Der Streit um den Humanismus ist älter als das Wort. Was die Sache selber sei, ist aber schon zur Zeit der griechischen Klassik umstritten. Seit Humanismus auch noch als Epochenbegriff verwendet wird, konkurrieren sogar Humanismen im Plural miteinander. Dabei versuchen die unterschiedlichen Richtungen, den Begriff für sich zu besetzen, ja zu monopolisieren. Freilich entstehen bald auch ausdrückliche Antihumanismen, die nur insofern humanistisch bleiben, als sie sich weiterhin der griechisch-römischen Antike verpflichtet fühlen: eine andere, zum Beispiel "archaische" und "heroische" Antike der (...) wie auch immer "humanen" konfrontieren. Seitdem gibt es einen Humanismusstreit im engeren und bis heute andauernden Sinn. Entscheidende Voraussetzung dafür ist, dass Humanismus stets Antike-Rezeption und Humanität zugleich meinte, also auch "Humanitarismus" gewesen ist. - Vorwort - I. Antiker und moderner Barmherzigkeitsdiskurs - H. Cancik: Entrohung und Barmherzigkeit, Herrschaft und Würde. Antike Grundlagen von Humanismus - F. Hartmann: "Das Wohlergehen des Kranken... oberster Grundsatz"? Über Menschlichkeit und Menschen-Heilkunde - II. Menschenrechtsdiskurse und ihre Problematik - A. Haratsch: Entstehung und Entwicklung der Menschenrechte - E. Stölting: Humanismus und Eurozentrismus - C. Elsas: Potentiale religiös-kultureller Traditionen zur Achtung von Menschenrechten - K. Meyer: Feminismus zwischen Neo- und Posthumanismus. Betrachtungen zu Martha Nussbaum und Judith Butler - III. Antihumanistische Diskurse des späten 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts - E. Flaig: Kultur und Krieg. Antihumanismus bei Jakob Burckhardt und Friedrich Nietzsche - Richard Faber: Humanistische und faschistische Welt. Über Ludwig Curtius (1874-1954) - E. Rudolph: Humanismus und Antihumanismus im Streit. Cassirer und Heidegger in Davos - A. Geisenhanslüke: Antihumanismus? Über Michel Focault und die Folgen - IV. Prohumanistische Plädoyers bis heute - A.-U. Sommer: Franz Overbeck, ein skeptischer Humanist? - G. Wedekind: Europa im Exil. Erich Auerbachs säkulare Weltbürgerschaft - C. Türcke: Die Falle der Selbstentfaltung. Humanismus und kritische Theorie. (shrink)

English summary: In the 20th century it was the distortions of humanism (third humanism, antihumanism) rather than the actual history of the concept and the idea of humanism and of the authors and texts associated with it, from Plato to Humboldt, which shaped its image. This volume contains a number of individual studies which together create a genealogy of humanistic thought in Europe. German description: Im 20. Jahrhundert haben eher die Entstellungen des Humanismus wie der 'dritte Humanismus' oder der 'Antihumanismus' (...) sein Profil gepragt als die tatsachliche Geschichte seines Begriffs, seiner Idee und die damit verbundenen Autoren und Texte von Platon bis Wilhelm von Humboldt.und Ernst Cassirer. In diesem Band wird in zeitkritischer Absicht anhand einer Reihe von Einzeluntersuchungen eine Genealogie des humanistischen Denkens in Europa vorgenommen. Der Band enthalt Beitrage von: Enno Rudolph, Anne Eusterschulte, Achim Geisenhansluke, Charlotte Schoell-Glass, Wolf-Dietrich Hartwich, Andreas Arndt, Vincent von Wroblewsky, Christoph Schulte, Ekkehard W. Stegemann, Kim Sitzler, Ursula Baatz und Joachim Fischer. (shrink)

Von philologischer Nüchternheit und humanistischem Engagement... Der Band dokumentiert exemplarisch die Verbindung von Altertumswissenschaft und moderner Kulturwissenschaft auf hohem philologischem und kritisch reflektierendem Niveau.

The main goal of this paper is to investigate whether humans are unique in using tools and artifacts. Non-human animals exhibit some impressive instances of tool and artifact-use. Chimpanzees use sticks to get termites out of a mound, beavers build dams, birds make nests, spiders create webs, bowerbirds make bowers to impress potential mates, etc. There is no doubt that some animals modify and use objects in clever and sophisticated ways. But how does this relate to the way in which (...) humans make and use objects to achieve their goals? To answer this question, this paper first presents a taxonomy of artifacts, identifying four overlapping categories, namely embodied, perceptual, cognitive, and affective artifacts. It then discusses definitions of animal tool-use, arguing that we need a more liberal approach, one that goes beyond the use of tools that are embedded in occurrent perception-action cycles. This paper ends by analysing how instances of animal tool and artifact-use can be classified according to the four identified categories, concluding that some animals use embodied, perceptual, cognitive, and affective artifacts. In this sense, humans are thus not unique in the kinds of tools and artifacts we use. What is unique, however, is our unprecedented flexibility and openness to deeply incorporate a large variety of complex tools and artifacts into our embodied, perceptual, cognitive, and affective systems. (shrink)

Richard Faber, the author of learned studies of Novalis, Vergil, Brecht, and Carl Schmitt, is aware that this is not the first book he has published with the same title. ad Jacob Taubes, the title...

Hilbert’s program was an ambitious and wide-ranging project in the philosophy and foundations of mathematics. In order to “dispose of the foundational questions in mathematics once and for all,” Hilbert proposed a two-pronged approach in 1921: first, classical mathematics should be formalized in axiomatic systems; second, using only restricted, “finitary” means, one should give proofs of the consistency of these axiomatic systems. Although Gödel’s incompleteness theorems show that the program as originally conceived cannot be carried out, it had many partial (...) successes, and generated important advances in logical theory and metatheory, both at the time and since. The article discusses the historical background and development of Hilbert’s program, its philosophical underpinnings and consequences, and its subsequent development and influences since the 1930s. (shrink)

This study reconstructs the relationship between philosophy and politics in the way in which Heidegger's failure as a politician influenced the redevelopment of philosophy in the 1930s. The author also explains how Heidegger's failure influenced the content and direction of his later work.

Logic has pride of place in mathematics and its 20th century offshoot, computer science. Modern symbolic logic was developed, in part, as a way to provide a formal framework for mathematics: Frege, Peano, Whitehead and Russell, as well as Hilbert developed systems of logic to formalize mathematics. These systems were meant to serve either as themselves foundational, or at least as formal analogs of mathematical reasoning amenable to mathematical study, e.g., in Hilbert’s consistency program. Similar efforts continue, but have been (...) expanded by the development of sophisticated methods to study the properties of such systems using proof and model theory. In parallel with this evolution of logical formalisms as tools for articulating mathematical theories (broadly speaking), much progress has been made in the quest for a mechanization of logical inference and the investigation of its theoretical limits, culminating recently in the development of new foundational frameworks for mathematics with sophisticated computer-assisted proof systems. In addition, logical formalisms developed by logicians in mathematical and philosophical contexts have proved immensely useful in describing theories and systems of interest to computer scientists, and to some degree, vice versa. Three examples of the influence of logic in computer science are automated reasoning, computer verification, and type systems for programming languages. (shrink)

The proof theory of many-valued systems has not been investigated to an extent comparable to the work done on axiomatizatbility of many-valued logics. Proof theory requires appropriate formalisms, such as sequent calculus, natural deduction, and tableaux for classical (and intuitionistic) logic. One particular method for systematically obtaining calculi for all finite-valued logics was invented independently by several researchers, with slight variations in design and presentation. The main aim of this report is to develop the proof theory of finite-valued first order (...) logics in a general way, and to present some of the more important results in this area. In Systems covered are the resolution calculus, sequent calculus, tableaux, and natural deduction. This report is actually a template, from which all results can be specialized to particular logics. (shrink)

Methods available for the axiomatization of arbitrary finite-valued logics can be applied to obtain sound and complete intelim rules for all truth-functional connectives of classical logic including the Sheffer stroke and Peirce’s arrow. The restriction to a single conclusion in standard systems of natural deduction requires the introduction of additional rules to make the resulting systems complete; these rules are nevertheless still simple and correspond straightforwardly to the classical absurdity rule. Omitting these rules results in systems for intuitionistic versions of (...) the connectives in question. (shrink)

Studies the politics of Heidegger in terms of "thrownness" or "existential contingency". Attempts to think through Heidegger's philosophy in a manner that parallels his own dialogue with other key western thinkers.

The ancient Taoist text that forms the central part of this book was discovered by Wilhelm, who recognized it as essentially a practical guide to the integration of personality. Foreword and Appendix by Carl Jung; illustrations. Translated by Cary F. Baynes.A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book.

Textbook on Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and computability theory, based on the Open Logic Project. Covers recursive function theory, arithmetization of syntax, the first and second incompleteness theorem, models of arithmetic, second-order logic, and the lambda calculus.

"This is an excellent textbook on Neoplatonism which gives the reader a very concise and lucid overview of the basic doctrines and leading thinkers of the last great philosophy to emerge before the Christianization of the Roman Empire. I’ve no doubt that my students next semester will benefit from the analyses contained in the book. The contents of the chapters are very informative and adequately place developments in their socio-cultural context." --Michael B. Simmons, Auburn University at Montgomery.

Having visited Ireland regularly during the 1930s, Ludwig Wittgenstein resigned his Cambridge philosophy professorship in 1947 and moved there, living in a fishing village on the Atlantic coast and hotels in Dublin and the Wicklow Mountains. Although Wittgenstein spent some time out of the country, Ireland was effectively his base for three very productive years during which he worked on what would become one of his key books, the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein in Ireland represents the first sustained account (...) of Wittgenstein's time in Ireland, placing it in its historical context. Wall pays a good deal of attention to the representation of the Irish landscape in which the Austrian philosopher found himself able to work; a large part of his writings were produced in the bleak landscapes of Ireland and Norway. (shrink)

Despite their differences in origin, the three influential schools of twentieth-century continental cultural criticism--the Frankfurt School, existentialism, and poststructuralism--have long been treated as an ensemble and with critical hesitancy. Examining these schools as responses to the apparent collapse of Western civilization in the twentieth-century and as formidable intellectual challenges to the cultural legacies of the Enlightenment, this book provides a productive base for criticism and broadens our understanding of their histories and reception.

This paper addresses the problem of ‘ignorance’ in philosophy and science, particularly with respect to the conceptualization, study and solution of environmental problems. We begin by distinguishing between ‘risk’, ‘uncertainty’ and ‘ignorance’. We then offer a categorization of ignorance, and use these categories to assess the role of science as a means of reducing ignorance. We note that to proceed with science, several 'acts of faith' are necessary. We conclude with a discussion of the importance of an attitude of openness (...) in science and philosophy, especially regarding environmental problems. Throughout, we illustrate our discussion of ignorance, and the problems involved in its reduction, by reference to environmental issues. (shrink)

This book is the complete story of the creation of the universe, as it was understood by the ancient Egyptians. It is a collection of harmonic and radical 'Black Thoughts' and the pursuit of equality for all of this planet's inhabitants"--P. vii.

On the basis of careful textual exegesis and philosophical analysis, and contrary to the received view, Mark R. Wheeler demonstrates that Aristotle presents and systematically explicates his definition of the essence of the truth in the Metaphysics. Aristotle states the nominal definitions of the terms "truth" and "falsehood" as part of his arguments in defense of the logical axioms. These nominal definitions express conceptions of truth and falsehood his philosophical opponents would have recognized and accepted in the context of dialectical (...) argument. On the basis of these nominal definitions, Aristotle develops his definitions of the essences of truth and falsehood--his "real" definitions of truth and falsehood. Aristotle's methodical exposition of his essential definitions of truth and falsehood in the Metaphysics serves as a well-developed example of how his philosophical inquiry starts with nominal definitions and ends with real definitions. Wheeler also argues for the novel claim that Aristotle defines the most fundamental kind of truth in terms of accurate measurement. Aristotle's metrical conception of truth serves as the theoretical basis for specifying the truth conditions of various assertions, for identifying the sorts of beings implicated in these truth conditions, and for explaining the nature of approximate truth and falsehood. Far from offering us a minimal account of truth, Wheeler shows how Aristotle offers us a sophisticated and metrical theory of truth. (shrink)