Die Krisenhaftigkeit der jüngeren und jüngsten Zeit ist unübersehbar. Von daher ist auch das verstärkte Bemühen um Verantwortung in Politik und Gesellschaft zu verstehen. Verantwortliches Handeln ist dabei keineswegs unpopulär. Aber es zeigt sich auch, dass es sich in alltagsmoralischen Überzeugungen nicht von alleine durchsetzt, oder in sein Gegenteil verkehrt wird, wenn es bspw. Von Marketingstrategien des 'green-washing' vereinnahmt wird. Die mit einem Geleitwort von Frau Rita Süssmuth versehenen fünf Vorlesungen der Studium Universale-Ringvorlesung 'Kultur der Verantwortung - Verantwortung der Kultur' (...) der Heinrich-Heine-Universität dis-kutieren deshalb auf 120 Seiten einmal die Herkunft und die Widersprüchlickkeit des Verantwortungsprinzips, aber auch die Chancen einer 'neuen Ära der Verantwor-tung' (Ludger Heidbrink). In einer zweiten Vorlesung werden Gründe dafür genannt, warum es auch ethisch vertretbar sein kann, Wirtschaftsunternehmen in Teilen von einer generellen Verpflichtung zur globalen Verantwortung zu entbinden (Michael Baurmann). Dem Zusammenhang von Verantwortung und Kultur gehen an den Beispielen des Intellektuellen und der Avantgardekunst zwei weitere Vorlesungen nach. Während der Intellektuelle in der heute stark medialisierten Öffentlichkeit seine traditionelle Funktion als Kritiker staatlicher und ökonomischer Machtverhältnisse zuneh-mend verliert (Bernd Witte), scheint diese Rolle von den aktivistischen Kunstpraktiken der Avantgarde und der ihr entsprechenden Museumskultur aufgegriffen worden zu sein (Lutz Hieber). Mit der abschließenden Vorlesung wird der Blick auf eine außereuropäische Gesellschaft und Kultur geworfen und gezeigt, wie die offizielle Innen- und Außen-Politik Chinas einer 'harmonischen Gesellschaft und einer harmonischen Welt' sich zwar auf eine konfuzianische Tradition beruft, in der Alltagswirklichkeit diese aber immer wieder wegen tief sitzender Ängste vor einem Zerfall des Riesenreichs unterläuft (Carmen Meinert). (shrink)

According to the regulations of the Antarctic Treaty System all claims for sovereignty over certain parts of Antarctica are indefinitely suspended. Since the treaty went into effect Antarctica has become a space where the traditional concept of national sovereignty does not apply any longer but has been replaced by an international governance scheme. Nevertheless it can be easily observed that some nations are preparing themselves to substantiate possible future claims for national spaces in Antarctica and are engaging in a wide (...) range of activities to support such future claims. The article describes and analyzes these activities as an Antarctic ‘thumb war’ on national claims in Antarctica and showcases how nations are using certain activities that might be considered as of low importance to prepare and substantiate potential future claims in a post Antarctic Treaty regime. While this thumb war is mainly occurring in the Antarctic Peninsula Region, it is also going on in an area where there are overlapping suspended but not abandoned national claims and where space is limited, at least in Antarctic terms. The article analyses what is required to claim potential future national sovereignty in an area where there can be no such sovereignty according to international treaties and how nations are positioning themselves for such claims with activities that need to be understand as borderline in the context of the current system of international treaties. (shrink)

In this carefully argued critique, Steven Horst pronounces the theory deficient.

The paper answers the title question via its methodological commitment to a Husserlian description of the acts of consciousness which we cannot but perform when we engage in linguistic communication. Familiarizing the reader with the central terms of the German Vorstellung and Vorstellbarkeit (imaginability) and their prominence in phenomenological inquiry in the Introduction, the paper addresses major uses of Vorstellung from Kant to Husserl, before identifying imaginability as the hidden core of natural language, captured in a re-definition of language and (...) linguistic meaning. The observation that imaginability affects all linguistic aspects from phonology to pragmatics is followed by the claim that it is primarily a communally shared form of. The last Section offers a speculative, radically gradualist thesis of language evolution in opposition to dominant catastrophe theories, with the conclusion summarising the answer to the title question in terms imaginable, schematized resemblance relations. (shrink)

This book introduces an account of cognitive architecture, Cognitive Pluralism, on which the basic units of understanding are models of particular content domains. Having many mental models is a good adaptive strategy for cognition, but models can be incompatible with one another, leading to paradoxes and inconsistencies of belief, and it may not be possible to integrate the understanding supplied by multiple models into a comprehensive and self-consistent "super model". The book applies the theory to explaining intuitive reasoning and cognitive (...) illusions and explores implications for epistemology, semantics, and disunity of science. (shrink)

Die philosophische Promotion Horst-Eberhard Richters stellt eine wichtige Auseinandersetzung mit der Phänomenologie des Schmerzes dar. Geprägt von seinem subjektiven Schmerzerleben und seinen Leiderfahrungen als Soldat im Zweiten Weltkrieg in Russland formuliert Richter bereits 1948 – im Alter von 25 Jahren – die Grundgedanken seines wirkmächtigen philosophischen Hauptwerks Der Gotteskomplex (1979). In seinem »Antrag auf Zulassung zur Promotion« im Fach Philosophie schrieb Richter, die »philosophische Arbeit« stelle für ihn »eine zentrale Lebensfrage« dar. Obwohl er seine »Zukunft als Mediziner« sehe, betrachte (...) er die Philosophie »als Basis für die weitere Entfaltung meiner philosophischen Tätigkeit«. Ihm schwebte eine Verbindung von Medizin und Philosophie vor, die er in der Psychosomatischen Medizin, der Psychoanalyse und auch in seinen sozialphilosophischen Schriften verwirklichte. (shrink)

In almost all countries, the transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy caused high unemployment. The governments attempted to ease the changeover to a market economy for the unemployed by introducing several passive and active labour market policies. This paper first points out which effects were to be expected of such policies from the perspective of Austrian Economics. These theoretical hypotheses are then tested empirically. It turns out that the hypotheses deducted from Austrian Economics theory are impressively (...) corroborated by the empirical evidence.Dans presque tous les pays, la transition d’une économie centralement planifiée vers une économie de marché ont provoqué un chômage élevé. Les gouvernements ont essayé d’adoucir la transition vers une économie de marché pour les chômeurs en introduisant plusieurs politiques passives et actives sur le marché du travail. Tout d’abord, cet article souligne quels étaient les effets attendus de telles politiques à la lumière de l’économie autrichienne. Ces hypothèses théoriques sont ensuite testées de manière empirique. Il en ressort que les hypothèses déduites de la théorie économique autrichienne sont corroborées de manière significative par les preuves empiriques. (shrink)

Although the semantic insights about natural language produced so far by neuroscientific research have been meagre, (Pulvermüller 2010) they have provided one important empirical finding which lang...

Contemporary philosophers of mind tend to assume that the world of nature can be reduced to basic physics. Yet there are features of the mind consciousness, intentionality, normativity that do not seem to be reducible to physics or neuroscience. This explanatory gap between mind and brain has thus been a major cause of concern in recent philosophy of mind. Reductionists hold that, despite all appearances, the mind can be reduced to the brain. Eliminativists hold that it cannot, and that this (...) implies that there is something illegitimate about the mentalistic vocabulary. Dualists hold that the mental is irreducible, and that this implies either a substance or a property dualism. Mysterian non-reductive physicalists hold that the mind is uniquely irreducible, perhaps due to some limitation of our self-understanding. In this book, Steven Horst argues that this whole conversation is based on assumptions left over from an outdated philosophy of science. While reductionism was part of the philosophical orthodoxy fifty years ago, it has been decisively rejected by philosophers of science over the past thirty years, and for good reason. True reductions are in fact exceedingly rare in the sciences, and the conviction that they were there to be found was an artifact of armchair assumptions of 17th century Rationalists and 20th century Logical Empiricists. The explanatory gaps between mind and brain are far from unique. In fact, in the sciences it is gaps all the way down.And if reductions are rare in even the physical sciences, there is little reason to expect them in the case of psychology. Horst argues that this calls for a complete re-thinking of the contemporary problematic in philosophy of mind. Reductionism, dualism, eliminativism and non-reductive materialism are each severely compromised by post-reductionist philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind is in need of a new paradigm. Horst suggests that such a paradigm might be found in Cognitive Pluralism: the view that human cognitive architecture constrains us to understand the world through a plurality of partial, idealized, and pragmatically-constrained models, each employing a particular representational system optimized for its own problem domain. Such an architecture can explain the disunities of knowledge, and is plausible on evolutionary grounds. (shrink)

"One might say that 'chance' is anything but blind in forking-path narratives."Fictional worlds attract the attention of debaters in particular when they are supposed to activate the viewers' reflections in a special way. Thus, movies that are most likely to irritate the audience and seem to animate people to reflect on their own personality and life are of major interest. In the following, I want to discuss a certain type of movie that meets these criteria: forking-path or multiple-draft narratives. On (...) the one hand they rely on well-known narrative schemata, and on the other hand they comprise something that is actually impossible: alternative futures. One central thesis raised by spokespersons of the .. (shrink)

Das „Handbuch Verantwortung“ vermittelt einen Überblick über Themen, Positionen und die bisherigen einschlägigen Arbeiten in der deutsch- und englischsprachigen Verantwortungsforschung. Es befasst sich mit Geschichte und Etymologie der Verantwortung und schildert, inwiefern der Verantwortungsbegriff zum Grundvokabular des ethischen Denkens gehört. So wird die Verantwortung historisch und genealogisch lokalisiert und ein Fundament für den wissenschaftlichen Austausch geschaffen. Wann immer von Verantwortung die Rede ist, spielen Begriffe wie Freiheit, Zurechnung, Schuld oder Pflicht eine wesentliche Rolle, da durch sie der Verantwortungsbegriff definiert wird. (...) Diese und andere Begriffe werden in dem Handbuch thematisiert und sortiert. Darüber hinaus werden nicht nur unterschiedlichen Typen und Arten der Verantwortung behandelt, wie z.B. die individuelle und kollektive Verantwortung. Der Leser wird auch mit den wichtigsten Handlungsbereichen der Verantwortung vertraut gemacht, zu denen u.a. die politische und ethische Verantwortung gehören, aber auch die Rolle des Verantwortungsprinzips in Erziehung, Medien, Technik und Wissenschaft. Und nicht zuletzt steht in dem Handbuch die praktische Seite der Verantwortung im Fokus der Aufmerksamkeit. Ein maßgebliches Ziel ist es, den Beitrag zu thematisieren, den das Verantwortungsprinzip für den Umgang mit Problemen der Menschenrechte, Weltarmut oder den Klimawandel besitzt. (shrink)

Das Ziel des Bandes besteht darin, einen Überblick über die Grundfragen, Kernthemen und Handlungsfelder der praktischen Wirtschaftsphilosophie zu geben. Zu diesem Zweck befasst sich Teil I einführend mit dem Verhältnis von Ökonomie und Ethik, der Verbindung zwischen Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft und Politik sowie dem Zusammenhang von Globalisierung, Transnationalisierung und Interkulturalität. Teil II setzt sich mit den Kernthemen der praktischen Wirtschaftsphilosophie auseinander. Es werden Begriffe und Themen vorgestellt, die sowohl für die ökonomische Wissenschaft als auch für die Realökonomie relevant sind. Hierzu zählen (...) systematische und normative Begriffe wie Präferenzen, Rationalität oder Regeln, Grundlagenthemen wie Freiheit, Verantwortung oder Gerechtigkeit und operative Themenfelder wie Handel, Markt, Kooperation oder Digitalisierung. Teil III beschäftigt sich abschließend aus wirtschaftsphilosophischer Perspektive mit zentralen Praxisfeldern der Ökonomie. Dazu gehören das Verhältnis von Unternehmens- und Konsumentenverantwortung, die Rolle von Stakeholder-Beziehungen, Shared Value-Ansätze, die Verbindung von Governance und Institutionen sowie alternative Wirtschaftsformen und die Wirtschaftspolitik. Das Handbuch Wirtschaftsphilosophie verbindet in interdisziplinärer Perspektive philosophische Grundlagenreflexion mit theoretischer und praktischer Erschließung des ökonomischen Handelns. Methodisch werden dabei wissenschaftstheoretische, normative, kulturbezogene und historische Aspekte miteinander verbunden. (shrink)

Horst Bredekamp’s subject is the astute deployment and perennial resonance of the startling image of the body politic that dominates the frontispiece to Leviathan: a treatise on the psychology of the individual and the dynamic of the multitude, published in 1651 by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Affirming the centrality of such a figural device for this pioneering theorist of the state, Bredekamp goes on to address the art-historical dimension of the mesmerising etched title-page. In his central chapters he (...) explores the extraordinary range of sources – from socio-cultural tradition to scientific advances – on which the author and his artist-collaborator may have drawn. In conclusion, he reveals Hobbes to be no less passionate than shrewd in his belief that the constraints and amenities of a tolerable life in common attest to the potency of the visual. As appendices, two essays and catalogues explore the portraits made of Hobbes as well as illustrations that appeared in his other works, thus systematically completing the exploration of the images connected with this exceptional philosopher. (shrink)

The paper analyses Peirce’s hypoiconicity through the lens of Husserlian intentionality. Peirce’s triple structure of hypoiconicity as resemblance relation, diagrammatical reasoning and metaphoric displacement is shown to require intentional acts in its production and interpretation. Regarding hypoiconicity as a semiotic schematization of Vorstellung, the paper places it in the context of Husserl’s conception of intentionality in which iconicity appears as a stepping-stone towards the skeletonization of resemblance in diagrammatical abstraction and as schematic displacement in metaphor. As such, hypoiconic intentionality is (...) argued to play a role also in Peirce’s community conception of language. The paper’s core claim is that intentionality provides an avenue for revealing hypoiconicity as a major, critical concept of semiotics, functioning as paradigm case for investigating the convergence of semiotics and phenomenology. (shrink)

This book challenges the standard view that modern hermeneutics begins with Friedrich Ast and Friedrich Schleiermacher, arguing instead that it is the dialectic of reflective and teleological reason in Kant’s Critique of Judgment that provides the actual proto-hermeneutic foundation. It is revolutionary in doing so by replacing interpretive truth claims by the more appropriate claim of rendering opaque contexts intelligible. Taking Gadamer’s comprehensive analysis of hermeneutics in Truth and Method (1960) as its point of departure, the book turns to Kant’s (...) Critiques, reviewing his major concepts as a coherent system in relation to his sensus communis. At the heart of the book is the interaction between reflective, bottom-up search and teleological, top-down interpretative projection as provided in Part II of the third Critique. This text contends that Kant’s broad definition of nature invites the liberation of the reflective-teleological judgment from its biological exemplifications and so permits us to establish its generalised status as a path-breaking, methodological tool. Kant’s dialectic of reflective search and meaning bestowing, stipulated teleology is asserted to anticipate a series of motifs commonly associated with hermeneutics. Figures covered include Dilthey, Husserl, Ingarden, Heidegger, Gadamer, Apel, Habermas, Ricoeur, Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze, Vattimo, Nancy and Caputo. Their collective contributions to interpretation allow for a review of the evolution of hermeneutics from the perspective of the Kantian critique of the limitations of human cognition. The book is written for the informed, general reader, but will likewise appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as researchers in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

Expulsion of senses. Acustic spaces: call and listening in interpretive sociology. Following the 'mental constructs' that are illustrative for Max Weber's Idealtypologie, the 'acustic spaces' in the cultural concept of education are developed. The study is an analysis of the organization of command and obedience in Weber's sociology of domination. His interpretive sociology is taken from Martin Heidegger. Another subject of the paper is an excursion into the sociology of music of Weber and Adorno. In the acoustic sounds of music, (...) especially in the organ and piano works, we find the process of rationalization of the Western culture. (shrink)

At the beginning of the year, the Draft Common Frame of Reference (DCFR) was published. The text is the result of the work of a broad range of private law scholars from the Member States of the European Union, and it presents itself as an ‘academic’ document, committed to the precepts of scholarship rather than politics. Notwithstanding its unwieldy name, the text is nothing less than the draft of the central components of a European Civil Code. The following article aims (...) to inform the reader about this potentially important document and to initiate further academic debate about it. Following an overview of the genesis and content of the DCFR (Part 1), the discussion focuses on whether, and to what extent, it is based upon consistent and convincing core aims and values (Part 2). The article then proceeds to address, more specifically, the significance of private autonomy, and it examines the extent to which the proposed rules satisfy the requirements of legal certainty and legal clarity (Part 3). Thereafter, the DCFR is measured against the criteria of internal consistency and systematic integrity (Part 4). Also (Part 5) the question is asked whether the Draft critically reflects and convincingly integrates the sources on which it is based (that is the Lando Commission's Principles of European Contract Law and the Acquis Principles, as well as the private law traditions of the Member States). Also deserving of attention is the inclusion of more than 120 definitions of central concepts of private law, which are not to be found in this form or level of detail in either the Lando Principles or the national private laws (Part 6). (shrink)

It is difficult to translate the title “Wissen und Glauben” into English, because there is a debate between Kant, Jacobi, Fichte and Hegel behind it. Through Fichtes “Wissenschaftslehre” knowledge has been accepted as the basic element of all scholarship, whereas faith belongs to religion.First of all we will show, that knowledge and faith have an independent root. Each can exist by itself whithout the other one. Secondly, we will show how they complement one another. In fact faith can be sufficient (...) for the individual without knowledge. But faith can only achieve its richness and its public effectiveness together with knowledge, the πλήρωμα of faith needs knowledge. Knowledge on the other hand can neither take its depth nor reach its totality without faith. Knowledge that wants to enlighten itself must rely on faith. Faith shows knowledge that it is neither fully founded on man nor can it be fully considered as an image of the universe. On the one hand faith is criticism of self-empowered knowledge, on the other hand it is the way to surpass knowledge and to complete it. (shrink)