Cicero, als der unbestrittene Meister der römischen Beredsamkeit in Theorie und Praxis, hat sich in mehreren Werken mit der Theorie der Rhetorik befasst. In seinen 'Partitiones oratoriae' stellt er die Rhetorik als System dar. Der literarischen Form nach handelt es sich um einen Dialog oder einen Katechismus in Frage und Antwort: Sohn Marcus darf seinen Vater im Urlaub anhand einer griechischen Vorlage examinieren. Über die Datierung des Werks besteht keine Übereinstimmung: Einiges spricht für seine Entstehung im Jahre 56 v. (...) Chr., vieles dafür, dass es erst zehn Jahre später niedergeschrieben wurde. Das straff gegliederte Werk gibt einen ausgezeichneten Einblick in die vielfältigen Anforderungen, denen ein Redner gerecht werden musste und auch heute noch genügen muss. (shrink)

ABSTRACT “Meister Eckhart’s Mysticism in Comparison with Zen Buddhism” originally appeared as the concluding section of Ueda Shizuteru’s first book, Die Gottesgeburt in der Seele und der Durchbruch zur Gottheit: Die mystische Anthropologie Meister Eckharts und ihre Konfrontation mit der Mystik des Zen-Buddhismus. It was first published in 1965 as an expanded version of Ueda’s doctoral dissertation, which was written under the supervision of Ernst Benz at the University of Marburg. Ueda’s careful analysis not only illuminates important points (...) of affinity between Eckhart and Zen, but also explains why Eckhart’s mysticism cannot be simply interchanged with Zen Buddhism. To allow the reader to read for themselves, I kept all interpretative notes to a minimum. The text is translated from the most recent edition of the German text, published in 2018 by Verlag Karl Alber, and edited by Wolf Burbat. The German pagination is interpolated in bold throughout the text. (shrink)

Meister Eckhart war ein eigenstandiger Denker der abendlandischen Philosophie und Theologie, der als solcher noch nicht wirksam erfasst wurde - was mit den kirchlichen Prozessen und der Rezeption zusammenhangt, die ihn mit mystischen Schwarmereien in Verbindung gebracht hat. Dem "Aufbruch Meister Eckharts ins 21. Jahrhundert" (Georg Steer), den man dennoch erhoffen kann, soll dieser Band dienen. Dazu gehoren die Besinnung auf die grosse abendlandische Tradition (mit Aristoteles, Plotin, Origenes, Dionysius, Augustinus und Thomas von Aquin), Textinterpretationen und die unmittelbare (...) Wirkungsgeschichte (Heinrich Seuse, Nikolaus von Kues, Martin Luther) sowie die denkerische Beziehung zu epochalen Figuren (Immanuel Kant, Edmund Husserl). Schliesslich erfolgt ein Blick auf die Eckhart-Rezeption durch Rainer Maria Rilke, Martin Heidegger, Karl Rahner, Bernhard Welte und Joachim Kopper und auf die Beziehung zum zen-buddhistischen und konfuzianischen Denken. (shrink)

Books Reviewed in this Article: Theological Investigations, Vol. XVIII: God and Revelation. By Karl Rahner. Pp.vi, 304, London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1984, £18.50. Theological Investigations, Volume XIX: Faith and Ministry. By Karl Rahner. Pp.vi, 282, London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1984, £18.50. Theological Investigations: Volume XX: Concern for the Church. By Karl Rahner. Pp.vi, 191, London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 1981, £14.50. Concise Theological Dictionary. Edited by Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler. Pp.541, London, Burns & (...) Oates, 1983, £12.50. A New Dictionary of Christian Theology. Edited by Alan Richardson and John Bowden. Pp.xvii, 614, London, SCM Press, 1983, £19.50. The God of Forgiveness and Healing in the Theology of Karl Rahner. By J.N. King, Pp.93, Washington, University Press of America, 1982, $17.50, $6.75. In Search of Humanity, A Theological and Philosophical Approach. By John Macquarrie. Pp.vii, 280, London, SCM Press, 1982, £8.50. Faith and the Mystery of God. By Maurice Wiles. Pp.viii, 146, London, SCM Press, 1982, £4.50. Trinity and Temporality: The Christian Doctrine of God in the Light of Process Theology and the Theology of Hope. By John J. O'Donnell. Pp.xii, 215, Oxford University Press, 1983, £15.00. The Cosmic Christ in Origen and Teilhard de Chardin: A comparative Study. By James A. Lyons and edited by Maurice Wiles. Pp.xii, 236, Oxford University Press, 1982, £13.50. Grounded in Love: Sacramental Theology in an Ecumenical Perspective. By Frans Josef van Beeck. Pp.x, 151, Washington, University Press of America, 1982, $19.50, $9.25. Justification: The Author's First Book reissued with a New Introductory Chapter and the Original Response of Karl Barth. By Hans Küng. Pp.xlvi, 332, London, Burns and Oates, 1982, no price given. Reality and Evangelical Theology. By T.F. Torrance. Pp.174, Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1982, $8.95. The Quest for the Historical Israel: Reconstructing Israel's Early History. By George W. Ramsey. Pp.xiv, 193, London, SCM Press, 1982, £5.50. Cantico del Cantici: Interpretatio Ludica. By Enrica Salvaneschi. Pp.140. Genoa, II Melangolo, 1982, 15, 000 Lire. Love Lyrics from the Bible: A Translation and Literary Study of the Song of Songs. By Marcia Falk. Pp.142, Sheffield, Almond Press, 1982, £14.95, £5.95. Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction. By James L. Crenshaw. Pp.286, London, SCM Press, 1982, £5.95. The Sciences and Theology. Edited by A.R. Peacocke. Pp.xviii, 309, Stocksfield, Oriel Press, 1982, £14.00. Vision and Character: A Christian Educator's Alternative to Kohlberg. By C.R. Dykstra. Pp.viii, 160, Leominster, Fowler Wright Books, 1981, £4.45. Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics, Books I, II & III. Translated with a commentary by Michael Woods. Pp.xii, 234, Oxford, Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press, 1982, £11.50. Kant's Theory of Mind: An Analysis of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason. By Karl Ameriks. Pp.ix, 314, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982, £15.00. Heidegger's‘Being and Time’and the Possibility of Political Philosophy. By Mark Blitz. Pp.260, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1981, £13.75. Symbol as Sense: New Approaches to the Analysis of Meaning. Edited by Mary Le Cron Foster and Stanley H. Brandes. Pp.xvi, 416, New York, Academic Press, 1980, £19.60. The God Within. By Harry R. Klocker. Pp.x, 147, Washington, University Press of America, 1982, $19.00, $9.25. The Philosophical Frontiers of Christian Theology: Essays Presented to D.M. MacKinnon. Edited by Brian Hebblethwaite and Stewart Sutherland. Pp.ix, 252, Cambridge University Press, 1982, £17.50. Jews, Pagans and Christians in Conflict. By David Rokeah. Pp.232, Jerusalem, The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, Leiden; E.J. Brill, 1982, 94 gld. Religion, Law, and the Growth of Constitutional Thought 1150–1650. By Brian Tierney. Pp.xi, 114, Cambridge University Press, 1982, £12.50. St John of the Cross: The Life and Thought of a Christian Mystic. By Alain Cugno. Pp.vi, 153, London, Burns & Oates, 1982, £6.95. Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and Defense. Translated by Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn. Pp.xviii, 360, London, SPCK, 1981, £8.50. Francisco de Osuna: the Third Spiritual Alphabet. Translated by May E. Giles. Pp.xvi, 624, London, SPCK, 1981, £12.50. Rome and the Anglicans. Edited with a Postscript by Wolfgang Haase. Pp.301, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1982, 138 DM. The Westminster Confession in the Church today: Papers Prepared for the Church of Scotland Panel on Doctrine. Edited by Alasdair I.C. Heron. Pp.vii, 154, Edinburgh, Saint Andrew Press, 1982, £4.00. Essaying Montaigne: A Study of the Renaissance Institution of Writing and Reading. By John O'Neill, Pp.ix, 244, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982, £12.50. Rousseau after 200 years: Proceedings of the Cambridge Bicentennial Colloquium. Edited by R.A. Leigh. Pp.xv, 299, Cambridge University Press, 1982, £30.00 An American Experience of God: The Spirituality of Isaac Hecker. By John Farina. Pp.xii, 217, New York, Paulist Press, 1981, $11.95. Hecker Studies: Essays on the Thought of Isaac Hecker. Edited by John Farina. Pp.vii, 243, New York, Paulist Press, 1983, $6.95. (shrink)

Ende des Sommers 1818, während seines Aufenthalts in München, trifft Victor Cousin Schelling und läßt sich Fichtes Leben in Jena für seine Fragments philosophiques schildern. Der Philosoph wird als »le plus sincère, le plus vertueux, mais aussi le plus obstiné des hommes« charakterisiert. Er stellt ihn dann Goethe gegenüber, damals Geheimrat des Großherzogs Karl-August von Sachsen-Weimar: »Jamais deux hommes ne se convinrent moins que le grand poète et le grand philosophe«, sagt Cousin. Und die Gründe für diese Urteile sind (...) mannigfaltig. Wenn einerseits Fichte in Jena als Verfasser des Beitrags zur Berichtigung der Urtheile des Publikums über die französische Revolution auch erkannt worden war und - obwohl er jede auffälligen Äußerungen zu vermeiden suchte - er auch kein Geheimnis aus seinen demokratischen Überzeugungen machte, hatte sich andererseits Goethe sowohl in seinen Werken als auch in seiner politischen Tätigkeit immer gegen jede gewalttätige Revolution erklärt, die danach strebte, die angestammte Obrigkeit zu vernichten. Diese seine Haltung entspringt unmittelbar Goethes Idee, daß die Natur - und mit ihr die Geschichte - im Grunde eher der Ort ununterbrochener und langsamer Metamorphosen als unvorhersehbarer Brüche sei. Hier wirkt das gleiche Motiv, daß sich Wilhelm Meister von einem angehenden Schauspieler durch Einfluß einer geheimen Gesellschaft auch seelisch zu einem Arzt wandeln läßt, und es ist im Grunde auch das Gleiche, wenn Goethe in der Geologie den Neptunismus Werners dem Vulkanismus vorzieht. Der Vielseitigkeit der Interessen eines Goethe, der gleichsam Dichter und Naturforscher, Minister und Weltmann war, steht die Gestalt eines Fichtes gegenüber, der sein ganzes Leben der monolithischen Konstruktion der philosophischen Wissenschaftslehre gewidmet hat. Aber auch philosophisch trennt sie ein Abgrund zutiefst. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 178-181 [Access article in PDF] Buddhist Perceptions of Jesus. Edited by Perry Schmidt-Leukel with Gerhard Koberlin and Thomas Josef Gotz, OSB. St. Ottilien: EOS-Verlag, 2001. 179 pp. The papers collected here represent a significant step forward in European scholarship on Buddhist-Christian relations. As Perry Schmidt-Leukel remarks in his helpful introduction, they are an experiment in correlating auto-interpretation and hetero-interpretation, introspection and extrospection.Each of the first (...) three sections—on China/Japan, Southeast Asia, and Europe—begins with a historical study. Iso Kern clears up some misconceptions about the Jesuits' approach to mission work in China, stating that they did in fact preach Jesus crucified (37) and the doctrine of Atonement (41) in the face of a grave danger that Christianity would simply be absorbed into Buddhism (33). Whereas Buddhism had no specifically religious clash with the state, Christianity did, and this was eventually sealed by martyrdom in both China and Japan. Introducing part 2, Heinz Murmel gives a sober reassessment of the vehement controversies between a certain segment of Buddhism and a certain type of Christianity in Ceylon. Only the high-caste highland nikayas were protected by the British (63); the more popular, rural Buddhists of the lowlands felt excluded and threatened and gave rise to what became known as "Protestant Buddhism." The "great debates" between bitterly anti-Christian monks and Protestant clergymen were not as important as the records may suggest, and even the fiery Anagarika Dharmapala later disclosed that he felt great devotion to Jesus. Finally, Frank Usarski reviews the heated debates between ill-informed Christians and overaggressive Buddhist converts such as Karl B. Seidenstucker as Buddhism established itself in Germany in the early decades of the twentieth century. The History of Religions school seemed to suggest that Christianity was culturally inferior to Buddhism, which was allegedly proved by Christian attitudes to [End Page 178] vegetarianism and the general anti-intellectualism of Christianity. Christianity was inauthentic, derivative, "Buddhism in Jewish garments" (120).Yet even Seidenstucker, the renegade Protestant, converted to Catholicism toward the end of his life.Each historical contribution is followed by an essay on the contemporary situation in the three regions, and these vary greatly in substance. Shizuteru Ueda offers a profound meditation on the significance of Keiji Nishitani for Buddhist approaches to Christianity. If Nietzsche posed the fundamental question of "life without why " (44-45), the thought of Meister Eckhart contains the answer (curiously, Ueda insists that this answer must be European, because Europe "determines the world" [47]). The "ground" on which we stand, interpreted as Nishida's "place (basho) of nothingness," is "ground-less." This is not nihilism but the overcoming of nihilism by nihilism, the shûnyatâ of shûnyatâ (46). Jesus as the Christ is the God/man and therefore the mediator, the absolute in history (53). He occupies the "place" (basho) of infinite openness, unconditioned ultimacy (55). He is thus unique, but not universal: the ultimate "for me" is not necessary "for the whole of mankind" (56). The actual encounter between Buddhist and Christian absolutes takes place in silence.Santikaro Bhikkhu, the friend and translator of Buddhadâsa Bhikkhu in the last eight years of his life, tells how his mentor gradually overcame his initial suspicion ofChristianity, perhaps because he was not confronted with colonial oppression as Dharmapala was in Ceylon. Distinguishing between "people language" and " dhamma language," he eventually arrived at a certain equivalence between the Christian God and Buddhist dhamma understood as a nonpersonal, nondual transcendent that is nevertheless not outside nature (85, 90). What Jesus the Teacher of Wisdom offers in the Sermon on the Mount, if practiced, is sufficient for salvation (93). In the perspective of dhamma language, however, the God of Christian convention is conditioned, and Jesus as Son of God cannot be unique. Though inconclusive and sometimes obscure because of Buddhadâsa's indifferent grasp of English, this is surely an astonishing journey for one who tried to understand each tradition, including his own, from the sources. It brought him fierce criticism from fellow Buddhists, however, who branded him a... (shrink)

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) was never Kant's student. But when he, as a private teacher without any university degree, anonymously published his first book, the Kritik aller Offenbarung (Critique of all revelation, 1791), even some of the most prominent German philosophers took it to be Kant's long‐expected philosophy of religion. Three years later he became the successor of one of the most influential Kantian philosophers, Karl Leonhard Reinhold, at the famous University of Jena. There he taught and published his (...) theory of the “Science of Knowledge,” which the famous poet and critic Friedrich Wilhelm Schlegel hailed as among the “greatest influences of the age,” together with the French Revolution and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. It became the origin of post‐Kantian philosophy, later called “German Idealism.” Fichte himself supported the French Revolution and soon got into trouble with conservative student “orders” and with the church authorities (because of his Sunday lectures). In 1798, an article by a friend in his Philosophisches Journal was accused of atheism. Fichte defended it and withdrew from the university in Jena, after troubles with Goethe – the “minister of education” in Weimar – and Herder. (shrink)

Karl Pfeifer attempts to present a coherent view of panentheism that eschews Pickwickian senses of “in” and aligns itself with, and builds upon, familiar diagrammed portrayals of panentheism. The account is accordingly spatial-locative and moreover accepts the proposal of R.T. Mullins that absolute space and time be regarded as attributes of God. In addition, however, it argues that a substantive parthood relation between the world and God is required. Pfeifer’s preferred version of panpsychism, viz. panintentionalism, is thrown into the (...) mix as an optional add-on. On this account, God is conceived of as a “spiritual field” whose nature can be made more intelligible by regarding “God” as having a mass-noun sense in some contexts. Pfeifer closes with the suggestion that we look to topology and mereology for further development of the position outlined in his paper. (shrink)

ZU "HEGEL UND DER STAAT" Der erste, der das Leben Hegels schrieb, war der Konigsberger Professor Karl Rosenkranz. Sein Buch erschien 1844. Der Verfasser hatte Hegel noch seIber gekannt. Unter den person lichen treuge­ bliebenen Schiilern ist er einer der freieren; ohne daB er seinen Anschauungen nach gerade der Hegelschen Linken zuzurechnen ware, ist ihm doch manches mit ihr gemein; nicht bloB eine gewisse Selbstandigkeit gegeniiber der Systematik des Meisters, sondern mehr noch eine eigentiimliche Zersplitterung und Beweglichkeit des Empfindens, (...) ein unruhig stoffsiichtiges Hineingreifen in die Schatze der Zeit und Vergangenheit, ein starker Hang endlich zum geist­ reichen Widersinn stell en den Verfasser der "Asthetik des HaBlichen" fast eher in die Reihe der StrauB, Bauer, Feuerbach als zu den Marheineke, Gabler und Henning. Sein Hegelbuch zeigt von diesen Eigenschaften verhaltnismaBig wenig; sie sind da zuriickge­ drangt durch die fromme Achtung des Schiilers gegen den toten Meister und wohl auch durch den Ernst des BewuBtseins, sozusagen im amtlichen Auf trag der Schule zu schreiben: die Lebensgeschichte trat an die Offentlichkeit als Erganzungsband zu den Werken. Auch die Menge handschriftlichen Stoffes, die das Buch im Abdruck oder Auszug brachte, tat das ihre, dem Verfasser den Ratim fiir seine eigenen Fliige einzuengen. Immerhin wird der Leser des noch heute unentbehrlichen und urn seiner ausgepragten und zeitcharakteristi­ schen Eigenart willen wohl nie ganz iiberftiissig zu machenden Buchs noch genug wunderbare Einfalle darin finden. (shrink)

The thesis presented here focuses on the concept of totality in the work of the contemporary cultural critic Fredric Jameson (1934–). By totality, we mean how the human heart enables the human body, but without the body, the heart has no part concerning the whole; they are mutually dependent. This work shall argue that totality is the allegorical figuration framing Jameson’s political critiques of modernity in The Political Unconscious (1981) and Postmodernism (1991). The postmodern world today as an absent totality (...) represents the contradiction in Jameson: We live in a complex world despite its unrepresentability. Whilst studies of early Jameson have interpreted his works through postmodernity and cognitive mapping, their unsubstantiation of Jameson’s later totality has resulted in not being able to explicate Jameson’s view of the a-historicity of postmodernity. Part One shall examine Jameson’s readings of Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel, demonstrating that Hegel’s critique of Kant concerning the boundary of knowledge includes its overcoming and that Hegelian totality is not closed, permitting Jameson to represent the world as an open totality. Part Two shall argue that Jameson’s reading of the works of Karl Marx and the Marxist tradition of Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin reinforces totality in their writing styles, which allows Jameson to glimpse totality through writing. Part Three shall argue that totality in Jameson’s interpretation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1796) is at work and that Friedrich Schlegel’s novel Lucinde (1799) elucidates a counterpoint to totality which can be used to understand non-dialectical thinkers which Jameson examines such as Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze. Part Four shall argue that Jameson’s reading of these thinkers is justified in critiquing their productive misreadings of totality as closed, informing their political quietism, thereby re-politicising totality as an allegory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BALTHASAR AND ECKHART: THEOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES AND CATHOLICITY CYRIL O'REGAN Yale University New Haven, Connecticut Or pleas'd to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a Fault, and hesitate Dislike; Alike reserv'd to blame or to commend, A tim'rous Foe and a suspitious Friend 1 THE TENDENCY to avoid exclusion is a mark of the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar. It represents an identifying habit, an incorrigible feature (...) of style and sensibility. His texts in which theologians, philosophers, poets, dramatists, and saints are christianly praised give testimony to a catholicity that barely brooks limits. Not only in true Gospel fashion are a multitude invited to the eschatological banquet, they constitute the vast medium of tradition, in which Maximus the Confessor rubs shoulders with Plato, in the company of Claudel, Calderon, and Therese of Lisieux. At different times Balthasar thinks of the tradition as one huge symphony in which notes sound only to be transcended and as a conversation between particular perspectives on the great mystery of redemption, no one of which is final and which meet only in the infinity of their object. The decision for plurality and variety in the tradition certainly validates difference and counts against its reduction.2 Yet at the same time tradition, precisely as a matter of variety, exhibits a measure of coherence or concordance that pro1 These couplets are from Alexander Pope's poem Atticus. See Minor Poems, ed. Norman Ault, completed by John Butt (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd.; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954), p. 143. 2 See, for example, The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. Edward T. Oakes, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), pp. 39, 187, 251. 203 204 CYRIL O'REGAN hibits difference from becoming truly excessive. It is this prohibition of excessive difference in Balthasar's reading of tradition that I would like to examine here. I take as my case study of Balthasar's rhetoric of reading his conflicted response to Meister Eckhart, about whose inclusion in the Christian tradition Balthasar expresses no doubts, yet whose theological message is such as to cause anxiety. We shall occupy ourselves in this paper with the way in which Eckhart's nonnegotiable inclusion within the tradition serves to repress the account of those features that present a fundamental challenge, that represent difference that would make the Christian field radically heterogeneous. In the first two sections, focusing mainly on the fifth volume of The Glory of the Lord (=GL),3 I shall offer outlines of both the positive and negative contributions Eckhart is deemed to have made to the theological tradition. Though I do not wish to give the impression of Scholastic pro and contra, Balthasar's positive remarks being imbricated with the negative and vice versa, it will be suggested that the elements adduced in both cases constitute mirror images of each other. Balthasar takes a bifocal, though not stereoscopic, view of a group of five elements: aesthetic disposition, the sameness of Being and God, the whylessness of the divine, Gelassenheit, and Gottesgeburt. This group is in effect read twice, once in a way that affirms and confirms Eckhart's unproblematic inclusion in the tradition (section 1), and again in a way that, in the light of basic Christian principles, raises serious questions about such inclusion (section 2). In a final section the question is raised whether the conflict in interpretation suggests a deeper underlying conflict between Balthasarian commitment to Catholic theological principles and catholicity. I. BALTHASAR'S AFFIRMATIVE RENDERING OF ECKHART On the surface there is little reservation about the approbation Eckhart receives in the fifth volume of The Glory of the 3 The Glory ofthe Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. S, The Realm ofMetaphysics in the Modern Age, trans. Oliver Davies, Andrew Louth, Brian McNeil, C.R.V., John Saward, and Rowan Williams, ed. Brian McNeil, C.R.V. and John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991). BALTHASAR AND ECKHART 205 Lord. If the depths of Balthasar's analyses of the medievals in his volumes on metaphysics (vols. 4 & 5) never reach the level of his account of Anselm and Bonaventure in volume two, it would be caviling to suggest that his intention at the... (shrink)

Research suggests that institutions affect the levels of corruption in a country. We take these arguments a step further and examine whether it is the presence of inclusive institutions and/or the credible and consistent implementation of institutions that matter, as regards corruption. We use a novel approach to theoretically conceptualise and empirically operationalise institutions along two analytically distinct dimensions: the nature of the institutions (the de jure dimension), and the extent to which they are credibly and consistently implemented over time (...) (the de facto dimension), using a panel dataset for 148 countries covering 2012 to 2018. We find that formal institutions are most effective in reducing corruption when the rules are credibly and consistently implemented. Furthermore, this effect appears to operate differently at different levels of national income. The nature of the formal institutions appears important across income levels, but particularly so at the upper middle income level, while the credible and consistent implementation of these institutions is primarily influential at upper middle income levels. We explain why this may be the case and elaborate on the policy implications. (shrink)

After reviewing the papers in this special issue, I must conclude that brains are not syntactic engines, but control systems that orient to biological, interindividual, and cultural norms. By themselves, syntactic constraints both underdetermine and overdetermine cognitive operations. So, rather than serving as the basis for general cognition, they are just another kind of empirically acquired constraint. In humans, symbols emerge from a particular sensorimotor activity through a process of contextual broadening that depends on the coordination of conscious and nonconscious (...) processing. This process provides the representational freedom and stability that constitute the human brain’s solution to the frame problem and symbol grounding problem. Symbol formation and grounding is an ongoing process of generalising constraints from particular contexts, selectively enlisting their use, and re-automating them. This process is central to the self-creation of a language-using person with beliefs, agency, and identity. (shrink)

This programmatic statement of a lecture series presented by intellectuals close to Georg Lukács in 1917 concerns the paradoxical stress, influentially expounded by Georg Simmel, between the subjective culture of the self and its growing alienation from the overwhelming mass of the objectified culture that surrounds it. The theme is the reflection and analytic grasp of that division and of the insights it yields into the nature of culture.

We show when and how the principles of efficiency and equality might come together and develop a fairness compensation test. A simple graphical analysis is applied. If the faimess compensation test fails, efficiency and justice cannot be fully connected and a wedge between econornic and faimess principles remains. We discuss how important this wedge might be and argue that there does not exist a principle of systematic antinomy between efficiency and faimess.

Can desires and actions be evaluated as responsive or unresponsive to reasons, in ways that extend beyond the instrumental implications of one's (other) desires? And does there exist any form of inference or reasoning that is practical in nature? Hume is generally supposed to have given an unambiguously negative reply to both of these questions. In particular, he is often taken to have held that no desire, passion, or action may ever be said to be opposed to reasons, except (perhaps) (...) in so far as it is based on a false belief or confused piece of means-ends reasoning. And he is generally taken to have held that the existence of some sort of peculiarly practical form of inference or reasoning is fundamentally .. (shrink)

Zentrale Denkfiguren der von Wolfgang Klafki begründeten kritisch-konstruktiven Erziehungswissenschaft werden in diesem Buch aufgegriffen und in ihrem Innovationswert für die wissenschaftliche Pädagogik reflektiert. Namhafte Autorinnen und Autoren unterschiedlicher Subdisziplinen und Generationen vertiefen Klafkis Ansatz theoretisch wie methodisch und öffnen Problemstellungen, die bisher nicht bearbeitet worden sind.