Despite the implied critical stance of dystopian narratives, there is a strand of beautiful, aesthetically pleasant dystopias—inherently ambivalent texts that are—both fascinating and horrifying. Drawing from examples in literature and television, this article argues that “beautified dystopias” generate a surplus of aesthetic enjoyment, harboring a mystifying potential in tension with the critical-satirical potential of dystopias. In a rereading of Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, this article first examine how D-503's aestheticizing voice—although undeniably constructed for a satirical effect—fosters a degree of fascination toward (...) the dystopian world in excess of Zamyatin's intentions. Second, taking Black Mirror's “Fifteen Million Merits” as an example of contemporary televisual dystopias, this article argues that the supposedly ironic construction of beautified cinematic mise-en-scènes deepens and complicates the underlying ambivalence of “beautified dystopias.” The author's assumption is that this is not an exceptional case, but rather an integral part of the current dystopian structure of feeling. (shrink)

La negativa a imaginar la "otra" sociedad más allá del capitalismo no está ajena a la prohibición judía de nombrar o describir a Dios. Cualquiera que sea la fuente del tabú, de las principales figuras relacionadas con la Escuela de Frankfurt, solo Mar- cuse se ha atrevido en los últimos años a romperlo. Solo Marcuse ha tratado de decir lo indecible en un esfuerzo cada vez más urgente por reintroducir un molde utópico a la teoría socialista.

Music is a natural human expression present in all cultures, but the functions it serves are still debated. Previous research indicates that rhythm, an essential feature of music, can enhance coordination of movement and increase social bonding. However, the prolonged effects of rhythm have not yet been investigated. In this study, pairs of participants were exposed to one of three kinds of auditory stimuli (rhythmic, arrhythmic, or white‐noise) and subsequently engaged in five trials of a joint‐action task demanding interpersonal coordination. (...) We show that when compared with the other two stimuli, exposure to the rhythmic beat reduced the practice effect in task performance. Analysis of the behavioral data suggests that this reduction results from more temporally coupled motor movements over successive trials and that shared exposure to rhythm facilitates interpersonal motor coupling, which in this context serves to impede the attainment of necessary dynamic coordination. We propose that rhythm has the potential to enhance interpersonal motor coupling, which might serve as a mechanism behind its facilitation of positive social attitudes. (shrink)

The political public sphere is important for democracy, and it is changing – this is how the quintessence of Jürgen Habermas’s monumental study on The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989) could be summarized in simple words. In the fields of political sociology and social theory, history, but also research on social movements, cultural studies, and media and communication studies, his conception of the public sphere as a sphere mediating between the state and civil society has had a decisive (...) influence on the debate about the potential of collective reason for modern democracy. In this introduction we give a short overview of Habermas’s arguments on the rise and fall of the bourgeois public sphere, demonstrate the necessary link between the public sphere and democracy and, referring to the contributions to this special issue, sketch current transformations of the public sphere along three basic processes – digitalization, commodification, and globalization. (shrink)

According to classical molecular chemistry, molecules have a structure, that is, they are sets of atoms with a definite arrangements in space and held together by chemical bonds. The concept of molecular structure is central to modern chemical thought given its impressive predictive power. It is also a very useful concept in chemistry education, due to its role in the rationalization and visualization of microscopic phenomena. However, such a concept seems to find no place in the ontology described by quantum (...) mechanics, since it appeals to classical notions such as the position of the atomic nuclei or the individuality of electrons. Although this problem has attracted the attention of several authors, the discussion is far from settled. Some authors adopt an explicitly reductionist position and advocate to reconstruct the concept of molecular structure within the framework of the quantum theory. Others, although acknowledging the conceptual discontinuity between quantum mechanics and molecular chemistry, keep the hope of future reduction alive. From an explicitly non-reductionist position, on the contrary, others authors conceive molecular structure as an emergent phenomenon. The purpose of this article is to propose a different line of argumentation to address this problem. By contrast to reduction and emergence, the admission of a multiplicity of ontologies, not necessarily linked by hierarchical connections, cancels the need of finding a relation of dependence between the molecular level and the quantum level. This ontologically pluralist position can be applied to the issue of molecular structure, in order to argue that it is possible to admit the existence of structure in the ontology of molecular chemistry, in spite of the fact that it does not exist in the quantum world. (shrink)

En esta reseña se analizan las tesis más importantes desarrolladas por Peter Sloterdijk en La fuerte razón para estar juntos, publicado en español en el año 2022. La clave de lectura propuesta establece vinculaciones entre esta obra y los escritos del año 1993 —puntualmente, En el mismo barco y Extrañamiento del mundo—. Estas relaciones inter-textuales tienen por objeto contextualizar la afirmación central del ensayo: las sociedades contemporáneas son comunas auto-estresantes. A través de la reconstrucción general de esta idea, se presenta (...) aquí una aproximación sistemática al modo particular en que Sloterdijk afronta el problema filosófico de la pertenencia y la identidad a la luz del significado que los nueve de noviembre tienen para la historia alemana. (shrink)

The language comprehension system preferentially assumes that agents come first during incremental processing. While this might reflect a biologically fixed bias, shared with other domains and other species, the evidence is limited to languages that place agents first, and so the bias could also be learned from usage frequency. Here, we probe the bias with electroencephalography (EEG) in Äiwoo, a language that by default places patients first, but where sentence-initial nouns are still locally ambiguous between patient or agent roles. Comprehenders (...) transiently interpreted nonhuman nouns as patients, eliciting a negativity when disambiguation was toward the less common agent-initial order. By contrast and against frequencies, human nouns were transiently interpreted as agents, eliciting an N400-like negativity when the disambiguation was toward patient-initial order. Consistent with the notion of a fixed property, the agent bias is robust against usage frequency for human referents. However, this bias can be reversed by frequency experience for nonhuman referents. (shrink)

Silvia Federici ha buscado mantener encendido el debate en torno a los vínculos entre marxismo y feminismo. Así, tras una intensa labor de investigación y militancia ha destacado tanto la importancia de Karl Marx para el pensamiento feminista como también la modesta conciencia del autor sobre la situación de las mujeres en el capitalismo. Es desde ese horizonte que, en el presente escrito, nos proponemos reconstruir este análisis a partir de una cuidadosa exégesis hermenéutica, centrada en la concepción marxiana de (...) la naturaleza humana y en el vínculo indisociable de la misma con la idea de trabajo. Pondremos de manifiesto críticamente tanto las limitaciones como la potencia que habita en estas ideas de Marx si las abordamos desde una perspectiva feminista. Primeramente, examinaremos sus desarrollos filosófico-antropológicos, en los que interpreta el trabajo como esencia vital, para ver cómo su sesgo relega a las mujeres al espacio de lo natural. Posteriormente nos concentraremos en su análisis del concepto fuerza de trabajo para atender las opacidades que presenta su abordaje del modo en que la misma es producida y reproducida. Finalmente exploraremos las implicancias que en torno a la cuestión del tiempo social conlleva esta laguna de Marx. (shrink)

This article re-introduces the notion of liturgical mysticism from both the perspectives of systematic theology and Church history. The authors adopt an interdisciplinary approach grounded in theology aiming to revisit the concept of liturgical mysticism in order to contribute to developing an adequate interpretive model for mystical texts. The article introduces the notion of liturgical mysticism firstly by a systematic-theological fundamental analysis of Christian mystical experience, showing the uniqueness of that experience and the possible interconnections with liturgy; secondly, by studying (...) liturgical mysticism historically, in the context of the Middle Dutch tradition in the sixteenth century, especially the Arnhem Mystical Sermons, in order to provide a solid historical basis for our argumentation; lastly, the article explores first the impact of our findings on the theological understanding and method in the study of mysticism, and second it notes some ramifications for contemporary Christian spirituality. The authors attempt to show that liturgical mysticism, understood and practised as a tradition bound and context sensitive religious experience, is historically plausible and theologically promising. (shrink)

Computerspiele sind längst nicht mehr nur eine potentiell problematische Freizeitbeschäftigung von Jugendlichen, sondern längst in der interdisziplinären Forschung angekommen. Eine systematische philosophische Beschäftigung mit dem Thema steht noch aus. Das Buch zeigt, wie die Philosophie zur theoretischen Klärung von Sachverhalten rund um das Computerspiel fruchtbar gemacht werden kann. Begriffe wie ‚Medium‘. ‚Spiel‘, ‚Narrativität‘ und ‚Ontologie‘ werden grundsätzlich reflektiert, Ästhetik, Räumlichkeit und Bildlichkeit werden unter die Lupe genommen sowie Auswirkungen auf Ethik, Arbeit, die Politik und unser Handeln beleuchtet. Außerdem macht das (...) Buch deutlich, was für ein reichhaltiges Forschungsfeld das Computerspiel für die Philosophie selbst ist, das der ästhetischen, ontologischen und ethischen Aneignung harrt. (shrink)

In this contribution, we argue that critical theories of the public sphere (in Habermas, but also in Negt and Kluge as well as Fraser) leave out the socially central field of labour and labour-political disputes, and that a reactualization and refocusing becomes necessary: We define the dynamics of globalization, commodification and digitalization as sequences of a renewed structural transformation of both social self-understanding and gainful employment. With the help of a multi-level model of labour-political publics and counter-publics, class mobilizations can (...) be examined with a public-theoretical lens and important moments of labour-political disputes can also be reflected on their communicative conditions. This is exemplified by two vignettes. (shrink)

Aworkshop was held August 26–28, 2015, by the Earth- Life Science Institute (ELSI) Origins Network (EON, see Appendix I) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. This meeting gathered a diverse group of around 40 scholars researching the origins of life (OoL) from various perspectives with the intent to find common ground, identify key questions and investigations for progress, and guide EON by suggesting a roadmap of activities. Specific challenges that the attendees were encouraged to address included the following: What key (...) questions, ideas, and investigations should the OoL research community address in the near and long term? How can this community better organize itself and prioritize its efforts? What roles can particular subfields play, and what can ELSI and EON do to facilitate research progress? (See also Appendix II.) The present document is a product of that workshop; a white paper that serves as a record of the discussion that took place and a guide and stimulus to the solution of the most urgent and important issues in the study of the OoL. This paper is not intended to be comprehensive or a balanced representation of the opinions of the entire OoL research community. It is intended to present a number of important position statements that contain many aspirational goals and suggestions as to how progress can be made in understanding the OoL. The key role played in the field by current societies and recurring meetings over the past many decades is fully acknowledged, including the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL) and its official journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, as well as the International Society for Artificial Life (ISAL). (shrink)

BackgroundBiobanking biospecimens and consent are common practice in paediatric research. We need to explore children and young people’s (CYP) knowledge and perspectives around the use of and consent to biobanking. This will ensure meaningful informed consent can be obtained and improve current consent procedures.MethodsWe designed a survey, in co-production with CYP, collecting demographic data, views on biobanking, and consent using three scenarios: 1) prospective consent, 2) deferred consent, and 3) reconsent and assent at age of capacity. The survey was disseminated (...) via the Young Person’s Advisory Group North England (YPAGne) and participating CYP’s secondary schools. Data were analysed using a qualitative thematic approach by three independent reviewers (including CYP) to identify common themes. Data triangulation occurred independently by a fourth reviewer.ResultsOne hundred two CYP completed the survey. Most were between 16–18 years (63.7%, N = 65) and female (66.7%, N = 68). 72.3% had no prior knowledge of biobanking (N = 73).Acceptability of prospective consent for biobanking was high (91.2%, N = 93) with common themes: ‘altruism’, ‘potential benefits outweigh individual risk’, 'frugality', and ‘(in)convenience’.Deferred consent was also deemed acceptable in the large majority (84.3%, N = 86), with common themes: ‘altruism’, ‘body integrity’ and ‘sample frugality’. 76.5% preferred to reconsent when cognitively mature enough to give assent (N = 78), even if parental consent was previously in place. 79.2% wanted to be informed if their biobanked biospecimen is reused (N = 80).ConclusionProspective and deferred consent acceptability for biobanking is high among CYP in the UK. Altruism, frugality, body integrity, and privacy are the most important themes. Clear communication and justification are paramount to obtain consent. Any CYP with capacity should be part of the consenting procedure, if possible. (shrink)

While Austrian social and healthcare service nonprofit organizations are key performers in the COVID-19 pandemic, we also notice their vulnerability in terms of struggling with this disruptive extreme context. The particularity of disruptive extreme contexts is that organizations commonly can neither anticipate them, nor prepare specific countermeasures or specialized resources for fighting against them. Thus, we regard organizational resilience based on non-specialized resources as an appropriate approach for dealing with disruptive extreme contexts. Organizational resilience refers to an organization's ability to (...) resist disruptive extreme contexts while maintaining and adapting functionality and ultimately learning from these extreme contexts by mobilizing and accessing the required resources, behaviors and capabilities. Based on 33 expert interviews with NPO top and middle managers we aim to explore individual-based and interactional resilience mechanisms of NPOs in the pandemic. The qualitative content analysis yielded to following results: Individual personality traits and attitudes constitute individual-based resilience mechanisms. Moreover, a shared understanding, social connectedness and managerial staff orientation as interactional resilience mechanisms helped to maintain and adapt NPOs' functioning. Overall, this study reinforces the multilevel nature of resilience in terms of the crucial combination of individual and interactional resilience mechanisms for facing adversity. Moreover, it emphasizes the evolving nature of resilience in terms of the required time for, e.g., building trust. (shrink)

This white paper outlines the plans of the History Philosophy Culture Working Group of the Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration.

Summary Until recently it was believed that Christian Huygens’ earliest publication of his pendulum invention was Horologium of 1658. He published the more famous general treatise, Horologium Oscillatorium, fifteen years later in 1673. Two years ago, an article1 suggesting an unknown collaboration in developing the clock pendulum between Huygens and the Paris clockmaker Isaac Thuret, presented the evidence of Benjamin Martin, an 18th century educationalist and retailer of scientific material. Martin described a Huygens publication of 1657 and reproduced (...) the illustration it contained. This illustration shows a different clock from the one drawn in Horologium and different also from those previously considered as Huygens’ earliest surviving examples. However, the illustration is similar to part of a plate in Horologium Oscillatorium and this similarity caused one historian to cast doubt on the existence of the 1657 publication.2 This article, with information presented for the first time, seeks to prove the existence of that work and thereby establish it in the canon of Huygens’ writings while re-examining the invention in the light that it casts. 1Whitestone, Sebastian, ‘The Identification and Attribution of Christiaan Huygens’ First Pendulum Clock', Antiquarian Horology, December (2008), 201–222. 2Plomp, R., ‘Letter', Antiquarian Horology, December (2009), 714–17. See also author's reply, ibid, 717–19. (shrink)

Short description: Part A : Philosophy, Literature, and Knowledge – Chapter I : Idealism and the Absolute – A. J. B. Hampton: “Herzen schlagen und doch bleibet die Rede zurück?” Philosophy, poetry, and Hölderlin’s development of language suffi cient to the Absolute – P. Sabot: L’absolu au miroir de la littérature. Versions de l’Hégélianisme’ chez Villiers de l’Isle Adam et chez Mallarmé – P. Gordon: Nietzsche’s Critique of the Kantian Absolute – Chapter II: Philosophy and Style – J.-P. Larthomas: Le (...) cas Kierkegaard (1813-1855) ou l’écriture comme dialectique de l’écoute – S. Hüsch: Style et signifi cation. Intériorité et communication indirecte chez Søren Kierkegaard – A. Milon: La question du style en philosophie: la grammaire non-style – C. Van Lerberghe: La question du style dans la phénoménologie asubjective de Jan Patocka – Chapter III: Poetry and Philosophy – J.-B. Dussert: Martin Heidegger en ses poèmes – C. de Roche: The poem and the monad: On the reception of Leibniz‘ monadology in Paul Celan’s poetics – M. de Jesus Cabral: Entre théâtre et philosophie : notes sur la poétique de Maurice Maeterlinck – Chapter IV : Literature, Philosophy, and (new) Mythology – A. Martinengo: La raison hors de soi. Herméneutique et mythe chez Paul Ricoeur – G. Boggio Marzet Tremoloso: Démythologisation comme acte mythopoïétique: le cas de Jason de Elisabeth Porquerol. – G. Coulter: Jean Baudrillard: The Literary / Poetic Philosopher – Chapter V : Literature and Ethics – J. Azoulai: L’Éthique de Spinoza dans Bouvard et Pécuchet: un vertige philosophique et littéraire – I. Vendrell: Can Literature be Moral Philosophy? A sceptical view on the Ethics of Literary Empathy – F. Picon: Envisager Todorov: Poétique, éthique et humanisme contemporain – Chapter VI : Philosophy and Textuality – E. Lecler: La littérature : la mort de la philosophie – J. A. Gosetti- Ferencei: Writing in Philosophy and the Literature and Philosophy of Writing (Plato, Mann, Blanchot) –W. Cristaudo: Bringing Back Character and Grammar: Freeing Literature from Excessive Reliance on Philosophy and Theory – C. Alfano: Parenthesising Cracks into the Ground of Philosophy: The Textuality of Stanley Cavell’s Philosophical Writing – Part B: Perspectives of a Dialogue between Philosophy and Literature: Philosophical Refl ections in Literary Creation – Chapter VII : Philosophical Dialogue and Literature – A. Baillot: Tieck et Solger, un dialogue philosophicolittéraire – V. Altachina: Le dialogue philosophique chez Diderot et chez Dostoïevski – Chapter XIII : Bergsonien Infl uences in Literature – C. Dewas: Bergson et Katzantzakis. Les limites du langage comme condition d’une métaphysique de la littérature – E. Pesenti Rossi: La philosophie à l’épreuve de la poésie : Bergson et Ungaretti – Chapter IX : Wittgenstein and Literature – G. Valdemarca: La revanche du sens commun : Wittgenstein, Musil et la chute de la certitude – A. Leaker: From the ‘numinous glow’ to ‘gut squalor’: Transcendence and the Ordinary in Wittgenstein and Don DeLillo’s Underworld – A. den Dulk: Wallace and Wittgenstein: Literature as Dialogue Concerning the Real World – Chapter X: Borges and Semprun: Writers and Philosophers – J.-F. Mattéi: Borges et la philosophie – T. Capmartin: Voyage au bout de la représentation dans Fictions: Quelques remarques ménardiennes sur Borges et le stoïcisme – V. Capdevielle- Hounieu: Jorge Semprún et l’hybridation du littéraire et du philosophique : pour une ‘fi ction essayistique’ – Chapter XI : Literary (Mis-) Readings of Philosophy – P. Lasarte: Misreadings of Arthur Schopenhauer in Sin Rumbo by Eugenio Cambaceres – S. Roldan: Qu’est-ce qui est fort comme la mort selon Maupassant? La détermination ultime d’Olivier Vertin vue sous l’angle de Schopenhauer – B. Nickel: L’infl uence de Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) sur la poésie concrète – Chapter XII: The Impact of Philosophy on 20th Century Literature and Poetry – B. Ertugrul: Walter Benjamin et Ingeborg Bachmann entre littérature et philosophie – J. Leclercq / M. Watthee-Delmotte: Michel Henry : pour un langage de la subjectivité. La pensée du roman Le Fils du roi – J. Hobus: “The happiness of the concentration camps”: Reading Imre Kertész’ Novel Fatelessness with Albert Camus’ Concept of the Absurd – S. Frogel: Man without God: Nietzsche, Kafka and Camus Der Herausgeber Sébastian Hüsch, Studium der Philosophie, Geschichte,. (shrink)

The latter half of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century witnessed a remarkable resurgence of interest in Kant’s philosophy in Continental Europe, the effects of which are still being felt today. _The Neo-Kantian Reader_ is the first anthology to collect the most important primary sources in Neo-Kantian philosophy, with many being published here in English for the first time. It includes extracts on a rich and diverse number of subjects, including logic, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, (...) and transcendental idealism. Sebastian Luft, together with other scholars, provides clear introductions to each of the following sections, placing them in historical and philosophical context: the beginnings of Neo-Kantianism: including the work of Hermann von Helmholtz, Otto Liebman, Friedrich Lange, and Hermann Lotze the Marburg School: including Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, and Ernst Cassirer the Southwest School: including Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert, Emil Lask, and Hans Vaihinger responses and critiques: including Moritz Schlick, Edmund Husserl; Rudolf Carnap, and the 'Davos dispute' between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer. The Neo-Kantian Reader is essential reading for all students of Kant, nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy, history and philosophy of science, and phenomenology, as well as to those studying important philosophical movements such as logical positivism and analytic philosophy and its history. (shrink)

Will to Power, Eternal Recurrence, and the Being of Entities. Heidegger’s “Aus-einander-setzung” with Nietzsche. The article examines the internal dynamics of Heidegger’s influential interpretation of Nietzsche, focusing on his lectures written between 1936 and 1942, which form the basis for Heidegger’s two-volume book Nietzsche, first published in 1961. Speaking of Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche is potentially misleading, however, since Heidegger gave a series of different interpretations that contradict one another in some essential points. In the first two lectures from 1936/37, (...) we can still observe a far-reaching identification with Nietzsche as the mastermind of a ‘new beginning’ in the ‘history of being’. Nevertheless, shortly afterwards, Heidegger makes Nietzsche’s metaphysics responsible for the domination of modern technology and thus for the last stage of the ‘forgetting of being’. As such, Heidegger no longer views Nietzsche as a thinker of ‘transition’, but merely as the philosophical founder of a hopeless ‘end time’. Against this backdrop, and after the Second World War, Heidegger declared that this particular critique of Nietzsche entailed an “intellectual resistance” against National Socialism. This assertion is discussed at the end of the article together with Heidegger’s rapprochement with Nietzsche during the early 1950s. (shrink)

This essay defines Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophical language criticism as materialistic. It takes up Max Beck’s discussion of Adorno’s critique of German metaphysical jargon in his paper “Jargon, Bullshit, sinnlos”. However, this essay argues for a twofold critique as being constitutive for Adorno’s approach: It is directed not only at Martin Heidegger’s ontological understanding of language but also at Logical Empiricism’s formalistic understanding of it. Beck’s claim of an affinity between the methods of Adorno and the Vienna Circle is (...) therefore questionable. The first part illuminates the philosophical significance of Adorno’s encounters with the Vienna protagonists. The second part discusses the differences between a formalistic and a materialistic approach: instead of excluding metaphysical expressions as meaningless, Adorno contextualizes them historically and socially. Thus Adorno criticizes early analytic philosophy’s reductive treatment of language and its rigorist understanding of enlightenment. The third part connects the critiques of formalism and of jargon by pointing to their own socio-historical embeddedness. Finally, it argues for the contemporary relevance of such twofold critique. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, DavosSebastian LuftPeter E. Gordon. Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Pp. 448. Cloth, $39.95.Much ink has been spilled on the dispute between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger that took place in the Swiss resort town Davos in 1929—famous since Thomas Mann staged his Magic Mountain there—and which has since been referred to as the “Davos Dispute.” While the (...) debate itself and accounts accompanying it have been widely known to historians [End Page 508] of philosophy, Harvard historian Peter E. Gordon shows in this marvelous new book how memory has shaped the event into something much larger than anyone could have foreseen. It is, Gordon claims, the silent work of memory that has made this debate, rather innocuous at the time, into what can be retrospectively be considered the truly earth-shattering philosophical event of the twentieth century.In hindsight, the symbolism of the debate between a German who became a leading Nazi philosopher in 1933 and a Jew who, in the same year, was dismissed from his professorship and forced to flee Germany, could not be greater. It only grows if one connects the historic events with their respective philosophies: on the one side the liberal modern Cassirer, whose philosophy allegedly glorified the Weimar stalemate, and on the other side the radical Heidegger, whose call for “authentic existence” took on a bone-chilling reality as he embraced Hitler in 1933 as the führer to lead Germany back to its authentic roots.Two volumes—the 1999 collection, 70 Jahre Davoser Disputation, edited by E. Rudolph and D. Kaegi, and, in 2000, A Parting of the Ways by Michael Friedman—were the first to delve into the debate’s symbolic meaning. It was Friedman’s thesis that the fateful “parting of the ways” between Continental and Analytic philosophy could be traced to this meeting, which was also attended by Rudolf Carnap. Despite these studies, there has until now not been a comprehensive treatment that pulls together all threads into one narrative, covering the entire intellectual, historical, cultural, and philosophical landscape of the time. Gordon’s book achieves just that and will be, for years to come, the landmark work on this encounter.The book begins from the background in post-World War I philosophy in Germany, which was perceived, along with culture, as being in crisis (ch. 1), to “set the stage” on the “Magic Mountain” (ch. 2). It proceeds to summarize the individual lectures by Cassirer and Heidegger, giving a detailed interpretation of the protocol prepared by students of the interlocutors (chs. 3–4). The author then takes a deep breath in chapter 5 to place the debate in the larger context of Cassirer’s and Heidegger’s philosophies. But the story does not end there, as chapter 6 examines the relation between both thinkers after the debate. Finally, in chapter 7, Gordon assesses the newer debates concerning this dispute up to the debate between Bourdieu and Habermas concerning Heidegger’s Nazi involvement, though it does not re-engage with Friedman’s thesis, as might have been desired.Regarding his interpretation, Gordon juxtaposes Cassirer’s and Heidegger’s philosophies along the Kantian distinction between spontaneity and receptivity, where both paradigms make different claims on the “normative image of humanity” (5 ff.). Whether humanity is interpreted as spontaneous and world-creating, in optimistic Enlightenment terms (Cassirer), or as receptive and open to the world, i.e. as the “shepherd” rather than the “lord of being” (Heidegger), both are answering the fourth of Kant’s questions, “What is man?” While this distinction is useful for understanding the basic relation between them, it is also—as the author would concede—somewhat too coarse to do justice to their mutual differences and commonalities. Were one to assert a systematic critique, Gordon does not really make up his mind as to the true significance of these paradigms: are they mutually exclusive oppositions or, as he implies elsewhere, two alternative versions of philosophical modernism with a common ground? There is evidence for both readings. This question, however, is for the philosopher to answer—the philosopher who wants to push... (shrink)

Dieses Handbuch gibt einen umfassenden Überblick über das Gesamtwerk Husserls und seinen Einfluss auf die nachfolgende Philosophie und andere Wissenschaften. Es ist gleichzeitig das erste Referenzwerk, was nicht nur Husserls veröffentlichte Schriften, sondern auch die Themen des zur Husserls Lebzeiten unveröffentlichten Nachlasses berücksichtigt.​Edmund Husserl gilt als der Begründer der Phänomenologie und als einer der wichtigsten Philosophen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Er stand jedoch lange im Schatten seiner Nachfolger wie etwa Martin Heidegger oder Jean-Paul Sartre. Etwa ab den 1990er Jahren setzte (...) eine Wendung ein, da nun Husserls unveröffentlichter Nachlass zunehmend rezipiert wird. Dabei wird deutlich, dass Husserl mit seiner Phänomenologie für die Philosophie wichtiges Neuland erschlossen sowie zu vielen traditionellen Themen der Philosophie wichtige Beiträge geleistet hat. Seine feingliedrigen Beschreibungen und Strukturbestimmungen der Erfahrung und des Bewusstseins hatten darüber hinaus bedeutende Einflüsse auf Disziplinen, wie etwa Psychologie, Anthropologie oder Soziologie. (shrink)

When Edmund Husserl retired in 1928, ceding his chair at the University of Freiburg to his successor Martin Heidegger, he again began working intensively on synthesizing his philosophical efforts into a new “system of phenomenology.” This new presentation could, hopefully, displace his earlier presentation of 1913 in the Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, Book I, a work with which he had become dissatisfied in the meantime.

When Edmund Husserl retired in 1928, ceding his chair at the University of Freiburg to his successor Martin Heidegger, he again began working intensively on synthesizing his philosophical efforts into a new “system of phenomenology.” This new presentation could, hopefully, displace his earlier presentation of 1913 in the Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, Book I, a work with which he had become dissatisfied in the meantime.

Martin Seel wonders how it is possible to liberate oneself from wanting to be right. In the following, we will ask whether the idea of a wanting to be right is so much as intelligible. For if one thinks about thinking and asks what it means to think something, then the idea of wanting to be right seems to have no place. Both the possibility and the necessity of a liberation from wanting to be right seem to dissolve. And (...) yet, we will show, there is wanting-to-be-right. But we do not understand the idea of wanting-to-be-right merely by thinking about thinking. Rather, we understand the idea of wanting-to-be-right only because thinking is something that takes place between two whose thoughts can contradict each other. If my thought meets your thought, and your thought negates my thought, then it is possible that we both want tobe right. This is the existential core of the idea of a liberation from wanting to be right: It is about the liberation from conflict and the hope for reconciliation. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 24 Heft: 2 Seiten: 223-224.

In this essay Martin Kintzinger takes as his starting point observations on the current debate regarding knowledge and asserts a lack of reflection on the status of knowledge in pre-modern societies. In Sebastian Brant’s work ‘Narrenschiff’ and other contemporary critical writings, Kintzinger finds evidence that the medieval critique of experts was not by necessity a critique of expertise per se. Rather, it often was a critique of an expertise based on purely theoretical book learning, deemed unpractical and inapplicable. (...) Significantly, there existed a counter-conception of an expert who possessed both theoretical knowledge and practical experience and who was deemed practically able to cure disease, or give valuable legal advice etc. Of course, the term experientia was first used in this context only around 1600. But Kintzinger argues that experience-based knowledge, which is associated with inductive inference and the modern natural sciences, was not a product of the early modern period. Rather, the notion of experience as a warrant of true knowledge was heavily rooted in medieval thought. This essay subsequently traces the emergence of the notion of experience to Scholasticism, to the thought of Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great and to the medieval debate on the dualism between the arts and science, and between empiricus and theoricus respectively. (shrink)

This chapter aims to direct attention to the political dimension of the social media age. Although current events like the Cambridge Analytica data breach managed to raise awareness for the issue, the systematically organized and orchestrated mechanisms at play still remain oblivious to most. Next to dangerous monopoly-tendencies among the powerful players on the market, reliance on automated algorithms in dealing with content seems to enable large-scale manipulation that is applied for economical and political purposes alike. The successful replacement of (...) traditional parties by movements based on personality cults around marketable young faces like Emmanuel Macron or Austria’s Sebastian Kurz is strongly linked to products and services offered by an industry that simply provides likes and followers for cash. Inspired by Trump’s monopolization of the Twitter-channel, these new political acteurs use the potential of social media for effective message control, allowing them to avoid confrontations with professional journalists. In addition, an extremely active minority of organized agitators relies on the viral potential of the web to strongly influence and dictate public discourse – suggesting a shift from the Spiral of Silence to the dangerous illusion of a Nexus of Noise. (shrink)