Diese phänomenologische Studie bietet im historisch orientierten ersten Teil eine umfassende mentalitätsgeschichtliche Analyse der Deutung und Bewertung des Lachens von der europäischen Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Kritisch analysiert werden die vier wichtigsten und folgenreichsten Argumentationsmodelle: - die ethisch orientierte platonisch-stoisch-augustinische Argumentationstradition, die dem Lachen misstrauisch bis feindlich gegenübersteht; - die anthropologisch orientierte Argumentationstradition, die von Aristoteles über Joubert und Kant bis herauf zu Plessner und Schmitz reicht und die das Lachen als ein proprium hominis deutet und rechtfertigt; - die physiologisch-mechanistisch-energetische (...) Argumentationstradition, die mit Descartes beginnt und mit Freud immer noch nicht beendet ist; - die evolutionsgeschichtlich-ethologische Argumentationstradition, die von Darwin begründet wurde und heute die wohl dominanteste ist. Der zweite, systematische Teil führt die anthropologisch orientierte Argumentationstradition auf der Grundlage der Neuen Phänomenologie von Hermann Schmitz fort und beschreibt das Lachen in seinen drei Grundtypen als Bekundungs-, Interaktions- und Resonanz-Lachen auf den verschiedenen ontogenetischen Stufen von Lachmündigkeit als Spiel von personaler Emanzipation und personaler Regression wie auch als synergetischsynästhetisches Gesamtverhalten bei verschiedenen Einstellungen und in verschiedenen Situationen. Die beiden letzten Kapitel bieten Überlegungen zur Lebensfunktion des Humors und Empfehlungen zum Vertrauen in die je eigene Leiblichkeit als dem tragenden Grund personalen Seins. (shrink)

Managers of multinational companies often favour an aggressive tax avoidance strategy that pushes the legal limits onto the advantage of shareholders and the disadvantage of the spirit of democratically legitimized tax laws. The public and media debate whether such aggressive behaviour is immoral. Aggressive tax avoidance is a subset of the aggressive legal interpretations potentially observable in all fields which places little weight on the will of a democratically legitimized legislation. A thorough ethical analysis based on the deontological approach of (...) Kant demonstrates that aggressive tax avoidance as a special case of operating on the edge of legal boundaries is potentially immoral. Applying the Kantian “contradiction of conception or will” test shows that this maxim might not be conceived or willed as a general law of nature. If all natural or legal persons aggressively interpret laws on all subjects and in every imaginable situation, then central principles of the system of law we all rely upon would be severely compromised. Therefore, aggressive tax avoidance by managers of multinational companies may violate the managers’ moral duty to obey not only the letter but also the intention or spirit of the law. The validity of the argumentation depends critically on the formulation and interpretation of the respective maxims and on assumptions about the legal system. Preserving central elements of Kantian philosophy, the article demonstrates the complexity of a philosophical argumentation which tries to justify the moral intuitions that underpin the common negative evaluation of aggressive legal strategies in business. (shrink)

In this book, Martin Lenz provides the first reconstruction of intersubjective accounts of the mind in early modern philosophy. Some phenomena are easily recognised as social or interactive: certain dances, forms of work and rituals require interaction to come into being or count as valid. But what about mental states, such as thoughts, volitions, or emotions? Do our minds also depend on other minds? The idea that our minds are intersubjective or social seems to be a recent one, developed (...) mainly in the 19th and 20th centuries against the individualism of early modern philosophers. By contrast, this book argues that well-known early modern philosophers often started from the idea that minds are intersubjective. How then does a mind depend on the minds of others? Early modern philosophers are well known to have developed a number of theories designed to explain how we cognize external objects. What is hardly recognized is that early modern philosophers also addressed the problem of how our cognition is influenced by other minds. This book provides a historical and rational reconstruction of three central, but different, early modern accounts of the influence that minds exert on one another: Spinoza's metaphysical model, Locke's linguistic model, and Hume's medical model. Showing for each model of mental interaction (1) why it was developed, (2) how it construes mind-mind relations, and (3) what view of the mind it suggests, this book aims at uncovering a crucial part of the unwritten history of intersubjectivity in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This article explores the possibilities of considering how ‘matter and meaning are mutually constituted’ in the production of knowledge (Barad, 2007: 152) through presenting a diffractive analysis of a piece of interview data with a six-year-old boy in a preschool class. Inspired by Donna Haraway’s (1997) and Karen Barad’s (2007) theorising, I understand diffractive analysis as an embodied engagement with the materiality of research data: a becoming-with the data as researcher. Understanding the body as a space of transit, a series (...) of open-ended systems in interaction with the material-discursive ‘environment’, diffractive analyses constitute transcorporeal engagements with data. Stacy Alaimo’s (2010) theorisation of the transcorporeal is put to work diffractively with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s (1987) thinking on the process of becoming minor or minoritarian. This implies a reconceptualisation of the very act of thinking as a transcorporeal process of engagement, going beyond the idea of reflexivity and interpretation as inner mental activities taking place in the mind of the researcher understood as separated from the data. Through my example, I argue that diffractive analysis can make visible new kinds of material-discursive realities that can have transformative and political consequences. (shrink)

This article discusses ethical problems related to postsecondary–K-12 collaborative work involving instructional technologies. Technology related school-university collaboration in particular can give rise to some ethical dilemmas, due to the variety of skills, interests, and obligations of participating teachers, tech specialists, professors, and school administrators. Participants, in promoting narrow interests and concerns too immoderately, can lose sight of a learning-driven framework for decision making. Ethics are implicated, because student learning should be at the heart of the codes that guide all educators (...) in their professional behavior. This article begins by identifying potential advantages of using technology to enrich teacher education classes. The article then describes problems related to initiating access to K-12 classrooms and to negotiating a plan of action. The article seeks to reconcile the concerns of school administrators’and information technology officers’typical concerns with those of K-12- and university-based instructors. (shrink)

Brecht hat im Laufe seiner geistigen Entwicklung eine ganze Reihe von ideologischen Positionen eingenommen und für sein poetisches Werk fruchtbar gemacht, von denen die marxistische nur eine von vielen war. Deshalb stellt dieser neue Blick auf Brecht sein Werk als einzelne Stationen einer nach allen Seiten offenen Entwicklung dar und konzentriert sich dabei auf die Positionen, die bisher in der Forschung zu kurz gekommen, übersehen oder schlichtweg geleugnet worden sind: die nationalprotestantischen Anfänge des jungen Dichters, die enge Orientierung an der (...) Philosophie von Max Stirner in den frühen Augsburger Dramen und die ebenso enge Orientierung an Lao-Tse in den späten klassischen Werken. (shrink)

The Condemnation of 1277 is one of the most salient events in arguing about the nature and boundaries of philosophy. My aim is not to add another estimation of the Condemnation as a clash of faith and reason, but rather to consider the concept of philosophy at work. To sidestep deciding on a particular notion of philosophy in advance, I will focus on the kind of disagreement displayed in the document of the Condemnation. With a side-glance to contemporary argumentation theory, (...) I shall argue that the disagreement we encounter fulfils crucial criteria of what is known today as deep disagreement. We will see that we are in fact dealing not with one concept of philosophy but two different kinds of philosophy. At the same time, it will turn out that the reception has mainly focused on one kind of philosophy only, namely the rationalist approach attacked in the Condemnation. (shrink)

Political scientists should put aside questions about whether voters are rational or irrational, informed or uninformed, and questions about how flawed democracy is. Although they are interesting, these questions are secondary. Answering them in no way helps people—it does not help them with their violent neighborhoods, their declining incomes, their flooded homes, or their dying crops. Instead, researchers should focus on the first-order question of how to improve democratic accountability.

Going beyond the theory/practice and discourse/matter divides -- Learning and becoming in an onto-epistemology -- The tool of pedagogical documentation -- An intra-active pedagogy and its dual movements -- Transgressing binary practices in early childhood teacher education -- The hybrid-writing-process: going beyond the theory/practice divide in academic writing -- An ethics of immanence and potentialities for early childhood education.

This paper relates Arendt's critique of a labor society to her thoughts on the "good life." I begin with the claim that in the post-mass production era, Western societies, traditionally centered around gainful employment, encounter a decrease in the relevance of labor and can thus no longer rely on it as a resource for individual or social meaning. From Arendt's perspective, however, the current situation allows for the possibility of a transition from a society based on labor to a society (...) centered around activities. I explore Arendt's different types of activities-labor, work, action-with respect to the question of justice between the genders. (shrink)

The first is of a more historical nature, the second of philosophical concern: what was the place occupied by angels in the medieval world-view and what was ...

Modern Philosophy, the third volume in the history of philosophy series edited by Etienne Gilson, is a comprehensive critical study of philosophical thought from Descartes to Kant. Containing detailed discussions of individual figures, both major and minor, it treats not only their metaphysical and epistemological views but also their philosophies of art, religion, morals, and politics. It presents the historical settings in which they wrote and shows the dialectical interplay among their views. As Gilson and Langan point out, there inevitably (...) is some arbitrariness in deciding what to include or emphasize in a volume such as this, but, in my opinion, it would be difficult to give a more balanced and complete survey than theirs. (shrink)

Comparing the experiences of mystics and victims of delusion we find very similar states of conditions: an experience of abnormal significance, pseudohallucinations, the sense of mission, the suspension of time, extremes of mood, and the sudden and passive appearance. Only the subsequent course of life of those having the experiences makes it possible to distinguish between belief and delusion. The criteria are simple: we find hope and doubt only in relation to mystical experience whereas in delusion we find a paralyzed (...) belief; human freedom increases in belief but is lost in delusion; and belief allows the interaction between the person and society while the person who is deluded has no effectiveness in society. (shrink)

In the wake of Wilfrid Sellars’ philosophy, John Locke’s theory of ideas is often taken to fall prey to the so-called Myth of the Given. The main charge is that Locke appeals to passively received sense impressions to justify knowledge claims and ultimately confuses natural processes with normative conceptual activity. In this paper, I will argue that the accusations are founded on a faulty reading and that Locke’s account does indeed circumvent Givenism without having to abandon the foundationalist ambitions that (...) drive his theory of ideas. I will begin by exploring the attractions and pitfalls of the Myth. Secondly, I will show how the Sellarsian objections can be launched against Locke’s theory of ideas. Thirdly, I will present my interpretation of Locke’s take on ideas and show how they fare in relation to the crucial features involved in the discussion of the Myth. By way of conclusion, I will discuss whether Locke’s way of avoiding the Myth limits his foundationalist approach. (shrink)

In der 1970 gegründeten Reihe erscheinen Arbeiten, die philosophiehistorische Studien mit einem systematischen Ansatz oder systematische Studien mit philosophiehistorischen Rekonstruktionen verbinden. Neben deutschsprachigen werden auch englischsprachige Monographien veröffentlicht. Gründungsherausgeber sind: Erhard Scheibe, Günther Patzig und Wolfgang Wieland. Von 1990 bis 2007 wurde die Reihe von Jürgen Mittelstraß mitherausgegeben.

This article theorizes and exemplifies reconceptualized teaching practices, both in early childhood education 1 and in a couple of programs within the new Swedish Teacher Education . 2 These programs are tightly knit to the last 12 years of reconceptualized early childhood education practices in and around Stockholm, built on deconstructive, co‐constructive, and re‐constructive principles, inspired by poststructural and feminist poststructural theories. The aim is foremost to work towards a dissolution and/or transgression of the modernist theory‐practice binary that dominates ECE (...) and teacher education practices, where theory is meant to be applied to practice. Student teachers, as well as pre‐school teachers, use what I have conceptualized as deconstructive talks, as a possibility of making visible the dominant discourses of childhood, identity, learning, play, and gender in the performed and documented teaching practices. In teacher education, students’ narratives are also deconstructed. The aim is to transgress teaching‐as‐usual; i.e. dominant and normative ways of thinking and acting in teaching and learning situations. I will suggest an ethics of ‘resistance’, affirmation and becoming, inspired by Derridean deconstructionist thinking, as a professional attitude and reflexive mode for teachers, teacher students and teacher educators. (shrink)

Volume 34, Issue 8, December 2020, Page 1632-1645.

Against the background of the increasing importance of digitization in health care, the paper examines how medical practitioners who are involved in the development of digital health technologies legitimate and criticize the implementation and use of digital health technologies. Adopting an institutional logics perspective, the study is based on qualitative interviews with persons working at the interface of medicine and digital technologies development in Switzerland. The findings indicate that the developers believe that digital health technologies could harmonize current conflicts between (...) an increasing economization of the health care system and professional–ethical demands. At the same time, however, they show that digital technologies can undermine the demand for medical autonomy, a central element of the medical ethos. (shrink)

In the course of the debates on Priscian's notion of the perfect sentence, the philosopher Peter Abelard developed a theory that closely resembles modern accounts of propositional attitudes and that goes far beyond the established Aristotelian conceptions of the sentence. According to Abelard, the perfection of a sentence does not depend on the content that it expresses, but on the fact that the content is stated along with the propositional attitude towards the content. This paper tries to provide an analysis (...) and a consistent interpretation of Abelard's arguments within the framework of the mediaeval models of language and mind. (shrink)

This paper deals with the relationships between theoretical and clinic instances deriving from Lacan’s conception of the real and of reality . It’s main argument is that the disparity between the latter notions is the spring of the insurmountable tensions between ethics and epistemology , one that a philosophical regard shows to be constitutive of the psychoanalytical practice. Lacan’s program of a negative ontology allows us to establish connections between different trends in psychoanalytical thought and practice as well as in (...) general between psychoanalysis and philosophy. (shrink)

BackgroundBurnout is being experienced by medical students, residents, and practicing physicians at significant rates. Higher levels of Hardiness and Emotional Intelligence may protect individuals against burnout symptoms. Previous studies have shown both Hardiness and Emotional IntelIigence protect against detrimental effects of stress and can be adapted through training; however, there is limited research on how training programs affect both simultaneously. Therefore, the objective of this study was to define the association of Hardiness and Emotional Intelligence and their potential improvement through (...) hyper realistic immersion simulation training in military medical students.MethodsParticipants in this study consisted of 68 second year medical students representing five medical schools who were concurrently enrolled in the United States military scholarship program. During a six day hyper-realistic surgical simulation training course, students rotated through different roles of a medical team and responded to several mass-casualty scenarios. Hardiness and Emotional Intelligence were assessed using the Hardiness Resilience Gauge (HRG) and the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-I 2.0) respectively, at two time points: on arrival (pre-event) and after completion of the course (post-event).ResultsHardiness and Emotional Intelligence scores and sub scores consistently improved from pre-event to post-event assessments. No difference in training benefit was observed between genders but differences were observed by age where age was more often associated with Emotional Intelligence. In addition, factor analysis indicated that the HRG and EQ-I 2.0 assessment tools measured predominately different traits although they share some commonalities in some components.ConclusionThis study indicates that Hardiness and Emotional Intelligence scores can be improved through immersion training in military medical students. Results from this study support the use of training course interventions and prompt the need for long term evaluation of improvement strategies on mitigating burnout symptoms. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 107 Heft: 3 Seiten: 526-535.