The Goedelian approach is discussed as a prime example of a science towards the origins. While mere self­referential objectification locks in to its own by­products, self­releasing objectification informs the formation of objects at hand and their different levels of interconnection. Guided by the spirit of Goedel's work a self­reflective science can open the road where old tenets see only blocked paths. “This is, as it were, an analysis of the analysis itself, but if that is done it forms the fundamental (...) of human science, as far as this kind of things is concerned.” G. Leibniz, ('Methodus Nova ...', 1673) . (shrink)

This paper treats of Husserl’s phenomenology of happiness or eudaimonia in five parts. In the first part, we argue that phenomenology of happiness is an important albeit relatively neglected area of research, and we show that Husserl engages in it. In the second part, we examine the relationship between phenomenological ethics and virtue ethics. In the third part, we identify and clarify essential aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology of happiness, namely, the nature of the question concerning happiness and the possibility of (...) a phenomenological answer, the power of the will, the role of vocation, the place of obligation, the significance of habituation, the necessity of selfreflection and self-criticism, the importance of sociability and solidarity, the impact of chance and destiny, and the specter of regret. In the fourth part, we establish the inextricable linkage between Husserl’s metaethics and his metaphysics. In the fi ft h part, we provide a provisional exploration of his conception of the connection between happiness and blessedness. We acknowledge that there is an extensive literature on Husserl’s phenomenological ethics, and our study has benefitted greatly from it, but we also suggest that our holistic approach critically clarifies his description of happiness, virtue, and blessedness by fully recognizing that his phenomenological metaethics is embedded in his phenomenological metaphysics. (shrink)

By bringing feminist science studies scholar Donna J. Haraway’s A manifesto for cyborgs (1985) and Situated knowledges (1988) in line with contemporary critical new materialist thought (see Colman & Van der Tuin, 2024; Dolphijn & Van der Tuin, 2012; Geerts, 2022), this critical pedagogical and philosophical think piece tackles the problematic of Anthropocenic disruptions of the planetary biosphere for critical pedagogies and higher education (also see Carstens, 2016). It additionally encourages its readers to think through their own pedagogical conceptions and (...) praxes by means of irruptive (Geerts & Carstens, 2024; Koro-Ljungberg, 2015) selfreflection- stimulating questions. Our situated – and thus limited and open-ended – response to this all-encompassing Anthropocenic crisis is rooted in a rethinking of Harawayan cyborgian and situated knowledges and the critical pedagogical lessons drawn from the latter. Rereading Haraway’s work through contemporary critical new materialist and related scholarship reveals that it already contained an ecofeminist onto-epistemological shift toward more-than-human agency and relationality. This shift has major consequences for all things critical pedagogical and educational, as our pedagogical thinking-doings are deeply embedded in today’s crisis-ridden lifeworld. This rereading exercise furthermore underlines the necessity of an updated critical new materialist pedagogical praxis for learning and teaching, inspired by Harawayan ecofeminism, that takes the entanglements between human, dehumanised, and more-than-human actors seriously. (shrink)

This article explores an overlooked motif in the Critique of Pure Reason: the Damsel in Distress. Kant uses the trope to motivate his first Critique on a narrative level. Reason is depicted as a high-born female subject in a hopeless predicament, unable to free herself. A hero rescues her, not by liberation, but by discipline, mirroring the myth where the rescued female is appropriated through marriage. The paper examines the parallels between this popular trope and the narrative of the first (...) Critique, arguing that Kant’s choice of this motif is due to cultural and political biases. While this narrative aligns with Kant’s goal of establishing philosophy as a strict science, it marginalizes the also present, progressive potential of Kant’s concept of the highest faculty as a hermeneutical, world-making, and orienting capacity as means for universal cum critical thinking. The discussion proceeds from (1) argumentatively relevant methodological considerations, to showing that Kant (2) does use the damsel in distress in the Critique of Pure Reason. Subsequently, (3) with regard to the reasons for the choice of the narrative, it is argued that it is based on the convictions about the nature of women that Kant advocates in the Observations on the Beautiful and the Sublime and in his Anthropology. (4) Insofar as narratives and metaphors shape convictions and delineate the realm of the conceivable, Kant’s narrative choice undermines his own conception of reason, according to which the highest faculty is to be understood positively as an active, hermeneutic and orienting ability as well as a selfreflective basis for critical thinking. The discussion ends (5) with a conclusion. (shrink)

To understand how we have become what we are requires, following Foucault, not a theory but an `analytics' which examines how technologies of power and knowledge have, since antiquity, intertwined and developed in concrete and historical frameworks. Distilling from Foucault's oeuvre as a whole a rough periodization of western political rationalities, this article shows how the processes whereby some people discipline or govern others are frequently closely connected to procedures of identity-constitution and knowledge-production. Platonic, Stoic and Christian pursuits of self-mastery (...) and self-knowledge, often via the intervention of an external master, were initially confined to an elite, but thereafter were amplified and generalized to encompass entire populations in conjunction with the rise of the modern state. Via techniques of confession and ascetic conduct, faith and empiricism, and selfreflection and everyday reality, western political rationalities, in the form of combined totalization and individualization technologies whereby some (struggle to) discipline others even as all (are exhorted to) discipline themselves, have come to dominate the globe. (shrink)

Protestant ethics, since the fifties of last centrury, has moved from foundational and eschatological terms, provoked by sociohistorical selfreflection, to recognize human rights as basic frame of reference for realistic christian ethics. In consequence of this swing, conceptual, theological affinity to modern principles of human freedom as well as distinction to the realm of »public law« are challenging a new discussion of »public« theology in encounter of Christianity with Islam.

The aim of this paper is to distinguish between weak and strong points of Ernst Jünger’s main theoretical work Der Arbeiter. Herrschaft und Gestalt . Starting from recapitulation of his thought, as a weakness appears the insufficient selfreflection of author’s instance in Jünger’s essay together with the insufficient selfreflection regarding his relation towards the historicalmetaphysical tradition. In conclusion, a substantive strength is shown which turns reading of Jünger’s work, right at the dawn of the 21st century and with (...) all due reservations, in a worthwhile suggestion – namely, its diagnostic relevance in the era of “wars against international terrorism”. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to explicate Jürgen Habermas’s discourse on education vis-à-vis his political project of a democratized society. Arguably, Habermas sees in the structures and processes inherent in the universities an ideal place for self-reflection and communicative action. Thus, his idea of a university is tied up with the potentials of establishing an emancipated, enlightened society. The agencies of selfreflection hinge with democratic practices and processes, and the facility of communicative action even in a differentiated and specialized (...) learning practices and processes in a bundled lifeworld in the universities boost the prospect of a democratized society. Together with other institutions that promote, enhance, and safeguard avenues of discourses free from domination, university education contributes to the realization of the democratization project. (shrink)

The history of Slovak philosophy can be reconstructed along two basic lines: along the line of the school philosophy, developed at existing high schools, colleges and universities, as well as along the other line - that of philosophical thinking. The researches should focus not only on professional philosophy, but also on the forms of applied philosophical thinking as a part of the community's culture. The standpoint of the researches should be non-ideological, non-national, non-ethnical. "The Slovak philosophy" is related to all (...) philosophical expressions, historically present in Slovak region or in Slovak culture. This option as an alternative to previous paradigmatic scheme, used by Marxist historiography. It represents a methodological issue par excellence, demanding a special attention and also theoretical and methodological selfreflection of the historians of philosophy. (shrink)