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GREAT EMPIRES may come and go, but, like the tides, they leave behind a tangled assortment of treasures and trash. In the case of the British Empire, this included much that one might admire, but also a British Protestant morality that was codified in laws that persist to this day. Section 377 of the colonial Penal Code is a striking example. It classed consensual oral and anal sex as “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” and made it a crime (...) punishable with imprisonment for life. When the British administrators withdrew, they took their soldiers, but left their law books behind. Section 377 was recently repealed in India, but it is still very much on the books in Bangladesh. (shrink)

Der Beitrag der Mathematik zur Naturwissenschaft besteht darin, Erkenntnisse a priori von den (empirischen) Gegenständen der letzteren zu gewinnen und - unter der Voraussetzung, daß es überhaupt Empirisches gibt - , die Existenz solcher Gegenstände a priori zu sichern. Die Aufgabe der Metaphysik ist es, besondere Begriffe ( in bezug auf die körperliche Natur) zu bilden und die Prinzipien für deren mathematische Konstruktion zu entwickeln. Die so "metaphysischkonstruierten" Begriffe werden dann durch Angabe empirischer Modelle physikalisch interpretiert.

A new approach to the historiography of the history of philosophy was first proposed near the end of the eighteenth century. It is useful to regard it as an alternative to two others, sometimes conceived of as exhausting the possibilities: a purely philosophical approach, and a purely historical one, both of which I consider in section I. The bulk of the paper is devoted to what I call "the modern historiography of the history of philosophy" . Its origins are closely (...) tied to the renewal of philology. Section III recounts the methodological innovations of the New Philology and their relevance for approaching texts--including philosophical ones--from the past. In section IV, I consider some moves made by early proponents of "modern historiography"--in particular their implicit demand for an internal rather than an external history of philosophy, that is, an account that allows us to understand how and why philosophy has changed through time, in terms of philosophical factors: how, for example, one set of philosophical considerations led to a certain view; how reflecting on that view led philosophers to perceive various difficulties, and to perceive philosophical responses to those difficulties, and so on. The goal is to exclude, to as great an extent as possible, external factors, that is, factors which are not themselves philosophical views or arguments. In section V, I turn to Christian A. Brandis whose methodological reflections and historiographical practice mark an enormous advance over his predecessors and even over some of his successors, like W. Jaeger. I conclude by arguing that some "philosophical" objections brought against the way of proceeding advocated by Brandis fail. In the course of describing this new approach and its origins, I hope also to make clear why it is more attractive than the two other possibilities briefly considered in section I. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDie Arbeit diskutiert die These C. G. Hempels, dass allgemeine Gesetze in den Naturwissenschaften und in der Historie die selbe ‘theoretische Funktion’ innehaben. Zu diesem Zweck unterscheidet der Autor zwischen systembildenden und genetische Strukturen bildenden Wissenschaften, denen als Darstellungsformen die Theorienhierarchie und die Narration entsprechen. Diese beiden Grundformen der Organisation unseres Wissens über Tatsachen werden auf einen Unterschied in der Erklärungsweise zurückgeführt, der nicht logischer, sondern pragmatischer Natur ist. Es ist dies der Unterschied zwischen Subsumption und Zurechnung. Während bei der (...) systematischen Organisation des Wissens das zugrundeliegende Theoriengefüge die Bedingungen exakt festlegt, unter denen ein Faktum als erklärt anzusehen ist, fehlt eine solche erkenntnis‐leitende Funktion der Gesetze bei der genetischen Organisation.SummaryThis paper discusses C. G. Hempeľs contention according to which universal laws fulfil the same ‘theoretical function’ in Natural and Historical Science. To this end, the author differentiates between system‐building and genetically structured sciences. Their modes of presentation are respectively hierarchically ordered theory and narrative. These two basic ways of arranging our knowledge of facts are led back to a difference in explanation, of a pragmatic, not logical nature, that is, to the difference between Subsumption and Ascription. Whereas in the systematic organization of knowledge, the basic underlying theory sets the exact conditions, under which a fact can be described as explained, such an epistemological directive function of laws is not to be found in genetic organization. (shrink)

Over the past 15 years, Rainer Forst has developed a fundamental research programme within the tradition of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. The core of this programme is a moral account of the basic right of justification that humans owe to one another as rational beings. This account is put to work by Forst in articulating - both historically and philosophically - the contexts and form of justice and of toleration. The result is a powerful theoretical framework within which to (...) address issues such as transnational justice and multicultural toleration. In this volume, Forst sets out his ideas in an extended essay, which is responded to be influential interlocutors including: Andrea Sangiovanni, Amy Allen, Kevin Olson, Anthony Laden, Eva Erman and Simon Caney. The volume concludes with Forst's response to his interlocutors. (shrink)

It is surprising how far one can get by thinking things through. (Alec Fisher [2004], The logic of real arguments, p. 1)In the first part of the article, the central role of theory in emotion psych...

​Kaum ein Konzept in der jüngeren politischen Theoriegeschichte kann auf eine solch steile und, wie sich mittlerweile gezeigt hat, auch langanhaltende Karriere zurückblicken wie das der Deliberation. Die in diesem Sammelband vereinigten Überlegungen stehen unter der zweiteiligen übergreifenden Überschrift "Deliberative Kritik – Kritik der Deliberation", die in einem Zug den kritischen Sinn der Deliberation und die Notwendigkeit einer reflexiven Kritik am Konzept der Deliberation selbst deutlich macht. Neben Erkundungen der Ideengeschichte und der normativen Grundlagen der Deliberation geht es um eine (...) Auseinandersetzung mit alternativen Konzeptionen und institutionellen Kontexten. Angesichts des Umstands, dass sich politische Prozesse bekanntlich seit geraumer Zeit aus den nationalstaatlichen Rahmungen herauslösen, werden zudem transnationale und kosmopolitische Perspektiven umfassend ausgeleuchtet. All diese topoi berühren wesentliche Denklinien der Arbeiten Rainer Schmalz-Bruns’, dem dieser Sammelband zum sechzigsten Geburtstag gewidmet ist. (shrink)

European citizenship is a nested membership in a multilevel polity that operates at member state and union levels. A normative theory of supranational citizenship will necessarily be informed by the EU as the only present case and will be addressed to the EU in most of its prescriptions, but should still develop a model sufficiently general to potentially apply to other regional unions as well. The Article first describes three basic characteristics of such a polity — democratic representation at the (...) supranational level, internal freedom of movement between member states, and regional limits to external geographic expansion — and argues that a multiplication of such regional unions would contribute to a more just and peaceful international order. Building on this modification of Kant’s model for a global confederation of republics, the contribution explores three alternative approaches for strengthening democratic citizenship in the European Union: a statist approach that aims at transforming the EU into a federal state, a unionist approach whose goal is to strengthen union citizenship vis-a`-vis member state nationality, and a pluralist one that specifies citizenship norms for each level and balances them with each other on the basis of the current state of federal integration. These approaches are then compared with regard to their implications for three policy questions: general status differences and inequality of rights amongst EU citizens living in their country of nationality, EU citizens residing in other member states, third-country nationals, and EU citizens residing outside the territory of the Union; voting rights in European, national, and local elections; and access to Union citizenship and to member state nationality. (shrink)

In this collection of essays, the first translation into English of the ground-breaking 'Normativität und Macht' (Suhrkamp 2015), Rainer Forst presents a new approach to critical theory. Each essay reflects on the basic principles that guide our normative thinking. Forst's argument goes beyond 'ideal' and 'realist' theories and shows how closely the concepts of normativity and power are interrelated, and how power rests on the capacity to influence, determine, and possibly restrict the space of justifications for others. By combining (...) insights from the disciplines of philosophy, history, and the social sciences, Forst revaluates theories of justice, as well as of power, and provides the tools for a critical theory of relations of justification. Translated from German. (shrink)

This article argues that the civic virtue of tolerance has to be understood as a virtue of justice. Based on an analysis of the concept of toleration and its paradoxes, it shows that toleration is a 'normatively dependent concept' that needs to take recourse to a conception of justice in order to solve these paradoxes. At the center of this conception of justice lies a principle of reciprocal and general justification with the help of which a distinction between moral norms (...) and ethical values is possible. While the former are strictly binding and define the realm of the tolerable, the latter are subject to reasonable disagreement that calls for toleration. Essentially, the virtue of tolerance is the capacity and willingness to accept the principle and criteria of justification of generally binding norms in an ethically pluralist society.This virtue is analyzed with respect to its normative and epistemological components. Finally, the idea of a 'tolerant character' is discussed. (shrink)

Discusses the influences of Erich Fromm, examines his conception of the nature of man, and analyzes his views of social psychology, philosophy, ethics, and religion.

A new experimental paradigm involving a computerised quiz was used to examine, on an intra-individual level, the strength of association between four components of the surprise syndrome: cognitive (degree of prospectively estimated unexpectedness), experiential (the feeling of surprise), behavioural (degree of response delay on a parallel task), and expressive (the facial expression of surprise). It is argued that this paradigm, together with associated methods of data analysis, effectively controls for most method factors that could in previous studies have lowered the (...) correlations among the components of emotion syndromes. It was found that (a) the components of the surprise syndrome were all positively correlated; (b) strong association existed only between the cognitive and the experiential component of surprise; (c) the coherence between syndrome components did not increase with increasing intensity of surprise; and (d) there was also only moderate coherence between the components of the facial expression of surprise (eyebrow raising, eye widening, mouth opening), although in this case, coherence tended to increase with intensity. Taken together, the findings support only a weakly probabilistic version of a behavioural syndrome view of surprise. However, the component correlations seem strong enough to support the existence of strong associations among a subset of the mental or central neurophysiological processes engaged in surprise. (shrink)

This paper sets out the notion of a current “biopolitical turn of digital capitalism” resulting from the increasing deployment of AI and data analytics technologies in the public sector. With applications of AI-based automated decisions currently shifting from the domain of business to customer (B2C) relations to government to citizen (G2C) relations, a new form of governance arises that operates through “algorithmic social selection”. Moreover, the paper describes how the ethics of AI is at an impasse concerning these larger societal (...) and socioeconomic trends and calls for an ethics of AI that includes, and acts in close alliance with, social and political philosophy. As an example, the problem of Predictive Analytics is debated to make the point that data-driven AI (Machine Learning) is currently one of the main ethical challenges in the ethics of AI. (shrink)

We first present a reconstruction of James’s theory of emotion (JATE) and then argue for four theses: (a) Despite constructivist elements, James’s views are overall in line with basic emotions theory. (b) JATE does not exclude an influence of emotion on intentional action even in its original formulation; nevertheless, this influence is quite limited. It seems possible, however, to repair this problem of the theory. (c) Cannon’s theory of emotion is a centralized version of JATE that inherits from the latter (...) theory a potentially fatal flaw, the insufficient physiological differentiation of emotions. (d) The core claim of JATE, that emotions are bodily feelings, is very likely false. (shrink)