Fifty years after his death, Walter Benjamin remains one of the great cultural critics of this century. Despite his renown, however, Benjamin's philosophical ideas remain elusive/m-/often considered a disaggregated set of thoughts not meant to cohere. This book provides a more systematic perspective on Benjamin, laying claim to his status as a philosopher and situating his work in the context of its time. Exploring Benjamin's theory of language, spoken and nonspoken, Rainer Rochlitz shows how Benjamin reconceptualized traditional ideas (...) of language, art, and history. Offering an expansive assessment of a unique twentieth-century thinker, this volume provides an indispensable guide for readers of Benjamin's recently released collected works. (shrink)

Bloch's correspondence, published the year of his hundredth birthday, evokes a period of German philosophy which today seems forever gone. In exile in Switzerland at the outbreak of WWI, Czechoslovakia and the United States during die Nazi period and in bodi Germanies after 1945, Bloch epitomized an extraordinary symbiosis of the Jewish and the German spirits. Benjamin, Adorno, and Bloch were assimilated Jews unaware of their identity (or difference) except dirough the disdainful look of others. They saw themselves primarily within (...) the tradition of German philosophy. In German Idealism and, above all, in Schelling and in the Kabbalah, Bloch discovered die theology of immanence in the tradition of Isaac Luria and Jakob Boehme. (shrink)

L'oeuvre d'Habermas témoigne de la façon dont le philosophe, dans son rôle d'intellectuel, peut agir de l'intérieur sur la cité, en se mêlant aux débats publics et en s'efforçant de les arracher aux abîmes de la déraison. Ces contributions, dont celle d'Habermas lui-même, reflètent le va-et-vient entre autoréflexion propre à la raison philosophique et sa projection théorique et pratique dans l'espace public politique.

L’essai « De la tolérance religieuse aux droits culturels » fait partie des travaux de J. Habermas sur la théorie politique. Il faut cependant le situer dans le contexte de ses réflexions les plus récentes sur le statut des religions qui subsistent dans les sociétés « postsécularisées ». Il se rattache donc bien à sa théorie de la démocratie1 et aux essais de théorie..

Si la " critique philosophique de l'art " peut constituer l'axe central d'une approche de la pensée de Walter Benjamin, c'est d'abord parce que l'art représente l'élément par lequel l'homme accède à sa propre temporalité. Le passé individuel, l'origine commune, le projet militant se cristallisent dans le geste artistique. La mémoire elle-même est une forme d'art, non moins que l'anticipation d'un avenir désirable. Investi du pouvoir de définir ainsi l'humanité de l'homme, l'art devient éminemment critiquable : Benjamin n'a jamais cru (...) que pratiquer la " critique " dispensât d'être philosophe. La critique, au contraire, n'a d'autre lieu que la philosophie, sous sa forme la plus épurée. On touche ici du doigt le fascinant pouvoir intégrateur de la pensée benjaminienne, capable de conjuguer l'autobiographique et le politique, la précision analytique et l'élan éthique, la déconstruction et la métaphysique. Quand Benjamin a été si souvent morcelé en personnalités contradictoires, sous la plume parfois d'un seul et même commentateur, c'est une image très cohérente, très homogène, qui nous semble ressortir des diverses contributions de ce recueil. (shrink)

In his book “Medical Philosophy: Conceptual issues in Medicine”, Mario Bunge provides a unique account of medical philosophy that is deeply rooted in a realist ontology he calls “systemism”. According to systemism, the world consists of systems and their parts, and systems possess emergent properties that their parts lack. Events within systems may form causes and effects that are constantly conjoined via particular mechanisms. Bunge supports the views of the evidence-based medicine movement that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) provide the best (...) evidence to establish the truth of causal hypothesis; in fact, he argues that _only_ RCTs have this ability. Here, we argue that Bunge neglects the important feature of patients being open systems which are in steady interaction with their environment. We show that accepting this feature leads to counter-intuitive consequences for his account of medical hypothesis testing. In particular, we point out that (i) the confirmation of hypotheses is inherently stochastic and affords a probabilistic account of both confirmation and evidence which we provide here; (ii) RCTs are neither necessary nor sufficient to establish the truth of a causal claim; (iii) testing of causal hypotheses requires taking into account background knowledge and the context within which an intervention is applied. We conclude that there is no “best” research methodology in medicine, but that different methodologies should coexist in a complementary fashion. (shrink)

Rainer Forst develops a critical theory capable of deciphering the deficits and potentials inherent in contemporary political reality. This calls for a perspective which is immanent to social and political practices and at the same time transcends them. Forst regards society as a whole as an ‘order of justification’ comprising complexes of different norms referring to institutions and corresponding practices of justification. The task of a ‘critique of relations of justification’, therefore, is to analyse such legitimations with regard to (...) their validity and genesis and to explore the social and political asymmetries leading to inequalities in the ‘justification power’ which enables persons or groups to contest given justifications and to create new ones. Starting from the concept of justification as a basic social practice, Forst develops a theory of political and social justice, human rights and democracy, as well as of power and of critique itself. In so doing, he engages in a critique of a number of contemporary approaches in political philosophy and critical theory. Finally, he also addresses the question of the utopian horizon of social criticism. (shrink)

Interactive social cognition theory and approaches of developmental psychology widely agree that central aspects of emotional and social experience arise in the unfolding of processes of embodied social interaction. Bi-directional dynamical couplings of bodily displays such as facial expressions, gestures, and vocalizations have repeatedly been described in terms of coordination, synchrony, mimesis, or attunement. In this paper, I propose conceptualizing such dynamics rather as processes of affective resonance. Starting from the immediate phenomenal experience of being immersed in interaction, I develop (...) the philosophical notion of affective resonance to refer to a dynamic entanglement of moving and being-moved in relation. The concept of affective resonance makes visible that the interaction dynamic itself creates an affective experience rather than transmitting internal feeling states between pre-existent individuals. This leads to a philosophical framework in which relationality and ontogeny are primary over separate individuals, and in which the naturalistic distinction of a fundamental physical level versus an emerging level of social processes has to be given up. (shrink)

Der Mensch ist das Wesen, das sich zu seiner Vergänglichkeit, seiner Sterblichkeit und Endlichkeit verhält. Das führt ihn zu Selbstdeutungen unterschiedlichster Art, aber die Frage, die der Mensch sich in Anbetracht von Geburt, Liebe und Tod selbst ist, bleibt letztlich offen. Rainer Marten zeigt, wie literarische, theologische und philosophische Entwürfe, die Seins- und Lebensfrage zu beantworten, kritisch besehen Gestaltungen ihrer Unbeantwortbarkeit sind. Von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart haben Dichter, Theologen und Philosophen kraft ihrer poetischen Selbstauslegung an das (...) Geheimnis endlichen menschlichen Lebens gerührt. Es ist der Mensch, der sich zum einen auf seine Endlichkeit zu besinnen vermag und der zum anderen anfängt zu verstehen, dass er mehr ist, als er weiß und wissen kann. (shrink)

Over the past 15 years, Rainer Forst has developed a fundamental research programme within the tradition of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. The core of this programme is a moral account of the basic right of justification that humans owe to one another as rational beings. This account is put to work by Forst in articulating - both historically and philosophically - the contexts and form of justice and of toleration. The result is a powerful theoretical framework within which to (...) address issues such as transnational justice and multicultural toleration. In this volume, Forst sets out his ideas in an extended essay, which is responded to be influential interlocutors including: Andrea Sangiovanni, Amy Allen, Kevin Olson, Anthony Laden, Eva Erman and Simon Caney. The volume concludes with Forst's response to his interlocutors. (shrink)

This chapter explores the relationship between republican democracy and justice by comparing Philip Pettit's notion of neo-republicanism with that of Immanuel Kant. It begins by describing a republican, political conception of justice as nondomination and explaining why the discourse of republicanism and that of theories of justice often remain at odds with one another. It then considers the basis of a republican conception of justice as nondomination and locates it within the principle of justification, along with Pettit's idea of autonomy (...) and respect. It also examines the notions of ‘arbitrariness’ and ‘domination’ as well as Pettit's ‘negative republicanism’ and its emphasis on legally and politically secure freedom of choice. The chapter argues that a Kantian interpretation of modern republicanism is more convincing than Pettit's ‘negative republicanism’. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Existieren, Wahrsein und Verstehen" verfügbar.

Only rarely do foreign visitors find their way to the Temple Garden of Philosophy, located away from the busy shopping streets and off the beaten tourist track in the Japanese capital. In this book, the World Sages, to whose memory the shrine in the centre of the Garden is dedicated, are presented as existential thinkers in four essays by Japanese and German scholars. In a detailed introduction, the author and translator of the volume sketches an intellectual framework that places the (...) Four Sages within the parameters of global humanism. Perusing the recent contributions by Jan Assmann and Jürgen Habermas, the epilogue offers a discussion of the controversial thesis of a Eurasian Axial Age around 600 BCE. With contributions by Prof. em. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Volker Gerhardt, Prof. em. Dr. Makio Takemura and Prof. em. Dr. Kōhei Yoshida. (shrink)

Data analytics and data-driven approaches in Machine Learning are now among the most hailed computing technologies in many industrial domains. One major application is predictive analytics, which is used to predict sensitive attributes, future behavior, or cost, risk and utility functions associated with target groups or individuals based on large sets of behavioral and usage data. This paper stresses the severe ethical and data protection implications of predictive analytics if it is used to predict sensitive information about single individuals or (...) treat individuals differently based on the data many unrelated individuals provided. To tackle these concerns in an applied ethics, first, the paper introduces the concept of “predictive privacy” to formulate an ethical principle protecting individuals and groups against differential treatment based on Machine Learning and Big Data analytics. Secondly, it analyses the typical data processing cycle of predictive systems to provide a step-by-step discussion of ethical implications, locating occurrences of predictive privacy violations. Thirdly, the paper sheds light on what is qualitatively new in the way predictive analytics challenges ethical principles such as human dignity and the (liberal) notion of individual privacy. These new challenges arise when predictive systems transform statistical inferences, which provide knowledge about the cohort of training data donors, into individual predictions, thereby crossing what I call the “prediction gap”. Finally, the paper summarizes that data protection in the age of predictive analytics is a collective matter as we face situations where an individual’s (or group’s) privacy is violated using dataotherindividuals provide about themselves, possibly even anonymously. (shrink)