This conceptual paper analyses the arguments which have been made in favour of a transition towards humanistic management. In order to reconcile economic as well as moral arguments an integrative model of humanistic management is presented. This model outlines prospective lines of empirical research especially in the area where business conduct is profitable but not humanistic.

What is the purpose of our economic system? What would a more life-serving economy look like? There are many books about business and society, yet very few of them question the primacy of GDP growth, profit maximization and individual utility maximization. Even developments with a humanistic touch like stakeholder participation, corporate social responsibility or corporate philanthropy serve the same goal: to foster long-term growth and profitability. Humanism in Business questions these assumptions and investigates the possibility of creating a human-centered, value-oriented (...) society based on humanistic principles. An international team of academics and practitioners present philosophical, spiritual, economic, psychological and organizational arguments that show how humanism can be used to understand, and possibly transform, business at three different levels: the systems level, the organizational level and the individual level. This groundbreaking book will be of interest to academics, practitioners and policymakers concerned with business ethics and the relationship between business and society. (shrink)

Using an explicit task cuing paradigm, we tested whether masked cues can trigger task-set activation, which would suggest that unconsciously presented stimuli can impact cognitive control processes. Based on a critical assessment of previous findings on the priming of task-set activation, we present two experiments with a new method to approach this subject. Instead of using a prime, we varied the visibility of the cue. These cues either directly signaled particular tasks in Experiment 1, or certain task transitions in Experiment (...) 2. While both masked task and transition cues affected task choice, only task cues affected the speed of task performance. This observation suggests that task-specific stimulus–response rules can be activated only by masked cues that are uniquely associated with a particular task. Taken together, these results demonstrate that unconsciously presented stimuli have the power to activate corresponding task sets. (shrink)

Contemporary theory of international politics faces a twofold problem: the critical engagement with legacies of national power politics in connection to 20th Century International Relations and the regeneration of notions of humanity. This book contributes to this engagement by a genealogy of thoughts on war, peace, and ethics"--Provided by publisher.

chapter Introduction Poststructuralist perspectives on language, gender and sexual identity Since the inception of the field of language and gender in the, ...

Interdisciplinary explorations of the implications of recent developments in vision theory for our understanding of the nature of pictorial representation and ...

Hartmut Rosa advances an account of the temporal structure of society from the perspective of critical theory. He identifies three categories of change in the tempo of modern social life: technological acceleration, evident in transportation, communication, and production; the acceleration of social change, reflected in cultural knowledge, social institutions, and personal relationships; and acceleration in the pace of life, which happens despite the expectation that technological change should increase an individual's free time. According to Rosa, both the structural and (...) cultural aspects of our institutions and practices are marked by the "shrinking of the present," a decreasing time period during which expectations based on past experience reliably match the future. When this phenomenon combines with technological acceleration and the increasing pace of life, time seems to flow ever faster, making our relationships to each other and the world fluid and problematic. It is as if we are standing on "slipping slopes," a steep social terrain that is itself in motion and in turn demands faster lives and technology. As Rosa deftly shows, this self-reinforcing feedback loop fundamentally determines the character of modern life. (shrink)

Im Mittelpunkt dieses Bandes stehen aktuelle Themen politischer Ethik, die sich den drei Bereichen Migration, Europa und Populismus zuordnen lassen. Die ethischen Herausforderungen, die die internationale Migration mit sich bringt, erfordern das Zusammenspiel nationaler und europäischer Ebenen. Entsprechend ist der große Rahmen der hier versammelten Beiträge eine transnational zu denkende Sozialethik in den Strukturen Europas. Zu den Reaktionen auf die Migration gehört unter anderem der erstarkende Rechtspopulismus, der sich in der Regel dezidiert europaskeptisch positioniert. Insofern ergeben sich aus dem Nachdenken (...) über Europa, Migration und Populismus Spannungsfelder und Argumentationsmuster, die mit grundlegenderen Fragen politischer Ethik verbunden sind. (shrink)

Classifying accounts of institutionalized social norms that rely on individual rule-following as ‘sociological’ and accounts based on individual opportunity-seeking behavior as ‘economic’, the paper rejects purely economic accounts on theoretical grounds. Explaining the realworkings of institutionalized social norms and social order exclusively in terms of self-regarding opportunityseeking individual behavior is impossible. An integrated sociological approach to the so-called Hobbesian problem of social order that incorporates opportunityseeking along with rule-following behavior is necessary. Such an approach emerges on the horizon if economic (...) methods are put to good sociological use on the basis of recent experimental economic findings on rule-following behavior. (shrink)

Für eine ethische Beurteilung des Einsatzes moderner Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien sowie autonomer Assistenzsysteme im Berufsfeld Pflege empfiehlt es sich zunächst, empirische Informationen über Wirkungen und Folgen dieser Technologien aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven einzuholen. Allerdings ist die Studienlage erweiterungsbedürftig. Auch wenn die Diskussion eher tentativ auf der Grundlage von vorsichtigen Annahmen geführt werden kann, so schälen sich dennoch in der internationalen pflegewissenschaftlichen Debatte sehr ambivalente Bewertungen heraus. Eine der Kontroversen betrifft die Frage, inwieweit und in welchem Maße Pflege als Beziehungsarbeit technisch substituiert (...) werden kann oder darf; inwieweit sich dadurch nicht nur Strukturen der Wahrnehmung und Aufmerksamkeit wandeln, sondern soziokulturelle Bedingungen von Hilfe, Unterstützung und Befähigung grundlegend verändern. Assistenztechnologien werden nicht nur das widersprüchliche Verhältnis von Sicherheit, Überwachung, Kontrolle und Entmündigung verschärfen. Unter dem Einfluss moderner Informationstechnologien wird sich auch der Status professionellen Wissens wandeln. Von erheblichem Gewicht ist schließlich, ob möglicherweise sozialanthropologische Grundannahmen wie beispielsweise die der leiblichen Responsivität und personalen Authentizität obsolet werden. Die ethische Beurteilung erfolgt aus verschiedenen Bewertungsperspektiven. Aus deontologischer Sicht hat sich die Akzeptanz neuer Technologien daran zu bemessen, inwieweit deren Wirkungen mit normativen Ansprüchen und Integritätsinteressen (Selbstbestimmung, Sicherheit) betroffener Personen vereinbar sind. Aus Sicht einer Ethics of Care wird es darum gehen, inwieweit durch den Einsatz von Assistenztechnologien nicht nur psychophysische Entlastungen (Pflegepersonal, Patient*innen, ältere Menschen), nicht nur bessere Informationsflüsse bewirkt werden können. Nicht weniger bedeutsam ist die Frage, ob soziale Netzwerke entwickelt, Möglichkeiten der Teilhabe verbessert und kreative Potenziale der Selbstorganisation und der Selbstwirksamkeit gefördert werden können. (shrink)

Der dritte Abschnitt der Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten gilt als der am schwierigsten zu interpretierende Text der praktischen Philosophie Kants. Argumentationsziel und Aufbau des Textes sind bis heute umstritten, seine Deutung hängt in hohem Maße von philologischen Fragestellungen ab. Der Kommentar interpretiert den dritten Abschnitt der Grundlegung Satz für Satz entlang dem Fortgang des Textes. Er widmet der gängigen These von der Deduktion des kategorischen Imperativs kritische Aufmerksamkeit und analysiert Überlegungen Kants zum sittlichen Bewusstsein, die bereits auf die Faktum-Lehre (...) der zweiten Kritik vorausweisen. (shrink)

Theocratic movements are on the rise. But what does it actually mean for God to rule? This study offers one answer by recovering the theocratic project of medieval Judaism's most important thinker, Moses Maimonides. Theocracy is often thought to quash human agency, evoking an overpowering deity and clerical domination. Yet, by reconsidering Maimonides' debt to the Islamic philosopher al-Fārābī, and challenging Leo Strauss' influential reading, I argue that among Maimonides' aims was to elevate humanity's role in divine rule. In its (...) highest form, reason is identical with revelation, action with providence. God's governance is delegated: Theocracy requires human agency - the imitation of God. Maimonides focuses on philosophical religious leaders. But he also broadens imitatio dei to anyone whose knowledge of God inspires love of God: By emulating God's goodness, we can become agents of divine rule. In this way, Maimonides' ideas suggest ways by which theocracy and democracy might, counterintuitively, be reconciled. (shrink)

Ordinary clocks do not measure time in the common and Newtonian sense, and there is a similar problem for spatial measurements due to effects of motion and gravitation. Einstein’s theories of relativity are based on the denial of the possibility of the ‘absolute’ measurements that would be required. Nevertheless, here it is shown how such measurements can be performed. For this purpose, a “light clock” (or equivalent) is linked with a “space-time odometer” that counts the zero crossings in the field (...) of the cosmic microwave background radiation. The readings of these two instruments allow to calculate the time interval and the length of their path in Euclidean space even in the presence of local variations in gravitational potential. (shrink)

This paper has two goals. The first is to develop a cross-linguistically valid model of modality and mood that captures the most important dimensions along which modal expressions vary. I posit a model with two such dimensions, one of volitivity, and one of event-orientation vs. speaker-orientation, mood being placed at the speaker-oriented end relative to modality proper. The second goal is to provide a new perspective on semantic change of modal expressions on the basis of the proposed model. I argue (...) that unidirectional change along the event-oriented / speaker-oriented dimension is the one overarching tendency of semantic change in modals. This stands in contrast to the widespread perception that change from deontic to epistemic is the dominant tendency. The directionality suggested in this new model is also more comprehensive than previously proposed tendencies of change, such as ‘‘from agent-oriented to epistemic’’, ‘‘from agent-oriented to speaker-oriented’’, and ‘‘from participant-internal to participant-external’’, as it better accounts for various kinds of change that have been previously neglected, including change from epistemic to deontic. (shrink)

Einer weit verbreiteten Lesart zu folge hat Kant mit seiner Kritik der praktischen Vernunft den Ansatz der Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sittenverworfen. Während er in der Grundlegung noch an einer Deduktion der Freiheit und Sittengesetzes arbeite, habe er diesen Gedanken in der zweiten Kritik mit seiner Theorie vom Faktum der Vernunft aufgegeben. Dementsprechend wird auch angenommen, dass das Gefühl der Achtung, welches in Kants Faktum-Lehre eine zentrale Rolle spielt, in der Grundlegung keine zentrale Funktion zukomme. Der vorliegende Aufsatz untersucht die (...) Funktion der Achtung in dieser Schrift und kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass der Achtung schon dieselbe moralepistemische Funktion zukommt, wie in der zweiten Kritik. Kant behandelt im Kontext der Zirkelproblematik der Grundlegung ausgiebig das moralische Interesse. Dieser Ausdruck ist lediglich ein anderer Begriff für die Achtung. Dieser kommt damit für die Auflösung des Zirkelverdachts in GMS III eine bedeutende Funktion zu und ihre Bedeutung für die Grundlegung als ganze muss revidiert werden. (shrink)

The historian and religious scholar Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich (1921-2007) was among the most influential minds in the post-Shoah German-speaking Jewish world. In 1943, with the help of Christian friends, he escaped from Berlin to Switzerland, where as a student, he became a spokesman in Jewish-Christian dialogue. Hartmut Bomhoff narrates how despite the experience of expulsion, life in the underground, and flight, Ehrlich became a bridge-builder.

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)

Hexa-Sabbath. Foreign Matter and Vital Substances, Experts and the Critical Consumer in the FRG during the 1950s and 1960sIn the late Fifties and early Sixties the regulation of food additives represented a remarkable turning point in German consumer politics, establishing a debate about decision making and policy advice, altering the discourse of purity and contamination, and inaugurating a new political actor, the organized critical consumer. The amendment of the Food Law in December 1958 functioned as a negotiation process between representatives (...) of science, industry and the state, which was institutionalized in the Senate Commissions of the German Research Foundation. While these Commissions for preservatives, foreign matter and colorants worked behind closed doors, a public discourse about the “toxic condition” of modern life and the negative role of the pharmaceutical and chemical industry gained strength.The debate about the admission of hexamethylenetetramine (hexa) took part at a crucial moment. Hexa was used as a preservative in the fish industry. But its anti microbial effectiveness was caused by the decomposition of hexa to formaldehyde. Despite the commission’s verdict against hexa, the lobbying activities of the industry granted it a reprieve. In the media, the case of hexa was seen as a touchstone for the capacity of negotiated decision making and the ability of rational scientists to resist the demands of industry. Finally, in 1963 it was the new political actor of the organized critical consumer, heir and successor to the housewife federations as well as to “purists” advocating life reform, who, supported by the media, enforced the prohibition of hexa as a preservative. (shrink)

Democratic conceptions of politics are tacitly or explicitly predicated upon a functioning arena for the formation of public opinion in an associated media-space. Policy-making thus requires a reliable connection to processes of ‘public’ will formation. These processes formed the focus for Habermas’s influential study on the public sphere. This contribution presents a look at more recent ‘structural transformation’, the causes of which are by no means limited to social media communication, and examines its consequences. It proceeds in three steps: 1) (...) in some proximity to Habermas, but also by means of the theory of resonance, it seeks to determine the kind of public sphere that a democratic polity requires; 2) an analysis of problems within the contemporary public sphere will feed into 3) a discussion of the conditions for the restoration of a ‘functioning political public sphere’. These include changes in the realms of participation, representation and spaces of encounter. (shrink)

The present paper argues that, despite appearance to the contrary, Kierkegaard’s writings offer promising argumentational resources for addressing the problem of evil. According to Kierkegaard, however, in order to make use of these resources at all, one must necessarily be willing to shift the battleground, so to speak: from a third- to a genuine first-person perspective, namely the perspective of what Climacus dubs Religiousness A. All (yet also only) those who seek deliberate self-annihilation before God—a God in relation to whom (...) they perceive themselves always in the wrong—shall discover the ideal that an unwavering and in fact unconditional thankfulness (namely, for being forgiven) is to be considered the only appropriate attitude towards God and as such both necessary and sufficient for coming to terms with evil and suffering, at least in the life of someone making that discovery. I will argue that Kierkegaard’s (non-)pseudonymous writings provide reasons, at times unwittingly, for adopting the perspective of Religiousness A; however, I will also and ultimately argue that the principle of infinite thankfulness as a corollary of that perspective flounders when it comes to making sense of (the eschatological implications of) the suffering of others. (shrink)

The article critically engages Menachem Fisch’s account of normative frameworks, in particular of (rational) transitions between them. I argue, first, that exposure to the normative criticism leveled at us by other human beings is indeed “capable of destabilizing normative commitment” to one’s own underlying framework beliefs and standards, as Fisch holds; however, closer scrutiny reveals that such exposure is neither sufficient nor necessary but rather accidental in this respect. Second, I will try to show that Søren Kierkegaard’s account of how (...) people fundamentally change their mind provides resources for both a substantial critique of Fisch and a more adequate understanding of the transitions in question. The article argues, third, that Fisch’s framework model – though meaningful, in fact heuristically indispensable in and as of itself – has robust transcendental implications which as such are being ignored, if not directly denied by Fisch and, precisely by being ignored or denied, unnecessarily weaken the overall plausibility of his account. Finally, and ex post, I will address an important objection raised by some commentators. (shrink)

Der Aufsatz fragt am Beispiel von Tucholskys Pyrenäenbuch von 1927 nach den Möglichkeiten disziplinärer Zuständigkeiten und methodisch gesteuerter Interpretationen im Feld der Kulturwissenschaft. Gibt im Falle des Pyrenäenbuchs die aus Sicht der Medienwissenschaft avancierte Kombinatorik von Text und Photographie die Auslegung vor oder lässt sich jenseits dieser etablierten medienwissenschaftlichen Theorie-Topik dem Text selbst noch ein anderer konkurrenzfähiger Auslegungshorizont abgewinnen? Gelesen im Umfeld von Arnold Gehlens Reflexionen über Gewohnheit (1927) und Walter Benjamins Kunstwerk-Aufsatz wird Tucholskys Reisebuch lesbar als aktualisierte Kierkegaard-Lektüre und (...) damit als systematische Abhandlung über mediale Gebrauchsweisen und Praktiken im Zeichen der Wiederholung. Drawing upon the example of Tucholsky's 1927 [Book of the Pyrenees], the paper inquires into the possibilities of disciplinary competences and methodology-driven interpretations in the field of cultural studies. It asks whether in the case of the, the combination strategies of text and photography necessarily predetermine the interpretation, or whether there are other competitive horizons of interpretation beyond this wellestablished theoretical topos of media studies. If it is read in the context of Arnold Gehlen's 1927 [Reflections on habit] and Walter Benjamin's, Tucholsky's [Book/journal of voyages] presents itself as an contemporary reading of Kierkegaard and thus as a systematic discussion of medial usages and practices under the sign of repetition. (shrink)