During the 1890s William James and Carl Georg Lange's works on emotion were discussed in psychological journals under the heading of the “James–Lange theory” of emotion. Yet Lange's work is much less known because it was linked with James' theory and because later neurophysiological research demonstrated that Lange's proposed mechanism for processing emotion could not be correct. However, a reappraisal of his work is warranted for several reasons: For his attempt to ground the emotions (...) in physiology at a time when psychologists advocated a purely spiritual conception of emotions, for his insights in biological psychiatry, for postulating a neuroanatomical centre for processing emotion. Finally, in the light of contemporary research, because Lange deconstructed the emotions into combinations of components, which makes his work a precursor to component and appraisal theories of emotion. (shrink)

According to what is now the standard account in the history of psychology, in the 1880s William James and the Danish physician Carl Georg Lange independently developed a strikingly new theory, commonly referred to as the ‘James–Lange’ theory of emotion. In this paper it is argued that this standard account is highly misleading. Lange's views on affect in his Om Sindsbevægelser were more cautious than James allowed, and not open to criticisms that have often been (...) levelled against the theory of emotion that James claimed he shared with Lange. In fact, Lange argued for distinctions that James did not mention in his discussion of Lange's work. Even with regard to the primary emotions, the two thinkers’ explanatory models diverged significantly. The contrast between James and Lange on affect is especially striking in their respective discussions of topics in aesthetics, as is established with reference to Lange's little-known Bidrag til Nydelsernes fysiologi som grundlag for en rationel æstetik. (shrink)

The teaching of ethics in science within the disciplines provides an avenue to deepen students’ scientific understanding and to develop their critical thinking skills. This study showcases a module which connects ethics to science within a large introductory geoscience course. The module components, a tutorial plus homework assignment and an exam question, require students to decide on ethical issues using a 5-step approach that mirrors the scientific decision-making process. The assignment is graded using a developed rubric. An analysis of exam (...) question responses reveals that students correctly identify stakeholders and mention contributions by geoscientists, but have difficulties recognizing their own assumptions. Furthermore, many acknowledge the complexity of the ethical issue at hand. The module provides an example of how disciplinary instructors can include ethics in their teaching and assess students’ ethical decision-making process. (shrink)

Der Vortrag zum Thema "Schmerzen", den der 100-jährige Hans-Georg Gadamer anläßlich des von der Orthopädischen Universitätsklinik Heidelberg am 11. November 2000 organisierten Symposions abhielt, war der letzte öffentliche Auftritt des großen Heidelberger Philosophen. In ihm formulierte Gadamer eine für das medizinische Kollegium ungeheure Provokation, indem er den Schmerz als eine lebenslange Aufgabe beschrieb, die, weit entfernt ein Makel oder gar Deformation des leidenden Individuums zu sein, sich vielmehr dem strukturell annähert, was Gadamer zeitlebens beschäftigt hat: der Hermeneutik. Der Akt (...) des Verstehens prägt auch das anschließende Gespräch zwischen Gadamer und dem Fachpublikum, in dem sich beide Seiten zögernd aufeinander zu bewegen. Das vorliegende Bändchen trägt dem in zweierlei Hinsicht Rechnung: Es gibt die freie, lebendige Rede Gadamers möglichst unverstellt wieder und flankiert die Anregungen Gadamers mit Überlegungen zum Phänomen "Schmerz" aus medizinischer und therapeutischer Sicht. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), Professor für Staats- und Völkerrecht, bewegt nach wie vor die Gemüter. Die Reaktion auf seine Schriften, Handlungen und Ausstrahlungen ist vielfältig; die Spanne reicht von entrüsteten, für die er der Teufel in Person bleibt, über viele Zwischenstufen bis zu jenen Lesern, die ihn für einen der subtilsten, noch keineswegs ausgeloteten Geistern dieses Jahrhunderts halten. Sein Leben lang war Carl Schmitt ein passionierter Schreiber von Briefen. Meist handelte es sich um handschriftlich verfasste, die für den Schreibenden (...) die Fortsetzung eines konkreten Gespräches mit anderen Mitteln war. Das macht das authentische und die Spontanität der Schmitt-Briefe aus. Als erste Edition einer umfangreichen Korrespondenz wird in dem Buch die Korrespondenz zwischen Carl Schmitt und Armin Mohler veröffentlicht. Der Briefwechsel umfasst die Zeit von 1947 bis 1980 und enthält 280 Briefe und Karten von Carl Schmitt an Armin Mohler. Von dem Briefpartner und Herausgeber wird in der Regel aus den eigenen Briefen nur auszugsweise zitiert, sofern es für das von Carl Schmitt Geschriebene notwendig ist. Armin Mohler (1920 bis 2003), ist einer der bekanntesten rechtskonservativen Schriftsteller, Kritiker und Historiker in Deutschland. Sein Handbuch zur Konservativen Revolution ist ein Standardwerk. In der Zeit des Briefwechsels war Mohler von 1949 bis 1953 Sekretär Ernst Jüngers, danach Korrespondent großer Zeitungen in Paris und von 1964 an Geschäftsführer der Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung, in der er sehr beachtete Symposien zu aktuellen wissenschaftlichen Themen organisierte. Der Briefwechsel ist für die Deutung Carl Schmitts in der Nachkriegszeit in seinem Sauerländer "Exil" grundlegend, gleichzeitig enthält er pointierte Schlaglichter auf das politische und kulturelle Geschehen der frühen und mittleren Bundesrepublik sowie auf Werk und Leben von Ernst Jünger. (shrink)

This article is concerned with developing a philosophical approach to a number of significant changes to academic publishing, and specifically the global journal knowledge system wrought by a range of new digital technologies that herald the third age of the journal as an electronic, interactive and mixed-media form of scientific communication. The paper emerges from an Editors' Collective, a small New Zealand-based organisation comprised of editors and reviewers of academic journals mostly in the fields of education and philosophy. The paper (...) is the result of a collective writing process. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

Le but de la vie chez Schopenhauer et chez Nietzsche.--Sur la sociologie des sens.--La notion de valeur.--Le christianisme et l'art.--Du réalisme dans l'art.--La philosophie de l'aventure.--La religion et les contrastes de la vie.--Métaphysique de la mort.--Sur le matérialisme historique.--De l'essence de la philosophie, etc.

1. Michael A PetersBeijing Normal UniversityChatGPT is an AI chatbot released by OpenAI on November 30, 2022 and a ‘stable release’ on February 13, 2023. It belongs to OpenAI’s GPT-3 family (genera...

Friedrich Nietzsche has emerged as one of the most important and influential modern philosophers. For several decades, the book series Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) has set the agenda in a rapidly growing and changing field of Nietzsche scholarship. The scope of the series is interdisciplinary and international in orientation reflects the entire spectrum of research on Nietzsche, from philosophy to literary studies and political theory. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that undergo a strict peer-review process. The (...) book series is led by an international team of editors, whose work represents the full range of current Nietzsche scholarship. (shrink)

Carl Henrik Koch har i denne bog samlet en række af sine artikler om fremtrædende danske filosoffer. Med start ved Holberg i 1700-tallet arbejder Koch sig op gennem den danske filosofihistorie og strejfer blandt andre Eilchov, Sibbern, A.P. Adler, Brøchner og naturligvis mastodonterne Søren Kierkegaard og Georg Brandes. Bogen giver en hurtig, men spændende indførsel i en vigtig del af den danske kulturhistorie, som gennem de sidste 250 år har haft stor indflydelse både herhjemme og i udlandet.

This 15th volume in the series covers such topics as technological frames in a town planning controversy, geometric constructions and the constructions of geometry, and money, technology and the tragedy of culture in the thought of George Simmel.

In “What Makes a Scientific Explanation Distinctively Mathematical?” (2013b), Lange uses several compelling examples to argue that certain explanations for natural phenomena appeal primarily to mathematical, rather than natural, facts. In such explanations, the core explanatory facts are modally stronger than facts about causation, regularity, and other natural relations. We show that Lange's account of distinctively mathematical explanation is flawed in that it fails to account for the implicit directionality in each of his examples. This inadequacy is remediable (...) in each case by appeal to ontic facts that account for why the explanation is acceptable in one direction and unacceptable in the other direction. The mathematics involved in these examples cannot play this crucial normative role. While Lange's examples fail to demonstrate the existence of distinctively mathematical explanations, they help to emphasize that many superficially natural scientific explanations rely for their explanatory force on relations of stronger-than-natural necessity. These are not opposing kinds of scientific explanations; they are different aspects of scientific explanation. (shrink)

In this, his most influential work, legal theorist and political philosopher Carl Schmitt argues that liberalism’s basis in individual rights cannot provide a reasonable justification for sacrificing oneself for the state—a critique as cogent today as when it first appeared. George Schwab’s introduction to his translation of the 1932 German edition highlights Schmitt’s intellectual journey through the turbulent period of German history leading to the Hitlerian one-party state. In addition to analysis by Leo Strauss and a foreword by Tracy (...) B. Strong placing Schmitt’s work into contemporary context, this expanded edition also includes a translation of Schmitt’s 1929 lecture “The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations,” which the author himself added to the 1932 edition of the book. An essential update on a modern classic, The Concept of the Political, Expanded Edition belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in political theory or philosophy. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 2 Seiten: 295-299.

A German writer's aphoristic, poetic, and difficult reflections on Heidegger's Being and Time. There is a beyond of reason and unreason. It is the human psyche. —Positive Nihilism Like many German intellectuals, Hartmut Lange has long grappled with Heidegger. Positive Nihilism is the result of a lifetime of reading Being and Time and offers a series of reflections that are aphoristic, poetic, and (appropriately, considering his object of study) difficult. Lange begins with an abyss (“There is an abyss (...) of the finite. It is temporality”) and proceeds almost immediately to extremity: “The twentieth century was governed by psychopaths. They collapsed the boundaries of moral reason and refuted Kant's analysis of consciousness.” He reflects further: “But who shall punish whom? One man's virtue is another man's crime. Thus Hitler could feel unwaveringly, as he wiped out entire populations, the starry sky above him and the moral law within him, as stipulated by Kant.” He considers the concept of civilization (“misleading”; “how should one oppose the remedies of civilization to the egomania, the murderous appetites of such outright psychopaths as Stalin or Pol Pot?”), the act of thinking (a fata morgana), the psyche, and Heidegger's Dasein. Positive Nihilism can be considered a pocket companion to Being and Time. “Heidegger's understanding of Being is nihilistic,” Lange writes, and then explains his assertion. He draws on Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Shakespeare's Othello for supporting arguments and illustrations. “Everyone is possessed of the courage to have angst about death. The question is whether this courage necessarily secures those vital advantages Heidegger alleges”–that “self-understanding [is] the mental anticipation of death.” Lange wrestles with Heidegger's position, calling on Tolstoy, Georg Trakl, Herman Bang, and Heinrich von Kleist to argue against it. (shrink)

The James–Lange theory considers emotional feelings as perceptions of physiological body changes. This approach has recently resurfaced and modified in both neuroscientific and philosophical concepts of embodiment of emotional feelings. In addition to the body, the role of the environment in emotional feeling needs to be considered. I here claim that the environment has not merely an indirect and thus instrumental role on emotional feelings via the body and its sensorimotor and vegetative functions. Instead, the environment may have a (...) direct and non-instrumental, i.e., constitutional role in emotional feelings; this implies that the environment itself in the gestalt of the person–environment relation is constitutive of emotional feeling rather than the bodily representation of the environment. Since the person–environment relation is crucial in this approach, I call it the relational concept of emotional feeling. After introducing the relational concept of emotional feeling, the present paper investigates the neurophilosophical question whether current neuroimaging data on human emotion processing and anatomical connectivity are empirically better compatible with the “relational” or the “embodied” concept of emotional feeling. These data lend support to the empirical assumption that neural activity in subcortical and cortical midline regions code the relationship between intero- and exteroceptive stimuli in a relational mode, i.e. their actual balance, rather than in a translational mode, i.e., by translating extero- into interoceptive stimulus changes. Such intero-exteroceptive relational mode of neural coding may have implications for the characterization of emotional feeling with regard to phenomenal consciousness and intentionality. I therefore conclude that the here advanced relational concept of emotional feeling may be considered neurophilosophically more plausible and better compatible with current neuroscientific data than the embodied concept as presupposed in the James–Lange theory and its modern neuroscientific and philosophical versions. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno were intellectual giants of the first half of the twentieth century. The drama _Foreplay_ explores their deeply human and psychologically intriguing private lives, focusing on professional and personal jealousies, the mutual dislike of Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt, the association between Walter Benjamin and Georges Bataille, and the border between erotica and pornography. Djerassi’s extensive biographical research brings to light many fascinating details revealed in the dialogues among the characters, including Adorno’s obsession (...) with his dreams, Benjamin’s admiration for Franz Kafka, and the intimate correspondence between Gretel Adorno and Walter Benjamin. The introduction of a fictitious character, Fräulein X, intensifies the complex interplay among the four lead protagonists and allows for a comparison of Adorno’s philandering and the similar behavior of Martin Heidegger, whose affair with Hannah Arendt is well known. _Foreplay_ brims with intrigue and the friction created when strong personalities clash. (shrink)

In der Reihe jena-sophia wird mit Hermann von Kehlers Mitschrift zu Hegels Ästhetikvorlesung aus dem Sommersemester 1826 ein wichtiges Dokument aus dem Besitz der Universitätsbibliothek Jena veröffentlicht. Hegel hat sich in dieser Vorlesung besonders intensiv mit der Kunst seiner Zeit auseinandergesetzt und ein breites Spektrum künstlerischer Gestaltungsmöglichkeiten vorgestellt, das vom Schönen über das Charakteristische bis zum Häßlichen reicht. Unter der Leitfrage seiner Ästhetik, der Frage nach der Relevanz der Kunst "für uns" und für die durch die Vernunftforderung bestimmte moderne Welt (...) sieht Hegel seine "These vom Ende der Kunst" bestätigt. Die Künste sind nicht die Quelle der modernen Kultur, sondern ein Faktor neben anderen. Dennoch bleibt die Kunst ein unverzichtbares Element der humanen Kultur. Ihre "Zukunft" liegt sowohl in der Vielfalt möglicher Gestaltung als auch in ihrer gesellschaftlichen Bedeutung: Die Pflege der Künste als Element der Bildung des Menschen fällt unter die Aufgaben des Staates; die Künste vermitteln dem modernen Menschen ein geschichtliches Bewußtsein sowohl aus den Quellen der eigenen Kultur, als auch durch die Integration des Fremden: der Weltkulturen. In der Enzyklopädie von 1827 hat Hegel die Ergebnisse dieser Vorlesung systematisch zu einer Erweiterung der ersten Paragraphen des "absoluten Geistes" über die Kunst genutzt. Daher bietet die Vorlesung nicht nur einen für Studenten (von Hegel selbst) entwickelten Einblick in seine Ästhetik, sondern auch die wissenschaftliche Grundlage für die systematische Erschließung seiner Philosophie der Kunst. Die vorliegende Edition präsentiert den Text der Hegelschen Vorlesung mit (kenntlich gemachten) Ergänzungen und Sachanmerkungen. Eine knappe Einleitung zur Vorlesung stützt sich auf eine in Vorbereitung befindliche Einführung in Hegels Ästhetik, die ebenfalls im Wilhelm Fink Verlag erscheint. (shrink)

The Challenge of the Exception is the key that unlocked the ideas of Carl Schmitt, a leading political theorist and jurist who influenced the thoughts of, among others, Hannah Arendt, Carl Joachim Friedrich, Otto Kirchheimer, Hans Morgenthau, Franz Neumann, and Leo Strauss. Professor Schwab clearly articulates Schmitt's key concepts and relates their centrality to politics and the state, to the political theory of liberalism, democracy and authoritarianism, and to international relations. When Schwab treats Schmitt's interpretations of constitutional questions, (...) for example, he shows how political theory in Germany is inextricably linked with constitutional law, legal theory, and the country's history. Not content to merely deal with Schmitt's profound contributions to twentieth-century thought, Schwab devotes considerable space to the unconscionable compromises that he made with the Third Reich. This, however, failed to help him become the political and legal theorist of Hitler's Germany. Schwab shows how the new Schmitt was suspect from the beginning and, by 1936, Schmitt the hunter had become Schmitt the hunted. Schwab's presentation of the multifaceted Carl Schmitt exposes the reader to a truly interdisciplinary excursion into the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

This is Oh, the Places You'll Never Go-the ultimate hilarious, cynical, but absolutely realistic view of a college graduate's future. And what he or she can or can't do about it. "This commencement address will never be given, because graduation speakers are supposed to offer encouragement and inspiration. That's not what you need. You need a warning." So begins Carl Hiaasen's attempt to prepare young men and women for their future. And who better to warn them about their precarious (...) paths forward than Carl Hiaasen' The answer, after reading Assume the Worst, is: Nobody. And who better to illustrate-and with those illustrations, expand upon and cement Hiaasen's cynical point of view-than Roz Chast, best-selling authorllustrator and National Book Award winner' The answer again is easy: Nobody. Following the format of Anna Quindlen's commencement address (Being Perfect) and George Saunders's commencement address (Congratulations, by the way), the collaboration of Hiaasen and Chast might look typical from the outside, but inside it is anything but. This book is bound to be a classic, sold year after year come graduation time. Although it's also a good gift for anyone starting a job, getting married, or recently released from prison. Because it is not just funny. It is, in its own Hiaasen way, extremely wise and even hopeful. Well, it might not be full of hope, but there are certainly enough slivers of the stuff in there to more than keep us all going. (shrink)

In this, his most influential work, legal theorist and political philosopher Carl Schmitt argues that liberalism's basis in individual rights cannot provide a reasonable justification for sacrificing oneself for the state. This edition of the 1932 work includes the translator's introduction which highlights Schmitt's intellectual journey through the turbulent period of German history leading to the Hitlerian one-party state. It also includes Leo Strauss's analysis of Schmitt's thesis and a foreword by Tracy B. Strong placing Schmitt's work into contemporary (...) context. (shrink)

This text was first published as ‘De nova methodo naturam ac motum fluidi electrici investigandi’ in Novi Commentarrii Societatis Regiae Scientiarum Gottingensis. Commentationes physicae et mathematicae classis 8 (Göttingen 1778: 168–80). It also appeared in a printing by Joann Christian Dieterich in Göttingen in 1778. Lichtenberg delivered this talk personally to the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen on 21 February 1778. Although Lichtenberg was not present, he had already informed the Royal Society of Lichtenberg’s discovery of the electrical figures (...) at a meeting on 3 May 1777. The present German version was first published in Lichtenberg’s Vermischte Schriften, vol. 9 (Physikalische und mathematische Schriften, vol. 4) (Göttingen, 1806) pp. 49–80. Wolgang Promies suggests that the German translation was likely done by Friedrich Christian Kries, who was a co-editor of the Vermischte Schriften and Lichtenberg’s student (see Georg Christoph Lichtenberg [1974], Schriften und Briefe, [ed. Wolfgang Promies (K II: Kommentar zu Band III)], Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, p. 11). Lichtenberg was the first to propose the use of + and – to designate electricity in this article. (shrink)