This volume provides the first English translation of Hans Kelsen's and Carl Schmitt's influential Weimar-era debate on constitutional guardianship and the legitimacy of constitutional review. It includes Kelsen's seminal piece, 'The Nature and Development of Constitutional Adjudication', as well as key extracts from the 'Guardian of the Constitution' which present Schmitt's argument against constitutional review. Also included are Kelsen's review of Schmitt's 'Guardian of the Constitution', as well as some further material by Kelsen and Schmitt on presidential dictatorship under (...) Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. These texts show Kelsen and Schmitt responding to one another, in the context of a debate focused on a concrete constitutional crisis, thus allowing the reader to assess the plausibility of Kelsen's and Schmitt's legal and constitutional theories. (shrink)

Presents theses about the history of linguistics, from John Locke to Ferdinand de Saussure, and reflects on language generally in the period from the 17th to the 19th century.

Kennismaking -- Verwantschap, vriendschap -- Antisemitisme, imperialisme -- Waarheid en politiek -- Slotbeschouwing.

Vittorio Hösle has made the attempt to justify objective idealism by using the method proposed by Karl Otto Apel. By analysing the logical structure of his argument it is shown that this attempt has completely failed. All steps of the argument depend on conceptual confusion and other mistakes.

This book is the best and most comprehensive treatment we have of Leibniz' study of natural languages, on the same high level of scholarship, knowledge, and insight as the essay Sigrid von der Schulenburg published in 1937. With its rich detail and source references, it is indispensable both to Leibniz scholars and to students of the history of the study of language. The editor's careful indices make it possible to use the book also as a work of reference. The reviewer (...) shows that the chief impulse to Leibniz' study of languages was the need to disprove the Swedish thesis of the northern origin of the Germanic languages. (shrink)

Logical Positivists had a very lively interest in the revolutionary science of their time, but also in modern art and especially in ‘international style’ architecture. Surprisingly they never published a representative volume or longer statement on art and architecture. But: it is not well known that Otto Neurath, their leading organizer and spokesman, invited the eminent art historian and critic Meyer Schapiro to contribute a volume on art to the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. Schapiro failed to deliver the promised (...) book. But from the extended correspondence and some material in the Schapiro papers one can describe the general direction the thing would have taken. The correspondence is also very interesting, because it also covers questions of the endangered peace and the approaching war, the academic scene in Europe and in the USA, and surprisingly: Martin Heidegger. Neurath died in 1945, but Schapiro came back to the Heidegger theme in 1968 when he wrote his famous harsh criticism of Heidegger’s programmatic long paper “Das Kunstwerk” where he interprets one of Van Gogh’s shoe-paintings. Schapiro’s short article caused much controversy then. (shrink)

La publication des Carnets de Carnap et de sa correspondance avec Neurath nous donne de nouveaux aperçus sur l’histoire de la collaboration et de l’amitié entre les deux hommes, qui fut mise à rude épreuve au cours des cinq dernières années. L’article aborde surtout les points qui n’ont reçu jusqu’à présent aucune attention, ou du moins peu d’attention : d’une part, la question de savoir quand et comment ils sont entrés en contact et, d’autre part, comment leurs relations ont évolué (...) après leur dernière rencontre, au cinquième Congrès international pour l’unité de la science, qui s’est tenu à Harvard en septembre 1939, immédiatement après le déclenchement de la seconde guerre mondiale. (shrink)

Vandals, Romans and Berbers. New Perspectives on Late Antique North Africa. Edited by Andy H. Merrills, xv + 347 pp. £55.00 cloth.

There are contemporary tendencies to regard the human consciousness as an algorithm, or to reduce the human subjective to organic-natural processes or to see it as a social construction depending on cultural conditions. Such approaches pose a challenge to ethical humanism, as it seems, as if it requires new justification and groundings. How can we grasp and defend the concept of embodied subjectivity of man and its freedom to act? How can we think of its unity including thought, will and (...) feeling, preventing it from getting lost in specialized potentials, and maintaining the person as an alert, responsible and self-founded unit? Furthermore, how is it possible to preserve the meaning of the name of the soul, since the notion of this traditional limit concept of the human subjective has fallen into disuse and likely vanished from the horizon? The essay asks for answer with the help of Hermann Cohen, the great Jewish philosopher of Neo-Kantianism, following the traces of his repeatedly stated, however never written systematic psychology. This first part of investigation confines itself to understand Cohen's early interpretation of Plato as the "primordial cell" of his psychology in order to show how the first three parts of his system of philosophy answer to some of the questions and problems the early work had raised, with special attention to Cohens philosophy of religion. Self-movement of soul and its deep connection with the human body could be viewed and grasped from the unity of human culture as well as of the allness of man. (shrink)