Seit dem byzantinischen Bilderstreit und dem Bildersturm der Reformation ist nicht mehr in solcher Intensität über Bilder nachgedacht worden wie in den letzten Jahrzehnten. Neben der Archäologie und der Kunstgeschichte haben sich zahlreiche weitere Fächer an Fragestellungen rund um das Bild geradezu festgebissen. Angesichts dessen geht einer der bedeutendsten Kunsthistoriker der Gegenwart der Frage nach, warum Begriff und Geltung sowie Macht und Ohnmacht von Bildern so hartnäckig verfolgte Themen unserer Tage geworden sind.

Shaping the Future maps out the ascetic practices of a Neitzschean way of life. Hutter argues that Nietzsche's doctrines are attempts and "temptations" that aim to provoke his free-spirited readers into changing themselves by putting philosophy into practice in their lives.

1. Im Angesicht der Zeit.--2. Im Umkreis der Kunst.--3. Im Horizont des Absoluten.

Literature on media ethics often tries to close the gap between theory and professional practice. So do three new books by T. Harcup, K. Sanders, and S. L. Bracci and C. G. Christians, of which only Sanders stably positions herself on both sides. She offers outlines of moral philosophical positions where she favors the virtue ethics approach that deals with a person's character and moral abilities. At the same time Sanders analyzes typical conflicts that arise in the everyday work of (...) journalists. Sanders and the more practical oriented former journalist Harcup follow the same fundamental question: "What is journalism for?", but they give different answers. To Harcup, the basic task of journalism lies in the effort to create publicness, i. e., to override barriers of social communication. To Sanders, journalism exists just to tell the truth. Much can be learned from the ‘theorists for contemporary ethics’, such as Charles Taylor and Jurgen Habermas, who are presented and interpreted in Bracci and Christian's collection, about the relationship between truth and publicness and how this relationship might stimulate the practice of journalism. Journalists' consideration of truth cannot be the necessary prerequisite for the publication of information; instead, the freedom of discourse is the necessary precondition to ensure that the decision whether and to what extent an information is of public interest remains in the hands of the public itself. (shrink)

Fifty years ago Hartman studied the barrier transmission time of wave packets (J Appl Phys 33:3427–3433, 1962). He was inspired by the tunneling experiments across thin insulating layers at that time. For opaque barriers he calculated faster than light propagation and a transmission time independent of barrier length, which is called the Hartman effect. A faster than light (FTL or superluminal) wave packet velocity was deduced in analog tunneling experiments with microwaves and with infrared light thirty years later. Recently, the (...) conjectured zero time of electron tunneling was claimed to have been observed in ionizing helium inside the barrier. The calculated and measured short tunneling time arises at the barrier front. This tunneling time was found to be universal for elastic fields as well as for electromagnetic fields. Remarkable is that the delay time is the same for the reflected and the transmitted waves in the case of symmetric barriers. Several theoretical physicists predicted this strange nature of the tunneling process. However, even with this background many members of the physics community do not accept a FTL signal velocity interpretation of the experimental tunneling results. Instead a luminal front velocity was calculated to explain the FTL experimental results frequently. However, Brillouin stated in his book on wave propagation and group velocity that the front velocity is given by the group velocity of wave packets in the case of physical signals, which have only finite frequency bandwidths. Some studies assumed barriers to be cavities and the observed tunneling time does represent the cavity lifetime. We are going to discus these continuing misleading interpretations, which are found in journals and in textbooks till today. (shrink)

Behemoth und Leviathan. Rebellion und Friedensordnung, Bürgerkrieg und souveräne Staatsperson. Die politische Theorie kommt nicht los von den beiden biblischen Ungeheuern, in deren Bildern Thomas Hobbes die politische Moderne bannte. Am Beginn der neueren Deutungen steht Horst Bredekamps Geschichte jenes 'Urbilds des modernen Staates' und seiner Mutationen (Thomas Hobbes. Der Leviathan. Das Urbild des modernen Staates und seine Gegenbilder, 1651?2001. Berlin 1999, 2006). Doch der Leviathan lässt sich nicht ohne seinen Doppelgänger verstehen, das Landtier Behemoth, das politische Symbol der (...) 'revolutionären anarchischen Kraft des Naturzustandes' (Carl Schmitt), dessen Bildgeschichte nicht weniger verwickelt ist. In seinem neuen Buch setzt Horst Bredekamp die politische Geschichte der beiden Untiere fort, indem er den historischen Wandel des hiobschen Monstrums in den Mittelpunkt stellt. Es ist zugleich der Start der neuen Reihe 'Carl-Schmitt-Vorlesungen', in denen die von der Carl-Schmitt-Gesellschaft jährlich in Berlin veranstalteten Vorlesungen veröffentlicht werden. (shrink)

In almost all countries, the transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy caused high unemployment. The governments attempted to ease the changeover to a market economy for the unemployed by introducing several passive and active labour market policies. This paper first points out which effects were to be expected of such policies from the perspective of Austrian Economics. These theoretical hypotheses are then tested empirically. It turns out that the hypotheses deducted from Austrian Economics theory are impressively (...) corroborated by the empirical evidence.Dans presque tous les pays, la transition d’une économie centralement planifiée vers une économie de marché ont provoqué un chômage élevé. Les gouvernements ont essayé d’adoucir la transition vers une économie de marché pour les chômeurs en introduisant plusieurs politiques passives et actives sur le marché du travail. Tout d’abord, cet article souligne quels étaient les effets attendus de telles politiques à la lumière de l’économie autrichienne. Ces hypothèses théoriques sont ensuite testées de manière empirique. Il en ressort que les hypothèses déduites de la théorie économique autrichienne sont corroborées de manière significative par les preuves empiriques. (shrink)

It is difficult to translate the title “Wissen und Glauben” into English, because there is a debate between Kant, Jacobi, Fichte and Hegel behind it. Through Fichtes “Wissenschaftslehre” knowledge has been accepted as the basic element of all scholarship, whereas faith belongs to religion.First of all we will show, that knowledge and faith have an independent root. Each can exist by itself whithout the other one. Secondly, we will show how they complement one another. In fact faith can be sufficient (...) for the individual without knowledge. But faith can only achieve its richness and its public effectiveness together with knowledge, the πλήρωμα of faith needs knowledge. Knowledge on the other hand can neither take its depth nor reach its totality without faith. Knowledge that wants to enlighten itself must rely on faith. Faith shows knowledge that it is neither fully founded on man nor can it be fully considered as an image of the universe. On the one hand faith is criticism of self-empowered knowledge, on the other hand it is the way to surpass knowledge and to complete it. (shrink)

This book challenges the standard view that modern hermeneutics begins with Friedrich Ast and Friedrich Schleiermacher, arguing instead that it is the dialectic of reflective and teleological reason in Kant’s Critique of Judgment that provides the actual proto-hermeneutic foundation. It is revolutionary in doing so by replacing interpretive truth claims by the more appropriate claim of rendering opaque contexts intelligible. Taking Gadamer’s comprehensive analysis of hermeneutics in Truth and Method (1960) as its point of departure, the book turns to Kant’s (...) Critiques, reviewing his major concepts as a coherent system in relation to his sensus communis. At the heart of the book is the interaction between reflective, bottom-up search and teleological, top-down interpretative projection as provided in Part II of the third Critique. This text contends that Kant’s broad definition of nature invites the liberation of the reflective-teleological judgment from its biological exemplifications and so permits us to establish its generalised status as a path-breaking, methodological tool. Kant’s dialectic of reflective search and meaning bestowing, stipulated teleology is asserted to anticipate a series of motifs commonly associated with hermeneutics. Figures covered include Dilthey, Husserl, Ingarden, Heidegger, Gadamer, Apel, Habermas, Ricoeur, Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze, Vattimo, Nancy and Caputo. Their collective contributions to interpretation allow for a review of the evolution of hermeneutics from the perspective of the Kantian critique of the limitations of human cognition. The book is written for the informed, general reader, but will likewise appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students as well as researchers in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)