Einflussreiche Denkerin des 20. Jahrhunderts. Das Handbuch erklärt die philosophischen, politischen und literarischen Kontexte, die Hannah Arendts Denken geprägt haben. Es präsentiert neben Informationen zur Biografie und den zeitgenössischen Bezügen alle wichtigen Werke und gibt Hinweise zu deren internationaler Rezeption in vielen Disziplinen. Zentrale Begriffe und Konzepte im Gesamtwerk Hannah Arendts werden ausführlich erklärt darunter: Antisemitismus, Das Böse, Macht, Revolution, Republik/Nation, Totalitarismus u. v. a.

Includes: Gunther Anders, "Victims of Aggression"; Hannah Arendt, "From the Life of the Mind; " Ernst Bloch, "On Fine Arts in the Machine Age, From "The ...

A biography of Hannah Arendt. Discusses her philosophical and political works, including those which mention antisemitism, such as "Rahel Varnhagen" (1930) - an example of the failure of emancipation, "The Jew as Pariah" (1944), "The Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951), and "Eichmann in Jerusalem" (1963).

In distinguishing and describing three types of theories of power, i.e. the concept of subjectivity-based power, the concept of system-based or structuralist power and the concept of intersubjectivity-based power, this paper analyses and discusses in detail the communitarian concept of power invented and developed by Hannah Arendt and criticizes her thesis of politics and community being independent of any considerations concerning normative truth.

Viruses and pandemics are part of an overarching ecological theme that encompasses not only climate and plants, but all forms and conditions of life. This requires a far-reaching change in perspective. Not only does biodiversity, following Alexander von Humboldt, form a common “cosmos” across the globe, but we humans are also part of it. This natural sphere corresponds to Arendt’s concept of the “world” on the social and political sphere. Cosmos and world take the place of the old irreconcilable (...) separation of nature/barbarism and culture/civilization. Consequently, the threat to cosmos and world does not come from nature but from man-made devastation. Biodiversity and human plurality can only thrive with the principles of environmental/political sustainability. (shrink)

Lying is by no means a new phenomenon in human existence, nor in philosophy or political science. Only Arendt’s phenomenological analysis, however, clearly reveals the constant tension between truth and lie inherent in the political space, and the structural weakness of the former compared to the latter. Adopting this perspective helps to understand the temptation of the so-called “post-truth” that manifests today in the form of “fake news”, conspiracy theories, and populist propaganda. This article sheds light on the political (...) and social conditions underlying the emergence of post-truth and on what distinguishes it from the political lie Arendt encountered in the nineteen-sixties in the United States. The Arendtian concept of qualitative plurality is proposed as an antidote to the unworldliness of post-truth. (shrink)

Hannah Arendts Philosophie des Politischen ist in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts zum Klassiker avanciert. Ihr emphatischer Begriff des Politischen wird in der Sozialphilosophie und in der politischen Theorie kontrovers debattiert. In jüngster Vergangenheit ist auch in der politischen Bildung eine deutliche Zunahme der Arendt Rezeption zu verzeichnen, in der auf ganz unterschiedliche Weise auf ihre Schriften Bezug genommen wird. Die Autorinnen und Autoren dieses Bandes nehmen dies zum Anlass, bildungspolitische Zugänge und Lektüren von Hannah Arendts Schriften zu (...) präsentieren, um damit ihren grundlagentheoretischen Beitrag zur politischen Bildung zu erfassen. Mit Beiträgen von Fred Dewey, Jerome Kohn, Wolfgang Heuer, Ingo Juchler, Dirk Lange, Bettina Lösch, Helgard Mahrdt, Waltraud Meints-Stender, Ingeborg Nordmann, Tonio Oeftering und Elisabeth Young-Bruehl. (shrink)

Discusses the nature of thought and volition, examines past philosophical theories, and clarifies the relation between will and freedom.

Rational agents are supposed to maximize expected utility. But what are the options from which they choose? I outline some constraints on an adequate representation of an agent’s options. The options should, for example, contain no information of which the agent is unsure. But they should be sufficiently rich to distinguish all available acts from one another. These demands often come into conflict, so that there seems to be no adequate representation of the options at all. After reviewing existing proposals (...) for how to construe decision-theoretic options and finding them all wanting, I suggest that our model of rational agents should include a special domain of ‘virtual’ option propositions to serve as formal objects of deliberation and choice. (shrink)

Each of the books that Hannah Arendt published in her lifetime was unique, and to this day each continues to provoke fresh thought and interpretations. This was never more true than for Eichmann in Jerusalem, her account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, where she first used the phrase “the banality of evil.” Her consternation over how a man who was neither a monster nor a demon could nevertheless be an agent of the most extreme evil evoked derision, outrage, (...) and misunderstanding. The firestorm of controversy prompted Arendt to readdress fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, as she struggled to explicate the meaning of Eichmann in Jerusalem. At the heart of this book is a profound ethical investigation, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy”; in it Arendt confronts the inadequacy of traditional moral “truths” as standards to judge what we are capable of doing, and she examines anew our ability to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. We see how Arendt comes to understand that alongside the radical evil she had addressed in earlier analyses of totalitarianism, there exists a more pernicious evil, independent of political ideology, whose execution is limitless when the perpetrator feels no remorse and can forget his acts as soon as they are committed. Responsibility and Judgment is an essential work for understanding Arendt’s conception of morality; it is also an indispensable investigation into some of the most troubling and important issues of our time. (shrink)

Dieses Buch geht davon aus, dass eine moderne Hermeneutik als Theorie des Verstehens im begrifflichen Rahmen der gegenwärtigen Theorie des Geistes und der Semantik rekonstruiert werden sollte. Vor diesem theoretischen Hintergrund, der in einem eigenen Kapitel näher umrissen wird, soll die Geschichte der Hermeneutik neu gelesen werden. Dabei wird deutlich, dass diese Lesart vielfach neue historische Interpretationen zu entwickeln und die wichtigsten Stationen der Geschichte der Hermeneutik theoretisch auf neue Weise zu integrieren vermag. Über die hermeneutischen Positionen hinaus, die in (...) den bisherigen Gesamtdarstellungen auftauchen, werden auch Entwürfe diskutiert, die besonders unter geist-theoretischen Aspekten interessant sind, zum Beispiel die antike Hermeneutik, die Hermeneutik Max Webers, die Hermeneutik der logischen Empiristen und die naturalistische Hermeneutik. Vor allem aber wird belegt, dass die Geschichte der Hermeneutik teilweise zu großen Einsichten gelangt ist, an die eine moderne Hermeneutik anknüpfen kann. Das Buch wendet sich nicht nur an Spezialisten der Hermeneutik-Geschichte, sondern an alle Interessierten, denen das Schicksal der verstehenden Wissenschaften am Herzen liegt, und möchte ihnen eine Perspektive empfehlen, unter der sich der Status und die Autonomie der Geisteswissenschaften sowie ihr Bezug auf das Humane unter Heranziehung substantieller Theorien auf neue Weise würdigen lassen. (shrink)

The present volume brings Arendt's notes for these lectures together with other of her texts on the topic of judging and provides important clues to the likely direction of Arendt's thinking in this area.

This book has grown out of eight years of close collaboration among its authors. From the very beginning we decided that its content should come out as the result of a truly common effort. That is, we did not "distribute" parts of the text planned to each one of us. On the contrary, we made a point that each single paragraph be the product of a common reflection. Genuine team-work is not as usual in philosophy as it is in other (...) academic disciplines. We think, however, that this is more due to the idiosyncrasy of philosophers than to the nature of their subject. Close collaboration with positive results is as rewarding as anything can be, but it may also prove to be quite difficult to implement. In our case, part of the difficulties came from purely geographic separation. This caused unsuspected delays in coordinating the work. But more than this, as time passed, the accumulation of particular results and ideas outran our ability to fit them into an organic unity. Different styles of exposition, different ways of formalization, different levels of complexity were simultaneously present in a voluminous manuscript that had become completely unmanageable. In particular, a portion of the text had been conceived in the language of category theory and employed ideas of a rather abstract nature, while another part was expounded in the more conventional set-theoretic style, stressing intui tivity and concreteness. (shrink)

Magnetism in meta-semantics is the view that the meaning of our words is determined in part by their use and in part by the objective naturalness of candidate meanings. This hypothesis is commonly attributed to David Lewis, and has been put to philosophical work by Brian Weatherson, Ted Sider and others. I argue that there is no evidence that Lewis ever endorsed the view, and that his actual account of language reveals good reasons against it.

Wolfgang Welsch examines global aestheticization phenomena, probes the relationship of aesthetics and ethics, and considers the broad relevance of aesthetics for contemporary thinking. He argues that modes of thought familiar from the aesthetic realm comprise fundamental paradigms for understanding todayÆs reality. The implications for specific and everyday issues are demonstrated in studies of architecture, advertising, the Internet, and our perception of the life world. Surgically precise, innovative, and, above all, relevant, this book is an essential resource, providing the analysis (...) of contemporary culture with philosophical bite. Aesthetics is to transcend itself, address the whole realm of aethesis, and hence enable orientation in the contemporary condition. Undoing aesthetics means releasing it from old cultural binds and giving it new ties with the future. (shrink)

Our senses provide us with information about the world, but what exactly do they tell us? I argue that in order to optimally respond to sensory stimulations, an agent’s doxastic space may have an extra, “imaginary” dimension of possibility; perceptual experiences confer certainty on propositions in this dimension. To some extent, the resulting picture vindicates the old-fashioned empiricist idea that all empirical knowledge is based on a solid foundation of sense-datum propositions, but it avoids most of the problems traditionally associated (...) with that idea. The proposal might also explain why experiences appear to have a non-physical phenomenal character, even if the world is entirely physical. (shrink)

Concentrating on Weber's engagement with political issues and their influence over his more theoretical concepts, Mommsen offers a critical analysis of Weber's notion of democracy, distinguishing its liberal and elitist features.

Gottlob Frege has exerted an enormous influence on the evolution of twentieth-century philosophy, yet the real significance of that influence is still very much a matter of debate. This book provides a completely new and systematic account of Frege's philosophy by focusing on its cornerstone: the theory of sense and reference. Two features distinguish this study from other books on Frege. First, sense and reference are placed absolutely at the core of Frege's work; the author shows that no adequate account (...) of the theory can avoid analysing the notion of thought that underpins it, or explaining how it has clarified our concept of judgement. Second, the theory is situated within the development of Frege's thought; the author reveals how the theory caused Frege to alter many of his fundamental views. In doing so the author presents a clearer picture of the problems the theory was intended to solve, and delineates more sharply the characteristic features of Frege's philosophy. (shrink)

Traditional logic as a part of philosophy is one of the oldest scientific disciplines. Mathematical logic, however, is a relatively young discipline and arose from the endeavors of Peano, Frege, Russell and others to create a logistic foundation for mathematics. It steadily developed during the 20th century into a broad discipline with several sub-areas and numerous applications in mathematics, informatics, linguistics and philosophy. While there are already several well-known textbooks on mathematical logic, this book is unique in that it is (...) much more concise than most others, and the material is treated in a streamlined fashion which allows the professor to cover many important topics in a one semester course. Although the book is intended for use as a graduate text, the first three chapters could be understood by undergraduates interested in mathematical logic. These initial chapters cover just the material for an introductory course on mathematical logic combined with the necessary material from set theory. This material is of a descriptive nature, providing a view towards decision problems, automated theorem proving, non-standard models and other subjects. The remaining chapters contain material on logic programming for computer scientists, model theory, recursion theory, Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems, and applications of mathematical logic. Philosophical and foundational problems of mathematics are discussed throughout the text. The author has provided exercises for each chapter, as well as hints to selected exercises. About the German edition: …The book can be useful to the student and lecturer who prepares a mathematical logic course at the university. What a pity that the book is not written in a universal scientific language which mankind has not yet created. - A.Nabebin, Zentralblatt. (shrink)

The correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers begins in 1926, when the twenty-year-old Arendt studied philosophy with Jaspers in Heidelberg. It is interrupted by Arendt's emigration and Jasper's 'inner emigration' and resumes in the fall of 1945. From then until Jaspers's death in 1969, the initial teacher-student relationship develops into a close friendship. Three countries figure prominently in the correspondence: Germany, Israel, and the United States. Among the topics are Fascism, the atom bomb and the threat (...) of global destruction, German guilt for the Holocaust, Jewishness, the State of Israel, American politics and American universities, the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Arendt and Jaspers discuss people both famous and obscure. They gossip, joke complain, and argue. They commiserate with each other over the illnesses and infirmities of old age. And they converse about the world's great philosophers: Spinoza, Kant, Marx, Max Weber, Heidegger. Here is a fascinating dialogue between a woman and a man, a Jew and a German, a questioner and a visionary, both uncompromising in their examination of our troubled century. (shrink)

The paper argues that Gareth Evans’ argument for transparent self-knowledge is based on a conflation of doxastic transparency with ascriptive transparency. Doxastic transparency means that belief about one’s own doxastic state, e.g., the belief that one thinks that it will rain, can be warranted by ordinary empirical observation, e.g., of the weather. In contrast, ascriptive transparency says that self-ascriptions of belief, e.g., “I believe it will rain”, can be warranted by such observation. We first show that the thesis of doxastic (...) transparency is ill-motivated and then offer a non-epistemic interpretation of ascriptive transparency by reference to the theory of explicit expressive acts: “I think it will rain” requires attendance to the weather because the utterance expresses a belief about the weather, not about ourselves. This will allow us to avoid what is often called “the puzzle of transparent self-knowledge” while remaining faithful to Evans’ linguistic observations. (shrink)

There is a tacit assumption that interpretation comes naturally, that human beings live by constantly interpreting. In this sense, we might even rephrase Descartes by saying: We interpret, therefore we are. While such a basic human disposition makes interpretation appear to come naturally, the forms it takes, however, do not. In this work, Iser offers a fresh approach by formulating an "anatomy of interpretation" through which we can understand the act of interpretation in its many different manifestations. For Iser, there (...) are several different genres of interpretation, all of which are acts of translation designed to transpose something into something else. Perhaps the most obvious example of interpretation involves canonical texts, such as the Rabbinical exegesis of the Torah or Samuel Johnson's reading of Shakespeare. But what happens when the matter that one seeks to interpret consists not of a text but of a welter of fragments, as in the study of history, or when something is hidden, as in the practice of psychoanalysis, or is as complex as a culture or system? Iser details how, in each of these cases, the space that is opened up by interpretation is negotiated in a different way, thus concluding that interpretation always depends on what it seeks to translate. For students of philosophy, literary and critical theory, anthropology, and cultural history, Iser's elucidation of the mechanics by which we translate and understand, as well as his assessment of the anthropological roots of our drive to make meaning, will undoubtedly serve as a revelation. (shrink)

This paper starts out from the idea that semantics is a “special science” whose aim, like that of chemistry or ecology, is to identify systematic, high-level patterns in a fundamentally physical world. I defend an approach to this task on which sentences are associated with with sets of possible worlds (of some kind). These sets of worlds, however, are not postulated for the compositional treatment of intensional contexts; they are not meant to capture what is intuitively asserted or communicated by (...) an utterance; nor are they supposed to shed light on the cognitive processes that underlie out linguistic competence. Instead, their job description is to capture certain regularities in the interactions between subjects using the relevant language. I also raise some questions about how the relevant worlds might be construed. (shrink)

Although Hannah Arendt is considered one of the major contributors to social and political thought in the twentieth century, this is the first general anthology ...