ABSTRACT This article draws attention to a neglected aside in the debate over whether Marx fathered an illegitimate child. In 1898, Louise Freyberger wrote a controversial letter in which she claimed Engels had confessed on his deathbed that Frederick Demuth was Marx’s son. The letter, however, only came to light in 1962 when Werner Blumenberg first discussed it in his biography of Marx. Blumenberg’s revelation provoked an on-going debate over the plausibility of Freyberger’s allegations. Several scholars went (...) so far as to dismiss the letter as a forgery, noting that it only existed in the form of a typed copy that Blumenberg had discovered in the archives of the International Institute of Social History (IISH). In 1963, Jacob-Peter Mayer published a review of Blumenberg’s biography in which he stated he had known of the letter in the 1930s, but few if any scholars took note of Mayer’s claim. In 2019, a copy of the letter in Mayer’s own hand was found among his papers. This article argues that Mayer copied his version, not from the IISH typescript, but from the original letter, which he had come across while working in the archives of the German Social Democratic Party in the 1930s. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for two principles to determine the temporal interpretation of modal sentences in English, given a theory in which modals are interpreted against double conversational backgrounds and an ontology in which possible worlds branch towards the future, The Disparity Principle requires that a modal sentence makes distinctions between worlds in the modal base. The Non- disparity Principle requires that a modal sentence does not make distinctions on the basis of facts settled at speech time. Selection of (...) the modal base will set these principles against each other, or allow for their cooperative interaction. For a root modal base, there is a conflict and disparity wins. The resulting interpretation is future. For a non-root modal base, the principles cooperate. Non-disparity determines a non-future interpretation and disparity requires the sentence to go beyond what is known by the speaker. (shrink)

Karl Marx's Capital is critique of the capitalistically organised social relations of reproduction. It recognises economic categories as perverted social categories and asks about the manner in which human social practice manifests itself in the form of independent economic categories and laws that unfold as if governed by invisible principles. He says, the capitalist relations are beyond human control and he argues that the indi-viduals act under economic compulsion and are controlled by the products of their own labour. His critique (...) says, in the capitalist social relations the individuals act as personification of economic categories. The immense wealth of capitalist society is abstract, it appears in the form of money as more money. In these wealth-relations, time is money, the satisfaction of human needs a mere sideshow. Yet, the economic categories are purely social forms. Critique of political economy is social critique of economic inversion, it is about the sheer unrest of live as the hidden misery of economic things. (shrink)

Der Band enthält die religionsphilosophischen Vorlesungen, die Feuerbach während der Revolutionszeit vom 1. Dezember 1848 bis zum 2. März 1849 im Heidelberger Rathaussaal vor Studenten, Angehörigen des Heidelberger Arbeiter-Bildungsvereins und fortschrittlichen Kreisen des Bürgertums gehalten hat. Die Vorlesungen, denen Feuerbach eine Stellungnahme zur Revolution und eine Skizze seiner weltanschaulichen Entwicklung vorangestellt hat, geben eine das gesamte erreichbare völkerkundliche, mythologische und religionsgeschichtliche Material verarbeitende Analyse der Naturreligionen, des Theismus und Monotheismus. Feuerbach bekämpft die theologische und idealistisch-philosophische Naturauffassung und stellt ihr Ergebnisse (...) der der Naturforschung und Prinzipien einer materialistische-sensualistischen Erkenntnistheorie und Naturphilosophie entgegen: Mittelpunkt allen Denkens, Strebens und Handelns müsse der Mensch in seinen realen Beziehungen sein, der in sich selbst und in seinen Wesenskräften tatsächlich findet, was er in der Religion nur illusorisch "verwirklicht"; an die Stelle religiösen Glaubens die auf menschenwürdige Gestaltung der Lebensverhältnisse gerichtete kollektive Selbsttätigkeit treten. (shrink)

Recent discussions of religious, cultural, and/or moral diversity raise questions relevant to the descriptive and normative aims of students of religious ethics. In conversation with several illustrative works, the author takes up issues of terminology, explanations or classifications of types and origins of plurality and pluralism, the relations between pluralism as a normative theory and the aims of a liberal state, and the import of an emphasis on plurality or pluralism for the comparative study of religious ethics.