Karl Holl’s interpretation of Luther’s concept of religion is based on his theoretical understanding of will. The research literature has often overlooked the fact that this foundation itself is based on a theory of emotions. The psychological implications of his interpretation of Luther, which are merely implied by Holl, can be decoded in the context of contemporary research, in this article on the basis of work by Hermann Siebeck and Reinhold Seeberg. In this way, this article systematically (...) highlights the complex structure of Luther’s concept of religion, as interpreted by Holl, with regard to its conceptual history. (shrink)

Karl Holl’s interpretation of Luther’s concept of religion is based on his theoretical understanding of will. The research literature has often overlooked the fact that this foundation itself is based on a theory of emotions. The psychological implications of his interpretation of Luther, which are merely implied by Holl, can be decoded in the context of contemporary research, in this article on the basis of work by Hermann Siebeck and Reinhold Seeberg. In this way, this article systematically (...) highlights the complex structure of Luther’s concept of religion, as interpreted by Holl, with regard to its conceptual history. (shrink)

This chapter treats in roughly chronological order ten Lutheran theologians other than Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich, who were examined in the previous chapter. All of these figures can be discussed in relation to their reception of Søren Kierkegaard's writings, even though the level of appropriation of Kierkegaard varies significantly. They include German national Lutheran theologians Karl Holl, Friedrich Gogarten, Paul Althaus, and Emanuel Hirsch, Scandinavian Lutheran theologians Anders Nygren, Knud Løgstrup, Regin Prenter, and Gustaf Wingren, and contemporary (...) German Lutheran theologians Wolfhart Pannenberg and Eberhard Jüngel. The chapter attempts to identify distinctive characteristics of each thinker and their connections to Kierkegaard. (shrink)

The paper intends to investigate the sources of the very concept of charisma in Max Weber, starting from some polemical readings made by Carl Schmitt. Aside from theologian Karl Holl, particular attention is devoted to Protestant jurist Rudolf Sohm and to his masterwork Kirchenrecht. Weber started to read it attentively in 1909, at the beginning of his project called Economy and Society, In the writings that make the most of this posthumous work that he never really ended, charisma (...) is meant as the non-juridical key for official and hierarchic organizations – Roman Church may not be the only good example: charisma creates concrete social associations elsewhere. Gradually, such organizations get more and more legal, as long as they lose their ‘extraordinary’ traits. The analysis will show how obedience and recognition are originally created by charisma and how they structure the ties that bind the followers to their leader, a hero, a prophet, or similar charismatic personalities. Being originally anti-economic, anti-institutional, charisma gets to be gradually objectified in a legal order provided with specific economical traits. In its last part, the paper analyses the famous conference Max Weber held in Munich in 1919, Politics as Vocation. Politics is identified as the intersection between charisma and bureaucracy, in the handling of the relationship between the two elements of devotion to the leader and the cause and the party machine. (shrink)

Karl Ameriks here collects his most important essays to provide a uniquely detailed and up-to-date analysis of Kant's main arguments in all three major areas of his work: theoretical philosophy (Critique of Pure Reason), practical philosophy (Critique of Practical Reason), and aesthetics (Critique of Judgment). Guiding the volume is Ameriks's belief that one cannot properly understand any one of these Critiques except in the context of the other two. The essays can be read individually, but read together they offer (...) a comprehensive guide to the main themes of the most influential of all modern philosophical systems. (shrink)

Marx was barely 25 when he produced this astonishing rich body of work-including economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and On the Jewish Question.

It has been argued that Kant's all-consuming efforts to place autonomy at the center of philosophy have had, in the long-run, the unintended effect of leading to the widespread discrediting of philosophy and of undermining the notion of autonomy itself. The result of this 'Copernican revolution' has seemed to many commentators the de-centring, if not the self-destruction, of the autonomous self. In this major reinterpretation of Kant and the post-Kantian response to his critical philosophy, Karl Ameriks argues that such (...) a view of Kant rests on a series of misconceptions. By providing the first systematic study of the underlying structure of the reaction to Kant's critical philosophy in the writings of Reinhold, Fichte and Hegel, Karl Ameriks challenges the presumptions that dominate popular approaches to the concept of freedom, and to the interpretation of the relation between the Enlightenment, Kant and post-Kantian thought. (shrink)

2015 Reprint of Original 1936 American Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Karl Mannheim was a Hungarian-born sociologist, influential in the first half of the 20th century and one of the founding fathers of classical sociology as well as a founder of the sociology of knowledge. His essays on the sociology of knowledge have become classics in the field. In "Ideology and Utopia" he argued that the application of the term ideology ought (...) to be broadened. He traced the history of the term from what he called a "particular" view. This view originally saw ideology as the perhaps deliberate obscuring of facts. Over time this view gave way to a "total" conception (most notably in Marx), which argued that a whole social group's thought was formed by its social position (e.g. the proletariat's beliefs were conditioned by their relationship to the means of production). However, he called for a further step, which he called a general total conception of ideology, in which it was recognized that everyone's beliefs-including the social scientist's-were a product of the context they were created in. Mannheim points out social class, location and generation as the greatest determinants of knowledge. He feared this could lead to relativism but proposed the idea of relationism as an antidote. To uphold the distinction, he maintained that the recognition of different perspectives according to differences in time and social location appears arbitrary only to an abstract and disembodied theory of knowledge. (shrink)

First published in English in 1953, this important book from eminent philosopher Karl Jaspers deals with the philsophy of the history of mankind. More specifically, its avowed aim is to assist in heightening our awareness of the _present_ by placing it within the framework of the long obscurity of prehistory and the boundless realm of possibilities which lie within the undecided future.This analysis is split into 3 parts: World history The present and the future The meaning of history.

Immanuel Kant's work changed the course of modern philosophy; Karl Ameriks examines how. He compares the philosophical system set out in Kant's Critiques with the work of the major philosophers before and after Kant. Individual essays provide case studies in support of Ameriks's thesis that late 18th-century reactions to Kant initiated an "historical turn," after which historical and systematic considerations became joined in a way that fundamentally distinguishes philosophy from science and art.

First published in English in 1953, this important book from eminent philosopher Karl Jaspers deals with the philsophy of the history of mankind. More specifically, its avowed aim is to assist in heightening our awareness of the _present_ by placing it within the framework of the long obscurity of prehistory and the boundless realm of possibilities which lie within the undecided future.This analysis is split into 3 parts: World history The present and the future The meaning of history.

This book explores the main stages and key concepts in the development of Kant's critical philosophy, from the early 1760s to the 1790s. Karl Ameriks provides a detailed and concise account of the main ways in which the later critical works provide a plausible defense of the conception of humanity's fundamental end that Kant turned to after reading Rousseau in the 1760s. Separate essays are devoted to each of the three Critiques, as well as to earlier notes and lectures (...) and several of Kant's later writings on history and religion. A final section devotes three chapters to post-Kantian developments in German Romanticism, accounts of tragedy up through Nietzsche, and contemporary philosophy. The theme of an elliptical path is shown to be relevant to these writers as well as to many aspects of Kant's own life and work. The topics of the book include fundamental issues in epistemology and metaphysics, with a new defense of the Amerik's 'moderate' interpretation of transcendental idealism. (shrink)

First published in English in 1933, this detailed philosophical examination of the contemporary state and nature of mankind is a seminal work by influential German philosopher Karl Jaspers. Elucidating his theories on a variety of topics pertaining to contemporary and future human existence, _Man in the Modern Age_ is an ambitious and wide-ranging work, which meditates upon such diverse subjects as the tension between mass-order and individual human life, our present conception of human life and the potential for mankind’s (...) future existence. Written shortly before the accession to power of Hitler and National Socialism, this is not only an important philosophical work, but also an insightful and intriguing historical document. (shrink)

'"Aus den zahllosen Abhandlungen zum Werk Friedrich Nietzsche ragt die Gesamtdarstellung von Karl Jaspers immer noch als einzigartige Leistung heraus. Nietzsche wird als,großer Philosoph' historisch und systematisch umfassend vorgestellt. Von unverminderter Aktualität ist das souveräne, auf alle verfügbaren medizinischen Daten gestützte Urteil des Psychiaters Jaspers über Nietzsches Krankheit." Prof. Dr. Volker Gerhardt.

A new 2023 translation into American English of Marx's influential 1845 "Die heilige Familie oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik" from the original manuscript. This edition includes a new introduction by the translator and reference materials including a Glossary of Philosophic and Economic Marxist Terminology, an Index of Personalities Associated with Marx and a Timeline of Marx’s Life and Works. This is Volume IV in The Complete Works of Karl Marx by NL Press. The Holy Family is Marx's first foray (...) into building his dialectical materialism, while still attacking the modern Hegelians.The main title itself is mocking Bruno Bauer's "Pure Criticism", which Marx parodies with the nonsense "Critical Criticism". This is the first publication Engels and Marx published together, only one year after meeting in person in 1844. Here he is attacking other Hegelians and Critical Philosophy writ large, arguing against Hegel's idealistic dialectic for his own dialectal Epicurean Materialism which he began to outline in his Ph.D. Thesis "Differenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie" in 1841. Marx believed that Critical Philosophy in general (kritische Philosophie), which sees the most fundamental task of Philosophy as primarily judging the possibility of knowledge before asserting any claim of knowledge itself, as misguided in its Platonic Ontology. The entire work is a polemic against "The Holy Family" of young Hegelians, mocking and insulting them on every page. He uses sarcastic parody, nearly Horatian satire, specifically towards Christianity- "Criticism so loved the masses that it sent its only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life". Ultimately, he declared these dilettante philosophers "false prophets" and himself the true prophet of Atheistic, Skeptical and Materialistic Humanism. Here he also argues that the only way to deal with "the Jewish problem" is by eradicating Christianity and all metaphysical beliefs because the "bourgeois morality" gets in the way of implementing a true, final solution to the muddying of pure European nationality by the existence of the Jews. Here we see the foundations of the National-Socialist movement which declared "there is no God but the German people" and started eradicating millions in the name of Humanism and Progress. (shrink)

Gegenpol zur Philosophie der Aufklärung. Karl Löwith thematisiert in seinem Essay zur Geschichtsphilosophie die biblisch verheißene Erlösung der christlichen Menschheit. Schon unmittelbar nach der Veröffentlichung 1949 und 1953 sorgte das Buch weltweit für Furore. Angesichts der heute lebhaft geführten Debatte um das "Ende der Geschichte" und die Thesen Fukuyamas hat Löwiths brillanter philosophischer Essay an Aktualität nichts verloren.

In this volume, Karl Ameriks explores 'Kantian subjects' in three senses. In Part I, he first clarifies the most distinctive features-such as freedom and autonomy-of Kant's notion of what it is for us to be a subject. Other chapters then consider related 'subjects' that are basic topics in other parts of Kant's philosophy, such as his notions of necessity and history. Part II examines the ways in which many of us, as 'late modern,' have been highly influenced by Kant's (...) philosophy and its indirect effect on our self-conception through successive generations of post-Kantians, such as Hegel and Schelling, and early Romantic writers such as Hölderlin, Schlegel, and Novalis, thus making us 'Kantian subjects' in a new historical sense. By defending the fundamentals of Kant's ethics in reaction to some of the latest scholarship in the opening chapters, Ameriks offers an extensive argument that Hölderlin expresses a valuable philosophical position that is much closer to Kant than has generally been recognized. He also argues that it was necessary for Kant's position to be supplemented by the new conception, introduced by the post-Kantians, of philosophy as fundamentally historical, and that this conception has had a growing influence on the most interesting strands of Anglophone as well as Continental philosophy. -/- . (shrink)

In The Lesson of this Century Popper's purpose is to warn us against the increasing violence and egoism of our society. What solutions can we offer to the problems of the environment, demography and corruption? How can we prevent the violence our society engenders? How can we preserve our democratic system while at the same time paving the way for global peace? Popper believes that the philosopher has a duty to intervene in politics and he utters a clear call to (...) all of us to recognise our responsibilities. He reminds us that it is our actions which will create the world of tomorrow. The interviews in this volume were originally given to the Italian journalist Giancarlo Bosetti. The volume also includes the transcript of an interview about the moral dangers of television not previously available in English. (shrink)

Karl Reinhardt, einer der wichtigsten Altphilologen des 20. Jahrhunderts, hat sich in seinen Untersuchungen uber Platons Mythen, die 1927 erschienen und zuletzt 1969 in einem Sammelband neu aufgelegt wurden, mit diesen ratselhaften Passagen aus Platons Dialogen beschaftigt. Mit seiner grundlegend neuen Deutung des Verhaltnisses des Mythischen und Rationalen bei Platon hat Reinhardt ein neues Kapitel der Platon-Interpretation aufgeschlagen. Seine Auslegung des Mythos als poetischer Selbstentfaltung des Logos hat von ihrer Aktualitat nichts verloren und leistet einen wichtigen Beitrag auch zur (...) Mythos-Forschung der Gegenwart. Die Neupublikation stellt dem Leser ein grosses Werk der Platon-Literatur wieder zur Verfugung. (shrink)

Two of the most brilliant German thinkers of the twentieth century were Karl Jaspers and Rudolf Bultmann. Jaspers, the philosopher, and Bultmann, the theologian, were both influenced by the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and the rise of the existentialist movement. Late in their careers they interacted on the subject of Bultmann's attempt to divest Christianity of its mythical components and make sense of it in more modern terms. This work is a compilation of articles by Jaspers and Bultmann that (...) formed a running debate originally published in various scholarly journals. The first half of the book is Jaspers' lengthy and critical analysis of Bultmann's interpretation of Christianity, in which Jaspers essentially rejects the premise that Christianity or any other religion can or should be understood without its mythical framework. Jaspers charges that Bultmann has radically misunderstood the nature of myth and that myth is an irreplaceable form of symbolic communication. In the second part, Bultmann defends his approach, suggesting that Jaspers has not really understood his intent or meaning. Contemporary people today, schooled in the scientific tradition, are likely to reject the biblical texts because of their miraculous claims and supernatural content. Bultmann insists that the scholarly, scientific study of the Bible is a legitimate way to reveal its true message, apart from all the supernatural trappings. Finally, in response, Jaspers accepts some of Bultmann's clarifications but takes him to task on the subject of justification by faith, which he feels Bultmann defines too narrowly and too exclusively. This stimulating work by two penetrating minds will give anyone interested in perennial philosophical and theological questions much to ponder. (shrink)

In this essay I revisit The Prince and the Discourses and argue that across the design of these two texts on the theme of conspiracy Machiavelli constructs an ambush on Medici princes. I reconsider Mary Dietz's (1986), and Langton's and Dietz's (1987) suggestion that Machiavelli's The Prince was a deceptive political act through an exploration of the link Dietz and Sheldon Wolin (2004) draw between Machiavelli's method and Renaissance artistry. I suggest that Machiavelli applied a one-point linear perspective – a (...) scientific and visual method of pictorial representation and geometrical modelling that emerged for the first time in the Renaissance – to the political field. I test this hypothesis on the theme of conspiracy in Machiavelli’s work by arguing that The Prince ultimately presents one vantage point – that of the prince – while the Discourses offers another – that of the conspirators. I argue that a blind spot is created by these two texts when they are jointly considered: conspirators seduced, recruited, and trained by the Discourses eliminate a prince caught off guard for having followed the advice on conspiracy in The Prince. (shrink)

Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes. Quentin Skinner. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. xvi-477. ISBN 0-521-55436-5. 35.00.

Zusammenfassung Die „romantische Liebe“ bildet unter modernen Bedingungen eine zentrale Quelle sozialer Anerkennung. Ihr nicht selten durch die Verwendung religiöser Semantik signalisierter Bedeutungszuwachs sorgt aber zugleich für eine Steigerung der Verletzlichkeit des einzelnen. Der damit beschriebenen spannungsvollen Eigenart, die der Anerkennungssphäre der Liebe unter modernen Bedingungen zukommt, wird in diesem Text nachgegangen. Dabei stehen zwei Autorinnen der Gegenwart, die sich mit den Ambivalenzen heutiger Liebesbeziehungen besonders eindrücklich auseinandergesetzt haben, im Fokus: die Kultursoziologin Eva Illouz und die Schriftstellerin Sally Rooney. Nach (...) einem einführenden Blick auf die den beiden Autorinnen gemeinsame Thematik, geht es um spezifische Unsicherheitserfahrungen, die sich mit dem Aufstieg der Liebe zu einer zentralen Anerkennungssphäre verbinden. Dann wird die für romantische Beziehungen ebenfalls charakteristische Spannung zwischen Anerkennung und Autonomie ins Auge gefasst. Es folgen schließlich theologische Überlegungen, die an Illouz‘ eigene Ausführungen zur religiösen Dimension der Liebe anknüpfen. (shrink)

Esta obra comprende quince ensayos de Karl Löwith publicados entre 1932 y 1970 en los que el filósofo alemán va desgranando su postura respecto a los núcleos esenciales de la filosofía de nuestro siglo. Inmerso en su época, logró, sin embargo, la distancia necesaria para cuestionar sus fundamentos: el nihilismo, el historicismo y el decisionismo.

Do animals possess rights? The argument works from marginal cases: we attribute value to humans because of some minimal set of characteristics thathumans possess. Animals possess these characteristics; therefore they deserve moral consideration. Such arguments depend on a functionalist attribution of value. Any turn to functionalism will necessarily be detrimental to human dignity, since some humans will not qualify. I will show how the methods used to establish animal rights are generally some form of functionalism, with particular emphasis on Peter (...) Singer and Tom Regan. Functionalism will always be arbitrary, since it assigns value on the basis of facts that do not necessitate such values. A better alternative is Aquinas’s theory of human dignity, that humans are valuable because of their supernatural destiny. This theory cannot be proven, but neither can the functionalist argument. Further, the human dignity argument is more rational, since it avoids many of the problems of the functionalist animal rights position. (shrink)