikern macht deutlich, dass dem "Querdenker" Geiger innerhalb der frühen deutschen Soziologie eine Ausnahmerolle zukommt. So ist er zum einen Pionier einer kritischen Problem- und Wirklichkeitswissenschaft, der danach strebt, die Soziologie mit den Mitteln der empirischen Sozialforschung und der Sozialstatistik auf eine methodisch kontrollierte Grundlage zu stellen. Zugleich ist Geiger aber auch Machtkritiker, Wertnihilist und Modernist. Als Ausdruck dieser Grundposition lässt sich nicht nur die entschiedene Gegnerschaft zu Kulturkritik, Gemeinschaftsschwärmerei und der NS-Ideologie verstehen, sondern auch sein Beitrag zur Entwicklung einer "realistischen" Demokratiekonzeption. (shrink)

The following is the transcript of a lecture taken in shorthand by Hans-Georg Backhaus. The transcript was originally published as an appendix in Hans-Georg Backhaus, Dialektik der Wertform. Untersuchungen zur marxschen Ökonomiekritik, a complete translation of which is forthcoming in the Historical Materialism book series.

The correspondence between the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno and his politically active graduate student Elisabeth Lenk offers fresh insights into both Adorno's view of surrealism and its relation to the student uprisings of 1960s France and Germany. Written between 1962, when Lenk moved to Paris and persuaded an initially reluctant Adorno to supervise her sociology dissertation on the surrealists, and Adorno's death in 1969, these letters reveal a surprisingly tender side of the distinguished professor. The correspondence is accompanied by (...) a selection of documents that bring additional depth and context to the letters and their engagement with the art and politics of the period. Filling in the background of Adorno and Lenk's lively exchange, the volume includes new translations of classic essays by Walter Benjamin ("Surrealism: Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia") and Adorno ("Surrealism Reconsidered"), along with a collection of short prose readings by Adorno and the writer-scholar Carl Dreyfus and three original essays by Lenk: her afterword to Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon, her Introduction to the German edition of Charles Fourier's The Theory of the Four Movements and the General Destinies, and her incisive essay "Critical Theory and Surreal Practice." An Introduction by Lenk's student, the contemporary writer and critic Rita Bischof, points to the continuing challenge of surrealist politics. This remarkable body of correspondence appears here in English for the first time, as do Adorno and Dreyfus's surrealist readings and the essays by Lenk. Together, they provide a rich mine of critical material for reassessing the significance of the surrealist movement and its successors. (shrink)

There is a notion, cataleptic in its effects, that discussion in ethics and values must ultimately be blocked by the “naturalistic fallacy.” We can go so far in analyzing the categories of “good,” “right,” “ought,” “valuable,” and the like, but never so far as to embark from the field of logic or general philosophy and enter the alien provinces of science—at least with a visa. To think to reduce moral problems to those of psychology or biology or to those of (...) “culture,” is The Fallacy, insensitivity to which brands one as a positivist, a dupe of “scientism,” or at least a sympathetic fellow-traveller. Though the vocabulary of The Fallacy is not old—G. E. Moore and his earnest commentators will date it—the idea is almost as antique as philosophy itself; indeed, it is one of the prime devices whereby philosophy has managed to rationalize its subject-matter as something more than an historical accident. (shrink)

This article argues that a group of fourteen female statues seen in the Theatre of Pompey in Rome by Tatian belonged to Greek female poets. This group, along with the statues representing the fourteen nationes vanquished by Pompey, and certain groups of statues in the Forum of Augustus should all be ascribed to the influence of the Hebdomades of Pompey's familiaris Varro.

Journal in the Night by THEODOR HAECKER Translated from the German by Alexander Dm PANTHEON BOOKS Printed in Great Britain for Pantheon Books Inc., 333 Sixth ...

Negative Dialects is a phrase that flouts tradition. As early as Plato, dialectics meant to achieve something positive by means of negation; the thought figure of a 'negation of negation' later became the succinct term. This book seeks to free dialectics from such affirmative traits without reducing its determinacy.

We bring together recent discussions on data capitalism and biocapitalization by studying value flows in consumer genomics firms—an industry at the intersection between health care and technology realms. Consumer genomics companies market genomic testing services to consumers as a source of fun, altruism, belonging and knowledge. But by maintaining a multisided or platform business model, these firms also engage in digital capitalism, creating financial profit from data brokerage. This is a precarious balance to strike: If these companies’ business models consist (...) of assetizing the pool of genomic data that they assemble, then part of their work has to revolve around obscuring to consumers any uncertainties that would potentially impinge on these processes of assemblage. We reflect on the nature of these practices and the market relationships that enable them, and we relate this reflection to debates around alternative market arrangements that would potentially mitigate the extractive tendencies of these and other digital health firms. (shrink)

The aim of the SI is to bring to the fore the places in which cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) are formed; how place shapes the dynamics of CSPs, and how CSPs shape the specific settings in which they develop. The papers demonstrate that partnerships and place are intrinsically reciprocal: the morality and materiality inherent in places repeatedly reset the reference points for partners, trigger epiphanies, shift identities, and redistribute capacities to act. Place thus becomes generative of partnerships in the most profound (...) sense: by developing an awareness of their emplacement, CSPs commit to place, and through their place-based commitments produce three intertwined modalities of place-specific ethics that bind CSPs and place: ethic of recognition, an ethic of care, and an ethic of resilience. Our authors have found vivid examples of how emplaced CSPs embody these ethics, signaling hope for the sustainability of our (always hyper-local) life-worlds. (shrink)

Inspired by Heidegger’s concept of the clearing of being, and by Wittgenstein’s ideas on human practice, Theodore Schatzki offers a novel approach to understanding the constitution and transformation of social life. Key to the account he develops here is the context in which social life unfolds—the "site of the social"—as a contingent and constantly metamorphosing mesh of practices and material orders. Schatzki’s analysis reveals the advantages of this site ontology over the traditional individualist, holistic, and structuralist accounts that have dominated (...) social theory since the mid-nineteenth century. A special feature of the book is its development of the theoretical argument by sustained reference to two historical examples: the medicinal herb business of a Shaker village in the 1850s and contemporary day trading on the Nasdaq market. First focusing on the relative simplicity of Shaker life to illuminate basic ontological characteristics of the social site, Schatzki then uses the sharp contrast with the complex and dynamic practice of day trading to reveal what makes this approach useful as a general account of social existence. Along the way he provides new insights into many major issues in social theory, including the nature of social order, the significance of agency, the distinction between society and nature, the forms of social change, and how the social present affects its future. (shrink)

Precis of my book by this title, for a symposium.

The article that follows is the second part of a study on Freedom prepared by the author for the International Dictionary of the Basic Terms of Philosophy and political Thought. The first half of the essay appeared in Philosophy Today, Summer 1960, pp. 126-136.

Summary The concept of unified theory is defined in logical and abstract semantic terms, and employed in the analysis of relations between empirical scientific theories. The conceptual framework of the approach applies to binary relations such as the reduction or replacement of one theory by another, and to multiple intertheory relations. Historically, unified theories tend to arise within the contexts of scientific conflicts which they may show susceptible of solution even in the most controversial cases of the logical incompatibility or (...) conceptual incommensurability of competing theories. These conclusions are exemplified by the Planck-Einstein quantum theory of thermal radiation. The analysis shows in which sense it can, and in which it cannot, be said that this theory unifies Wien's law and the Rayleigh-Jeans law of black-body radiation. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Persistence through time is like extension through space. A road has spatial parts in the subregions of the region of space it occupies; likewise, an object that exists in time has temporal parts in the various subregions of the total region of time it occupies. This view — known variously as four dimensionalism, the doctrine of temporal parts, and the theory that objects “perdure” — is opposed to “three dimensionalism”, the doctrine that things “endure”, or are “wholly present”.1 I will (...) attempt to resolve this dispute in favor of four dimensionalism by means of a novel argument based on considerations of vagueness. But before argument in this area can be productive, I believe we must become much clearer than is customary about exactly what the dispute is, for the usual ways of formulating the dispute are flawed, especially where three dimensionalism is concerned. (shrink)

Past and present societies world-wide have employed well over 100 distinct notational systems for representing natural numbers, some of which continue to play a crucial role in intellectual and cultural development today. The diversity of these notations has prompted the need for classificatory schemes, or typologies, to provide a systematic starting point for their discussion and appraisal. The present paper provides a general framework for assessing the efficacy of these typologies relative to certain desiderata, and it uses this framework to (...) discuss the two influential typologies of Zhang & Norman and Chrisomalis. Following this, a new typology is presented that takes as its starting point the principles by which numerical notations represent multipliers (the principles of cumulation and cipherization), and bases (those of integration, parsing, and positionality). Many different examples show that this new typology provides a more refined classification of numerical notations than the ones put forward previously. In addition, the framework provided here can be used to assess typologies not only of numerical notations, but also of many other domains. (shrink)

"Dreams are as black as death."_ —Theodor W. Adorno_ Adorno was fascinated by his dreams and wrote them down throughout his life. He envisaged publishing a collection of them although in the event no more than a few appeared in his lifetime. _Dream Notes_ offers a selection of Adornos writings on dreams that span the last twenty-five years of his life. Readers of Adorno who are accustomed to high-powered reflections on philosophy, music and culture may well find them disconcerting: (...) they provide an amazingly frank and uninhibited account of his inner desires, guilt feelings and anxieties. Brothel scenes, torture and executions figure prominently. They are presented straightforwardly, at face value. No attempt is made to interpret them, to relate them to the events of his life, to psychoanalyse them, or to establish any connections with the principal themes of his philosophy. Are they fiction, autobiography or an attempt to capture a pre-rational, quasi-mythic state of consciousness? No clear answer can be given. Taken together they provide a highly consistent picture of a dimension of experience that is normally ignored, one that rounds out and deepens our knowledge of Adorno while retaining something of the enigmatic quality that energized his own thought. (shrink)

Religion is a racialized category, even when race is not explicitly mentioned. In Modern Religion, Modern Race Theodore Vial argues that because the categories of religion and race are rooted in the post-Enlightenment project of reimagining what it means to be human, we cannot simply will ourselves to stop using them. Only by acknowledging that religion is already racialized can we begin to understand how the two concepts are intertwined and how they operate in our modern world.It has become common (...) to argue that the category religion is not universal, or even very old, but is a product of Europe's Enlightenment modernization. Equally common is the argument that religion is not an innocent category of analysis, but is implicated in colonial regimes of control and as such plays a role in Europe's process of identity construction of itself and of non-European. (shrink)