Ralph Dahrendorf survived incarceration in a German concentration camp in 1944. He later took degrees in sociology at Hamburg University and the London School of Economics and spent some time as one of Germany's European Commissioners, although he was critical of aspects of the bureaucracy. Dahrendorf was Director of the London School of Economics for ten years and gave the Reith Lectures in 1974. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1977, knighted in 1982 and became Member (...) of the House of Lords in 1993. Dahrendorf retired to Germany. Obituary by Colin Crouch FBA. (shrink)

Nel pensiero politico di Ralf Dahrendorf un tema ricorre costantemente, sia che si tratti di liberalismo sia della democrazia rappresentativa: le costituzioni politiche sono radicate nelle strutture sociali, stato politico e stato sociale sono mutualmente interdipendenti. In assenza di specifiche strutture sociali, la democrazia rappresentativa non può divenire effettiva, e quindi corrispondere a una realtà evidente perfettamente valutabile. Ancora. Le strutture sociali pongono limiti molto ristretti all’effettività delle forme politiche. Esistono, in altri termini, precisi elementi strutturali che permettono l’oggettivazione (...) della democrazia liberale, e non altri. Si tratta certo di una concezione che deve molto a Tocqueville, la sua immagine illumina il pensiero dahrendorfiano sulla democrazia. Pur tuttavia non è l’unico elemento ricorrente. Ideale e reale qui si confrontano. L’idea di democrazia, infatti, si misura con la realtà sul terreno della prassi politica. Non a caso Ralf Dahrendorf è presente in quattro diversi parlamenti in cui ha visto all’opera il cambiamento senza violenza, l’argomentazione razionale, l’espressione della maggioranza e il controllo del governo. Non si tratta solo dei princìpi fondamentali della teoria politica democratica, ma anche della sua formula politica, con la quale interpreta i cambiamenti negli spazi politici globali. Si tratta di spazi nei quali il potere è libero da vincoli, si misura sulla base di rapporti di forza, non conosce regole e procedure se non quelle dell’economicismo, della tecnica, della finanziarizzazione. Tuttavia lo Stato nazionale e la democrazia parlamentare sono ancora decisivi. Proprio perché pensa questo, egli crede che nello spazio globale i principi della democrazia rappresentativa devono essere tradotti in realtà. Certo, Dahrendorf non è in grado di indicare nuove soluzioni, ma si limita a mostrare delle semplici proposte per gestire il dibattito pubblico nel passaggio da una democrazia classica ad una «nuova democrazia». (shrink)

The essay describes some crucial moments in the intellectual biography of Ralf Dahrendorf and Jürgen Habermas, focusing on their frequent relationships in the first forty years. This research shows that, beyond the many divergences, what linked them in an enduring sodality was a radically democratic orientation that was consolidated in some epochal caesuras of German history: the advent of the Third Reich, the Second World War and the Anglo-American liberal “re-education”, the “normalization” of the Adenauer era, the crisis of (...) democracy and the protest of the “Sixty-eight”. (shrink)

Ralf Dahrendorf (1929-2009) established modern sociology as a normal science in the traditional university in post-war Germany. After ten years as a Full Professor, he joins the German liberal party, then in opposition. He stands successfully in a regional and then a national election (Landtag, Bundestag). He serves as junior minister under chancellor Willy Brandt and becomes a European commissioner less than a year later. Upon his resignation from the European Commission, he makes the UK his home and becomes (...) a British subject, becomes knighted and later appointed Lord. The second half of his life, as an intellectual amid the powers and a liaison between England and the continent, as a self-described 'straddler', may have been even greater in importance than the first, with his meteoric rise as a highly visible professor of sociology and as German politician of national prominence. His analysis of society and democracy in Germany, though dated (1965) appears still for the most part as valid. Historically, his own elite positions mark transition periods in the process of generational change. (shrink)

The article with allusions on Nietzsche’s provocation about history lessons proposes an interdisciplinary approach to academic scholarship considered as a special cultural and organizational form of advanced studies aimed at professional development or skill exchange, which have influence on human being in contemporary societies involved in the process of globalization. The theoretical conceptualization of institutionalized forms of scholarships and internships is analyze in connection with its practical representation and economical allocation. Pathological representations of academic scholarship as an end in itself (...) are unveiled as a kind of conspicuous consumptions symbolizing the status position or exclusivity on the borders between academic community and mass-media. The purpose of this article is to explicate some representations of academic scholarship in the contexts of the academic capitalism searching the way of overcoming its utilitarian limitations with universal ethical imperatives. To realize such a purpose, phenomenological reduction is applied in combination with the biographical method. Assumptions made in the article are verified on biographical fragments of curriculum vitae of influential sociologists such as Ralf Dahrendorf and Niklas Luhmann, because the social and professional self-realization and revision of the life-priorities of them was due in many aspects to academic scholarship gained by different ways but with success, especially in the field of educational policy and in the case of establishing democracy in the process of post-totalitarian transformation in Germany. This experience can be useful for Ukraine as well. The phenomenon of the cultural shock and its influence on visiting scholars is explicated. The role of communication between epistemic cultures is emphasized on by overcoming epistemic injustice and establishing academic integrity. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article offers a re-contextualization of the Positivism Dispute between the Frankfurt School and advocates of empirical sociology in the German sociological profession between 1954 and 1970. Investigating the reasons why the German Sociological Association convened in Tübingen in October 1961, it assigns a more peripheral role to Karl Popper and this now famous seminar. Focusing instead on the debate among German sociologists from the mid-1950s which prompted the convention of the seminar and the invitation for Popper to speak, the (...) article maintains that philosophy of history was the central concern of the Positivism Dispute. In this debate, members of the Frankfurt School emphasized contingency in history and society, while sociologists such as René König, Helmut Schelsky, Ralf Dahrendorf, and Arnold Gehlen advocated sociology as the empirical study of ‘given’ social facts. By doing so the article questions the narrative of the Positivism Dispute advanced by Karl Popper and some of his followers, as well as interpretations which have focused on debates during the aftermath of the Tübingen seminar in the 1960s. (shrink)

Europe and the European Union are now on the agenda, and there are heated discussions concerning both monetary and social unification. Ralf Dahrendorf, a Euroskeptic, has recently pointed out that “The worst part of the European Union is the deadly boredom surrounding most of the issues with which it deals.” The endless technical questions tackled by experts and interest groups are important and unavoidable, but they concern only those occasionally affected by them. Rarely is the fundamental question ever posed: (...) “What is the real reason why we are seeking European Union?”1For their part, philosophers have rediscovered an old theme:…. (shrink)

Karl R. Popper: The open society and its enemies -- Ralf Dahrendorf: Liberty and civil society -- Raymond Plant: Social welfare without class warfare -- Gertrude Himmelfarb and Irving Kristol: The moral imagination -- Raymond Aron: The opium of the intellectuals -- Friedrich A. Hayek: The constitution of liberty -- Isaiah Berlin: Liberty and pluralism -- Michael J. Oakeshott: The conservative disposition -- Leo Strauss: Relativism and the crisis of modernity -- Edmund Burke: Liberty and duty -- James Madison (...) vs. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Two views of self-government -- Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America -- Winston S. Churchill: The English-Speaking Peoples and the Free World -- Limited and accountable Government -- Two kinds of rationalism -- Liberty as conversation. (shrink)

Focusing on his essays “New value‐free sociology” and “Remarks on social conflict today,” this chapter discusses Adorno's assessments of how Karl Mannheim, Georg Simmel, Lewis Coser, and Ralf Dahrendorf have addressed the tensions and conflicts that beset contemporary society. The chapter draws on these sociologists' works and on Adorno's reading of them to elucidate core arguments in his critique of both their conceptions of the social world and their sociological modes of procedure. Particular emphasis is placed on Adorno's notion (...) of the potential of a sociological approach that is more suitable for gaining insight into the antagonistic capitalist condition. The key components of such an approach, notably experience, its interplay with theory, and sociology's response to appearance, are further illuminated with reference to passages that illustrate their operations in sociological research. (shrink)

Cross-sectorial, dynamic, and innovative partnerships are essential to resolve the challenges of humankind in the 21st century. At the same time, trust in each other’s integrity and good will is a precondition for the solution of any complex problem, and certainly for the success of the United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda. Experience shows that a nation’s economic and social success is at its greatest if, and when, there is cooperation and even cocreation involving a fair division of labor and responsibility (...) among the different societal stakeholders. This paper uses Ralf Dahrendorf’s seminal work on obligations, as well as the European Commission’s Science with and for Society unit’s definition of responsible research and innovation (RRI), to motivate industry responsibilities to make the world a healthier place. (shrink)

Two related themes have dominated discussions about the Left in advanced industrial democracies in recent years. The first is that an increasingly integrated world economy is creating a fundamentally new situation for leaders and publics, imposing burdens and constraining choices. You can either opt out of the system and languish, or put on what New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has called neoliberalism's “Golden Straightjacket”—at which point “two things tend to happen: your economy grows and your politics shrinks.” The second (...) is that traditional social democracy has played itself out as a political ideology, creating a vacuum that can and should be filled by some new progressive movement with greater contemporary relevance. For example, Ralf Dahrendorf has argued that “socialism is dead, and … none of its variants can be revived,” while Anthony Giddens has written that reformist socialism has become “defensive” and perhaps even “moribund.”. (shrink)

Globalization and a Normative Framework of Freedom The author considers the question of whether or even what normative structure of social order is able to encourage the advancement of the measure of positive liberty in the process of globalization. Related to this is the issue of the insufficiency of guarantees provided by orthodox liberalism for human self-determination. The author considers possible scenarios as to the way in which an elite cosmopolitan minority, profiting from globalization and feeling no responsibility for the (...) majority left to its own fate, would pursue its own interests. The ideas of Ralf Dahrendorf concerning the global rule of law in the name of freedom and the need for international law are referred to. Globalization is occurring just as Marx intuitively predicted: capitalism becomes the bearer of hidden immanent self-destructive mechanisms. In conclusion, the author's hypothesis is that the new era of law in the 21st century will ensure that certain civilization legal norms become natural or customary. (shrink)

This article introduces the Völkerpsychologie of the German psychologist and liberal politician Willy Hellpach. It shows how Hellpach used the once venerable approach of Völkerpsychologie, introduced by Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steinthal in the nineteenth century, to adapt to the Third Reich and distract the authorities from his political career. The article provides a close reading of Hellpach's main text on the subject, the Einführung in die Völkerpsychologie published in 1938, and explains the ease with which he was able to (...) make this approach compatible with Nazi ideology. Hellpach's case thus illustrates the proximity of national-liberal thinking to ?Nazi ideology?. Moreover, on account of the post-war reception of Hellpach's Völkerpsychologie by scholars such as Ralf Dahrendorf, the article examines the uneasy and incomplete repudiation of Völkerpsychologie after 1945. It concludes that the origins of widely used concepts such as ?national habitus? or ?national identity? can be traced back to the tradition of Völkerpsychologie and related studies of national character. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sharon O'Dair FREELOADING OFF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES In Profession 89, published by the MLA, Martin Mueller complains that the fashion for interdisciplinary work in literary studies is mostly an intradepartmental affair. In English departments interdisciplinary work results not in cross-fertilization between disciplines but in the establishment ofsubdisciplines within English. To support his assertions, Mueller focuses on the efforts of new historicists, most of which, he claims, would not pass (...) muster in history departments orjournals.1 But literary critics who import from sociology or psychology can be arraigned on the same charge; seldom do they engage sociologists or psychologists in the way envisioned by Mueller, that is, intensely. Ifthey did, the subdisciplines would not be defined as narrowly as they are; Marxism would not dominate our sociology of literature and psychoanalysis would not dominate our psychology of literature. If they did, critics would better understand the norms of science and thus be less likely to appropriate terms and theories for use outside the specialized arenas for which they were designed. And, to anticipate my conclusion, critics might then be less likely to further what psychologist Liam Hudson calls his discipline's "psychic engineering." My concern with how literary critics use social science results from grappling with the problem myself. Like most critics, I used to be rather uncritical in my borrowings from social science, figuring that ifit works, it works, and being, no doubt, somewhat off-put by the notion of "science." But as I read sociology and psychology on the problem of the self/subject, I became troubled by the way science structures discourse on the problem ofthe selfor subject and its relationship to surrounding environments. What do these discourses include and leave out? What are their boundaries? What is the status of the images of men and Philosophy and Literature, © 1991, 15: 260-267 Sharon O'Dair261 women offered by them? These are questions thatought tobe addressed by literary critics, but seldom are. To be more specific: although literary critics borrow heavily from the social sciences, most notably, of course, from those derived from the work of Marx and Freud, we do not often acknowledge the limits of the scientific discourses from which we borrow. Sociological "man" (the alienated role-player)—like psychological "man" (one pushed by drives and molded by stimuli) or economic "man" (the rational optimizer)— is an abstract and artificial description, a construct, useful as a tool in scientific analysis. As such, homo sociologicus or homo psychologicus maintains heuristic strength, but neither is intended to capture the whole of a human being or to account for the entirety of determining and enabling influences on him or her. Neither is a philosophy of human nature, and certainly neither was offered by social scientists to account for the creations of Kafka or Shakespeare. Ralf Dahrendorf has observed that "man in his entirety not only is safely removed from the attack ofany single discipline, but may possibly remain forever a nebulous shape in the background of scientific endeavor."2 Generalizing that point, Kenneth Burke explains that "insofar as any science has a nomenclature especially adapted to its particular field of study, the extension of its special terms to provide a definition in general would necessarily oversociologize, overbiologize, overpsychologize, or overphysicize, etc., its subject."3 So, in general, the social sciences, like the physical sciences from which they draw methodological inspiration, aim not to describe reality but to construct categories that allow each social science to capture a certain part, and only a certain part, ofreality in analysis. To get on with thejob, the sociologist controls for the fact of individuality—what is personal or unique in human beings—just as to get on with thejob, the psychologist controls for the fact ofsociety—what is social in human beings. Each discipline simplifies its notion of a person to proceed as science. As an object of study in much social science of this century and the last, a person is necessarily quite different from a person one meets on the streets, in a city or town. To the sociologist, then, if I may focus my argument, the person is nothing but his or her social roles. Erving Goffman, therefore... (shrink)

The author goes out from Helmuth Plessner’s book Die Grenzen der Gemeinschaft to show how the basic categories of Plessner’s philosophical anthropology, especially the eccentric position conception, apply to his critique of community-oriented societies like communism and fascism. Plessner saw the alternative to a community-based society in a model where social bonds took place by association, and in which the anthropological a priori enjoyed the optimum conditions for self-expression. This social model also allows the full establishment of social roles in (...) the anthropological sense, something that is annihilated by community-type societies. The author also addresses the different ways in which the “social role” category is interpreted by Plessner and Ralf Dahrendorf, and concludes with a few concrete and methodologically grounded objections to Plessner’s theory. (shrink)

The present paper investigates the power of proper forcings to change the shape of the universe, in a certain well-defined respect. It turns out that the ranking among large cardinals can be used as a measure for that power. However, in order to establish the final result I had to isolate a new large cardinal concept, which I dubbed “remarkability.” Let us approach the exact formulation of the problem—and of its solution—at a slow pace.Breathtaking developments in the mid 1980s found (...) one of its culminations in the theorem, due to Martin, Steel, and Woodin, that the existence of infinitely many Woodin cardinals with a measurable cardinal above them all implies that AD, the axiom of determinacy, holds in the least inner model containing all the reals, L. One of the nice things about AD is that the theory ZF + AD + V = L appears as a choiceless “completion” of ZF in that any interesting question seems to find an at least attractive answer in that theory. Beyond that, AD is very canonical as may be illustrated as follows.Let us say that L is absolute for set-sized forcings if for all posets P ∈ V, for all formulae ϕ, and for all ∈ ℝ do we have thatwhere is a name for the set of reals in the extension. (shrink)

The current paper proves the results announced in [5]. We isolate a new large cardinal concept, "remarkability." Consistencywise, remarkable cardinals are between ineffable and ω-Erdos cardinals. They are characterized by the existence of "O # -like" embeddings; however, they relativize down to L. It turns out that the existence of a remarkable cardinal is equiconsistent with L(R) absoluteness for proper forcings. In particular, said absoluteness does not imply Π 1 1 determinacy.

ZusammenfassungDie traditionsreiche Deutsche Gesellschaft für Innere Medizin war durch ihr Agieren in der NS-Zeit belastet. Vor ihrem ersten Nachkriegskongress 1948 in Karlsruhe fiel dem Bonner Klinikdirektor Paul Martini die Rolle eines Reorganisators zu. Martini, der während der NS-Zeit in Opposition zum Regime gestanden hatte, wählte einen Kurs umfassender Integration. Verfolgte des NS-Staats versuchte er ebenso in die DGIM einzubinden wie einstige gemäßigte Nationalsozialisten. Zugleich bemühte er sich um die Bewahrung des gesamtdeutschen Charakters der Kongresse sowie um einen zügigen Anschluss an (...) die internationale Forschung. Dennoch führte der eingeschlagene Weg die DGIM in nur scheinbar unpolitische Wissenschaftlichkeit und Jahrzehnte weitgehender Kritiklosigkeit gegenüber ihrer NS-Geschichte. (shrink)

Die Qualität der psychoanalytischen Praxis ist eine immer aktuelle Frage für den einzelnen Psychoanalytiker und die analytischen Institutionen. Ausgehend von den Grundelementen der psychoanalytischen Situation werden Basiskompetenzen des Analytikers postuliert und beschrieben, die die Herstellung und Bewahrung der analytischen Situation garantieren. Im Zentrum der Überlegung steht dann die analytische Deutungsfunktion, um die immer wieder gerungen werden muss, weil sie auch der Dynamik von Übertragung und Widerstand unterworfen ist. Es wird festgestellt, dass diese Überlegungen in Übereinstimmung mit modernen Auffassungen der psychoanalytischen (...) Haltung und Kompetenz stehen. (shrink)

It is shown in ZF that if $\delta are such that δ and δ + are either both weakly compact or singular cardinals and Ω is large enough for putting the core model apparatus into action then there is an inner model with a Woodin cardinal.

Resemblance Nominalism About Perfect Naturalness is the view that perfect naturalness of classes is best defined by a conceptual primitive of resemblance between particulars. The adequacy of RNPN is defended by outlining nominalism as the strictly anti-constitutive view that the particulars’ being the fundamental ways they are is not constituted by anything further, supplying a doubly plural contrastive and graded resemblance predicate that allows for a definition of perfect naturalness on an actualist basis, and proving a representation and a uniqueness (...) theorem on the basis of a formal constraint on resemblance called “the Principle”, thereby revealing that bodies of nominalist resemblance facts are guaranteed to behave as if they were grounded in patterns of universals distributed over particulars. (shrink)

Recently, metaphysical coherentism has been propounded as an alternative to metaphysical foundationalism and infinitism. The view replaces the picture of reality as a hierarchy of levels with that of a network of objects or facts standing in symmetric or, more generally, cyclic relations of metaphysical dependence. This paper defends the orthodox picture of a well-founded hierarchy against the claimed superiority of coherentism. First, it will be argued that alleged theoretical advantages of coherentism do not hold up to scrutiny. Secondly, examples (...) that are claimed to support coherentism are either misdescribed as involving metaphysical interdependence, or foundationalist treatments fare at least as good and often better than coherentist interpretations. Thirdly, a similar diagnosis applies to a recently proposed coherentist interpretation of quantum entanglement. The more general diagnosis is that claims of metaphysical dependence are convincing only if there is a detailed account of how one item metaphysically explains another. While foundationalists can resort to various specific explanatory relations, coherentism seems to be incapable of providing detailed explanations. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes bruteness from fundamentality by developing a theory of stochastic grounding that makes room for non-fundamental bruteness. Stochastic grounding relations, which only underwrite incomplete explanations, arise when the fundamental level underdetermines derivative levels. The framework is applied to fission cases, showing how one can break symmetries and mitigate bruteness whilst avoiding arbitrariness and hypersensitivity.

This paper is my contribution to round three of a longstanding debate between Robert Alexy and me about the principles theory’s concept of principle. In the first round, Alexy—bucking tradition—proposed a nongradualist distinction between rules and principles that divided the ontology of norms into two categorically distinct norm‐types. He connected this norm‐theoretical analysis with a theory of fundamental rights according to which such rights had to be understood as principles and thus interpreted as optimization requirements. In the first round I (...) objected to the norm‐theoretical assumptions and questioned the doctrinal merit of the principles theory approach. Unlike Alexy, I saw no merit in his notion of principle over and above optimization requirements, which by that time Alexy, too, regarded as rules. In round two, Alexy defended his concept of principle by taking refuge in the notion of an ideal ought, which he defined as a command to be optimized. In this second round, I criticized the new attempt to save his view of principles on the ground that the norms Alexy had in mind optimized not commands but states of affairs and thus were ordinary norms or rules according to the misguided taxonomy of the principles theory. Alexy opened round three of our exchange by admitting that my critique of round two was justified and that he had erred in identifying principles as ideal commands to be optimized. He now proposes an index theory of principles. In the paper, I recapitulate the motive and the main points of our debate and scrutinize Alexy’s latest innovation. (shrink)

Inductive Metaphysics combines an anti-aprioristic emphasis on an empirical and scientific basis for metaphysics with an insistence on a specifically philosophical abductive theory-building. Since the latter specifically philosophical work is not empirical itself, it may in a liberal sense be called apriori. This paper highlights this apriori dimension within IM by a case study on Structuralism, the view that fundamental reality consists of a network of relations, which a number of philosophers consider to be suggested by modern physics. Focussing on (...) Dasgupta’s algebraic Generalism, the author argues that Structuralism suffers from a severe entailment problem, because the relations-spanning apparatus must stand for metaphysically fundamental forms. Schaffer’s contention that there are no entailment problems is rejected. Advocates of IM are well advised to take seriously their own insistence on metaphysical abduction and not to one-sidedly emphasise the empirical input: the elaboration of exact metaphysical theories and the apriori evaluation of their inherent tenability is a constituent of IM no less important than the consideration of scientific input. More traditional ways of metaphysical reasoning inevitably survive as an essential dimension within IM. (shrink)