Adolf von Harnack auf schloss Elmau, von J. Müller.--Briefe Adolf von Harnacs an Johannes Müller.--Leben und erkennen, von A. Harnack.

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Sokrates und die alte Kirche" verfügbar.

In the course of his active teaching career of over fifty years, Adolf von Harnack only once lectured on the „Encyclopaedia of Theology“. This occured in the summer of 1884 when he was a young university professor in Gießen, lecturing twice a week from 9 to 10 in the morning. The handwritten script of the dictation booklet has so far gone unnoticed in the literature. It is documented here for the first time and in a full reproduction. These (...) lecture notes present a condensed, overall impression of Harnack's concept of theology, probably unlike any other his texts. Of particular interest is the detailed outline of a concept of religion that Harnack developed through an intense examination of drafts on this topic by Friedrich Schleiermacher and Albrecht Ritschl as well as Ritschl's prominent students, Julius Kaftan and Wilhelm Herrmann. Within the history of Harnack's opus, the lecture for the Encyclopaedia was done in close working relationship with the great literary project of the Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte. (shrink)

The article deals with the so-called „System Althoff“, that is the network of advisers Friedrich Althoff, ministerial director of the Prussian ministry of cultural affairs, created and employed in order to administer the faculties of theology at Prussian universities. In addition to leading the process of decision making in the ministry itself, he recruited a number of theology professors from the two dominant Church parties to advise him on appointing new professors. Famously, he consulted the opponents Hermann Cremer, a “positive” (...) biblicistic Systematic professor in Greifswald, and Adolf Harnack, a Ritschlian Church Historian in Berlin, but he also counted theologians like Friedrich Loofs and Martin Kähler among his advisers. The article’s main body focusses on Althoff’s correspondence with Cremer and Harnack in order to analyse the minister’s practice of administration in depth. In a second step the paper will relate the minister’s relationship with his two most prominent theological advisers to the wider „System Althoff“ in theology. Both parts serve to show that Althoff rationalized and professionalized the process of decision making in the ministry of cultural affairs by carefully considering different professorial advises in light of the current (church) political climate. (shrink)

Anhand von unveröffentlichten Briefen an die Herausgeber Hans Delbrück und Karl Muth wird im vorliegenden Beitrag nachgewiesen: Bernarda von Nell, die Mutter des Jesuitenpaters und Sozialethikers Oswald von Nell-Breuning, ist die Verfasserin des anonymen Artikels „Wie denkt Professor Harnack über die Enzyklika Pascendi?“ . Ihr Angriff auf Adolf Harnack ist Teil einer über Jahre andauernden, teils kritischen, teils bewundernden Auseinandersetzung mit dem protestantischen Gelehrten. Harnacks Antwort an die – ihm namentlich bekannte – Angreiferin ist vor dem Hintergrund (...) seiner Unterstützung für das „Bildungsstreben der Frauen“ zu sehen.Anhang; aus: A. Harnack, Die päpstliche Enzyklika des Jahres 1907. Ein Schlußwort.*[Man ist] der Enzyklika die Erklärung schuldig, die mir in den Kritiken kaum entgegengetreten ist, daß sie nach langer, langer Zeit von höchster katholischer Stelle die Glaubens- und Weltanschauungsfrage, nicht aber die Frage des Papsttums, in den Mittelpunkt stellt. Wir sind daran gewöhnt worden, von Rom aus vor allem diese Frage uns aufgerückt zu sehen; in der Enzyklika aber tritt sie ganz hinter jene andere zurück. Ich stehe nicht an, darin einen Fortschritt zu erkennen. Fast möchte ich sagen, der Papst rüttelt die Gewissen seiner Gläubigen auf! Sollten wir uns darüber nicht freuen? Er zwingt sie freilich alsbald auf einen ganz bestimmten Weg und bringt seine Macht in den Disziplinarvorschriften, die er erläßt, in eine fürchterliche Erinnerung; aber er lenkt ihre Aufmerksamkeit doch auf Glaubensfragen, er lenkt sie auf den „Modernismus“, den er nicht ohne Aufbieten von Kenntnissen eingehend schildert! Er nimmt also die unausbleiblichen Folgen aller geistigen Unruhe in den Kauf, weil er die Sache, den wahren, rechten Glauben, für so wichtig hält. Wäre es ihm nur um die eigene Herrschaft zu tun, so wäre diese Enzyklika das ungeschickteste Schriftstück von der Welt – es ist ihm wirklich um den christlichen Glauben und die rechte Theologie zu tun, wie er sie versteht, also um das Seelenheil seiner Gläubigen! Das soll man nicht verkennen, und darin liegt bei aller Rückständigkeit in bezug auf das Wesen des Wahrheitssinns und der Wissenschaft doch ein erfreuliches Moment. Auch wird ja der Versuch gemacht, den „Modernismus“ zu widerlegen, und so kläglich dieser Versuch auch ausgefallen ist – einige unvermeidliche Schatten und Fehler der modernen Wissenschaft sind nicht ungeschickt benutzt, und auf die Abgründe, die sie umgeben, ist nicht ohne Recht hingewiesen.Drawing its evidence from hitherto unpublished letters to the editors Hans Delbrück and Karl Muth , the present study proves the following fact: Bernarda von Nell, mother of the Jesuit priest and professor of social ethics Oswald von Nell-Breuning, is the author the anonymous article „Wie denkt Professor Harnack über die Enzyklika Pascendi?“ . This attack on Adolf Harnack is part of her continuous, sometimes critical, sometimes admiring discussion of the protestant scholar. Harnack’s reply to his challenger – known to him by name – should be appreciated in connection with his public support of “women’s pursuit of education”. (shrink)

This study of the reorganisation of the Straßburg theological faculty in the wake of the Franco-Prussian war traces the tormented path of that academic body towards the eventual calling of its own candidate Paul Lobstein to the professorship of lutheran dogmatics. The paper provides detailed insight into the welter of crossfire and intrigue that ensued as proponents of pietism, confessional lutheranism, mediating theology, and liberalism contended with strong-willed theological colleagues and with Bismarck on behalf of the Alsatian faculty. Among others, (...) the young Adolf von Harnack was briefly considered for the post in dogmatic theology. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDie öffentliche Theologie geht von der Kritik an der Privatisierung der Theologie aus und richtet sich auf das aktive Teilnehmen an den öffentlichen Diskursen der Gesellschaft für das gemeinschaftliche Wohl. Der vorliegende Aufsatz fasst den Ausgangs- sowie Zielpunkt der öffentlichen Theologie unter dem Begriff Entprivatisierungsthese zusammen. Während öffentliche Theologie auf die Überwindung von Säkularisierung und Individualisierung zielt, die unter dem Begriff von Privatisierung mitbegriffen sind, sind hier die positiven öffentlichen Bedeutungen von Säkularisierung und Individualisierung verdeutlicht. Ausgehend von Harnacks privatisierter theologischer (...) Auffassung vom Evangelium und seiner Teilnahme an politischen und sozialen Fragen wird herausgestellt, dass die öffentliche Dimension der Theologie nicht in der Exklusion von Säkularisierung und Individualisierung, sondern in ihrer positiven Aufnahme zurückzugewinnen ist. (shrink)

abstract: One of the most prolific approaches to the comparative study of Buddhist and Christian philosophy has been the use of Buddhist anti-metaphysicism to overcome the allegedly obsolete metaphysical discourse of Christianity. This approach has been practiced, among others, by Edgar Bruns, Frederik Streng, Joseph O'Leary, and John Keenan. Keenan's 1980–1990s seminal works were determinative in that they appeared to rely on intuitive and evident premises: Christianity became infused with Greek metaphysical concepts early on; consequently, it adopted the forms of (...) essentialism and ontological discourse practiced in metaphysics. That discourse has now become obsolete and must be overcome; Buddhist anti-metaphysicism helps overcome it; hence, Christianity can learn from Buddhism. In this paper, I show that although Keenan presents the first of these claims as self-evident, it is in fact highly polemical. Its origins lie in Albrecht Ritschl's and Adolf von Harnack's Hellenization theory. While the theological and historical background to this theory has been debated, Keenan does not engage in these debates. Even more, he transforms the theory in such a way that it becomes incongruent with its inherent aim. Following the problems implied on these two levels, I suggest that Keenan's project makes itself vulnerable to incoherencies. In the end, I argue for the overcoming of antimetaphysicism as a basis for Buddhist-Christian dialogue. (shrink)

I explore the usefulness of Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach in regard to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The CRPD aims at empowering people with disabilities by granting them a number of civil and political, but also economic, social and cultural rights. Implementing the CRPD will clearly be politically challenging and also very expensive for states. Thus, questions might arise as to whether the requirements set in the CRPD can be justified from an ethical perspective. (...) I will first investigate if Nussbaum's capabilities approach provides support for the rights claimed in the CRPD. Second, I will investigate to what extent Nussbaum's capabilities approach is a useful tool to set priorities among rights in the course of the implementation of the convention. This is an urgent question because seen realistically, it will not be possible to realize all rights at once and thus some rights need to receive greater priority than others. I will argue that the capabilities approach can be regarded as supporting the rights specified in the CRPD, but that it proves unable to guide the implementation process due to an insufficient grounding of the capabilities. Employing the capabilities approach thus leads to only limited results. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 7, July 2019, Page 37-38.

The last decade has witnessed the beginnings of a remarkable convergence of Husserlian phenonenology and analytic philosophy of language, and the present volumes provide original and important texts of the phenomenological philosophy of language. Powerfully influenced by the writings of the early Husserl, Reinach fashioned Husserl’s ideas into a rigorous analytical methodology of his own, which he applied in particular to problems in logic and the theory of knowledge, and to the philosophies of law and psychology. The central role of (...) the concept of state of affairs in Reinach’s philosophy will bring to mind immediately the formal ontology of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Reinach’s most significant contribution, however, is contained in his The a priori foundations of civil law (1913), above all in the detailed analysis of the a priori structure of the act of promising. This amounts to an elaborate phenomenological theory of speech acts which anticipates, and in some respects goes beyond, the later theories of Austin and Searle. The present edition is in two volumes. Volume 1, which includes a biographical and thematic introduction by the editors, contains critical editions of those pieces published by Reinach himself. Volume II is a collection of all those items in Reinach’s surviving Nachlass which are in publishable form, including a number of important pieces not hitherto obtainable on such themes as ethical predicates, speech acts (“soziale Akte”), perception and the theory of number, together with a comprehensive sketch of the problems in the theory of knowledge, logic and ethics. Appended to this is a text-critical apparatus which also contains extensive discussions of the origins and sources of the materials in question. (shrink)

This paper offers a refutation of P. Duhem's thesis that the falsifiability of an isolated empirical hypothesis H as an explanans is unavoidably inconclusive. Its central contentions are the following: 1. No general features of the logic of falsifiability can assure, for every isolated empirical hypothesis H and independently of the domain to which it pertains, that H can always be preserved as an explanans of any empirical findings O whatever by some modification of the auxiliary assumptions A in conjunction (...) with which H functions as an explanans. For Duhem cannot guarantee on any general logical grounds the deducibility of O from an explanans constituted by the conjunction of H and some revised non-trivial version R of A: the existence of the required set R of collateral assumptions must be demonstrated for each particular case. 2. The categorical form of the Duhemian thesis is not only a non-sequitur but actually false. This is shown by adducing the testing of physical geometry as a counterexample to Duhem in the form of a rebuttal to A. Einstein's geometrical articulation of Duhem's thesis. 3. The possibility of a quasi a priori choice of a physical geometry in the sense of Duhem must be clearly distinguished from the feasibility of a conventional adoption of such a geometry in the sense of H. Poincare. And the legitimacy of the latter cannot be invoked to save the Duhemian thesis from refutation by the foregoing considerations. (shrink)

Cette traduction inedite de l'oeuvre principale d'Adolf Reinach (1883-1917) apporte des contributions fondamentales a divers champs de la connaissance. Disciple de Husserl, Reinach propose une interpretation du monde social qui engage la phenomenologie sur le terrain des actes sociaux et des experiences individuelles qui les accompagnent, afin d'isoler les structures a priori qui sont au principe meme du droit positif. Le travail de Reinach s'inscrit egalement dans un champ d'analyse philosophique et linguistique centre sur les enonces dits performatifs, baptises (...) tels par Austin quelques decennies plustard. (shrink)

According to some cosmologists, the big bang cosmogony and even the (now largely defunct) steady-state theory pose a scientifically insoluble problem of matter-energy creation. But I argue that the genuine problem of the origin of matter-energy or of the universe has been fallaciously transmuted into the pseudo-problem of creation by an external cause. A fortiori, it emerges that the initial "true" and "false" vacuum states of quantum cosmology do not vindicate biblical divine creation ex nihilo at all.