In der Vorrede zur ersten Auflage der Religionsschrift macht Kant unmissverständlich klar, dass der zur Moral verbundene Mensch der „Idee eines Wesens über ihm" nicht bedürfe. Damit ist aber nicht der Sinn und Zweck der nachfolgenden Schrift bestritten, sondern lediglich klargestellt, dass auch Religion und Kirchenglauben unter dem Prinzipat des Autonomiegedankens stehen. Ausgehend von dieser Feststellung entwickelt Kant eine in vier Stücke gegliederte Schrift, die nicht nur den aufgeklärten Umgang mit positiven Religionen beschreibt, sondern die auch die moralphilosophischen Schriften der (...) 1780er Jahre bisweilen ergänzt, bisweilen modifiziert. So wird beispielsweise die Sphäre moralischer Verbindlichkeiten um eine Gattungspflicht, nämlich eine Pflicht „des menschlichen Geschlechts gegen sich selbst" erweitert und auch das in den Bereich der Anthropologie fallende Theorem des „Hanges zum Bösen" erweist sich als in hohem Maße diskutabel. Dass zu alledem das letzte Wort noch nicht gesprochen ist, zeigt die in den letzten Jahrzehnten wieder anhebende Diskussion, der der vorliegende Band Rechnung trägt, indem er zu etwa gleichen Teilen historisch und systematisch ausgerichtet ist und vieles an interessanten Neubewertungen bereithält. (shrink)

FriedrichJulius Stahl (1802-1861), der einst berühmte konservative Staatsphilo­ soph, Kirchenrechtslehrer und Politiker, gilt heute in der Hauptsache als Theoretiker des »monarchischen Prinzips« und als Verfechter eines autoritären Staats- und Kir­ chenbegriffs. Dieses Urteil erfaßt jedoch nur eine Seite der Leistung Stahls; es ver­ leitet dazu, seine politische Theorie als Konstruktion zur Rechtfertigung des monar­ chischen Prinzips und des »Obrigkeitsstaates« anzusehen und daher als überholt ab­ zutun. Die fruchtbaren Ansätze der politischen Wissenschaft, die in Stahls Werk enthalten sind, werden dabei übersehen. (...) In der Literatur ist Stahl bisher relativ wenig Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet wor­ den. Die liberale Staatslehre seiner Zeit sah in Stahl primär den politischen Gegner und bemühte sich kaum um ein tieferes Eindringen in sein Denken 1. Die erste philo­ sophisch gründliche Kritik an Stahl übte 1861 der Herbartianer Thilo 2; sein philo­ sophischer Standpunkt hinderte ihn jedoch daran, die auf Schelling zurückgehende Komponente in Stahls Denken verständnisvoll zu erfassen. So sieht er Widersprüche bei Stahl auch dort, wo keine sind. (shrink)

This book critically engages with the idea of transparency whose ubiquitous demand stands in stark contrast to its lack of conceptual clarity. The book carefully examines this notion in its own right, traces its emergence in Early Modernity and analyzes its omnipresence in contemporary rhetoric. Today, transparency has become a catchword outplaying other Enlightenment values like empowerment, sincerity and the notion of a public sphere. In a suspicious manner, transparency is entangled in the discourses on power, surveillance, and self-exposure. Bringing (...) together prominent scholars from the emerging field of Critical Transparency Studies, the book offers a map of the various sites at which transparency has become virulent and connects the dots between past and present. By studying its appearances in today’s hyper-mediated economies of information and by linking it back to its historical roots, the book analyzes transparency and its discontents, and scrutinizes the reasons why it has become the imperative of a supposedly post-ideological age. (shrink)

In response to Reinhard Brandt's criticisms (Kant-Studien 101 (2020):377-379), we defend our the conjecture on the text of Kant's "Doctrine of Virtue", § 9 presented in "Zwei Konjekturvorschläge zur Tugendlehre, § 9" (Kant-Studien 101 (2010):247-252).

The relation between ethics and social science is often conceived as complementary, both disciplines cooperating in the solution of concrete moral problems. Against this, the paper argues that not only applied ethics but even certain parts of general ethics have to incorporate sociological and psychological data and theories from the start. Applied ethics depends on social science in order to asses the impact of its own principles on the concrete realities which these principles are to regulate as well as in (...) order to propose practice rules suited to adapt these principles to their respective contexts of application. Examples from medical ethics (embryo research) and ecological ethics (Leopold's land ethic) illustrate both the contingence of practice rules in relation to their underlying basic principles and the corresponding need for a co-operation between philosophy and empirical disciplines in judging their functional merits and demerits. In conclusion, the relevance of empirical hypotheses even for some of the perennial problems of ethics is shown by clarifying the role played by empirical theories in the controversies about the ethical differentiation between positive and negative responsibility and the relation between utility maximisation and (seemingly) independent criteria of distributive justice in the context of social distributions. (shrink)

Popper gives the concept of social situation the role of key term in the method ology of situational analysis. The important characteristics of the social situation are aims and knowledge, which are attributed to the actor and are part of the situation. Furthermore, the elements of the situation create or are, as social institutions, obstacles to the actor. But more complex situations exist which here are called actor specific situations and are much more structured by the actor. The aims and (...) knowledge of the actors vary widely, so they cannot be attributed to the actors without a serious loss of information. The elements have social meanings and meanings which are ascribed to them by the actors. The concept of dual methodology tries to grasp these complex situations for the purpose of empirical research by combining causal explanation of analytical methodology with intentional explanation of a methodology of understanding. The interface between these methodologies is formed by the concept of generative mecha nisms. These are part of the causal theory as well as data gathered for the intentional explanation. The ideal result of research is achieved if the hypothesis cannot be rejected and the two kinds of generative mechanisms coincide. In this case, the hypothesis is a proven causal statement. Finally, the aptitude of the interpretative methodology for gathering the generative mechanisms is dis cussed. (shrink)

David Hume is quoted in Binmore’s book Natural Justice more than any other author, past or present, and throughout with a markedly positive attitude. It is argued that this affinity is reflected in many characteristic features of Binmore’s approach to fairness and social justice and especially in the central role motivational issues are made to play in his theory. It is further argued that Binmore shares with Hume not only important strengths but also certain weaknesses, among them a tendency to (...) derive from the limited evidence of past history far-reaching statements on human nature and the conditions thereby imposed on social morality. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer schnelle Fortschritt der Biomedizin fördert fortwährend neue bioethische Problemstellungen zutage und erfordert Anpassungen überlieferter Normbestände an neue Gegebenheiten. Für viele neue Verfahren stellen sich jedoch Fragen nicht nur der moralischen Bewertung, sondern auch der begrifflichen Einordnung. Diese besagt dann häufig etwas über das Gewicht, das einerseits sachlichen, andererseits normativen Kontinuitäten und Diskontinuitäten beigelegt wird. Der Beitrag illustriert die in diesem Zusammenhang auftretenden Konflikte am Beispiel des Gene editing bei Nutzpflanzen, der mitochondrial replacement therapy, des aktiven Behandlungsabbruchs bei Schwerkranken und (...) dem freiwilligen Verzicht auf Nahrung und Flüssigkeit zur Lebensbeendigung (Sterbefasten). Besonderes Augenmerk gilt den Dilemmata, die sich ergeben, wenn sich diese Konflikte angesichts verhärteter normativer Fronten diskursiv nicht auflösen lassen. (shrink)

The contribution argues that causal interpretations of empirical correlations between neural and conscious events are meaningful even if not fully verifiable and that there are reasons in favour of an epiphenomenalist construction of psychophysical causality. It is suggested that an account of causality can be given that makes interactionism, epiphenomenalism and Leibnizian parallelism semantically distinct interpretations of the phenomena. Though neuroscience cannot strictly prove or rule out any one of these interpretations it can be argued that methodological principles favour a (...) causal interpretation on epiphenomenalist lines, both for reasons of metaphysical parsimony and for reasons of coherence with established physical principles such as the conservation of energy. In the concluding chapter, some of the philosophical and the empirical challenges following from this model are outlined, the most important being closer scrutiny of the neurophysiological processes accompanying conscious volition. (shrink)

It is evident that the problem of global climate change is closely bound up with questions of distributional justice, both intra- and intergenerational. Questions of justice are raised by two kinds of burdens: reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases, and the financial and knowledge transfers necessary to enable the poorest countries to compensate the harms suffered by the ongoing process. Both burdens involve considerable costs and opportunity costs. On the backdrop of a prioritarian version of utilitarianism, it is argued (...) that the answer should be a split strategy. While reduction of emissions should be based on the polluter-pays principle, obligations of compensation should be based on the criteria of overall economic strength. (shrink)

Whereas traditional ethical discussions of suicide have primarily dealt with questions relating to the moral rightness or wrongness of suicidal acts, the problem of which moral criteria should govern acts of preventing, admitting and aiding suicide has rarely been discussed systematically. In the present paper it is argued that suicide is morally neutral in all cases in which it does not constitute grave damage, material or psychological, to others, that this does not imply that non-prevention, in the same range of (...) cases, is morally neutral as well. Moral criteria for suicide prevention are formulated by making use of the Rawlsian device of a fictitious “veil of ignorance” behind which moral rules are decided on from merely self-regarding motives. It is argued that decision behind the veil would be of a principle of “restricted paternalism” that minimizes both the risk of not being prevented from committing suicide in cases in which this is clearly irrational in view of the enduring preferences of the suicidal person himself, as well as the complementary risk of being subjected to compulsory detention or treatment in cases in which suicide is the option conforming most, on a realistic view of the case, to the enduring preferences of the person. The practical rules translating the principle into concrete practice comprise a rule demanding compulsory prevention of all imminent suicides by persons not intimately known to the potential preventer, a prohibition of pre-emptive compulsory measures, and a general temporal limitation on detention. Finally, a similar, if more tentative, derivation of practical rules is attempted for cases in which aiding a suicide might seem to another person to be in the best interest of the suicidal person concerned. (shrink)

The author discusses some ethical problems connected with taking human organs for transplantation from living and dead people. First of all, he asks whether being an organ giver should be taken as our moral duty. It seems to be the duty of heart in Kantian terms. Various possibilities in the legal regulation of taking organs are considered here as well as the criteria and forms of their distribution. None of them, however, can be satisfying because of the inescapable conflict between (...) the principle of utility and that of autonomy. (shrink)

Biozentrische Postulate eines intrinsischen Wert des Lebendigen können nicht nur metaethisch unterschiedlich eingebettet sein, sie lassen sich auch unterschiedlich begründen und akzentuieren. Der Beitrag untersucht die Tragfähigkeit des Versuchs, den intrinsischen Wert des Lebendigen auf dessen Würde zurückzuführen, eine Konzeption, die u. a. bei der Einführung des Begriffs "Würde der Kreatur" in die Schweizerische Bundesverfassung in den frühen 1990er Jahren leitend gewesen ist. Es werden drei unterschiedlich anspruchsvolle Konzeptionen einer "Würde des Lebendigen" unterschieden sowie drei unterschiedlich anspruchsvolle normative Ausgestaltungen und (...) gezeigt, dass selbst noch die jeweils schwächsten Formen mit schwerwiegenden Begründungsproblemen konfrontiert sind. (shrink)

The subject matter of ethics is morality, and ethics deals with it in four different though closely related ways: by analysis, by criticism, by norm construction, and by moral pragmatics.