In der modernen Hirnforschung wird die Frage nach der Herkunft des »Mentalen« erneut kontrovers diskutiert. Kann es z. B. »freie Handlungsentscheidungen« angesichts der kausal bedingten physischen Hirnvorgänge geben? Hier ist die Überzeugung zu prüfen, es könnten den physischen »Korrelaten« des Mentalen trotz eines Sinnverlustes die ausschlaggebenden Einsichten entnommen werden.Ewald Richter zeigt: Wird ohne nähere Begründung - ausgehend von sinnlichen Wahrnehmungen bis hin zur Erkenntnis und den ihr aufgestockten Bereichen - jede mögliche Erfahrung bereits als zugeschnitten auf ein objektivierendes (...) Verhalten aufgefaßt, dann unterbleibt eine alles entscheidende Rückfrage. Insbesondere wird der Blick verstellt sowohl für die Berechtigung verschiedener Seinsweisen als auch für die »Weise des Begegnens« von »Seiendem selbst«, welches kein »Abbilden« ist. Verfehlt wird nicht zuletzt die Frage nach der »Gründung« des »Selbst« in einem vorgängig offenen Bereich. (shrink)

This massive two-volume reference presents a comprehensive selection of the most important works on the foundations of mathematics. While the volumes include important forerunners like Berkeley, MacLaurin, and D'Alembert, as well as such followers as Hilbert and Bourbaki, their emphasis is on the mathematical and philosophical developments of the nineteenth century. Besides reproducing reliable English translations of classics works by Bolzano, Riemann, Hamilton, Dedekind, and Poincare, William Ewald also includes selections from Gauss, Cantor, Kronecker, and Zermelo, all translated here (...) for the first time. (shrink)

'Subjetividade e Literatura' tem como ponto de partida o movimento historiográfico do final do século XX. Reúne 16 estudos - e pesquisadores de diferentes áreas do conhecimento - que procuram fundir literatura e história, ou contos e psicanálise, ou ainda arte e romance, objetivando estabelecer uma forma de compreender a realidade culturalmente construída. Esta obra trata da subjetividade, mas também trata de livros, de como eles descrevem - ou interpretam - o que as pessoas percebem e sentem.

This commentary examines Glenberg's characterization of “suppression” in light of negative priming and related phenomena. After offering a radically different slant on suppression, an attempt is made to weave this alternative version into Glenberg's provocative discussion of embodied memories.

Gerhard Richter's groundbreaking study argues that the concept of "afterness" is a key figure in the thought and aesthetics of modernity. It pursues questions such as: What does it mean for something to "follow" something else? Does that which follows mark a clear break with what came before it, or does it in fact tacitly perpetuate its predecessor as a consequence of its inevitable indebtedness to the terms and conditions of that from which it claims to have departed? Indeed, (...) is not the very act of breaking with, and then following upon, a way of retroactively constructing and fortifying that from which the break that set the movement of following into motion had occurred? The book explores the concept and movement of afterness as a privileged yet uncanny category through close readings of writers such as Kant, Kafka, Heidegger, Bloch, Benjamin, Brecht, Adorno, Arendt, Lyotard, and Derrida. It shows how the vexed concepts of afterness, following, and coming after shed new light on a constellation of modern preoccupations, including personal and cultural memory, translation, photography, hope, and the historical and conceptual specificity of what has been termed "after Auschwitz." The study's various analyses—across a heterogeneous collection of modern writers and thinkers, diverse historical moments of articulation, and a range of media—conspire to illuminate Lyotard's apodictic statement that "after philosophy comes philosophy. But it has been altered by the 'after.'" As Richter's intricate study demonstrates, much hinges on our interpretation of the "after." After all, our most fundamental assumptions concerning modern aesthetic representation, conceptual discourse, community, subjectivity, and politics are at stake. (shrink)

Published posthumously in 1908, Ecce Homo was written in 1888 and completed just a few weeks before Nietzsche’s complete mental collapse. Its outrageously egotistical review of the philosopher’s life and works—featuring chapters called Why I Am So Wise and Why I Write Such Good Books—are redeemed from mere arrogance by masterful language and ever-relevant ideas. In addition to settling scores with his many personal and philosophical enemies, Nietzsche emphasizes the importance of questioning traditional morality, establishing autonomy, and making a commitment (...) to creativity. Essential reading for students of philosophy, this unique memoir is crucial to an understanding of Nietzsche’s other works. (shrink)

Although Walter Benjamin's writings are considered to be among the most powerful theoretical enterprises of the twentieth century, his ideas are resistant to cooptation by the doctrines of various critical programs. These essays engage this resistance by examining the ghostly in Benjamin's work. The contributors show that the haunting truths Benjamin offers point towards new forms of responsibility. These truths reside in a figurative elsewhere, a ghostly space that his texts delimit but never fully inhabit, and these essays seek to (...) do justice to the ghosts of Benjamin. Issues explored include: the status of the image in Benjamin's literary reflections and in his meditations on cinema and visual culture; abiding Benjaminian notions of messianism, aura, reproducibility, semblance, and melancholy; Benjamin's relation to Freud; his innovative rethinking of history, virtuality, and translation; and his reflections on tragedy and prophecy, the geometrical dimensions of writing, and the relation between eros and language. (shrink)

Die gängigen Prognosen, nach denen die Religionen im Kontext der Moderne oder im Zuge der Globalisierung an Bedeutung verlieren würden, haben sich nicht bestätigt. Das Gegenteil ist der Fall: Jenseits von nihilistischen Entwürfen und virtuellen Konstruktionen öffneten sich auch und gerade in der Literatur Räume für die Belebung religiöser Weltsicht. Ausgehend von Heinrich Böll und seiner Anfang der 1960er Jahre eingeleiteten Distanzierung von der Institution Kirche, wird am Beispiel von Botho Strauß und Peter Handke, die seit den 1970er und 1980er (...) Jahren eine ins Metaphysische zielende Subjektivität repräsentieren, eine Renaissance des Religiösen konstatiert, die sich in den Werken des jüngeren Autors Ralf Rothmann seit den 1990er Jahren mit selbstbewusster Deutlichkeit fortschreibt. Anhand der geistesgeschichtlichen Trias Gnostizismus, Philosophie und Mystik nimmt die Verfasserin eine Fokussierung vor, die die ästhetischen Konzeptionen der Autoren deutlich werden lässt und sie zueinander in Beziehung setzt. (shrink)

This paper presents the case of the post-crisis discursive defence of shadow banking in the Netherlands to argue, first, that there is a need to dust off older elite theories and adapt them to post-democratic conditions where there are no widely shared ‘political formulas’ to secure mass support for elite projects. Second, that temporality should be taken more seriously; it is when stories fail that elite storytelling can be observed in practice. As new ‘political formulas’ are minted and become established, (...) elites can again hope to withdraw from the political scene and leave policy-making to the self-evidence of output legitimacy and/or the perpetuum mobile of There-Is-No-Alternative. This suggests that elite theory should replace an epochal reading of post-democracy with a more conjunctural one. (shrink)

Mental health professionals who care for asylum seekers in Western European countries increasingly encounter problems for which standard diagnostic and therapeutic protocols and institutional healthcare policies offer no ready answers. In the following case vignettes some of these problems can be identified.

The author offers a conceptual investigation of the tension between openness and protection in well-developed welfare states. Because of a combination of demographic tendencies and labor market shortages, a growing number of European welfare states is currently exploring market-led immigration policies. However, the level of protection these welfare states offer seems hard to reconcile with the low threshold markets that are needed to incorporate newcomers. The author argues that the “solution”lies not so much in a clear political choice for either (...) but rather in the coordinated institutionalization of differentiated citizenship rights. The author illustrates this case with examples taken from the Dutch context, claiming further that the particular combination of corporatist welfare arrangements and the tradition of lenient enforcement in the Netherlands provides a “natural”habitat for the kind of regime pluralism that differentiated citizenship requires. (shrink)

Department of Geography and Planning, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands There is a growing sense of dissatisfaction among political philosophers with the practical sterility and empirical inadequacy of the discipline. Post-Rawlsian philosophy is wrestling with the need to construct a ‘contextualized morality’ that is sensitive to the particularities and complexities of actual moral reasoning but does not succumb to the temptations of relativism. We argue that this predicament is due to its inability to take the pluralism of our moral universe, (...) the multi-layeredness of our social reality, the indeterminacy of our normative principles and the complexity of our practical reasoning seriously. To incorporate these properties of the ‘human condition’ we have constructed a complex evaluative framework, balancing moral, ethico-political, prudential and realist criteria. We argue that political philosophy new style is well advised to adopt such a framework and to position itself, as a true ‘art’, between political philosophy old style and the social sciences. Thus political philosophy is better equipped to deal with the big tradeoffs of today, rekindle our utopian hopes and regain political bite. Key Words: comparative institutionalism • evaluation studies • political philosophy • political theory. (shrink)

Gegen das Streben der Moderne nach Widerspruchsfreiheit, Ordnung und Einheit aktiviert die Postmoderne die Begriffe Differenz, Widerstreit und Ambivalenz. Dieser Wandel lat auch die Bildungsphilosophie nicht unberuhrt. In diesem Buch wird untersucht, welche Auswirkungen postmoderne Ideen auf Bildungsphilosophie und -praxis haben konnen. Im Zentrum der Auseinandersetzung steht die Kritik an der modernen Identitats- und Subjektkategorie und der Versuch, diese aus postmoderner Sicht neu zu bestimmen und gewinnbringend auf die Erwachsenenbildung zu beziehen.

Rule-following is a normative doing and therefore needs to be reconsidered in a metaethical framework. Rule-following will be discussed in the light of cognitivism and non-cognitivism. It will be shown that neither cognitivism nor non-cognitivism are sufficiently good accounts for conceptualizing rule-following, because they are held captive by a quasi-mechanistical picture of rule-following. This idea stems from Stanley Cavell´s and John McDowell´s approach to rule-following. McDowell appeals to the idea that we participate in “shared forms of life” and therefore are (...) able to follow rules correctly. I believe that his quietist view can be amplified by conceptualizing different modes of following a rule. We can also follow a rule e.g. ironically and still grasp the conceptual content of the rule adequately. (shrink)