This is a welcome reprint of a book that continues to grow in importance.

The author presents and defends three theses: (1) "the first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology." (2) "the second is that the concepts of obligation, And duty... And of what is morally right and wrong, And of the moral sense of 'ought', Ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible...." (3) "the third thesis is that (...) the differences between the well-Known english writers on moral philosophy from sidgwick to the present day are of little importance." (staff). (shrink)

Die Beitrage des Sammelbandes widmen sich aus theologisch-philosophischer Perspektive der historischen Rezeption und der systematischen Relevanz des Freiheitsstreits zwischen Martin Luther und Erasmus von Rotterdam. Im systematischen Zentrum steht das jeweilige freiheitstheoretische Verstandnis des Menschen, seiner epistemischen und voluntativen Vermogen und seines metaphysischen Ortes innerhalb der Schopfung, besonders sein Verhaltnis zu Gott. Aus historischer Perspektive wird die Rezeption von Luthers Freiheitsbegriff durch Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schelling und in der analytischen Philosophie untersucht. Mit Beitragen von Christine Axt-Piscalar, Frank Dettinger, Thomas Frisch, (...) Volker Gerhardt, Friedrich Hermanni, Amit Kravitz, Jorg Noller, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Birgit Recki, Georg Sans SJ, Ruben Schneider und Gunther Wenz. (shrink)

This book offers an introduction to the Sophists of fifth-century Athens and a new overall interpretation of their thought. Since Plato first animadverted on their activities, the Sophists have commonly been presented as little better than intellectual mountebanks - a picture which Professor Kerferd forcefully challenges here. Interpreting the evidence with care, he shows them to have been part of an exciting and historically crucial intellectual movement. At the centre of their teaching was a form of relativism, most famously expressed (...) by Protagoras as 'Man is the measure of all things', and which they developed in a wide range of views - on knowledge and argument, virtue, government, society, and the gods. On all these subjects the Sophists did far more than simply provoke Plato to thought. Their contributions were substantial and serious; they inaugurated the debate on many central philosophical questions and decisively shifted the focus of philosophical attention from the cosmos to man. (shrink)

Der alle drei Jahre tagende Kongress der „Deutschen Gesellschaft für Philosophie“ (DGPhil) ist der größte Kongress für Philosophie in Deutschland. Vom 11.-15. September fand er diesmal an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in München statt. Mit rund 1600 Teilnehmern und über 400 philosophischen Vorträgen fiel er, auch durch den Veranstaltungsort bedingt, wesentlich umfangreicher aus als der XXI. Kongress in Essen.

_Freiheit nach Kant_ analyzes Kant’s conception of freedom from a historical and systematic point of view. It considers its position in the history of philosophy, its impact on German Idealism, and finally discusses the systematic relevance of Kant’s theory.

Normal propositional modal systems This first chapter has two main aims. One is to give a general account of the propositional modal systems that we shall ...

This novel contributed volume advances the current debate on free will by bridging the divide between analytic and historically oriented approaches to the problem. With thirteen chapters by leading academics in the field, the volume is divided into three parts: free will and determinism, free will and indeterminism, and free will and moral responsibility. The contributors aim to initiate a philosophical discourse that profits from a combination of the two approaches. On the one hand, the analytic tools familiar from the (...) debate – arguments, concepts, and distinctions – can be used to sharpen our understanding of classical philosophical positions. On the other hand, the rich philosophical tradition can be reconstructed so as to inspire new solutions. In recent years, the problem of free will has received special attention in the analytic arena. This is the first anthology to combine historical and analytic perspectives, significantly furthering the debate, and providing a crucial resource to academics and advanced students alike. (shrink)

An examination of verbal hallucinations and thought insertion as examples of "alienated self-consciousness.".

This book traces the intellectual revolution initiated by Thales in the sixth century BC to its culmination in the metaphysics of Parmenides.

In my paper, I shall take seriously Kant’s puzzling statements about the moral feeling of respect, which is, according to him, “a feeling self-wrought by means of a rational concept and therefore specifically different” from all common feelings. I will focus on the systematic position of the moral feeling of respect within the framework of Kant’s transcendental idealism. By considering its volitional structure, I argue for a compatibilist account of the moral feeling of respect, according to which both intellectualist and (...) affectivist interpretations are true. As such, respect can be understood in terms of a process of moral self-consciousness and self-formation, which means that the will must be freed from initial empirical motives, and finally be determined only by rational principles. (shrink)

In his book “Schiller as Philosopher”, Frederick Beiser laments that “contemporary Kant scholars have been intent on ignoring him. If they know anything at all about Schiller, it is only as the author of an epigram satirizing Kant”. Therefore, Beiser calls us “to consider Schiller as a philosopher, to reconstruct and appraise the arguments of his philosophical writings” (Beiser, 2005, p. vii). In this paper, I shall argue that it is Schiller's conception of freedom of the will as “heautonomy” that (...) stands behind his critique and modification of Kant's ethics. However, the systematic significance of Schiller's theory of freedom is not obvious. Its argumentative structure must first be reconstructed—as Beiser has demanded—because it is concealed by an esthetic discourse. A reconstruction of Schiller's theory of freedom shows that he contrasts his concept of heautonomy as individual self‐determination with the Kantian concept of an autonomy or autocracy of reason by the universal moral law. Schiller's own philosophical contribution to the debate on freedom after Kant must therefore not be understood as a mere esthetic balancing and softening of Kant's ethical rigorism. Rather, it shows serious transformations of Kant's approach, which justifies understanding it as a critical step beyond Kant's theory of the autonomy of reason. (shrink)

Contrary to Karl Leonhard Reinhold's theoretical critique of Kant's philosophy, his practical critique has been almost unknown. In my paper, I shall reconstruct Reinhold's practical philosophy after Kant. I will concentrate on the so‐called Reinhold's dilemma, which concerns the problem of moral imputability in the case of immoral actions in Kant. Also, I shall explain how Reinhold tried to escape this dilemma by introducing a new action theory and by sharply distinguishing between reason and will. Finally, I shall evaluate Reinhold's (...) practical significance by relating his conception of individual freedom to recent theories of volitional self‐determination. (shrink)

In this chapter, I will address the philosophical ambivalence of the concept of Willkür in and after Kant. The aim of my chapter is to defend it against the charge of irrationality and mere chance, and to rehabilitate it from a historical and analytic point of view. I will analyze Kant’s use of the word “Willkür”, and chronologically follow the semantic and systematic changes in his philosophical work. Finally, I address recent attempts to revitalize the concept of Willkür in the (...) analytic debate by referring to the work of Harry Frankfurt and Robert Kane. I shall argue that we need to distinguish between two kinds of libera arbitria. Whereas the liberum arbitrium indifferentiae can be interpreted in terms of the pejorative sense of “Willkür”—as mere chance—the liberum arbitrium voluntatis equals a reflective kind of Willkür—literal Will-kür —which involves freedom of the will. (shrink)

In this paper, I will reconstruct Kant’s theory of illusion from the perspective of his transcendental philosophy. I argue that it is Kant’s theory of dialectic as the “logic of illusion” that grounds both theoretical and practical error and that traces them back to a common root: the operation of rationalizing by theoretical and practical reason. I analyze different kinds of theoretical and practical errors and show how they are grounded in reason’s general propensity to rationalize. The paper exposes this (...) common root and shows which rules Kant develops in order to avoid rationalizing. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze Schelling’s compatibilist account of freedom of the will particularly in his Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom. I shall argue that against Kant’s transcendental compatibilism Schelling proposes a “volitional compatibilism,” according to which the free will emerges out of nature and is not identical to practical reason as Kant claims. Finally, I will relate Schelling’s volitional compatibilism to more recent accounts of free will in order to better understand what he (...) means by his concept of a “higher necessity.”. (shrink)

Betrachtet man das breite Spektrum an produktiven Wechselwirkungen zwischen den beiden Kulturnationen Italien und Deutschland, so ist es verwunderlich, dass die italienische Philosophie in Deutschland immer noch als „terra incognita“ (Ugo Perone) gelten darf. Darum bringt dieser Band das ‚transalpine‘ Wechselspiel von Rezeption und Transformation im deutsch-italienischen Denken exemplarisch zur Sprache. Im Zentrum stehen die Bereiche der Aufklärung (Vico, Herder), der klassischen deutschen Philosophie (Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel), der Philosophie des Risorgimento (Rosmini, Gioberti) und der Philosophie der Gegenwart (Luigi Pareyson (...) und die Turiner Schule). (shrink)

Wie kann Europa politisch und gesellschaftlich durch die Möglichkeiten der Digitalisierung profitieren und seine Krisen überwinden, von denen es in der letzten Zeit so geplagt wurde? Wie kann es ein „Humanprojekt“ und die Einheit von „grüner“ Ökologie und „blauer“ Informationstechnik realisieren? In diesem Band präsentiert Luciano Floridi eine Zusammenfassung seiner Thesen, wie sich die Digitalisierung ganz konkret auf politische und soziale Phänomene auswirkt, und wie nun weniger die Dinge als ihre Relationen an Bedeutung gewinnen.Mit kritischen Beiträgen von Manfred Broy, Markus (...) Gabriel, Armin Grunwald, Ruth Hagengruber, Alexander Kriebitz, Christoph Lütge, Raphael Max, Catrin Misselhorn und Malte Rehbein. (shrink)

This entirely new work guides the reader through the most basic systems of modal propositional logic up to systems of modal predicate with identity, dealing with both technical developments and discussing philosophical applications.

Kant’s moral philosophy is challenged by the so-called “Socratic Paradox”: If free will and pure practical reason are to be identified, as Kant argues, then there seems to be no room for immoral actions that are to be imputed to our individual freedom. The paper argues that Kant’s conception of rationalizing helps us to avoid the Socratic Paradox, and to understand how immoral actions can be imputed to our individual freedom and responsibility. In rationalizing, we misuse our capacity of reason (...) in order to construct the illusion according to which we are not bound to the absolute demand of the moral law, but rather subject to exceptions and excuses. Finally, the paper interprets the three rules of “common sense” in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment in terms of an antidote to rationalizing. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 66 Heft: 2 Seiten: 162-182.

Biological evolution is a complex blend of ever changing structural stability, variability and emergence of new phe- notypes, niches, ecosystems. We wish to argue that the evo- lution of life marks the end of a physics world view of law entailed dynamics. Our considerations depend upon dis- cussing the variability of the very ”contexts of life”: the in- teractions between organisms, biological niches and ecosys- tems. These are ever changing, intrinsically indeterminate and even unprestatable: we do not know ahead of (...) time the ”niches” which constitute the boundary conditions on selec- tion. More generally, by the mathematical unprestatability of the ”phase space”, no laws of mo- tion can be formulated for evolution. We call this radical emergence, from life to life. The purpose of this paper is the integration of variation and diversity in a sound concep- tual frame and situate unpredictability at a novel theoretical level, that of the very phase space. Our argument will be carried on in close comparisons with physics and the mathematical constructions of phase spaces in that discipline. The role of symmetries as invariant preserving transformations will allow us to under- stand the nature of physical phase spaces and to stress the differences required for a sound biological theoretizing. In this frame, we discuss the novel notion of ”enablement”. Life lives in a web of enablement and radical emergence. This will restrict causal analyses to differential cases. Mutations or other causal differ- ences will allow us to stress that ”non conservation princi- ples” are at the core of evolution, in contrast to physical dynamics, largely based on conservation principles as sym- metries. Critical transitions, the main locus of symmetry changes in physics, will be discussed, and lead to ”extended criticality” as a conceptual frame for a better understanding of the living state of matter. (shrink)

Editor James Fetzer presents an analytical and historical introduction and a comprehensive bibliography together with selections of many of Carl G. Hempel's most important studies to give students and scholars an ideal opportunity to appreciate the enduring contributions of one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century.

The aim of the present volume is to advance the debate about free will by combining historical and analytic perspectives. In the discussion throughout the centuries, many problems have emerged that cast doubt on the assumption that we have free will. The aim of this introduction is, first, to present these problems as well as to present several strategies that have been proposed in order to solve these problems; second, to give an overview of the content of the present volume. (...) The contributions to this book aim, for the most part, to advance the debate about these problems by drawing on ideas that can be found in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Der Begriff der Digitalität ist erst in jüngster Zeit ins Zentrum der Kultur- und Geisteswissenschaft gerückt. Er entspricht nicht dem Verständnis von Digitalisierung im Sinne der Entwicklung von Technologien, der Erfassung und Speicherung von Daten und der Automatisierung von Abläufen. Vielmehr reflektiert Digitalität auf kulturelle und gesellschaftliche Realitäten und Lebensformen, die mit der Digitalisierung einhergehen und diese im Wechselspiel wiederum ermöglichen. Ziel des Bandes ist es, das Phänomen der Digitalität näher zu bestimmen und den Blick auf kulturelle, philosophische, didaktische und (...) soziologische Aspekte des Lebens in einer digitalisierten Welt zu richten. Folgende Fragen stehen dabei im Zentrum: In welchem Verhältnis stehen die Phänomene „Digitalisierung“ und „Digitalität“? Wie verändern sich Lehr- und Lernprozesse im Kontext von Digitalisierung und Digitalität? Welche Herausforderungen, Chancen und Probleme ergeben sich aus der Digitalität für die Zukunft der Gesellschaft und der Universitäten? Wie lässt sich die Kultur der Digitalität gezielt gestalten und vermitteln? (shrink)

Hume's Reception in Early America: Expanded Edition brings together the original American responses to one of Britain's greatest men of letters, David Hume. Now available as a single volume paperback, this new edition includes updated further readings suggestions and dozens of additional primary sources gathered together in a completely new concluding section. From complete pamphlets and booklets, to poems, reviews, and letters, to extracts from newspapers, religious magazines and literary and political journals, this book's contents come from a wide variety (...) of sources published in colonial America and the early United States between 1758 and 1850. As well as classics by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, it contains scores of unknown and hard-to-locate items, many of which have not been reprinted since their original publication. These responses are divided into four parts covering Hume's Essays; his Philosophical Writings; his History of England; and his Character and Death. Each of those parts has a separate introductory essay, and every selection is introduced by a short headnote that sets the piece in its historical context and provides bibliographical references. Packed with new insights into Hume and American thought and culture, Hume's Reception in Early America reveals the relevance and impact of Hume on American political, philosophical, historical, religious, and aesthetic debates. (shrink)

The introduction to the volume situates the concept of drive in the history of classical German philosophy and in the history of biology. It outlines the recent state of research and provides an overview of the contributions.