Emotional creativity (EC) is a pattern of cognitive abilities and personality traits related to originality and appropriateness in emotional experience. EC has been found to be related to various constructs across different fields of psychology during the past 30 years, but a comprehensive examination of previous research is still lacking. The goal of this review is to explore the reliability of use of the Emotional Creativity Inventory (ECI) across studies, to test gender differences and to compare levels of EC in (...) different countries. Thirty-five empirical studies focused on EC were retrieved and the coefficients required for the meta-analysis extracted. The meta-analysis revealed that women showed significantly higher EC than men (total N = 3,555). The same gender differences were also found when testing scores from three ECI subscales, i.e. emotional novelty, emotional preparedness and emotional effectiveness/authenticity. When comparing EC in 10 different countries (total N = 4,375), several cross-cultural differences were revealed. The Chinese sample showed a significantly lower average ECI total score than all the other countries. Based on the integration of results, the avenues for future research on EC and the breadth of influence of the concept of EC across different fields of psychology are discussed. Keywords: Emotional Creativity, Review, Meta-Analyses, Meta-Analysis, Definition, Emotional Creativity Inventory, ECI, Reliability, Gender Differences, Cross-cultural, Cross-culture, Personality Traits, NEO Personality Inventory, Big Five, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Openness to Experience, Introversion, Neuroticism, Emotions, Creativity, Cognition, Cognitive Abilities, Affect, Fantasy, Coping, Alexithymia, Anhedonia, Self-understanding, Motivation, Creativeness, Innovative Performance, Creative Ability, Artistic Creativity, Creative Thinking. MeSH Headings: Emotions, Creativity, Affect, Affective Symptoms, Gender, Sex, Gender Identity, Cross-Cultural Comparison, Transcultural Studies, Temperament, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Anhedonia, Creativeness, Cognition, Cognitive Function, Artistic Creativity, Creative Ability, Creative Thinking. (shrink)

Blumenberg‘s phenomenological anthropology replaces the traditional question: What is the human being? with the following question: How is being human even possible? This question expresses a great mistrust over the ability of copying with human life. According to Blumenberg, man can survive only when he keeps distance from the threatening world in a literal as well as metaphorical sense. As an upright animal, who sees and can be seen, he can experience being hunted but also being the hunter in order (...) to bring himself into safety from what threatens him as well as succeeding in hunting. In a metaphorical sense, man takes distance from the almighty reality through myths, religion, science, technology, art, resp . culture as reliable ways to cope with anxiety and threats in this, for him, dangerous and nameless world. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to reconsider Barthes’s theory of textuality, as presented in his The Pleasure of the Text. Barthes’s approach is based on the rejection of the “referential” or “realistic” theories of literary text: the Barthesian pleasure is drawn from the texture of the text itself rather that from its alleged referential character. In this sense, the author’s suggestion is to return to the notion of representation rejected by Barthes, even though this representation should not be identical (...) with the reference in the classical sense of the word. The notion of “weak representation”, suggested by the author, does not mean a return to a naïve conception of realism. It rather implies that the referent would be a fantasmatic rather than “realistic” entity. The notions of representation and reference are exemplified by the interpretation of Richardson’s Clarissa and Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbevilles. (shrink)

The size and distance of an object are crucial pieces of information that every human being processes from an early age (see, e.g., Day & McKenzie, 1981; Granrud, 2006). For infants, the distance o...

Kleine Schriften, written by the eminent German scholar of Islamic Studies Josef van Ess, is a unique collection of Van Ess' widely scattered short writings, journal articles, encyclopaedia entries, (autobiographical) essays, reviews and lectures, in (mainly) German, English and French, some of which are published here for the first time. It includes a full bibliography of the author's work, in addition to two indexes of classical authors and works, which aim to make accessible the remarkable riches that these Kleine (...) Schriften have to offer. The three-volume collection, carefully selected by the author himself, offers over 150 texts organized primarily along Van Ess' own biography and the history of the discipline. It is divided into twelve parts, beginning with Tübingen where his career began in 1968, and ending with Retrospects and Postscripts for the future, with the thematic complexes Islam and its first options and Muʿtazila as centre pieces. All parts are introduced by brief accounts of the historical context in which each of the assembled texts was written and which course subsequent scholarship may have taken. (shrink)

The concept of autonomy is of crucial importance not only for philosophical but also for theological ethics. Referring to the contemporary debate on the universality or particularity of moral judgments the idea of universal moral principles is defended by reconstructing the fundamental similarities between J. Rawls's liberal theory of social justice and Aquinas's understanding of natural law. Despite this plea for a cognitivist approach in normative ethics and a strong concept of practical reason the communitarian movement has to be taken (...) seriously especially from a theological perspective. As both the concepts of happiness or human fulfillment and that of virtue need to be rehabilitated in post-Kantian ethics communitarianism could help us to overcome a too narrow and therefore partly blind understanding of moral theory. (shrink)

Introduction : heroes like us -- Hegel, the western and classical modernity -- The myth and the frontier -- The hero in the epochs of mythical and the bourgeois -- The end of the individual -- The end of the subject -- Romanticism, crime and agonal modernity -- The return of tragedy in modernity -- Heroes of coolness and the ironist -- Nietzsche, science fiction and hybrid modernity -- Heroic individualismus and metaphysics -- Superhumans, supermen, cyborgs -- Heroes of the (...) future. (shrink)

This article wants to answer three questions: first, why is not only sensibility but visibility important for modern democracy? Second, why is art or aesthetic experience important for both democracy and visibility? And third, how is it possible that aesthetic experience generates effects that conduce to democracy? Answering these questions aims at highlighting an inner connection between democracy, feelings and aesthetics. For a democratic community, on the one hand, cannot exclude feelings from political discourse, but, on the other hand, cannot (...) accept them in their immediate and absolute form. Feelings need ‘transformation’, and the best popular medium for this is aesthetic experience. (shrink)

This work brings in both the original German and English translation of over one hundred short essays in philosophical logic and the philosophy of mind of historical importance to understanding Wittgenstein's philosophical thought and development in the 1930's. Transcribed from the papers of Friedrich Waismann and dating from 1932-35, the majority are highly important dictations by Wittgenstein to Waismann, but also includes texts of redrafted material by Waismann closely based on the dictations. Many of these texts become the ultimate sources (...) of material on philosophy of language that constitutes the bulk of Waismann's book Logic, Sprache, Philosophy. The transcriptions throw light on the development of Wittgenstein's thought in this period and some of the topics are not covered in any of the existing publications of his writings, in particular his detailed attention to causal theories of meaning. They also contain texts covering psychological concepts such as expecting, intending and experience; these have no counterparts in Waismann's publications. (shrink)

Following Hegel's remark that art is a “thousand-eyed Argos,” one can formulate the assumption that under contemporary conditions art and surveillance state do not necessarily exclude, but reflect each other. The film minority report as popular art offers a visual self-reflection on this proposition. The central question is whether and to what extend this film performs a legitimization or delegitimization of the normative order.

Der Band enthält Beiträge von Juristen, Medizinern und Philosophen aus Australien, Estland, Polen, Rußland, Tschechien, den U.S.A. und Deutschland zu Themen der Ethik und Wissenschaftstheorie der Medizin. Die Mehrzahl der Beiträge sind von Nachwuchswissenschaftlern des College for Advanced Central European Studies an der Europa-Universität Viadrina erarbeitet worden. Sie wurden im Rahmen der Jahrestagung des Arbeitskreises für Ethik und Wissenschaftstheorie der Medizin in Ostmitteleuropa neben weiteren Beiträgen, die hier zum Abdruck kommen, zur Diskussion gestellt. Der Arbeitskreis beruht auf einer Kooperationsvereinbarung des (...) Interdisziplinären Zentrums für Ethik der Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) und des Instituts für Geschichte und Ethik der Medizin der Universität Halle-Wittenberg. Die Beiträge befassen sich u. a. mit der Gesundheitsreform in Polen, mit ethischen und rechtlichen Problemen bei der künstlichen Befruchtung, der Abtreibung, medizinischen Experimenten an Menschen, der Gentechnik, der Patientenautonomie, Außenseitermethoden in der Medizin, dem Patiententestament, dem Todesbegriff, Drogenkonsum, der Sterbehilfe und der Gentechnik. (shrink)

The text presents the general cultural-historical thesis that one cannot adequately understand philosophy after the Second World War if one does not understand it in interaction with politics and popular culture. These three spheres find themselves in a variable triangular constellation after the Second World War. Methodologically, the text is guided by the fact that this interplay is also organised in a triangular and variable way, namely according to the options of coexistence, conflict and cooperation. Adorno’s philosophy serves as a (...) challenging example. The principle of coexistence, conflict and cooperation also serves as a framework for the second part of the text, which reformulates Adorno’s socio-critical question about the possibility of change as an ontological question. In the constellation with politics, pop music can in this context express in its own way what in philosophy is called the principle of ontological contingency. (shrink)

The funding of higher education is under stress. On the one hand, the benefits of universities for economic prosperity and growth are increasing as universities graduate more students; undertake a greater share of scientific research; and, through cooperation with business, stimulate the technological advance of the private sector. At the same time, government funding of higher education is stagnating or even falling in many countries. The book brings together the views of an international group of experts on the financing of (...) higher education. They examine funding trends in Asia, Europe and the United States and present practical proposals for the reform of university funding and operations and examples of successful ways of building links between industry and universities that can be mutually beneficial and supplement government funding of higher education. (shrink)