Der Beitrag führt in das Author meets Critics zum Buch „Kontroverse Themen im Unterricht. Konstruktiv streiten lernen“ (Reclam 2021) von Johannes Drerup ein. Zu diesem Zweck geben wir einen kurzen Überblick über zentrale Probleme und Herausforderungen von Demokratieerziehung und demokratischer Bildung, die in der Debatte über den angemessenen Umgang mit kontroversen Themen im Unterricht verhandelt werden.

In our lives, we aim to achieve welfare for ourselves, that is, to live good lives. But we also have another, more impartial perspective, where we aim to balance our concern for our own welfare against a concern for the welfare of others. This is a perspective of justice. Nils Holtug examines these two perspectives and the relations between them.

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, EarlyView.

According to the Harm Principle, roughly, the state may coerce a person only if it can thereby prevent harm to others. Clearly, this principle depends crucially on what we understand by harm. Thus, if any sort of negative effect on a person may count as a harm, the Harm Principle will fail to sufficiently protect individual liberty. Therefore, a more subtle concept of harm is needed. I consider various possible conceptions and argue that none gives rise to a plausible version (...) of the Harm Principle. Whether we focus on welfare, quantities of welfare or qualities of welfare, we do not arrive at a plausible version of this principle. Instead, the concept of harm may be moralized. I consider various ways this may be done as well as possible rationales for the resulting versions of the Harm Principle. Again, no plausible version of the principle turns up. I also consider the prospect of including the Harm Principle in a decision-procedure rather than in a criterion of rightness. Finally, in light of my negative appraisal, I briefly discuss why this principle has seemed so appealing to liberals. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that coming into existence can benefit (or harm) aperson. My argument incorporates the comparative claim that existence canbe better (or worse) for a person than never existing. Since these claimsare highly controversial, I consider and reject a number of objectionswhich threaten them. These objections raise various semantic, logical,metaphysical and value-theoretical issues. I then suggest that there is animportant sense in which it can harm (or benefit) a person not to comeinto existence. Again, I consider and (...) reject some objections. Finally, Ibriefly consider what the conclusions reached in this paper imply for ourmoral obligations to possible future people. (shrink)

The contributors to the volume are: Richard Arneson, Linda Barclay, Thomas Christiano, Nils Holtug, Susan Hurley, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Dennis McKerlie, ...

This contribution traces the parallel development of two distinct approaches to peasant agroecological education: the peasant-to-peasant horizontal method that disseminated across Mesoamerica and the Caribbean beginning in the 1970s, and the political-agroecological training schools of combined consciousness-building and skill-formation that have been at the heart of the educational processes of member organizations of La Via Campesina since the 1990s. Applying a theoretical framework that incorporates territorial struggle, agroecology and popular education, we examine spatial and organizational aspects of each of these (...) models for peasant education and movement-building. Recognizing that the models, their respective contexts, and the dialectical relationships therein have been in constant evolution, we share findings on the movement-place as a territorial system with socio-historical subjectivity, that is, peasant movements as territorially-embedded, collective historical actors. This leads to some conclusions in moving past educational theory that has centered upon individual subjects, and approaching a conception of territory as a subject of learning processes. (shrink)

This text is intended to show that in Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the possibilities of political judgment there is an idea of subjectivity that seeks to combine sociality and individuality. In Hannah Arendt’s case, the development of individual judgment becomes the precondition for allowing individuals to be given independent judgment. Arendt derives this concept of judgment from Kant’s reflections on the aesthetic power of judgment which she broadens and makes fruitful for political space. Using the example of aesthetic judgment, Arendt (...) develops an idea of political subjectivity that is intended to respond to the destruction of the subject through totalitarian politics. (shrink)

Phenomenology has primarily been concerned with conceptual questions about knowledge and ontology. However, in recent years the rise of interest and research in applied phenomenology has seen the study of political phenomenology move to a central place in the study of phenomenology generally. The Routledge Handbook of Political Phenomenology is the first major collection on this important topic. Comprising 35 chapters by an international team of expert contributors, the Handbook is organised into six clear parts, each with its own Introduction (...) by the editors: Founders of Phenomenology Existentialist Phenomenology Phenomenology of the Social and Political World Phenomenology of Alterity Phenomenology in Debate Contemporary Developments. Full attention is given to central figures in the phenomenological movement, including Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas as well as those whose contribution to political phenomenology is more distinctive, such as Arendt, De Beauvoir and Fanon. Also included are chapters on gender, race and intersectionality, disability, and technology. Ideal for those studying phenomenology, continental philosophy and political theory, The Routledge Handbook of Political Phenomenology bridges an important gap between a major philosophical movement and contemporary political issues and concepts. (shrink)

We treat the classical dynamics of the hydrogen atom in perpendicular electric and magnetic fields as a celestial mechanics problem. By expressing the Hamiltonian in appropriate action–angle variables, we separate the different time scales of the motion. The method of averaging then allows us to reduce the system to two degrees of freedom, and to classify the most important periodic orbits.

Dahlbäck, Forsblad and Hydén argue that conversational remembering in the real‐world must be acknowledged as an interactional practice grounded in and bound to the communicative actions produced by the interlocutors. They illustrate the complexity of those processes by referring to their own fieldwork examining older adults’ prospective memory within their homes (Dahlbäck, Kristiansson, & Stjernberg, 2013) and propose alternative methodologies (e.g., scenarios design) to increase collaborations between ethnographic and experimental memory researchers.

In bilateral logic formulas are signed by + and –, indicating the speech acts assertion and denial. I argue that making an assumption is also speech act. Speech acts cannot be embedded within other speech acts. Hence we cannot make sense of the notion of making an assumption in bilateral logic. Attempts to solve this problem are considered and rejected.

In this paper, we consider a few actual cases of mnemonic strategies among older subjects (older than 65). The cases are taken from an ethnographic study, examining how elderly adults cope with cognitive decline. We believe that these cases illustrate that the process of remembering in many cases involve a complex distributed web of processes involving both internal or intracranial and external sources. Our cases illustrate that the nature of distributed remembering is shaped by and subordinated to the dynamic characteristics (...) of the on-going activity and to our minds suggest that research on memory and distributed cognition should focus on the process of remembering through detailed descriptions and analysis of naturally occurring situations. (shrink)

F. P. Ramsey was a remarkably creative and subtle philosopher who in the briefest of academic careers made significant contributions to logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language and decision theory. His few published papers reveal him to be a figure or comparable importance to Russell, Carnap and Wittgenstein in the history of analytical philosophy. This book was the first critical study of Ramsey's work, offering a thorough exposition and interpretation of his ideas, setting the ideas in their historical context, (...) and assessing their significance for contemporary research. The study is intended to complement the reissue of Ramsey's papers edited by Professor Hugh Mellor. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEvaluative aesthetic discourse communicates that the speaker has had first-hand experience of what is talked about. If you call a book bewitching, it will be assumed that you have read the book. If you say that a building is beautiful, it will be assumed that you have had some visual experience with it. According to an influential view, this is because knowledge is a norm for assertion, and aesthetic knowledge requires first-hand experience. This paper criticizes this view and argues for (...) an alternative view, according to which aesthetic discourse expresses affective states of mind, analogously to how assertions express beliefs. It is because these affective states require first-hand experience that aesthetic discourse communicates that such acquaintance is at hand. The paper furthermore argues that the lack of an experience requirement for aesthetic belief ascriptions constitutes a problem for the kind of expressivist who claims that evaluative belief states are covert non-cognitive states. (shrink)

The Ethical Question asks whether ethical values in artworks determine their aesthetic value and, if so, how. I argue that the question is ambiguous between a direct and an indirect reading. I show how the indirect reading is philosophically uninteresting because it has an obvious answer: a view called ‘immoralism’. I also show how most of the significant figures in the relevant literature address the indirect form of the question anyway—needlessly, if I am right. Finally, I consider whether some version (...) of the indirect question is more philosophically interesting, connecting it to the so-called ‘qua problem’. I attempt to give clarity to the discussion by applying work on the virtues and vices of explanations. (shrink)

The article analyses and reconstructs a broad idea of legal responsibility which underlies and normatively links tort law with the law of unjustified enrichment. The article’s central proposition is that responsibility for damage caused and enrichment-responsibility are closely interrelated. Both aspects of obligations are equally an expression of corrective justice, and ultimately serve to protect the civil rights of citizens. It is shown that the idea of civil equality and the principle against unjustified enrichment require citizens to assume responsibility not (...) only for the consequences of their misbehaviour, but also for the consequences of lawful actions that non-reciprocally endanger the rights of others. This can be seen particularly clearly in cases of necessity like Vincent v Lake Erie. Under current law, those cases fall in between the categories of unjustified enrichment and wrongs; in most legal systems, they are therefore regarded as particularly hard cases. Nevertheless, the liability of a person lawfully causing damage in a situation of necessity exemplifies the idea of legal responsibility, and thus helps in better understanding the law of non-contractual obligations. Methodologically, the article combines historical arguments derived from the late scholastic theory of restitution with a comparative analysis of Western legal systems and contemporary private law theory. This approach is designed to overcome the conceptual boundaries of national private laws on both sides of the English Channel; it may help to address difficult legal problems more appropriately. (shrink)

This book offers a multidisciplinary collection of historiographical case studies which in various ways explore the question of the modes of interrelation between 'change' and 'continuity' in historical narratives in Western cultural history."--Introduction, p. [1].

The puzzle this article examines is how one can study the concept of modernity within the history of its universalization as a process of translation. For this purpose, I look at how the contemporary Moroccan historian and intellectual Abdallah Laroui has critically engaged with the history, politics, and epistemology of translating modernity into his intellectual and political setting of Morocco, North Africa, and the Middle East during and after the colonial period. I read him as making a critical intervention into (...) existing modes of timing and spacing the concept of modernity and, thus, what I describe as the politics of historicity. In conclusion, I make a methodological plea for framing the history of concepts across political borders in terms of translational practices. (shrink)

Am Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts sind die gesellschaftlichen Konsequenzen neuer Formen der Sammlung, Verwendung und Vernetzung von Daten zur Überwachung und Beeinflussung von Menschen und Gruppen noch nicht vollends absehbar. Mit den Surveillance Studies können die Bedingungen und Diskurse von Sicherheit, Überwachung und Kontrolle im Rahmen einer interdisziplinären Forschungsinitiative analysiert werden. Verschiedene Pespektiven werden hier einführend dargestellt. Beiträge aus der Rechtswissenschaft, der Kriminologie, der Geographie, Soziologie und Kunstgeschichte zeigen, welche unterschiedlichen Perspektiven es gibt, um die komplexen und folgenreichen Zusammenhänge der (...) Surveillance zu verstehen oder zukünftige Entwicklungen einzuschätzen. Die verschiedenen Perspektiven ergänzen sich zu einem Gesamtbild, welches die Strukturen und Feinheiten dieser Entwicklungen deutlich macht. Die Beiträge gehen dabei auf grundsätzliche Probleme bei der Analyse von Überwachung aus ihrer jeweiligen Sicht ein und bieten so eine kompakte Übersicht über ein spezifisches, in dieser Hinsicht neues Forschungsfeld. Weiterhin zeigen sie, wie vielschichtig der Einfluss der von Überwachungtechnologien und Kontrolldiskursen auf unser tägliches Leben tatsächlich ist. Als einführende Texte bieten die versammelten Beiträge einen Ausgangspunkt für weitere Analysen und Diskussionen – vor allem jenseits aller akademischen Debatten. (shrink)

It is widely held within contemporary metaethics that there is a lack of linguistic support for evaluative expressivism. On the contrary, it seems that the predictions that expressivists make about evaluative discourse are not borne out. An instance of this is the so-called problem of missing Moorean infelicity. Expressivists maintain that evaluative statements express non-cognitive states of mind in a similar manner to how ordinary descriptive language expresses beliefs. Conjoining an ordinary assertion that p with the denial of being in (...) the corresponding belief state famously gives rise to Moorean infelicity:?? It’s raining but I don’t believe that it’s raining. If expressivists are right, then conjoining evaluative statements with the denial of being in the relevant non-cognitive state of mind should give rise to similar infelicity. However, as several theorists have pointed out, this does not seem to be the case. Statements like the following are not infelicitous: Murder is wrong but I don’t disapprove of it. In this paper, I argue that evaluative statements express the kind of states that are attributed by ‘find’-constructions in English and that these states are non-cognitive in nature. This addresses the problem of missing Moorean infelicity and, more generally, goes to show that there are linguistic facts which support expressivism about evaluative discourse. (shrink)

Bilateralists, who accept that there are two primitive speech acts, assertion and denial, can offer an attractive definition of consequence: Y follows from X if and only if it is incoherent to assert all formulas X and to deny all formulas Y. The present paper argues that this definition has consequences many will find problematic, amongst them that truth coincides with assertibility. Philosophers who reject these consequences should therefore reject this definition of consequence.

The right to health is enshrined in the constitution of the World Health Organization and numerous other international agreements. Yet today, an estimated 5.7 million people die each year from treatable infectious diseases, most of which are susceptible to existing antimicrobials if they were accessible. These deaths occur predominantly among populations living in poverty in low- and middle-income countries, and they greatly exceed the estimated 700,000 annual deaths worldwide currently attributed to antimicrobial resistance. Ensuring universal appropriate access to antimicrobials is (...) not only a critical part of realizing the right to health, it is necessary for mobilizing effective collective action against the development and spread of AMR. (shrink)

Ethical questions have traditionally been approached through conceptual analysis. Inspired by the rapid advance of modern brain imaging techniques, however, some ethical questions appear in a new light. For example, hotly debated trolley dilemmas have recently been studied by psychologists and neuroscientists alike, arguing that their findings can support or debunk moral intuitions that underlie those dilemmas. Resulting from the wedding of philosophy and neuroscience, neuroethics has emerged as a novel interdisciplinary field that aims at drawing conclusive relationships between neuroscientific (...) observations and normative ethics. A major goal of neuroethics is to derive normative ethical conclusions from the investigation of neural and psychological mechanisms underlying ethical theories, as well as moral judgments and intuitions. The focus of this article is to shed light on the structure and functioning of neuroethical arguments of this sort, and to reveal particular methodological challenges that lie concealed therein. We discuss the methodological problem of how one can—or, as the case may be, cannot—validly infer normative conclusions from neuroscientific observations. Moreover, we raise the issue of how preexisting normative ethical convictions threaten to invalidate the interpretation of neuroscientific data, and thus arrive at question-begging conclusions. Nonetheless, this is not to deny that current neuroethics rightly presumes that moral considerations about actual human lives demand empirically substantiated answers. Therefore, in conclusion, we offer some preliminary reflections on how the discussed methodological challenges can be met. (shrink)