This is part 2 of an interview with Prof. J. Conant, conducted by Niklas Forsberg.

Niklas Luhmann is widely recognized as one of the most original thinkers in the social sciences today. This major new work further develops the theories of the author by offering a challenging analysis of the relationship between society and the environment. Luhmann extends the concept of "ecology" to refer to any analysis that looks at connections between social systems and the surrounding environment. He traces the development of the notion of "environment" from the medieval idea--which encompasses both human and (...) natural systems--to our modern definition, which separates social systems from the external environment. In Luhmann's thought, human beings form part of the environment, while social systems consist only of communications. Utilizing this distinctive theoretical perspective, Luhmann presents a comprehensive catalog of society's reactions to environmental problems. He investigates the spheres of the economy, law, science, politics, religion, and education to show how these areas relate to environmental issues. Ecological Communication is an important work that critically examines claims central to our society--claims to modernity and rationality. It will be of great importance to scholars and students in sociology, political science, philosophy, anthropology, and law. (shrink)

This is part 2 och an interview with Prof. J. Conant, conducted by Niklas Forsberg. This article will be published at the end of June 2016.

In this paper the author presents two different modes of relationship between phenomenological psychopathology and philosophy. The dominant mode conforms to the medical-psychiatric discourse which takes pathological time experiences as negative deviations from the ‘normal’ and ‘adequate’ equivalent. In this mode phenomenological description of ‘disturbed’ time experiences requires philosophy to provide an insight into the ‘essence’ of time and an essentially adequate experience of time. Only such a philosophical insight can deliver a valid reference point for investigating what is really (...) missing in pathological time experiences. This philosophical reference point can either consist in a metaphysical-normative concept of time and time experiences, or in a transcendental concept of how normal and abnormal time experiences are constituted in the inner consciousness of time. There is another mode of relationship which conforms to Freud’s discovery that pathological symptoms are not just negative alterations of the ‘normal’ but hide an own ‘meaning’. The author makes the case for the use of philosophy to unveil the specific kind of meaning in pathological experiences of time. She refers to existential philosophy in this respect, and in particular to its concept of Angst as a fundamental philosophical experience. This allows for a hermeneutic approach to ‘disturbed’ time experiences. What looks from a pure psychiatric perspective to be a mere ‘disorder’ of the ‘normal’, becomes understandable as a specific form of ‘suffering from one’s own temporality’. She argues that people with disturbed time experiences are especially sensitive to anxiety-laden experiences of what it means to be temporal, whilst ‘normal’ people can screen them out in favor of a ‘mentally undisturbed’ everyday life. (shrink)

The way that Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals begins may seem perplexing since it does not state in a clear way what the aims and purposes of the book are, nor does it say anything about methodology. This chapter aims to show how this peculiar opening, rightly understood, functions as an entrance to an understanding of the book as a whole, and to make clear why the opening chapter’s focus on the concept of art is the right place to (...) start. Murdoch’s view of metaphysics is that we are always guided by a worldview, i.e. by unified images that are historical and changing. Art functions as a mirror of its time that help to bring the background of our lives and thoughts into view. (shrink)

Traditionally, Lucian’s Navigium is regarded as a moralizing dialogue, which criticizes unrealistic aspirations. Lycinus incorporates this criticism by attacking his friends ironically. This essay elaborates that the dialogue also offers a more ethical interpretation that problematizes Lycinus’ moralizing attitude towards his friends. It argues that Timolaus, one of Lycinus’ interlocutors and friends, introduces a discourse about the reciprocal connection between the act of storytelling on the one hand, and friendship on the other. By doing so, aesthetics (stories) and ethics (friendship) (...) appear as complementary. To emphasize this perspective on the dialogue, the modern concept of narrative communities is connected with ancient concepts of friendship. Lycinus’ ironizing voice and behavior can then be seen as antagonistic rather than dominant. Timolaus, however, appears as subtle narrator, who by his own wish tries to make Lycinus aware of the importance of storytelling for friendship. (shrink)

Language Lost and Found takes as its starting-point Iris Murdoch's claim that "we have suffered a general loss of concepts." By means of a thorough reading of Iris Murdoch's philosophy in the light of this difficulty, it offers a detailed examination of the problem of linguistic community and the roots of the thought that some philosophical problems arise due to our having lost the sense of our own language. But it is also a call for a radical reconsideration of how (...) philosophy and literature relate to each other on a general level and in Murdoch's authorship in particular. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nordic Wittgenstein Review Jahrgang: 2 Heft: 1 Seiten: 131-160.

Zusammenfassung: Der Beitrag systematisiert, kontextualisiert und evaluiert den eigentumstheoretischen Hintergrund der derzeit breit geführten Debatte um bezahlbaren Wohnraum in deutschen Großstädten. Ausgehend von der These, dass hinter der sogenannten ‚Wohnungskrise‘ eigentlich eine ‚Bodenkrise‘ steht, werden drei zentrale Konflikte um die politische Rahmung des Eigentums an Boden diskutiert: die Frage nach dem Gebrauch, der Verwertung und dem Eigentumsschutz. Dabei werden die normativen Potentiale eines immanenztheoretischen, apriorisch pflichtgebundenen Eigentumsverständnisses für eine zeitgemäße Wohnraum- und Bodenpolitik ausgelotet.

"Zweifellos hat sich in diesem sich rasch entwickelnden Fachgebiet in dreißig Jahren viel geändert. Auch wenn man den laufenden Wechsel von Selbstempfehlungsmethoden der Managementsberatungsliteratur außer Acht läßt, ist die Organisationswissenschaft heute nicht mehr dieselbe wie die des Jahres 1964. Das muß aber nicht heißen, daß bestimmte Forschungsperspektiven widerlegt oder auf andere Weise obsolet geworden sind..." Aus dem Epilog zur 4. Auflage Seit seinem Erscheinen 1964 hat die Publikation den Rang einer der wichtigsten neueren deutschsprachigen Veröffentlichungen auf dem Gebiet der Organisationssoziologie (...) erlangt. Als Kompendium moderner sozialwissenschaftlich orientierter Organisationslehre sind die "Funktionen und Folgen formaler Organisation" in den Kanon aufgenommen worden. Damit ist der Versuch, eine Grundlegung der modernen, interdisziplinären Organisationstheorie zu schaffen, wie das nach wie vor starke Interesse belegt, gelungen. Die unveränderte Neuauflage dieses Werkes ist aber auch gerechtfertigt angesichts der noch immer gültigen Zielsetzung einer einheitlichen, integrierenden Theorie. Ungebrochene Aktualität bezieht der Titel darüber hinaus aus dem Zusammenführen von Systemtheorie und Entscheidungstheorie und dem Versuch, von da aus sowohl die informalen Seiten innerhalb der Systeme als auch die Abweichungen von Vorstellungen rationalen Entscheidens in den Blick zu bekommen. Das Buch ist eine permanente Aufforderung zur Diskussion - für Soziologen, Organisationstheoretiker und Verwaltungspraktiker. (shrink)

This article argues that Hannah Arendt’s essay “Civil Disobedience” contains a critique of white constitutionalism. A close reading of Arendt’s comments on the failure of Reconstruction to durably found Black citizenship reveals that the anti-Blackness of her account does not consist in ignoring the racialization of constitutional order but, to the contrary, in a dismissal of Black politics due to the limitations of a white constitutional heritage. In “Civil Disobedience,” Arendt thus stood on the edge of an insight that she (...) failed to develop more fully: Black movements had brought to light the limitations that racial domination places on the “augmentation” of America’s founding principles. For Arendt, the notion of the “principle” is meant to mediate the novelty of action with the durability of order. But to the extent that she views American institutions as defined by the “inherited crime” of slavery, feedback across temporal strata—between a principle in past, present, and future—is structurally blocked. The symbolic whiteness of citizenship undermines institutional durability, as it generates a crisis of constitutional authority for all. Tracing the sources behind Arendt’s pessimistic vision, the article demonstrates echoes between her account and the literature on which she relied: Tocqueville; Stanley Elkins; and, possibly, W. E. B. Du Bois. It concludes with a reading of Arendt’s commentary on Reconstruction as the attempt to recover a lost moment of foundation, an unredeemed promise of refounding. (shrink)

The requirement that theoretical and empirical research is to sustainably benefit not only the nominal researcher, but also the other research participants, is deeply embedded in the conceptual-analytical framework of Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject and its co-researcher principle. PSS research is thus to be of emancipatory relevance to those others the researcher comes to collaborate with. Meanwhile, the question of how this requirement can be prospectively integrated into the design of a research project remains subject to debate. (...) This question emerges as particularly difficult to tackle in research projects that engage in co-research with young children: How can a researcher ensure that the young children s-he works togethe with benefit from the research project? Based on the critical analysis of an earlier research project implemented by the author, the contribution at hand suggests that PSS’ foundational notion of emancipatory relevance needs to be revisited. It argues that if a research project is to sustainably benefit young co-researchers, the technical relevance of the expected mutual emancipation should as well be explicitly considered in the project design. A discussion of recent methodological developments in child-targeted Participatory Design and Human-Computer Interaction serve as inspiration for this conceptual specification. The contribution thereby invites co-research to further investigate how emancipatory relevance cannot only to be methodologically attained via dissemination of research results and conceptual developments, but also via the actual research process it attempts to engage the co-researchers in irrespective of their age. (shrink)

Inhalt: I. Satze der Form A glaubt, dass P. - II. Elementarsatz und phanomenologische Sprache. - III. Die wandelnde Bedeutung der Elementarsatze im Rahmen des Farbeninkompatibilitatsproblems. - IV. Regel und notwendiger Satz. G.E. Moore uber Wittgensteins Auffassung von Necessary Propositions. - V. Wittgensteins Single Lecture on Necessary Propositions. - VI. Eine behaviouristische Fehlinterpretation.".

What challenges must a principle of need for prioritisations in health care meet in order to be plausible and practically useful? Some progress in answering this question has recently been made by Hope, Østerdal and Hasman. This article continue their work by suggesting that the characteristic feature of principles of needs is that they are sufficientarian, saying that we have a right to a minimally acceptable or good life or health, but nothing more. Accordingly, principles of needs must answer two (...) distributive questions: when do we have sufficient and how should we prioritise among those who do not yet have a sufficiency? Furthermore, it is argued that Roger Crisp’s theory of need, which combines sufficientarianism with prioritarianism below the threshold of need, is better equipped than alternatives to answer these questions as well as meeting the challenges formulated by Hope, Østerdal and Hasman. However, Crisp’s theory faces two major challenges. First, it has to say something about the currency of distribution: a principle of need must be complemented either with a theory on the human good or a theory about the proper goals of health care. Second, it has to say something about where the threshold should be set. However, any attempt to set a threshold seems morally arbitrary in the light of the sufficientarian idea that those just above the threshold never should be given priority over those just below the threshold. (shrink)

Jan Patočka opens “The Phenomenology of Afterlife” by indicating that philosophers always tend to focus on questions about the mortality or immortality of the soul when thinking about death, and that he wants to take a different route focusing instead on the phenomenology of the afterlife and the ways the diseased others live in us. And this is what the major bulk of the text focuses on. But as Patočka’s unfinished text is about to end, he leaves us with a (...) peculiar addendum that signals that a return to the more traditional questions – about death as mine – is necessary. In this text, I seek to elucidate what the phenomenology of afterlife brings to the traditional discussion about death as mine (and about my “soul”). One of the more prominent and well-developed modern theories that discuss death as mine is Derek Parfit’s. Thus, the effort in this text is to find out what Patočka’s phenomenology can teach us about Parfit’s theory. (shrink)

English summary: What minimal philosophical requirements must be considered in order to be able to arrive at an ontologically and epistemologically realist position, with which one is finally able to speak about something like objective empirical knowledge or even an objective science? On the basis of Schopenhauers antinomy of human cognition, and through an introduction and analysis of his philosophical system based on his chief work The World as Will and Representation, a philosophical path is pointed out in this work, (...) which presents the possibility that such an ontologically and epistemologically realist position can be created in the form of an evolutionary realism and representationism, so that one is able to argue under exact systemic requirements for the existence of objective empirical knowledge and with it, finally arrive at an objective science. German description: Welche philosophischen Minimalvoraussetzungen muss man in Betracht ziehen, um zu einer ontologisch- und epistemologisch-realistischen Position gelangen zu konnen, mit der man letztendlich von so etwas wie objektivem empirischem Wissen oder gar von objektiver Wissenschaft sprechen kann? Ausgehend von Schopenhauers Antinomie des menschlichen Erkenntnisvermogens wird durch eine Einfuhrung und Analyse seines philosophischen Systems anhand seines Hauptwerks "Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung" ein philosophischer Weg aufgezeigt, der die Moglichkeit darlegt, eine derartige ontologisch- und epistemologisch-realistische Position in Form eines evolutionaren Realismus und Reprasentationismus so ausformulieren zu konnen, dass man damit unter bestimmten Systemvoraussetzungen fur die Existenz von objektivem empirischem Wissen und damit letztendlich fur eine objektive Wissenschaft argumentieren kann. (shrink)

Massimiliano Tomba’s Insurgent Universality traces a global history of revolutionary institution-building as ‘theory in action’, pushing radical democracy beyond an ontology of the political. This contribution aims to clarify the place of ‘insurgent institutions’ in Tomba’s work and suggests that an unresolved tension persists between insurgent universality as popular institutions on the one hand, and as a negative dis-ordering on the other. Exploring the promise and limitations of ‘insurgent institutions’ in light of their durability, its first part reads Insurgent Universality (...) alongside Santi Romano, the legal pluralist whose concept of the institution Tomba adopts. Secondly, the article turns to Hannah Arendt’s understanding of authority and Miguel Abensour’s discussion of ‘insurgent institutions’ as two potentially helpful accounts of democratic practice within durational time. Where Tomba remains focused on constellations between moments of rupture, Arendt and Abensour offer a politically generative understanding of durability specific to radical-democratic institutions. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that it’s impossible for there to be a single universal theory of meaning for a language. First, I will consider some minimal expressiveness requirements a language must meet to be able to express semantic claims. Then I will argue that in order to have a single unified theory of meaning, these expressiveness requirements must be satisfied by a language which the semantic theory itself applies to. That is, we would need a language which can express (...) its own meaning. It has been well-known since Tarski that theories of meaning whose central notion is truth can’t be expressed in a language which they apply to. Here, I develop Quine’s formulation of the Liar Paradox in grammatical terms and use this to extend Tarski’s result to all theories of meaning. This general version of the paradox can be formalised as a special case of the Lawvere Fixed-Point Theorem applied to a categorial grammar. Taken together with the initial arguments, I infer that a universal theory of meaning is impossible and conclude the paper with a brief discussion on what alternatives are available. (shrink)

The essays in this volume formulate what is considered to be the preconditions for an adequate theory of modern society. The volume starts with an examination of the modern European philosophical and scientific tradition notably the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Annual Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesSandra Costen Kunz and Jonathan A. SeitzThe Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies (SBCS) is one of more than two dozen scholarly societies that have been formally recognized by the American Academy of Religion as Related Scholarly Organizations. The pattern for many years has been for the SBCS to hold its annual meeting in conjunction with the annual meeting of the AAR. On (...) the Friday before the AAR’s Annual Meeting begins, the Society’s board meets in the morning and early afternoon, followed by an AAR-advertised session late that afternoon. On Saturday, another paper session or panel is followed by the Society’s annual members’ meeting.A highlight of the 2012 SBCS annual meeting was the unanimous approval, first by the governing board and later by the membership in attendance, of a major revision of the society’s bylaws. This revision focused largely on updates necessitated by changes in the ways scholars communicate day-to-day and in scholarly publications, and in international banking practices, because of the expanding use of electronic media. This revision was well over a year in the making, with particularly generous input of time and thought by former board member Grace Burford and Treasurer Guy McCloskey, and with efficient guidance by President Terry Muck.Another highlight of this 2012 gathering was the announcement at the board meeting that the SBCS’s reapplication for formal status as a Related Scholarly Organization of the AAR was accepted for another five years. Among other privileges, this status makes it possible for us to communicate our calls for papers, session plans, and annual meeting schedule through AAR’s website and print publications.At the governing board meeting, Treasurer McCloskey noted an increase of more than 7 percent in paying members, but it was agreed that the society could carry [End Page 193] out its purposes more effectively if we were to welcome more new members. One especially notable new member is C. Denise Yarbrough (University of Rochester), who was unanimously approved at the members meeting as the Christian co-editor of this journal, along with Buddhist co-editor Wakoh Shannon Hickey (Notre Dame of Maryland University), who signed on in 2011.Rita Gross, who formerly co-edited the journal and was president of the Society, was elected to the board, replacing Amos Yong, whose term ended in 2012. We are extremely grateful for his leadership in many areas, including the Streng Book Award Committee. Abraham Vélez de Cea was unanimously approved to chair the Streng Book Award Committee, with Mary Jeanne Larabee continuing on the committee and David Gardiner being approved as the third member. Alice Keefe, in her vice presidential role as program chair, took note of the lively discussion about possible topics for next year’s panel sessions.The Friday afternoon seminar was titled “Contemplative Pedagogy: Pitfalls and Potentials.” Panelists included John D. Copenhaver (Shenandoah University), Kristine T. Utterback (University of Wyoming), Andrew O. Fort (Texas Christian University), and Judith Simmer-Brown (Naropa University). The respondent was William H. Green (Tougaloo College), and Wakoh Shannon Hickey (Notre Dame of Maryland University) presided. Versions of the four panelists’ papers are included in this volume of the journal, as well as additional papers on the topic by other authors.In lieu of its customary field trip, this year the SBCS encouraged participants to attend the new film Jesus & Buddha: Practicing across Traditions (Old Dog Documentaries, 2012), screened on Friday night before the AAR Annual Meeting. In the film, three leading figures in Buddhist-Christian dialogue were interviewed: Paul F. Knitter (Union Theological Seminary), Robert Kennedy, SJ (St. Peter’s College), and Chung Hyun Kyung (Union Theological Seminary). A discussion, over which Knitter presided, followed the film.The Saturday panel was “The Ethics of Wealth in a World of Economic Inequality: Buddhist and Christian Perspectives.” Panelists included Joerg Rieger (Southern Methodist University), Alan Jay Richard (Realistic Living, Inc.), and Carol S. Anderson (Kalamazoo College). The respondent was Mark Wood (Virginia Commonwealth University), and Alice A. Keefe (University of Wisconsin) presided. At the end of this session, before the member’s meeting, we enjoyed P. J. Johnston’s... (shrink)