Introduces contemporary American philosophy of technology through six of its leading figures. The six American philosophers of technology whose work is profiled in this clear and concise introduction to the field—Albert Borgmann, Hubert Dreyfus, Andrew Feenberg, Donna Haraway, Don Ihde, and Langdon Winner—represent a new, empirical direction in the philosophical study of technology that has developed mainly in North America. In place of the grand philosophical schemes of the classical generation of European philosophers of technology, the contemporary American generation addresses (...) concrete technological practices and the co-evolution of technology and society in modern culture. Six Dutch philosophers associated with Twente University survey and critique the full scope and development of their American colleagues’ work, often illustrating shifts from earlier to more recent interests. Individual chapters focus on Borgmann’s engagement with technology and everyday life; Dreyfus’s work on the limits of artificial intelligence; Feenberg’s perspectives on the cultural and social possibilities opened by technologies; Haraway’s conception of the cyborg and its attendant blurring of boundaries; Ihde’s explorations of the place of technology in the lifeworld; and Winner’s fascination with the moral and political implications of modern technologies. American Philosophy of Technology offers an insightful and readable introduction to this new and distinctly American philosophical turn. Contributors are Hans Achterhuis, Philip Brey, René Munnik, Martijntje Smits, Pieter Tijmes, and Peter-Paul Verbeek. (shrink)

Emmanuel Lévinas (1906-1995) zählt nicht nur zu den wichtigsten Ethikern im 20. Jahrhundert. Vor allem entwirft er einen anderen Anfang der Ethik, die nicht auf der gesellschaftlichen Ebene oder als grosse Idee und Erzählung entsteht. Ethik entspringt vielmehr in der konkreten Zwischenmenschlichkeit, wenn man vom Anderen in die Verantwortung gerufen wird - und zwar durch die Verletzlichkeit seines nackten Gesichtes wie durch die Anrede. Die ethische Beziehung verdankt sich dabei nicht etwa der Gleichheit, der Nähe oder der Geschwisterlichkeit, sondern der (...) Andersheit des Anderen, seiner Ferne und vor allem seiner Fremdheit, die sich nicht hintergehen lassen. Damit gründet Lévinas die Gesellschaft nicht nur auf die Zwischenmenschlichkeit, sondern auch auf die Pluralität. So wenig wie die Ethik universelle Ansprüche erheben kann, lässt sich Gerechtigkeit als ein allgemeines Prinzip entwerfen. Vielmehr muss sie den Individuen in deren unendlicher Andersheit gerecht werden. In dieser Unendlichkeit blitzt im nackten Gesicht das Antlitz Gottes auf, denkt Lévinas aus der jüdischen Tradition heraus. Das lässt sich auch rein säkular verstehen, dass alle Menschen anders sind. Sie als Gleiche zu behandeln, unterwirft sie totalen politischen Ansprüchen, macht sie zu gehorsamen Untertanen. In Auseinandersetzung mit Sartre entwickelt Lévinas eine individualistische Ethik der Verantwortung, die jeden Menschen betrifft, indem sie aus der Zwischenmenschlichkeit heraus die Mündigkeit konstituiert. So verfolgt der Einzelne nicht primär seine Interessen, sondern übernimmt Verantwortung für den Anderen: Die Wende der Ethik im 20. Jahrhundert - von Sartre, de Beauvoir und Lacan inspiriert, von Derrida und Butler fortgeschrieben, bestehen zudem Parallelen zu Arendt und Foucault. (shrink)

Hans Joas is one of the foremost social theorists in Germany today. Based on Joas’s celebrated study of George Herbert Mead, this work reevaluates the contribution of American pragmatism and European philosophical anthropology to theories of action in the social sciences. Joas also establishes direct ties between Mead’s work and approaches drawn from German traditions of philosophical anthropology. Joas argues for adding a third model of action to the two predominant models of rational and normative action—one that emphasizes the (...) creative character of human action. This model encompasses the other two, allowing for a more comprehensive theory of action. Joas elaborates some implications of his model for theories of social movements and social change and for the status of action theory in sociology in the face of competition from theories advanced by Luhmann and Habermas. The problem of action is of crucial importance in both sociology and philosophy, and this book—already widely debated in Germany—will add fresh impetus to the lively discussions current in the English-speaking world. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

Radical democratic thinking is becoming intrigued by the material situatedness of its political agents and by the role of nonhuman participants in political interaction. At stake here is the displacement of narrow anthropocentrism that currently guides democratic theory and practice, and its repositioning into what we call ‘the nonhuman condition’. This Critical Exchange explores the nonhuman condition. It asks: What are the implications of decentering the human subject via a new materialist reading of radical democracy? Does this reading dilute political (...) agency? Or should this be seen, on the contrary, as an invitation for new voices and demands to enter into democratic assemblages? How might engagement with the more-than-human disrupt or extend theories of radical democracy? Hans Asenbaum and Amanda Machin discuss the human democratic subject both through radical democratic and new materialist lenses. They suggest that a new materialist decentred subject does not lose agency but further gains political responsibility in radical democracy. Jean-Paul Gagnon highlights the possibility of becoming through loss. In losing our anthropocentric arrogance—our understanding of being other and better than animal—we become more connected and discover our place in human-nonhuman assemblages. Melissa Orlie agrees that something can be gained through renouncing dominant human fantasies and presents a ‘radical democratic naturalism’. By renouncing land violence and acknowledging nature’s subjectivity, we can further nonexploitative radical democratic politics. This is where the notion of ‘tidalectic’ processes introduced by James L. Smith is helpful. Focusing on water and the Indigenous knowledges around rivers, he considers how democracy and community can be reimagined as plural, cyclical and attentive to the nonhuman with which the human is inevitably entangled. Diana Leong offers a different approach. Considering the nonhuman from the perspective of Black Studies demands an awareness to how blackness has long been constituted as non- or partially human. (shrink)

Undersøgelser af sammenhængen mellem tysk filosofi og nazismens teorier med særlig vægt på Martin Heidegger (1889-1976).

Hans Kelsen is considered by many to be the foremost legal thinker of the twentieth century. During the last decade of his life he was working on what he called a general theory of norms. Published posthumously in 1979 as Allgemeine Theorie der Normen, the book is here translated for the first time into English. Kelsen develops his "pure theory of law" into a "general theory of norms", and analyzes the applicability of logic to norms to offer an original (...) and extreme position which some have called "normative irrationalism". Examining the views of over 200 philosophers and legal theorists on law, morality, and logic, and revising several of his own earlier positions, Kelsen's final work is a mandatory resource for legal and moral philosophers. (shrink)

The central aim of this paper is to present a Boolean algebraic approach to the classical Aristotelian Relations of Opposition, namely Contradiction and (Sub)contrariety, and to provide a 3D visualisation of those relations based on the geometrical properties of Platonic and Archimedean solids. In the first part we start from the standard Generalized Quantifier analysis of expressions for comparative quantification to build the Comparative Quantifier Algebra CQA. The underlying scalar structure allows us to define the Aristotelian relations in Boolean terms (...) and to propose a 3D visualisation by transforming a cube into an octahedron. In part two, the architecture of the CQA is shown to carry over, both to the classical quantifiers of Predicate Calculus and to the modal operators—which are given a Generalized Quantifier style re-interpretation. In this way we provide an algebraic foundation for Blanché’s Aristotelian hexagon as well as a 3D alternative to his 2D star-like visualisation. In a final part, a richer scalar structure is argued to underly the realm of Modality, thus generalizing the 3D algebra with eight (2 3 ) operators to a 4D algebra with sixteen (2 4 ) operators. The visual representation of the latter structure involves a transformation of the hypercube to a rhombic dodecahedron. The resulting 3D visualisation allows a straightforward embedding, not only of the classical Blanché star of Aristotelian relations or the paracomplete and paraconsistent stars of Béziau (Log Investig 10, 218–232, 2003) but also of three additional isomorphic Aristotelian constellations. (shrink)

The purpose of this work is to explain the meaning of the biological terms "generatio aequivoca, Epigenesis, Praformation" in Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason", Chapter 27, within the historical context, and to show Kant's intentions by using them. Kant used these terms as biological analogies to illustrate the different epistemological positions of Locke, Leibniz and Hume (sensualism, rational dogmatism, scepticism) to form a contrast to his own point of view: "Epigenesis" stands for apodicticity, apriority, spontaneity and productivity of the categories (...) of the intellect. This biological term allowed a dynamic imagination of knowledge as a product of pure intellect (form) and sensuality (matter). Kant defined the basic terms in his critique of the judgment (Chapter 81). (shrink)

This essay traces the roots of Wittgenstein’s Pyrrhonism to Mauthner, and argues that Wittgenstein’s later views moved even closer to those of Mauthner, although Wittgenstein never became as thoroughgoing a Pyrrhonian as Mauthner had been. It is argued that Mauthner’s neo-Pyrrhonian view of language was “responsible for the linguistic turn in Wittgenstein’s thinking and thereby indirectly also for the whole linguistic turn in 20th-century analytic philosophy”.

Die Abhandlung, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen Methoden, untersucht Johann Gottfried Herders Verwendung der Analogie als Instrument für die Entdeckung neuer Gebiete der Erkenntnis in den Bereichen seiner Naturphilosophie, der Geschichtsphilosophie und Literaturkritik. Abschließend wird Herders Verhältnis zum überlieferten Gedanken einer ars inveniendi bestimmt.

Historically, the productive aspect of the aesthetic experience can be described as a process during which aesthetic practice freed itself step by step from restrictions imposed on productive activity in both the classical and the biblical tradition. If one understands this process as the realization of the idea of creative man, it is principally art which actualizes this idea.1 First, when the poietic capacity is still one and undivided, it asserts itself subliminally; later, in the competition between technical and artistic (...) creation, it explicitly claims to be a production of a special kind. It is in that history of the concepts labor and work that the restrictions become most palpable.2 In the Greek tradition, all producing remains subordinate to practical action . As the activity of slaves who are rigorously excluded from the exercise of the virtues, poiesis occupies the lowest rank in social life. In the Christian tradition, handiwork is cursed, which means that man is meant to maintain himself only by toiling against a resistant nature ; salvation can only be found beyond his activity in this world. But in both the classical and the Christian conceptual fields relating to labor, we already encounter ambivalent definitions which could introduce and justify an upward revaluation of man's labor.1. See Hans Blumenberg, "'Nachahmung der Natur': Zur Vorgeschichte des schöpferischen Menschen," Studium Generale 10 : 266-83, still unexcelled. I also base my discussion on Jürgen Mittelstrass, Neuzeit und Aufklärung; Studien zur Entstehung der neuzeitlichen Wissenchaft und Philosophie , and to the results of two seminars at Constance held jointly and to which I owe essential insights.2. See Werner Conze, "Arbeit," in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historiches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Conze, Otto Brunner, and Reinhart Koselleck, 4 vols. , 1:154-215, and Walther Bienert, Die Arbeit nach der Lehre der Bibel ; an abbreviated version appears in Bienert's "Arbeit," Die Religion in Gescheichte und Gegenwart .Hans Robert Jauss is professor of literary criticism and Romance philology at the University of Constance. He is the author of many books and articles, including two works forthcoming in English, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception and Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics, from which the present essay is taken. Michael Shaw has translated many works, among them Max Horkheimer's Dawn and Decline. (shrink)

Die ›Wiedergeburt‹ des Interesses am Kosmos, an der Rolle des Menschen, vor allem des Individuums, die Reformation und die humanistische Neubesinnung auf die Antike, auch die Tierkunde, bilden den inspirierenden Hintergrund für Denker und Forscher der frühen Neuzeit, die das Verhältnis des Menschen zum ›Tier‹ und dessen ›Seele‹ neu reflektieren, und zwar jenseits des scholastischen Konzepts einer »anima sensitiva«. Montaigne gibt in seinen Essays erste wirkmächtige ethische Impulse, indem er das individuelle Tier in den Blick nimmt. Aber auch die reformatorische (...) Theologie fordert neu heraus, über das Leiden der Kreaturen Gottes nachzudenken. Individualismus und Humanismus, Wissenschaft und Theologie bereiten der neuzeitlichen Tierethik in Europa den Weg und begleiten sie weit über Darwins Zeiten hinaus. Dieser historische Gang seit den Anfängen der Neuzeit führt über allgemeine und spezielle tierethische Diskurse in der angelsächsischen und deutschen philosophischen Aufklärung bis zu heute aktuellen Kernpositionen und tangiert heterogene Praktiken und Probleme im konkreten Tierschutz. (shrink)

Extensive measurement is called weak if the axioms allow two objects to have the same scale value without being indifferent with respect to the order. Necessary and/or sufficient conditions for such representations are given. The Archimedean and the non-Archimedean case are dealt with separately.

The existence of an animal soul and problems of animal ethics are often discussed in the German philosophical literature of the 18th century, especially in response to the cartesian theory of the beast machine. The following paper presents firstly a view into the early discussions and doctrines about animal souls (e.g., Winkler, Meier). It unfolds secondly some strategies for the legitimation of the death of animals, including contemporary concepts of soul, mainly under the influence of Leibniz. The third part examines (...) some fundamental concepts of obligations to animals within the discussion of natural rights (e.g., Thomasius, Kant). Finally, examples for the early considerations about animal rights (Dietler, Smith) are presented. (shrink)

The most important analytical tool in non-cooperative game theory is the concept of a Nash equilibrium, which is a collection of possibly mixed strategies, one for each player, with the property that each player's strategy is a best reply to the strategies of the other players. If we do not go into normative game theory, which concerns itself with the recommendation of strategies, and focus instead entirely on the positive theory of prediction, two alternative interpretations of the Nash equilibrium concept (...) are predominantly available.In the more traditional one, a Nash equilibrium is a prediction of actual play. A game may not have a Nash equilibrium in pure strategies, and a mixed strategy equilibrium may be difficult to incorporate into this interpretation if it involves the idea of actual randomization over equally good pure strategies. In another interpretation originating from Harsanyi, see also Rubinstein, and Aumann and Brandenburger, a Nash equilibrium is a ‘consistent’ collection of probabilistic expectations, conjectures, on the players. It is consistent in the sense that for each player each pure strategy, which has positive probability according to the conjecture about that player, is indeed a best reply to the conjectures about others. (shrink)

The global crisis that erupted in 2008 has left unmistakably deep scars in architectural culture. But what is happening now is not solely attributable to what began as a mortgage crisis; many of the causes lie deeper, and go back further than a few years. In a way, the recession has simply accelerated, and exacerbated, various pre-existing trends. Without overstating the case, the West, and above all Europe, is undergoing such major change at the beginning of the twenty-first century that (...) it is no longer logical to expect the future to be simply an extrapolation and continuation of the recent past. And this could well have far-reaching consequences for architecture. Of course, this is not the first time that people have declared that things will never be the same again. And up to now reality has usually turned out to be a good deal better than predicted. But there are reasons why architects in Europe should consider the possibility that this time it really might turn out differently. (shrink)

This article identifies principles for global journalism ethics in speeches and essays by the early 20th century journalist and founder of the first American journalism school, Walter Williams. Williams is not known as a media ethicist, nor is he a prominent figure in ongoing scholarly work on global journalism ethics. However, his nascent ethical principles offer an important foreshadowing of current discussions on how journalism ethics might work in a global context. The global perspective he brought to journalism was formulated (...) at a critical period in the development of American journalism and codes of ethics. Tracing the evolution of global journalism ethics is important because the search for universal ethical principles in journalism has intensified today. That is because “media technologies are increasingly and dramatically global. Our work in media ethics should be commensurate with them” (Christians, 2005, p. 3). A century ahead of current attempts to develop principles for global journalism ethics, Williams was confronted with pluralism and globalization, just as he and other key figures in American journalism's history were shaping journalism into a profession and an academic discipline. While Williams discussed such principles as global responsibility and awareness of difference, he also contended that a specifically Christian, American, pastoral model should set the global standard. This paradoxical, unwieldy stance is discussed in the context of the Progressive Era. Implications for current scholarship on global journalism ethics are explored. (shrink)

We comment on the proposition “that lower temperatures and especially greater seasonal variation in temperature call for individuals and societies to adopt … a greater degree of self-control” (Van Lange et al., sect. 3, para. 4) for which we cannot find empirical support in a large data set with data-driven analyses. After providing greater nuance in our theoretical review, we suggest that Van Lange et al. revisit their model with an eye toward the social determinants of self-control.