The idea that Heidegger's thinking is essentially anti-sociological is very widespread and seems to be commonly accepted. Nevertheless, a closer examination of Heidegger's reading of Aristotle, particularly in his early Freiburg and Marburg lectures, provides a quite different picture. In his attempt to overcome the shortcomings of Husserl's phenomenology, by studying Aristotle Heidegger makes an important discovery. Being sociological is an existential feature of human being. Here, the lecture of the summer term 1924, Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie (Fundamental concepts of (...) Aristotelian Philosophy), which mainly deals with Aristotle's Rhetoric, is of special importance. In analyzing the phenomenon of speaking within the polis as some kind of apophantic language, Heidegger hits upon the fact that the political is grounded in social communication. The idea of human being as existing within a context of communication developed in this lecture is an important starting point of Heidegger's later philosophy of language. (shrink)

Aphoristiker und andere Vertreter kleiner Formen des Denkens lieben Spinoza. Dies ist eine Merkwürdigkeit, denn gerade die Aphoristiker, die das Antisystematische propagieren, den blitzartigen, schlagenden Einfall vor der konsequenten Entwicklung eines Gedankens favorisieren, sollten doch eigentlich mit dem zusammenhängenden, systematischen und konsequenten Denken more geometrico Spinozas wenig bis gar nichts anzufangen wissen. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die Spinozarezeption ausgewählter Aphoristiker und analysiert das hier zum Ausdruck kommende Verhältnis von Aphorismus bzw. kleiner Form und System. Die Art und Weise, wie sich (...) aphoristisch bzw. in kleinen Formen operierende Autoren mit Spinoza befassen, wirft ein signifikantes Licht auf ihre Aphoristik selbst. Wer über eine Theorie der kleinen Form nachdenkt, ist gut beraten, sich um das Spinoza-Bild der Aphoristiker zu bemühen. Untersuchte Autoren sind Rudolf Kassner, Lichtenberg, Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Hebbel, Nietzsche, Peter Altenberg, Ludwig Hohl, Canetti, Peter Handke und Joseph Maurer. (shrink)

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG›Reinheit‹ ist ein Grundbegriff der Religionswissenschaft. Kaum eine Religion kommt ohne ein Konzept von Reinheit aus. Lange Zeit hindurch war dieser Begriff auch in der Philosophie angesehen, bis Johann Georg Hamann das bekannteste Buch, welches Reinheit im Titel führt, nämlich die Kritik der reinen Vernunft Immanuel Kants, einer Metakritik unterzog. In seiner Metakritik führt Hamann den Nachweis, dass eine sich mit Emphase auf die Reinheit des Denkens berufende Philosophie sich wie eine Religion mit entsprechendem normativem Anspruch verhält. Gegen die kritische (...) Philosophie Kants setzt Hamann ein bewusst unreines, auf Sinnlichkeit, Leidenschaft und Geschichte basierendes Denken, welches sich im Gegensatz zum sich selbst sterilisierenden reinen Denken als fruchtbar und zukunftsfähig erweist. So mobilisiert er die Würde des Schmutzes gegen die kryptoreligiöse Selbstkorrumpierung der Vernunft.SUMMARY‘Purity’ is a key term of religious studies. Very few religions get along without some concept of purity. For a long time this concept had some reputation in philosophy as well until Johann Georg Hamann launched his meta-critique against the most famous book with contains purity in its title: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. In his critique Hamann shows that philosophical thinking which emphatically insists on purity behaves like a religion with a strong normative attitude. Hamann opposes Kant's critical philosophy with a deliberately impure thinking, which is based upon senses, emotion and history. In contrast to the self-sterilizing pure thinking, this way of philosophizing proves to be fertile and future-compliant. In this way he mobilizes the dignity of filth against the crypto-religious self-corruption of reason. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 59 Heft: 1 Seiten: 54-79.

Der vorliegende Band versammelt Studien zum Denken Johann Georg Hamanns, die ich seit 2004 angefertigt habe. Ein wesentlicher Auslöser für mein Interesse an diesem im Wortsinne merkwürdigen Autor waren die HamannSeminare meines philosophischen Lehrers Jürgen Frese vom Wintersemester 2001/2002 und Sommersemester 2002 in der Abteilung für Philosophie an der Universität Bielefeld. Mit der Hamann-Forschung kam ich durch einen im Rahmen dieses Seminars durchgeführten Besuch auf dem achten internationalen Hamann-Kolloquium die Gegenwärtigkeit Johann Georg Hamanns 2002 in Halle-Wittenberg in Kontakt. Die hier (...) und auf den folgenden Kolloquien vorherrschende interdisziplinäre Atmosphäre ist mir in meiner Hamann-Beschäftigung wegweisend geworden.--Vorwort. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDie philosophische Frage 〉Was ist Wahrheit?〈 beantwortet Johann Georg Hamann mit einer Phänomenologie des philosophischen Begriffs. Philosophische Begriffsbestimmungen bleiben ihm unbefriedigend und abstrakt, denn der philosophische Begriff als sprachliche Handlung ist nicht definierbar, sondern vielmehr Anzeige eines Geschehens, in dem der Mensch sich etwas sagen lässt. Die Antwort auf die Frage nach der Wahrheit ist die Ankunft des den Einzelnen erschließenden Wortes. Ausgehend von dieser ontologisch-soziologischen Basis wendet sich Hamann gegen den Ideenhimmel der selbstgenügsamen reinen Vernunft im Philosophieren und beschreibt (...) das Wahrheitsgeschehen als einen dynamischen Prozess aus sprachlicher Geologie, erfahrener Ästhetik und tradiertem Formular.Für diese dynamische Wahrheitskonzeption betont Hamann in seiner Geologie die Gebundenheit des Menschen an das Konkrete als Feld seines Wirkens, in dessen Fruchtbarkeit sich sein Tun bewährt, in seiner Ästhetik die sinnliche Wahrnehmung Gottes als Grundlage der menschlichen Existenz und die Bewahrung des menschlichen Lebens im biblischen Text in seinem Formularismus. Ein solches triadisches Wahrheitsgeschehen ist in konkreter Individualität Dichtung des göttlichen Autors.SummaryJohann Georg Hamann responds to the philosophical question ‘What is truth?’ with a phenomenology of philosophical concepts. For him, philosophical definitions remain abstract and insufficient because philosophical concepts as speech-acts are not definable but indications of events where man allows that something is said to him. The answer to the question of truth is the arrival of the Word which reveals the individual. Starting from this ontological and sociological assumption Hamann rejects the realm of self-sufficient reason in philosophizing and describes a dynamic process of truth consisting of linguistic geology, experienced aesthetics and traditional formula instead. His geology therefore emphasizes the confinement of man to concrete things as the field of his work, whose fertility proves his actions. His aesthetics stresses the sensual perception of God as the basis of human existence and his use of formula the safekeeping of human life in biblical texts. This threefold event of truth is in its concrete individuality poetry of God as author. (shrink)

Zwei Anlässe bilden den Ausgangspunkt für diesen Sammelband. Anlässlich des 100. Todestags von Hermann Cohen fand im Oktober 2018 in Dortmund ein Symposium statt, das hier dokumentiert wird. Im Mittelpunkt standen hierbei die Fragen nach Cohens Bedeutung für die Philosophiegeschichte bis in die Gegenwart sowie nach der bleibenden Relevanz seines Religionsbegriffs. Zudem wird Dieter Adelmanns grundlegende Studie zum Herkommen des Begriffs „erzeugen“ in Cohens Logik der reinen Erkenntnis aus der Synthese von früher Wissenschaft des Judentums und der Humboldtschen Sprachphilosophie im (...) Werk H. Steinthals erstmals einer breiten Öffentlichkeit vorgelegt. Adelmann zeigt insbesondere die Bedeutung von M. Joel, Michael Sachs und Steinthal für das religiös geprägte Denken des Marburger Neukantianers und Erkenntnistheoretikers Cohen auf. Brigitte Falkenburg zeigt, dass jenseits von Cohens Erkenntnistheorie seine eigentliche Bedeutung im philosophischen Konstruktivismus zu finden ist. Knut Martin Stünkel wendet sich Cohens unterschätzter Religionsschrift Der Begriff der Religion im System der Philosophie von 1915 zu und entwickelt eine Religionstopologie, mit deren Hilfe eine metasprachliche Ebene der Religionsforschung ermöglicht wird. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre criticises the ethics of modernity as fallacious, and wants it replaced by Aristotelian virtue ethics. He is particularly critical concerning modernity’s non-contextual understanding of reason, and wants to renew the ethical significance of concepts like tradition and context.

Summary Plato and Aristotle understood phenomena to be knowable to the extent that they participate in the reality of the unchangeable, and this attitude was appropriated by the church fathers as a way of exploring the world’s dependence on its Creator. Luther’s insistence on the world’s sinfulness and on salvation as one-sidedly dependent on divine agency has been criticized as a rejection of this understanding of the inherent goodness of the world, thus paving the way for the secularized world view (...) of modernity. Among these critics is Erich Przywara in his works up to and including his book Analogia Entis from 1932. However, in 1952 Przywara published an article where he found Luther’s theology of exchange to be a close parallel to his own doctrine of analogia entis, the implication being that Luther is closer to a Catholic understanding of the world’s relationship with God than mainstream post-Enlightenment Protestantism, and this article is an attempt to substantiate that claim. (shrink)

This devastating polemical critique of the existentialist philosophy of Martin Heidegger is a monumental study in Adorno's effort to apply qualitative analysis to the content and impact of cultural phenomena.

Dag Svanæs is involved in the Norwegian public debate on how to handle the Corona pandemic. During the last year, he has written articles, participated in many debates and given lectures on the pandemic. He is the initiator of the website Coronakritikk.no, where they document the debate and present scientific knowledge about the pandemic. Svanæs is a professor at the Department of Computer Technology and Informatics at NTNU and studies the interaction between humans and technology. Svanæs received his Ph.D. in (...) Human-Computer Interaction from NTNU. His research over the last 15 years has been in the fields of HCI and Interaction Design. He has built up a full-scale usability laboratory that allows for simulation of use scenarios with multiple users and multiple devices in realistic settings – primarily for the medical domain. This allows for evaluations and empirical studies of embodied interaction. The basic theory that most inspires his work is the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger. This was also the topic of his 2000 PhD. This shows Svanæs’ interest in technology, philosophy, health and the ability to have knowledge to predict what could happen in the future. (shrink)

What are the most fundamental features of the world? Do minds stand outside the natural order? Is a unified picture of mental and physical reality possible? The Mind in Nature provides a staunchly realist account of the world as a unified system incorporating both the mental and the physical.

Various scholars defend the idea that leadership is something accomplished between the leader and the led, rather than something that coincides with the role of an individual manager. Even so, we argue that shared leadership implies a relational ontology grasping leadership as an ever-changing series of events that is thoroughly processual in nature. Supplementing existing analyses and expanding the possibilities for relational leadership research, we propose a view from the perspective ofprocess philosophy, in which relations determine individual leaders and followers, (...) and not the reverse. The process perspective invites us to see and to feel leadership subjectively within ourselves, instead of simply looking at it objectively from the outside. Understanding leadership in this way, as an internally related complex occasion of experience, has implications for expanding the possibilities for what is known in management as relational leadership research. (shrink)

THE KEYNESIAN REVOLUTION AND ITS CRITICS: ISSUES OF THEORY AND POLICY FOR THE MONETARY PRODUCTION ECONOMY by Gordon A. Fletcher New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. 348pp., $35.00 A commonplace of the history of economic thought, repeated by Fletcher, holds that Keynes was the first economist of the 1930s to reject Say's Law of Markets. It is argued that Fletcher ignores many of Keynes's contemporaries, especially those influenced by Knut Wicksell, who disagreed with Say but who used a (...) framework for monetary analysis that was sounder in all respects than that of Keynes's General Theory. (shrink)

"Is higher education a right, or a privilege? This author argues that all citizens in a free and open society should have an unconditional right to higher education. Such an education should be costless for the individual and open to everyone regardless of talent. A readiness and willingness to learn should be the only qualification. It should offer opportunities that benefit citizens with different interests and goals in life. And it should aim, as its foundational moral purpose, to help citizens (...) from all walks of life live better, freer lives. Using concepts and ideas from liberal political philosophy the author argues that access to educational goods and services is something to which all citizens have a right over a full life. Such goods, it is argued, play a key role in helping citizens realize self-determined goals. Higher education should therefore be understood a basic social institution responsible for ensuring that all citizens can access such 'autonomy-supporting' goods. The book examines the implication of this justification of the right to higher education for questions of educational justice, political authority, distributive justice, civic education, and personal autonomy"--. (shrink)

The term ‘locality’ is used in different contexts with different meanings. There have been claims that relational quantum mechanics is local, but it is not clear then how it accounts for the effects that go under the usual name of quantum non-locality. The present article shows that the failure of ‘locality’ in the sense of Bell, once interpreted in the relational framework, reduces to the existence of a common cause in an indeterministic context. In particular, there is no need to (...) appeal to a mysterious space-like influence to understand it. (shrink)

Recent research illustrates substantial gaps between entrepreneurial intentions and behavior. This is a challenge for entrepreneurship promotion interventions that have primarily focused on stimulating entrepreneurial intentions. However, extant literature suggests that implementation intentions enhance the likelihood of acting congruently to the behavioral intention. Furthermore, theory also suggests the condition effects of situations and the perceived control over them. We therefore hypothesized that implementation intentions mediate the relationship between entrepreneurial intention and action, while perceived family support moderates the movement from implementation (...) intention to entrepreneurial action. Using two-wave survey data from a sample of students at an African university, we measured two psychological attributes as important precursors of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial intentions present before undertaking an innovations and entrepreneurship course. Implementation intentions regarding entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial actions, and perceived parental support for entrepreneurial activities were also measured 2 weeks after completion of the course. Our results demonstrate support for the proposed moderated double mediation model in which the effects of the two psychological attributes on entrepreneurial actions are explained via entrepreneurial intentions and implementation intentions. We further find moderation effects of perceived family support indicating that implementation intentions more likely predicted entrepreneurial actions in cases of higher family support. (shrink)

In the Anthropocene, the fact that human activity is enmeshed with the existence and actions of every kind of other being is inescapable. As a result, the planetary ecological crisis has brought forth an urgent need to rethink understandings of human action. One response holds that the transformations necessary to tackle today’s crises will emerge from the distinctive capacity of human beings to transcend their environment. Another school of thought calls for seeing action as composite, produced by distributed networks of (...) human and nonhuman agents. Yet the first of these is open to charges of human exceptionalism, while the second, according to its critics, lacks effective political traction. Martin Crowley argues that a new conception of political agency is necessary to break this impasse. Engaging with thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Bernard Stiegler, and Catherine Malabou, Crowley proposes an original account of agency as both distributed and decisive. Challenging the prevailing view of agency as exclusively human, he explores how a politics that incorporates nonhuman agency can intervene in the real world, examining timely issues such as climate-related migration and digital-algorithmic politics. A major intervention into ongoing debates in posthumanism, political ecology, and political theory, Accidental Agents reshapes our understanding of political agency in and for a more-than-human world. (shrink)

. Science at the interface with society is regarded with mistrust among parts of the public. Scientific judgments on matters of practical concern are not infrequently suspected of being incompetent and biased. I discuss two proposals for remedying this deficiency. The first aims at strengthening the independence of science and suggests increasing the distance to political and economic powers. The drawback is that this runs the risk of locking science in an academic ivory tower. The second proposal favors “counter-politicization” in (...) that research is strongly focused on projects “in the public interest,” that is, on projects whose expected results will benefit all those concerned by these results. The disadvantage is that the future use of research findings cannot be delineated reliably in advance. I argue that the underlying problem is the perceived lack of relevance and reliability and that pluralism is an important step toward its solution. Pluralism serves to stimulate a more inclusive research agenda and strengthens the well-testedness of scientific approaches. However, pluralism also prevents the emergence of clear-cut practical suggestions. Accordingly, pluralism is part of the solution to the credibility crisis of science, but also part of the problem. In order for science to be suitable as a guide for practice, the leeway of scientific options needs to be narrowed – in spite of uncertainty in epistemic respect. This reduction can be achieved by appeal to criteria that do not focus on the epistemic credentials of the suggestions but on their appropriateness in practical respect. (shrink)

Agnotology concerns the creation and preservation of confusion and ignorance. Certain positions are advocated in science in order to promote sociopolitical interests with the result of launching mock controversies or epistemically unjustified dissent. I propose to identify agnotological ploys by the discrepancy between the conclusions suggested by the design of a study and the conclusions actually drawn or intimated. This mechanism of “false advertising” serves to implement agnotological endeavors and helps identify them without having to invoke the intentions of the (...) relevant agents. I discuss three agnotological cases, i.e., studies on bisphenol A, Bt-maize/Roundup, and Oslo’s airport Gardermoen. Pinpointing agnotological endeavors is a means for weeding out approaches that look fitting at first glance, but are blatantly inappropriate, in fact. (shrink)

Hermann Deuser, international renommierter Theologe, Religionsphilosoph und Fellow am Max-Weber-Kolleg der Universitat Erfurt, hat im Februar 2016 seinen 70. Geburtstag gefeiert. Diesem Anlass widmen die Herausgeber mit dem vorliegenden Band eine Sammlung von Aufsatzen, in denen sich namhafte Weggefahrten und Kollegen aus dem In- und Ausland zu zentralen Aspekten von Deusers Denken, insbesondere seinen jungeren und jungsten Arbeiten zum Verhaltnis von (Natur-)Wissenschaft und Theologie bzw. Religion, programmatisch und im Detail aussern. Es handelt sich folglich nicht um eine Festschrift im ublichen (...) Sinne, sondern um eine Anthologie von Originalbeitragen, die ausschliesslich oder zumindest an prominenter Stelle Deusers substantielle Beitrage zur theologischen und religionsphilosophischen Gegenwartsdebatte konstruktiv-kritisch wurdigen und weiterdenken. Mit Beitragen von:Wolfgang Achtner, Stefan Alkier, Svein Aage Christoffersen, Ingolf U. Dalferth, Hermann Deuser, Hans-Gunter Heimbrock, Eilert Herms, Hans Joas, Matthias Jung, Markus Kleinert, Melanie Kohlmoos, Gesche Linde, Dietmar Mieth, Michael Moxter, Robert Cummings Neville, Lukas Ohly, Martin Schmuck, Heiko Schulz, Saskia Wendel, Catherina Wenzel, Knut Wenzel. (shrink)

This paper analyzes Kant’s notorious claim that psychology cannot become a science “properly so-called”. Contrary to widespread opinion, he does not hold any of the following three implausible views: psychological phenomena cannot be mathematized, they cannot be explained in by reference to mathematical causal laws, and they cannot be dealt with in causal terms at all. Instead of claiming something about psychological phenomena, Kant argues against a specific conception of psychology: the then popular introspective psychologies. Only this reading explains why (...) he is also concerned with the possibility of psychological experiments, and it does justice to how he himself treats phenomena of thinking, willing, and so on. (shrink)

This paper shows how late 1960’s student protests influenced the thought of Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend. I argue that student movements shaped their work from this period, specifically Lakatos’s “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes” and Feyerabend’s Against Method. Archival evidence shows that their political environments at London and Berkeley inflected their writing on scientific method, entrenching Lakatos’s search for a rationalist account of scientific development, and encouraging Feyerabend’s ‘anarchistic’ theory of knowledge. I document this influence and (...) draw two broader lessons: one lesson about the role of biography in philosophy and the other about the historiography of student protests. (shrink)

Academic philosophy can be puzzling to newcomers. The conventions, terms, and expectations entrenched among philosophers aren’t always clear from the outside. Why are philosophers so preoccupied with finding “the truth”—doesn’t everyone have their own philosophy? Is philosophy so deep and difficult that its literature has to be incomprehensible? What kinds of arguments can there be for a philosophical position? Where does the evidence come from? Why is there so much jargon—wouldn’t it be better to do away with it altogether? Best-selling (...) author and retired philosophy professor Robert Martin answers these questions and many more, offering a practical guide to arguing and writing philosophically. Anecdotes, jokes, asides, digressions, oddments, and entertainments are included throughout, resulting in an informal introduction that doesn’t shy away from the nuts and bolts of philosophical argument. (shrink)