Dieses Fachbuch verteidigt einen kritischen Realismus und diskutiert im Rahmen des de Broglie-Bohm-Ansatzes neuere Arbeiten zum modernen Realismus von Smolin, Dürr, Goldstein, Tumulka, Zanghi und anderen.

Das Buch enthält eine informative und klare Darstellung der Entstehung des Antirealismus unter dem Einfluß der Suche nach absoluter Gewißheit. Der Verfasser konfrontiert diese für die moderne Philosophie charakteristische Denkweise mit der realistischen und fallibilistischen Auffassung des Kritischen Rationalismus. H. Albert.

Der Begriff „Globalisierung“ wird zunehmend nicht nur in den Disziplinen der Ökonomie und der Kommunikationswissenschaft diskutiert, sondern auch in den Gesellschafts- und Erziehungswissenschaften sowie insbesondere in der Interkulturellen Philosophie. Der Diskurs über Globalisierung verläuft dabei teilweise analog demjenigen über Inter- und Multikulturalität. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes geben ein breites Spektrum wieder. Sie reichen von der Konstatierung der Globalisierung als einer Rahmenbedingung, zu der man sich als Wissenschaftler reflexiv oder reaktiv zu verhalten habe, über die Analyse diverser Teilaspekte und über visionäre (...) Einforderungen utopischer Globalisierungsauslegungen bis zur Negierung ihrer erkenntnistheoretischen Bedeutung. Das Gemeinsame dieser Vielfältigkeit ist die Bestimmung des Globalen als eines Szenarios der Begegnung. (shrink)

Der Begriff „Globalisierung“ wird zunehmend nicht nur in den Disziplinen der Ökonomie und der Kommunikationswissenschaft diskutiert, sondern auch in den Gesellschafts- und Erziehungswissenschaften sowie insbesondere in der Interkulturellen Philosophie. Der Diskurs über Globalisierung verläuft dabei teilweise analog demjenigen über Inter- und Multikulturalität.Die Beiträge dieses Bandes geben ein breites Spektrum wieder. Sie reichen von der Konstatierung der Globalisierung als einer Rahmenbedingung, zu der man sich als Wissenschaftler reflexiv oder reaktiv zu verhalten habe, über die Analyse diverser Teilaspekte und über visionäre Einforderungen (...) utopischer Globalisierungsauslegungen bis zur Negierung ihrer erkenntnistheoretischen Bedeutung. Das Gemeinsame dieser Vielfältigkeit ist die Bestimmung des Globalen als eines Szenarios der Begegnung. (shrink)

Dass sich Hegel und Hermann Cohen trotz scheinbarer Gegensatze miteinander versohnen lassen, ist eine Grunduberzeugung des Werkes von Myriam Bienenstock, welches sich stets durch die doppelte Ausrichtung auf Hegel und das judische Denken auszeichnete. Mit diesem Band wird Myriam Bienenstock, seit 1997 Professorin fur Philosophie an der Universitat Francois Rabelais in Tours, anlasslich ihres 70. Geburtstages geehrt. Mit Beitragen von Dominque Bourel, Bernard Bourgeois, Christophe Bouton, Pierfrancesco Fiorato, Jean-Francois Goubet, Dana Hollander, Helmut Holzhey, Gerhard Kurz, Claudia Melica, Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik, (...) Ludwig Siep, Guy Stroumsa und Norbert Waszek. (shrink)

The purpose of the presented paper is to showcase the links between Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s libertarian argumentation ethics and Karl-Otto Apel’s transcendental pragmatics with a special reference to the consensus theory of truth proposed by the latter thinker. More specifically, the author contends that Hoppe’s theory is logically contingent on Apel’s views on truth in that some crucial gaps in Hoppe’s grounding of the so-called “a priori of communication and argumentation” are filled by Apel’s original arguments. Additionally, the paper provides (...) a case for interpreting Hoppe's ethics as a theory of rational conflict-freedom, which seems to cohere best with the transcendental-pragmatist approach. Finally, the author offers a few remarks on how the most common objections against Hoppe's theory can be overcome on the basis of the transcendental pragmatics and the conflict-freedom principle. (shrink)

This article is a response to the 1994 Star Island conference on the “Decade of the Brain” from a Jewish perspective. After a brief introduction about the logical function of models and maps, I compare and contrast three models of the human: Ezekiel's vision of the chariot in the Hebrew Scriptures, Franz Rosenzweig's geometry of the human face in Der Stern der Erlosung (the Star of Redemption), and a standard anatomical picture of the human brain. Whereas Rosenzweigs face is seen (...) to be compatible with Ezekiel's chariot, both are seen to be radically distinct from the implicit conception of what a human being is in modern medical science. I conclude with a suggestion that the differences are to be understood in terms of their different intended functions and express my hope for some new kind of model that will incorporate the functional advantages of both. (shrink)

The book is divided into three sections. The first provides a general historical overview for the Jewish thought that follows. The second summarizes the variety of basic kinds of popular, positive Jewish commitment in the twentieth century. The third and major section summarizes the basic thought of those modern Jewish philosophers whose thought is technically the best and/or the most influential in Jewish intellectual circles. The Jewish philosophers covered include Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Mordecai Kaplan, (...) and Emil Fackenheim. The text includes summaries and a selected bibliography of primary and secondary sources. (shrink)

Hans-Hermann Hoppe famously argued that monarchy is superior to democracy insofar as property rights protection is concerned. The present paper calls this claim into question, with much of the heavy lifting being done by methodological ponderings. More specifically, it is demonstrated that instead of _a priori_, praxeological truths, Hoppe’s monarchy theory offers an ideal type of the politician bestowed with an inheritable title to the throne. Against this background, the ideal type in question is shown to be faulty in (...) that it treats monarchs as capitalist landowners of sorts, thereby overlooking strictly political incentives they face, which can predictably push them in directions inimical to free markets. (shrink)

The subject-matter of the paper is the theory of class struggle proposed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, one of the leading representatives of libertarian political philosophy in the radical tradition of Murray N. Rothbard. The author reconstructs and critically comments on the theory at hand. The author's remarks focus on the ethical and methodological background of Hoppe's approach, the main question being whether the latter theory is consonant with the thinker's positions on ethics and methodology, as well as with his political (...) standpoint. The author argues that not only does class analysis not contradict other core beliefs of Hoppe but it also represents an indispensable element of his libertarian philosophy. There is, however, a significant tension between the class approach and Hoppe's secondary philosophical position – his historical idealism. The article is concluded by indicating some further issues in the Hoppean theory of class that, in the author's opinion, should be subject to future inquiry. (shrink)

Résumé Avant de devenir l’un des pères fondateurs de l’école de Marbourg, Hermann Cohen avait rédigé un article dans lequel il cherchait à mettre en évidence les liens entre Heinrich Heine et le judaïsme. L’article révèle une double préoccupation : théologico-philosophique et politico-philosophique. Cohen affirmait que le panthéisme de Heine, inspiré de Spinoza, serait compatible avec le monothéisme juif, et que c’est ce panthéisme qui aurait mené Heine vers les « idées socialistes » que, comme Heine, il acceptait. Cohen (...) changea ensuite d’attitude envers Spinoza mais il demeura, sa vie durant, un grand admirateur de Heine, alors que Rosenzweig, qui pourtant se présenta comme l’héritier et le successeur de Cohen en pensée juive, développa une forte aversion contre le poète, ce qui ne peut être expliqué que si l’on prend en considération son propre engagement religieux. (shrink)

While the opposing paradigms of globalization and fragmentation compete in often bloody and destructive ways in the world today, this book convincingly reminds us of the importance of finding out more about the complex and changing ways in which we are connected. The authors demonstrate that the more we understand our connectedness and deal with its consequences, the less dependent and helpless we become. The critical, multidisciplinary perspectives they offer cover a wide range of subjects, from the world wide web (...) to medieval poetry, nations and gender, cancer narratives and money, emotion management and the financial markets, and the American civilizing process and the repression of shame. The contributions bear witness to Elias's innovative achievements while the authors continue his stunning explorations, extending them into other areas of the humanities and the sciences, and presenting their own wide-ranging and penetrating insights into our mutual dependence. Contributors are Jorge Arditi, Godfried Van Benthem Van Den Bergh, Reinhard Blomert, Stephen Guy-Bray, Thomas M. Kemple, Hermann Korte, Helmut Kuzmics, Stephen Mennell, Thomas Salumets, Thomas J. Scheff, Ulrich C. Teucher, Annette Treibel, and Cas Wouters. (shrink)

La théorie générale du contrôle et de la communication, mieux connue sous le nom de ‘cybernétique’, est habituellement considérée comme le fruit des recherches liées à la deuxième guerre mondiale aux Etats-Unis, menées principalement par le mathématicien américain Norbert Wiener . Dans le cadre de son travail pour l'armée, Wiener a développé une théorie générale des régulations. Nous nous intéressons aux origines de la théorie générale des régulations en Allemagne , montrant qu'elle prend naissance dans un contexte bien différent. (...) class='Hi'>Hermann Schmidt , le principal acteur dans ce domaine en Allemagne, bien que physicien de formation, formula sa version de la théorie du contrôle à la fin des années 30, grâce aux différents systèmes de régulation qu'il était amené à étudier au bureau des brevets du Reich . A partir de l'analyse d'une combinaison de facteurs contextuels, nationaux, politiques et contingents, nous proposons une explication de la moindre influence de la théorie de Schmidt.The general theory of control and communication, better known as ‘cybernetics’, is usually considered to be the result of research done during the Second World War in the United States, principally by the American mathematician, Norbert Wiener . Based on his military work, Wiener developed a general mathematical theory of control and feedback system. We discuss the origins of control and feedback theory in Germany , showing that it arose in a very different context.Hermann Schmidt , the principal actor in Germany, though trained as a physicist, formulated his version of control theory based on his extensive hands-on experience with control mechanisms gained during his work as a patent officer in the late 1930s at the German State Patent Office. We also offer an explanation for why Schmidt's general theory of control did not have a great influence based on a combination of national, political, and contingent contextual factors. (shrink)

In the range of his intellectual interests and the profundity of his mathematical thought Hermann Weyl towered above his contemporaries, many of whom viewed him with awe. This volume, the most ambitious study to date of Weyl's singular contributions to mathematics, physics, and philosophy, looks at the man and his work from a variety of perspectives, though its gaze remains fairly steadily fixed on Weyl the geometer and space‐time theorist. Structurally, the book falls into two parts, described in the (...) general introduction by the editor: Part 1 contains four essays on particular aspects of Weyl's work, highlighting ideas he developed in various editions of his classic Raum‐Zeit‐Materie. Part 2 presents a lengthy study by Robert Coleman and Herbert Korté covering nearly the whole gamut of Weyl's mathematical research, an impressive feat. Both in the introduction as well as in footnotes to the articles Erhard Scholz's editorial voice chimes in discreetly, helping tie all five studies together.Coleman and Korté begin chronologically with Weyl's early work in analysis and the modern theory of Riemann surfaces before turning to differential geometry, unified field theory, and the space problem, a topic they use as a springboard for a discussion of their own recent work on the foundations of space‐time. They then take up Weyl's shift to group representation theory and its applications to quantum mechanics, ending with his much earlier research on the structure of the continuum. All of these topics are well handled, but the authors' own agendas coupled with their penchant for overlooking chronology in order to package Weyl's work into neat little bundles leave one feeling rather stranded and far removed from the sources of Weyl's inspiration. Moreover, the narrative style makes this part of the volume read like a technical appendix, albeit a most informative one. Readers who tackle Scholz's far more contextualized essay will be amply rewarded by comparing his views with the opinions set forth by Coleman and Korté in Part 2.Scholz gives a masterful account of Weyl's intellectual journeys from 1917 to 1925 in a study that serves as a fulcrum for the entire volume. Drawing on a number of recently published studies, including his own, on the interplay between mathematics and physics inspired by Einstein's theory of general relativity, Scholz describes how Weyl responded to this challenge by developing a truly infinitesimal space‐time geometry that generalized classical Riemannian geometry. Although unconvinced by Einstein's critique of his unified field theory, Weyl shifted his focus from this realm to the classical space problem, analyzed earlier with more primitive techniques by Hermann Helmholtz and Sophus Lie. In this connection, it should be mentioned that Thomas Hawkins has given a probing analysis of Weyl's related work on the representation of Lie groups in his tour‐de‐force work, Emergence of the Theory of Lie Groups . Scholz argues that Weyl's struggle to tame his modernized version of the space problem stemmed from a deep‐seated belief in his geometrical ideas, which in turn were nourished by philosophical musings. By demonstrating the closely related conceptual links that motivated Weyl's research in infinitesimal geometry, space‐time physics, and the foundations of mathematics, Scholz nicely illuminates the underlying fabric of epistemological concerns that occupied Weyl's attention during this fertile period.The three remaining essays in Part 1 focus on other aspects of Weyl's work in mathematical physics and cosmology. Skuli Sigurdsson's “Journeys in Spacetime” offers a broad interpretation of Weyl's career, one that emphasizes Weyl's sensitivity to cultural tensions as reflected in his philosophical roots, which combined phenomenology with facets of German idealism. Shaken by the annihilation of cultural values in Nazi Germany, Weyl became deeply aware of the gulf that separated his earlier life in Göttingen and Zurich from the one he took up at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study in 1933. He tried to adapt, but felt out of place in an Anglo‐American scientific culture openly hostile toward metaphysics and speculative philosophy. Sigurdsson stresses these tensions, contrasting the introspective, creative individual against the backdrop of the collective in the age of the machine, but without spelling out which collective were most important for him. Wolfgang Pauli thought he knew and, like Einstein before him, he had no compunction about bluntly telling Weyl he was a mathematician, not a physicist.Pauli's opinions notwithstanding, Weyl did far more than just dabble around the mathematical edges of the new physics. If Coleman and Korté perhaps press their case for his visionary accomplishments too far, Norbert Straumann's essay “Ursprünge der Eichtheorien” suggests why Weyl's reputation among physicists has risen steadily ever since the advent of Yang‐Mills theory in the 1950s. In the course of describing Weyl's adaptation of his gauge transformation formalism to Dirac's electron theory, Straumann sheds considerable light on Pauli's role as self‐appointed watchman guarding the disciplinary boundary that separated theoretical physics from physical mathematics . He further suggests that disciplinary jealousy was a major reason why Pauli dismissed Weyl's two‐component formalism for spinors out of hand.In the realm of cosmology, on the other hand, Weyl's work has long since passed into the dustbins of history, as Hubert Goenner remarks in recounting a fascinating chapter in the infancy of space‐time physics. While doing so, Goenner shows how initially Weyl almost slavishly adopted what Einstein called Mach's principle, which asserts that the metric structure of space‐time is solely determined by the distribution of matter in the universe. This notion was quickly challenged by Willem De Sitter, who showed that Einstein's matter‐free field equations admitted a global solution with non‐zero constant curvature. Both Einstein and Weyl tried to argue that invisible masses must be present just over the “spatial horizon” of De Sitter's world in order to account for its curvature. Goenner meticulously analyzes the physical and mathematical issues at stake in this debate, stressing how Weyl gradually moved away from a strong physical interpretation to one in which mathematics models rather than physics models simply reveal natural phenomena. He argues further that Weyl's cosmological principle arose as the final expression of his search for a deeper physical meaning.Given the quality of these essays, it is regrettable that this book contains so little about Weyl's professional career, a weakness the editor could have redressed at least partially in his general introduction. This omission is all the more unfortunate given the dearth of readily accessible information about Weyl's life available elsewhere. For however mundane his outward existence may have been, the reader cannot be expected to appreciate the interplay between the world Weyl knew and his creative responses to it without fairly detailed knowledge of his biography. Shorn from these contexts, it becomes difficult to form a flesh‐and‐blood image of Weyl beyond the cliché‐ridden stereotype that sees him as a “heroic thinker in the grand German tradition.” While none of the authors falls into this trap, the collective impression they leave suggests a most enigmatic figure. Either Weyl the man tends to get lost in the shadows of his collected scientific output or he appears as a mystic loner, an outcast who abhorred the machine age in which he lived. Closer attention to the people in his life would no doubt produce a very different picture of the man and his interests. This major lacuna notwithstanding, the present volume will surely remain an indispensable resource for any future investigations of Weyl's staggering intellectual achievements. (shrink)

This article challenges E.P. Thompson's definition of ‘moral economy’ as a traditional consensus of crowd rights that were swept away by market forces. Instead, it suggests that the concept has the potential of improving the understanding of modern civil society. Moral economy was a term invented in the eighteenth century to describe many things. Thompson's approach reflects only a minor part of this conceptual history. His understanding of moral economy is conditioned by a dichotomous view of history and by the (...) acceptance of a model according to which modern economy is not subject to moral concerns. It is on principle problematic to confine a term conjoining two concepts as general as ‘moral’ and ‘economy’ to a specific historical and social setting. Recent approaches that frame moral economy as an emotively defined order of morals are also misleading since they do not address economic issues in the way they are commonly understood. The most promising current approaches appear to be those that consider t.. (shrink)

This paper deals with the question of the logicality of modal logics from a proof-theoretic perspective. It is argued that if Dos̆en’s analysis of logical constants as punctuation marks is embraced, it is possible to show that all the modalities in the cube of normal modal logics are indeed logical constants. It will be proved that the display calculus for each displayable modality admits a purely structural presentation based on double-line rules which, following Dos̆en’s analysis, allows us to claim that (...) the corresponding modal operators are logical constants. (shrink)

This article presents a sequent calculus for a negative free logic with identity, called N . The main theorem (in part 1) is the admissibility of the Cut-rule. The second part of this essay is devoted to proofs of soundness, compactness and completeness of N relative to a standard semantics for negative free logic.

American philosophy of religion makes possible a theological cosmology which allows us to conceive a foundation for the reality ofthe symbolism ofGod and creation, the processual integration of subject-object perspectives, the connections between nature and spirit, and those between faith and action. This raises the possibility of amending the deficit in the German theological tradition as regards theology of creation, that is, as the presupposition for a necessary ethics of creation. Constitutive factors in this connection are the christological elements of (...) the love of God which are made concrete via faith, thought, and act in a metaphysically and evolutionistically understood world-process. (shrink)

We investigate incomplete symbols, i.e. definite descriptions with scope-operators. Russell famously introduced definite descriptions by contextual definitions; in this article definite descriptions are introduced by rules in a specific calculus that is very well suited for proof-theoretic investigations. That is to say, the phrase ‘incomplete symbols’ is formally interpreted as to the existence of an elimination procedure. The last section offers semantical tools for interpreting the phrase ‘no meaning in isolation’ in a formal way.

Definite descriptions are in the focus of philosophical discussion at least since Russell's famous paper "On Denoting". We present in this paper a logic with descriptions in Russell's spirit. The formulation, however, is closely related to Schütte's development of predicate logic, i.e. the formulation of the calculus uses positive- and negative-parts. With respect to this slightly more sophisticated formulation it is possible to formalize Russell's convention that is originally stated in the metalanguage of his theory of descriptions within our calculus. (...) In this paper we prove an elimination theorem for this calculus. (shrink)

In this paper we use proof-theoretic methods, specifically sequent calculi, admissibility of cut within them and the resultant subformula property, to examine a range of philosophically-motivated deontic logics. We show that for all of those logics it is a (meta)theorem that the Special Hume Thesis holds, namely that no purely normative conclusion follows non-trivially from purely descriptive premises (nor vice versa). In addition to its interest on its own, this also illustrates one way in which proof theory sheds light on (...) philosophically substantial questions. (shrink)

Für das Verständnis der Philosophie Kants eröffnen sich neue Einsichten, wenn man neben den Druckschriften auch Kants Vorlesungen beizieht. Im vorliegenden Band werden unter dieser Maßgabe zentrale Aspekte der Kantischen Philosophie - Metaphysik, Logik, Anthropologie sowie Moral-, Rechts- und Religionsphilosophie - beleuchtet und neu gedeutet. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei die Frage nach den Grenzen des Wissens, wie Kant sie in seiner Transzendentalphilosophie beschrieben hat, und dem durch diese Grenzbestimmung eröffneten Freiraum des Glaubens. Diese Einhegung der theoretischen Philosophie hat weitreichende Folgen (...) für die Anthropologie. Der Mensch ist frei, die obersten Maximen seines Handelns - seine Gesinnung - zu bestimmen. Dafür trägt er Verantwortung. Welche Wirkung eine Entscheidung zeitigt, bleibt ihm verborgen. Kants Beharren auf der Unerkennbarkeit der,Dinge an sich' gewinnt hier seinen vollen anthropologischen Ernst. Der Autor Norbert Hinske ist Professor em. für Philosophie und Herausgeber des Kant-Index. Der Herausgeber Christoph Böhr ist ao. Professor für Philosophie an der Hochschule Heiligenkreuz / Wien und leitet dort die Forschungsstelle für Metaphysik. (shrink)