Scholars agree that Christology is at the center of the In Iohannis euangelium tractatus. In his exegesis of the Gospel of John, Augustine particularly highlights the human nature of the Incarnated, even as he integrates Trinitarian arguments (which he had developed earlier in his De trinitate) as a cornerstone of his homiletic teaching. This may have been important for the later reception of Augustine’s Trinitarian thought. Christology is clearly present throughout the various parts of the work. The differences between the (...) parts can be traced to the various contexts in which they were composed and/or delivered: e.g., the Anti-Donatist controversy that is behind the first sermons, and the Anti-Pelagian and Anti-Homean controversies that often fueled the later ones. Sometimes anti-heretical strategies are used as a crucial step for advancing the teaching of the preacher (not least because they can directly promote knowledge of the fundamentals of the faith), even if the heresy being opposed is of no immediate relevance or importance to the North Africa of Augustine’s day (e.g., that of the “Sabellians” or the “Apollinarians”). Surprisingly, the second half of the work (consisting as it does of shorter homilies or, better, drafts of homilies) contains various passages in which anti-heretical strategies were clearly pursued. It is particularly Augustine’s Anti-Pelagian strategy that provides us with clues regarding the historical context of this part of the work. (shrink)

English summary: From an international and interdisciplinary viewpoint, Thomas Aquinas was the most important scholastic philosopher and theologian. His life, work and legacy are set out in this four section handbook which provides orientation in what is currently known about the man, his affinities and character, his work and its impact. The volume offers a summary of research up until now, as well as a basis for further investigation. Comprehensive indexes and literature sources mean it can be used as a (...) work of reference whose articles can be separately or integrally understood. Writing from their different perspectives, philosophy and history scholars along with Protestant and Catholic theologians all help paint this portrait from their different perspectives. German description: Das Thomas Handbuch bietet eine Darstellung von Leben, Werk und Wirkung von Thomas von Aquin, dem wohl bedeutendsten Vertreter der scholastischen Philosophie und Theologie in interdisziplinarer und internationaler Perspektive. In vier Sektionen enthalt es Ausfuhrungen zur Orientierung in der gegenwartigen Forschungslage, zur Person des Thomas und ihren Verbindungen und Pragungen, zu seinem Werk und zu seiner Wirkung. Es bietet eine Zusammenfassung der bisherigen Forschungen zu Thomas von Aquin und eine Grundlage fur weitere Arbeiten. Erschlossen durch umfassende Register und Literaturangaben, kann es als Nachschlagewerk genutzt werden, dessen einzelne Artikel je fur sich verstehbar sind, aber auch als umfassende Gesamtdarstellung. Die interdisziplinaren Beitrage eroffnen eine Gesamtschau, in welcher verschiedene Perspektiven ihren Ort finden und ihren je eigenen Beitrag zum Gesamten bieten. Mit Beitragen von: Henryk Anzulewicz, Carmela Baffioni, Michael Basse, David Berger, Inos Biffi, Volker Henning Drecoll, Mechthild Dreyer, Stephan Ernst, Sabine Folger-Fonfara, Elias Fullenbach, Ruedi Imbach, Ingo Klitzsch, Ulrich Kopf, Pieter de Leemans, Volker Leppin, Jurgen Miethke, Thomas Prugl, Francois-Xavier Putallaz, Reinhold Rieger, Philipp W. Rosemann, Marianne Schlosser, Gury Schneider-Ludorff, Rolf Schonberger, Christoph Schwobel, Notger Slenczka, Wolfgang Sturner, Hubert Philip Weber. (shrink)

Im Rahmen der Reihe Klassiker Auslegen wird nun auch Rawls drittem Hauptwerk, Das Recht der Völker, ein kooperativer Kommentar gewidmet. Rawls entwickelt in seinem Spätwerk eine realistische Utopie internationaler Gerechtigkeit, die bei vielen seiner kosmopolitischen Schüler schnell auf Ablehnung stieß. Aus dem Abstand von 20 Jahren wird nun deutlich, dass die Schrift an Aktualität eher gewonnen und bis heute wichtige Debatte geprägt hat. Die einzelnen Beiträge rekonstruieren Rawls' Position zu globaler Gerechtigkeit, Menschenrechten, nichtidealer Theorie, internationaler Toleranz, Methode des politischen Konstruktivismus, (...) öffentlicher Vernunft um. Nach den Kommentarbänden zu Eine Theorie der Gerechtigkeit und Politischer Liberalismus liegt damit eine Einführung in Rawls' Theorieentwicklung in Gänze vor. Der Kommentar bietet somit ein für Studierende und Lehrende unentbehrliches Werkzeug, um sich mit der Politischen Philosophie internationaler Beziehungen zu befassen. (shrink)

Edmund Burke is considered the father of conservatism. With his ‘Reflections on the French Revolution’ (1790), Burke presented a work that was already controversial at the time of its publication. In Burke’s understanding, people and their social institutions are historical beings that are subject to change but unchanging in the face of all change. The central concept in Burke’s argument is heritage, which encompasses both collective, historical memory and social organisation, and specifically refers to constitutional traditions. Society is hierarchically structured (...) and forms an organic unit based on a necessary balance between the principles of continuity and regeneration. According to Burke, the state is the coagulated historical rationality of people who must be taken at least as seriously as contemporaries in their efforts to shape a good order. With contributions by Michael Becker, Norbert Campagna, Oliver Hidalgo, Jürgen Kamm, Skadi Siiri Krause, Thomas Lau, Ulrich Niggemann, Henning Ottmann, Volker Reinhardt and Rüdiger Voigt. (shrink)

It has been said that new discoveries and developments in the human, social, and natural sciences hang “in the air” (Bowler, 1983; 2008) prior to their consummation. While neo-Darwinist biology has been powerfully served by its mechanistic metaphysic and a reductionist methodology in which living organisms are considered machines, many of the chapters in this volume place this paradigm into question. Pairing scientists and philosophers together, this volume explores what might be termed “the New Frontiers” of biology, namely contemporary areas (...) of research that appear to call an updating, a supplementation, or a relaxation of some of the main tenets of the Modern Synthesis. Such areas of investigation include: Emergence Theory, Systems Biology, Biosemiotics, Homeostasis, Symbiogenesis, Niche Construction, the Theory of Organic Selection (also known as “the Baldwin Effect”), Self-Organization and Teleodynamics, as well as Epigenetics. Most of the chapters in this book offer critical reflections on the neo-Darwinist outlook and work to promote a novel synthesis that is open to a greater degree of inclusivity as well as to a more holistic orientation in the biological sciences. (shrink)

Die 'Kritik der Urteilskraft' zerfällt nur scheinbar in zwei oder mehr relativ unverbundene Teile. Zu Unrecht wird häufig die Verknüpfung der 'Ästhetik' mit der Teleologie bemängelt oder bedauert. Der Zusammenhalt des ganzen Kritischen Systems und die Notwendigkeit seiner Bestimmungen erschließt sich einem Denken, welches die zentrale Stellung der praktischen Philosophie bei der gedanklichen Fassung der Idee der Freiheit durch Kant klar sieht. Ausgehend von der Herleitung der prinzipiellen Funktion der Kritik der Urteilskraft als derjenigen der Kultur und Zucht (disciplina) des (...) Vernunftglaubens verschafft die Untersuchung Einsicht in die prinzipielle Geschlossenheit und Einheit der dritten kantischen Kritik und Zugang zur Kantischen Glaubenslehre, wie sie dem Gedanken der Aufklärung zugehört. (shrink)

Review of "Maß und Eigensinn. Studien im Anschluß an Georges Canguilhem“, ed. by Cornelius Borck, Volker Hess and Henning Schmidgen, München (Fink Verlag) 2005.".

Scott Aikin, Tempest Henning Download PDF.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reply to CriticsBethany Henningplato knew that philosophy is not something we write; it is something we live. As Deweyans, we know philosophy is an ideal that emerges within experience as the highest possibility for dialogue. Insofar as a book appears as an extended monologue, it obscures the qualitative and transactive dimensions of philosophy as it is practiced. But sessions like these reveal that books are moments in a conversation, (...) "perchings" in a dialogue that is forever in media res. I am deeply grateful to Bill Myers for organizing this panel, and for the generosity of Frank Ryan, Gregory Pappas, and Jim Garrison for having taken the time to read and think about this book. Each of them has served as a model for philosophical scholarship, and I am humbled and honored to have the opportunity to engage with them directly. They have challenged me in three distinct ways and have engaged with what I have written on separate plateaus of thought, at times revealing layers of which I was not fully aware. So I will do my best to respond to their concerns and develop our shared inquiry in their light. I will also own that my reading of Dewey is selective, and it is my attempt to work through a problem that materialized, as all problems do, in the course of ordinary lived experience.At Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where I attended graduate school, we offered a course called "The American Mind." The title was a provocation, so I applied to teach it one semester. It was a fantastic challenge to try to curate a selection of texts that would serve as an encounter with an intellectual tradition that eludes me as much as it informs me—after all, prior to college, I only knew that a "philosopher" is what becomes of the loser in the board game called Life. I did not know that there was something called "American philosophy" until I applied to study at SIUC.If philosophy is the way that a culture reflects upon itself, then in this book, I have tried to invite the American mind to lie down on the couch. [End Page 95] Or, it might be more accurate to say that I have asked John Dewey, as the representative of American philosophy, how he might psychoanalyze such a mind. My hypothesis is that Dewey's theory of aesthetic experience, and the art that communicates and preserves such moments of intensified vitality, touches the deepest, but unspoken meanings that human beings encounter. This is where quality, the character of an event as a singular whole, the immediate aspect of an event that we feel rather than know, can be stabilized and communicated. If an interpretation can be made of the deep conflicts that have left philosophy at the margins of American life, I believe we would be wise to begin with our "dreams," with the creations of our imagination, the artistic products that reveal the felt dimension of our shared world.Many readers of Dewey choose to focus on his theory of inquiry, his recasting of the scientific method, and his instrumentalism as forming the core of his thought. This is an understandable approach; his work here is novel and corrects bad intellectual habits. However, for the purposes of this book, I have emphasized aesthetic experience, the role of the qualitative, and pursuit of meaning over the correction of practice in my interpretation. This is a controversial choice since it courts the irrational and the vague, but I believe that our neglect of these portions of experience prevents philosophy from reconnecting with American life.Response to Frank RyanFrank Ryan is concerned about the extent to which I have cast the organism as porous, and that I have identified aesthetic experience as unconscious. I agree with Dr. Ryan's assessment that defining aesthetic experience as wholly unconscious would be a grievous error—and I hope not to have made it. There is a misleading ambiguity in the title of the book that might predispose the reader to suspect that I am claiming an equivalence, but what I intended to argue was not that aesthetic experience itself is unconscious, but rather... (shrink)

Die künstliche Zeugung und Selektion von Nachwuchs als Spender von Gewebe für Dritte ist ethisch umstritten. Kritiker des Verfahrens berufen sich oft auf Kants Forderung, Personen seien jederzeit auch als Zwecke an sich selbst zu behandeln. Diese Kritik wird aber oft vorgebracht, ohne dass erläutert würde, was es heißt, Personen als Zwecke an sich selbst zu behandeln. Befürworter des Verfahrens weisen die Kritik daher als dunkel zurück oder deuten sie so, dass sie das Verfahren zulässt. Dieser Artikel erläutert den Kern (...) der Zweckformel (im Zusammenhang mit anderen Formulierungen des kategorischen Imperativs). Dieser Deutung zufolge ist die Zeugung von Retterkindern in der Tat eine Form der Instrumentalisierung, die ich präemptive Instrumentalisierung nenne. Der Unterschied zwischen dieser Form der Instrumentalisierung und anderen Formen instrumentell motivierter Nachwuchsplanung wird dargestellt. (shrink)

This article provides a transcription and analysis of a newly located fragment of Kant’s autograph fair copy of his essay on Perpetual Peace. The 4-page manuscript is part of the John Wild Autograph Collection at Princeton University (USA) and constitutes the immediate sequel to a similar fragment preserved in the Staatsarchiv Hamburg and published in Kant-Studien 77 (1986). The Princeton fragment was not included in volume 23 of the Akademie-Ausgabe and was unavailable to recent editors; it presents a number of (...) textual variants and allows new insights into Kant’s writing process. (shrink)

The publication of Art as Experience in 1934 marked a theoretical turning point away from the disinterested spectatorship of Kant towards an aesthetics of everyday life. Dewey’s major claim therein is that “aesthetic experience” is privileged and ought to be taken as paradigmatic for all experience because it is controlled by an affective unity that he calls “pervasive quality” which harmonizes thought and action with its social and environmental context. In 1935 Walter Benjamin argued that pre-industrial works of art have (...) an “aura” that exerts an affective lure on consciousness, and that the remnants of this aura in the post-industrial age may lead to the abandonment of critical thought and seduce the masses into the sway of fascism. This paper considers John Dewey’s aesthetic theory in light of the critical perspective developed by his contemporaries in the Frankfurt School. I will consider whether Dewey’s reliance on the qualitative dimension of experience undermines the critical reflection that, theoretically, prevents the “aestheticization of politics” that leads to the spread of fascism, and propose that pragmatist aesthetics would benefit from greater tolerance for the “negativity” exemplified by the critical theorists. (shrink)

My goal in this brief essay is not so much to defend White's controversial thesis, but to use it as a context for appreciating the significance of Pope Francis's new encyclical Laudato Si’. Considering it in the context of White’s thesis, will bring certain salient features into relief.

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag geht der Frage nach, worin [die Spezifik von Praxis-Konzeptionen besteht und worin sie nicht besteht. Die These ist, dass Praxis-Konzeptionen mit allen Intentionalitäts-Konzeptionen brechen - also z. B. nicht einfach die sog. geistigen Intentionen materialisieren. Positiv bedeutet das, dass Praxis-Konzeptionen ihren Ausgangspunkt in Vollzügen nehmen, die durch ein,passives Moment' mitkonstituiert sind. Nebenbei soll an Theorietraditionen erinnert werden, die in aktuellen prax/stheoretischen Debatten verloren zu gehen drohen. Abschließend wird exemplarisch die Relevanz für sportwissenschaftliche Kontexte aufgezeigt.

Resumo: Identificamos tensionamentos na confluência das ações filosóficas entre ensino de filosofia e pesquisa. Destacamos o movimento permanente dos filósofos na produção de conhecimento, haja vista que há forte tendência a um ensino dinâmico e continuamente revisado pelos achados providos pela pesquisa e adequado ao contexto escolar. Vislumbramos nesse encontro polos muitas vezes díspares, principalmente, pelo fato de a pesquisa filosófica frequentemente encontrar barreiras nas atividades de ensino, e vice-versa. Porém, entrevemos possibilidades de interações entre ensino de filosofia e pesquisa. (...) O primeiro, por exemplo, oferece problemas importantes à pesquisa enquanto esta retribui com sugestões e respostas, o que, no conjunto, pode resultar num desenvolvimento incomum ao campo da filosofia. Além da produção de conhecimento, ressaltamos contribuições nessa parceria como: importante divulgação da filosofia pautada em um saber melhor embasado, contribuição na formação das pessoas e de um projeto de nação avesso à pobreza de argumentação e ajuizamento daqueles que foram alijados desses ensinamentos. A aproximação do ensino e pesquisa em filosofia provoca busca da segunda a tomar o primeiro como seu objeto de interesse e, no panorama da complexidade do campo, tornar a filosofia do ensino de filosofia espaço fecundo para produção de conhecimento e ação impactantes nos contextos escolares. Palavras-chave: Ensino de Filosofia; Pesquisa; Produção de Conhecimento Teaching Philosophy and Research: field of tensions, collaboration and knowledge production Abstract: We identified tensions at the confluence of philosophical actions between teaching philosophy and research. We highlight the permanent movement of philosophers in the production of knowledge, given that there is a strong tendency towards a dynamic teaching and continuously reviewed by the findings provided by the research and appropriate to the school context. In this meeting, we envision poles that are often disparate, mainly because philosophical research often encounters barriers in teaching activities, and vice versa. However, we glimpse possibilities of interactions between teaching philosophy and research. The first, for example, poses important problems to research while it responds with suggestions and answers, which, on the whole, can result in an unusual development in the field of philosophy. In addition to the production of knowledge, we highlight contributions in this partnership such as: important dissemination of philosophy based on a better-grounded knowledge, contribution to the formation of people and a project of a nation averse to the poverty of argumentation and judgment of those who were excluded from these teachings. The approximation of teaching and research in philosophy provokes the search for the second to take the first as its object of interest and, in the context of the complexity of the field, to make the philosophy of teaching philosophy a fertile space for the production of knowledge and impacting action in school contexts. Key-words: Teaching Philosophy; Research; Knowledge Production Enseñanza de la Filosofía y Investigación: campo de tensiones, colaboración y producción de conocimiento Resumen: Identificamos tensiones en la confluencia de acciones filosóficas entre la enseñanza de la filosofía y la investigación. Destacamos el movimiento permanente de los filósofos en la producción de conocimiento, dado que existe una fuerte tendencia hacia una enseñanza dinámica y continuamente revisada por los hallazgos que brinda la investigación y adecuada al contexto escolar. En este encuentro visualizamos polos muchas veces dispares, principalmente porque la investigación filosófica muchas veces encuentra barreras en la actividad docente, y viceversa. Sin embargo, vislumbramos posibilidades de interacciones entre la enseñanza de la filosofía y la investigación. La primera, por ejemplo, plantea importantes problemas a la investigación mientras responde con sugerencias y respuestas, lo que, en conjunto, puede resultar en un desarrollo inusual en el campo de la filosofía. Además de la producción de conocimiento, destacamos aportes en esta alianza como: importante difusión de la filosofía basada en un conocimiento mejor fundamentado, aporte a la formación de personas y proyecto de nación adversa a la pobreza de argumentación y juicio de aquellos que estaban excluidos de estas enseñanzas. La aproximación de la enseñanza y la investigación en filosofía provoca la búsqueda de que la segunda tome a la primera como su objeto de interés y, en el contexto de la complejidad del campo, hacer de la filosofía de la enseñanza de la filosofía un espacio fértil para la producción de conocimiento y acción impactantes en los contextos escolares. Palavras-clave: Enseñanza de la Filosofía; Búsqueda; Producción de Conocimiento Data de registro: 20/01/2023 Data de aceite: 24/01/2024. (shrink)

This project develops and defends a holistic, organic ethical theory grounded firmly in Whitehead's aesthetico-metaphysics of process. The seminal insight of this ethic, which I refer to as the Ethics of Creativity, is the fundamental sense of beauty and value at the base of existence; there is no vacuous, valueless existence. As a result of this starting point, it is this project's contention that it is not enough for an ethical theory merely to prescribe how we ought to interact with (...) other human beings. Rather, insofar as everything is inherently valuable, ethics must be radically reconceived as directing how we ought to comport ourselves with everything to which we relate. Accordingly, rather than having one ethic for our interaction with inter-human relationships and another for the extra-human world, the Ethics of Creativity is at once an inter-human ethic and an environmental ethic; it is, in this sense, holistic. Thus, with William James, I believe that the aim of a truly adequate ethical theory is "to find an account of the moral relations that obtain among things, which will weave them into the unity of a stable system, and make of the world what one may call a genuine universe from the ethical point of view" . ;As there currently is no systematic development of an ethical theory based on a robust conception of Whitehead's metaphysics and aesthetics, this project has the potential to be a substantial contribution to the field of process philosophy. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, I engage established ethical theories with the hope of transforming their basic presuppositions and indicating the need to move toward a process model. Thus, this project is at once critical and constructive. (shrink)

Arguments for moral consequentialism often appeal to an alleged structural similarity between consequentialist reasoning in ethics and rational decision-making in everyday life. Ordinary rational decision-making is seen as a paradigmatic case of goal-oriented, teleological decision-making, since it allegedly aims at maximizing the goal of preference satisfaction. This chapter describes and discusses a neglected type of preference change, “predictable preference accommodation.” This phenomenon leads to a number of critical cases in which the rationality of a particular choice does not depend on (...) features of the outcome of the chosen act. On the basis of these cases, it is argued that consequentialists cannot point to everyday decision-making as an uncontroversial example of consequentialist reasoning. On the contrary, it is suggested that an adequate account of rationality in prudential choice may need a Kantian notion of respect. (shrink)

Aus dem Motiv eines »Aufstandes der Dinge« leitet sich im linken russischen Konstruktivismus der Imperativ einer Befreiung der Dinge her, der sich von ihrer Repräsentation abkehrt und ein Bilderverbot verhängt, um neue Dinge für 〉neue Menschen〈 zu erschaffen. Diese Dinge – Universalkleidungsstücke und mobile Gebrauchsgegenstände – überspringen den Gegensatz zwischen Objekt und Dinglichkeit. Wie die zeitgenössische russische Phänomenologie (Gustav Špet, Nikolaj Žinkin) feststellt, macht kein 〉idealer Gegenstand〈 ihr Wesen aus, sondern der soziale Gebrauch, der es in einen unabschließbaren Veränderungsprozess involviert. (...) Russian constructivism's motif of an »insurgence of things« leads to the imperative of a liberation of things, which turns away from their representation and declares a Bilderverbot (prohibition of representation) in order to create new things for »new men.« These things – for example, clothing and articles of daily use – overleap the opposition between object and thingness. Their essence, as contemporary Russian phenomenology (Gustav Špet, Nikolaj Žinkin) affirms, is not constituted by any »ideal object«, but by social usage, which involves it in an interminable metamorphosis. (shrink)

In this article the work of a recent critic of moral vegetarianism (and veganism) is analyzed: Andrew F. Smith. Smith s work is significant for process thinkers who defend moral vegetarianism for various reasons. One of these is that he forces process thinkers to consider in more depth Whitehead’s view of plant ontology; another is that Smith adds insightfully to the conversation within process thought regarding the relationship between claims regarding animal rights and the ecoholistic concerns of environmental ethicists.

The opportunity to read and reflect on Presidential Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 1931–1940, the fourth volume of the American Philosophical Association Centennial Series, has been in equal measures rewarding, humbling, and taxing. Having recently completed my own edited volume of presidential addresses of another philosophical society, I have been thoroughly disabused of the notion that there is any particular form or content that defines a philosophical presidential address. Perhaps it should not be surprising that the topics of the (...) addresses are as varied as the field that they represent. Nevertheless, I have endeavored to impose some order on the collection, grouping them into six rough divisions, primarily by their similarity of subject matter or methodology. (shrink)