Blumenbergs Philosophie ist eine Philosophie der Umwege und des Neuansetzens. Sie stellt einen Versuch dar, sich unter den Bedingungen der Moderne produktiv einzurichten, ohne ethische Ansprüche aus dem Blick zu verlieren. Das Provisorische kehrt bei Blumen-berg implizit wie explizit wieder. Als Beschreibungskategorie macht es die Welt erklärbar und stiftet eine Orientierungsleistung. In Kombination mit einer positiven Umdeutung des Umweges erlaubt es Distanzierung von einem unübersichtlichen Verstricktsein in Weltzusammenhänge sowie ein Handeln als ob wir wüssten, was wir tun. Ziel ist ein (...) Nachdenken, das der Vorläufigkeit moderner Wirklichkeiten gerecht wird. Der Band widmet sich der Figur des Provisorischen und der Umwegskultur und verbindet eine systematische Perspektive auf das Werk Blumenbergs mit philoso-phiehistorischen Einordnungen und der Diskussion bisher unbeachteter Anknüpfungspunkte. (shrink)

In the past the ethnic duality of the Visigoths and the Hispano-Romans has been seen as one of the main characteristics in the formation of the Spanish Visigothic kingdom. This study shows that, instead of an ethnic division of the population, a Gothic identity, which was above all politically defined, was already applied to the entire population in the 6th century, and that overall it had less effect than is generally assumed. An analysis of the extant literary sources takes into (...) account the historical conditions and new methodical approaches to interpretation. (shrink)

This paper analyses the hegemony of the growth paradigm through the example of its naturalisation in capitalist production and consumption relations. Applying a combination of theoretical elements from the Marxian tradition, the Regulation approach and Bourdieusian sociology, emphasis is placed on how the growth imperative is reflected in people's minds and bodies. It becomes hegemonic because it appears to be the natural way of steering economy and society. As a result, all people - including working people - benefit from the (...) continuation of growth. To overcome the growth paradigm, activists would need to build on a crisis of the 'objective' structures of economy and society. (shrink)

The article discusses approaches to welfare under no-growth conditions and against the background of the growing significance of climate change as a socio-ecological issue. While most governments and scholars favor “green deal” solutions for tackling the climate crisis, a growing number of discussants are casting doubt on economic growth as the answer to it and have provided empirical evidence that the prospects for globally decoupling economic growth and carbon emissions are very low indeed. These doubts are supported by recent contributions (...) on happiness, well-being and alternative measures of measuring prosperity, which indicate that individual and social welfare is by no means equivalent to GDP growth. If the requirements of prosperity and welfare go well beyond material sustenance, then approaches that aim to conceptualize welfare under the circumstances of a “stable state economy” become more relevant. A qualitatively different environmental and welfare policy governance network would need to integrate the redistribution of carbon emissions, work, time, income and wealth. Since social policies will be necessary to address the emerging inequalities and conflicts, this article considers the roles that the various “no-growth” approaches dedicate to social policy and welfare instruments. (shrink)

It is well documented that training the rules employed in figural matrices tests enhances test performance. Previous studies only compare experimental conditions in which all or no rules were trained and therefore ignore the particular influence of knowledge about the easy and difficult rules. With the current study, we wanted to provide some first insights into this topic. Respondents were assigned to four groups that received training for no rules, only the easy rules, only the difficult rules, or for all (...) rules. The results show that a training only for the difficult rules was more effective than the other trainings. This applies also to performance in the easy rules that were actually not part of the training. A possible explanation for this finding is a facilitation of the solution process that is primarily driven by knowledge about the difficult rules. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that taking differences between the rules into account may provide a deeper understanding of the effects of trainings for figural matrices tests. (shrink)