The paper explores the relationships and interconnections in the philosophical and sociopolitical concepts of Günther Anders and Hannah Arendt. Both philosophers, who were married to each other for a short time, not only shared a similar fate in that they both had to flee from National Socialism, but both dealt with similar questions, albeit in different manners: with Auschwitz and the Holocaust, with the problem of totalitarianism, with the development of the Modern, which is defined by technology and industrial labour. (...) A comparison shows that many themes in the thinking of these philosophers are near to each other, but the methods and foci are other. At the foreground of Anders’ thinking is the question of the destructive influence of modern technology and weapons of mass destruction. However, Arendt concentrates on totalitarian political structures and the possibility of people to take action. Nevertheless, they both are concerned that people’s humanity is at risk under the political and technological conditions of the Modern. (shrink)

Research on perpetrators of genocidal processes and especially of the Holocaust is still puzzled by the fact that most of the atrocities and killings have been executed by ‘ordinary men’, i.e. by persons with a self-concept which would not have indicated that they could become killers. The guiding question of research on genocidal perpetrators is therefore how given moral inhibitions and moral values could have been overcome, or, to put it simply, how good people could have been turned into bad (...) ones. The following article proposes the opposite question: Is it possible that particular moral commitments and principles gave the perpetrators a sense of continuing moral integrity that enabled them to carry out the killings? This socio-psychological proposal is first elaborated theoretically and then illustrated with a case study on Franz Stangl, the commander of the extermination camp of Treblinka. (shrink)

A sequence of theoretical models is constructed as an extension to Leszek Nowak's theory of socialist society to explain important characteristics of the violent party purges in Soviet Stalinism. According to these models, purges are a regular and systemic feature of a socialist system during a certain phase of development (modelled as the phase of social enslavement). Contrary to traditional conceptions which interpret the purges essentially as resulting from the actions of an almost omnipotent, and partly irrational, despot, the models (...) presented here provide an explanation which does not need to conceive Stalin as the architect of terror (Robert Conquest), i.e. as the long-term planner of the terror. However, the concepts presented here preserve the vital arguments of the traditional approach, thereby contradicting the revisionist pattern of interpretation. In particular the models seek to provide a theoretical base for an explanation of the moderation of inner-party terror from 1938. This moderation is interpreted as resulting from a modification of the then existing ideology (and corresponding habits of the party's leadership); a modification which in itself had been stimulated by the disastrous effects of the great purge in 1937/38. This modification can be theoretically conceived as a process of ideological learning. The historical fact that the post-war purges (i.e. the Leningrad affair in 1949 and the Mingrelian affair 1951/52) did not reach such an enormous extent as the purges of the late 1930s may thus be attributed to a process of ideological learning. (shrink)

Both Peter Sloterdijk and Richard David Precht have characteristics of the so-called media intellectuals in their gesture and appearance and also implicitly refer to the protection of human rights. Whereby Sloterdijk seems to be focused on the rights of the individual and his individual interests, a Richard David Precht is more focused on community as well as individual interests. It will be briefly outlined how they can be viewed as representatives of two media tendencies of the media public in the (...) German public - or to establish certain contradictions. (shrink)

Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit dem politischen Vermögen von Menschen, die als ‚Illegale‘ diffamiert werden. In Erinnerung an diverse Aktionen, die vor allem in den letzten Jahren mitunter dramatisch vermitteln, dass Menschen, die nicht als Subjekte in einem bürgerlichen Sinn zählen, selbst in diffizilen Situationen politisch tätig werden, setzt sich dieser Text mit der Frage auseinander, in welchem Sinn es sich dabei um Momente des demokratischen Miteinanders handeln könnte. Im Fokus stehen dabei allerdings weniger sensationelle Momente, auf die sich zumeist (...) das Scheinwerferlicht der Presseagenturen konzentriert, um die transnationale Mobilität von ‚Illegalen‘ gemäß standardisierter Narrative visuell zu fixieren. Es soll anhand einiger Passagen vielmehr diskutiert werden, wie Menschen, denen das Recht abgesprochen wird, da zu sein, nicht selten einen Ungehorsam manifestieren, der am Rande der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft stattfindet und zugleich radikal demokratische Umbrüche markiert. (shrink)

Virtue as Value: A Comparison between Christoph Halbig and Max Scheler The aim of the following contribution is to compare the virtue conceptions of Christoph Halbig and Max Scheler in order to scrutinize their common positions and differences and thus to answer two questions: Firstly, is it true that Scheler's approach is based on the basic assumptions of the recursive theory of virtues, as Halbig asserts this? Secondly, can the virtues be defined as attitudes, or should they be conceived as (...) qualities of the person? In addition, the author examines the connection of virtues and emotions more closely and shows that virtues can be regarded as a kind of transformers from the negative to the positive, because they fix the right way of dealing with negative emotions and because they switch over the negative basic mood into a positive and joyful one. The reflection of these questions is embedded in a constant reference to Aristotle's understanding of virtues. (shrink)

This paper analyses the relatively neglected topic of hierarchy in the philosophical foundation of human rights. It develops a transcendental-discursive approach. This approach develops the idea that all human rights could be derived from a small set of fundamental rights that are interconnected and that incorporate all ulterior possible specific rights. This set is then applied to an analysis of human rights as they have been formulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The claim is that this prior set (...) of transcendental rights is discursively implied whenever we talk about human rights. Thinking about the hierarchy of rights pragmatically means thinking about prioritising their implementation. Some consequences for practical philosophy and politics concerning the role of states, enterprises and world citizenship are then discussed. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 65 Heft: 3 Seiten: 490-503.

In dialogue with the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt and Seyla Benhabib the author draws on the idea of a right to have rights and raises the question under which political conditions asylum can be a subjective right for political refugees. He argues that mere spontaneous acts of humanitarianism will not suffice to define the institutional commitments of liberal democracies in refugee policy. At the same time, no duty for any particular state to take up refugees can be derived from (...) a right to have rights. The quest for institutional solutions for a timely migration and asylum policy will rather enhance the discourses on the self-understanding of liberal democracies. With a critical eye on German asylum legislation and legal practice, the author contends that it will be a task of any co-ordinated European right of asylum to define political persecution in relation to the first dimension of human rights in order to differentiate the right of asylum from immigration legislation. (shrink)

Kant wird oft als einer derjenigen großen Philosophen angesehen, dessen Werk wesentlich zum jetzigen Verständnis der Menschenrechte und Menschenwürde beigetragen hat. Kant scheint, wenn man in seine Schriften schaut, jedoch keine Theorie der Menschenrechte im modernen Sinne gehabt zu haben. Bei näherem Hinsehen zeigt sich folgender Grund: Kant unterscheidet zwischen dem bloß privaten Recht, das dem positiven Recht untergeordnet ist, und dem öffentlichen Recht, das die begrifflichen Bedingungen einer jeden legitimen, legalen Ordnung darstellt. Der Inhalt des öffentlichen Rechts wird bei (...) ihm weder direkt aus einer freistehenden Moraltheorie abgeleitet, noch aus vertraglichen Übereinkünften oder dem positiven Recht. Stattdessen soll es aus den Ermöglichungsbedingungen einer rechtmäßigen Verfassung expliziert werden, unter der allein Ansprüchen auf (ein) „Recht“ irgendeine verbindliche Autorität zukommt. Wenn man diesen Ansatz ernst nimmt, kann man kaum eine Lesart bei Kant finden, die sich mit der modernen Auffassung von Menschenrechten vereinbaren lässt. Warum aber denken dann manche, dass Kant etwas zum modernen Verständnis der Menschenrechte beizutragen hätte? So lauten denn die Leitfragen der Erörterung: Welche Auffassungen in Kants Werk kommen einem zeitgenössischen Verständnis von Menschenrechten am nächsten? Warum jedoch können diese menschrechtlich vielleicht ähnlich klingenden Auffassungen Kants den heutigen Befürwortern der Menschenrechte doch keine Quelle oder Stütze bieten? (shrink)

Rule is commonly conceptualized with reference to the compliance it invokes. In this article, we propose a conception of rule via the practice of resistance instead. In contrast to liberal approaches, we stress the possibility of illegitimate rule, and, as opposed to critical approaches, the possibility of legitimate authority. In the international realm, forms of rule and the changes they undergo can thus be reconstructed in terms of the resistance they provoke. To this end, we distinguish between two types of (...) resistance—opposition and dissidence—in order to demonstrate how resistance and rule imply each other. We draw on two case studies of resistance in and to international institutions to illustrate the relationship between rule and resistance and close with a discussion of the normative implications of such a conceptualization. (shrink)

El artículo destaca la importancia de distinguir entre dos roles diversos que la noción de dignidad humana juega en bioética: uno, como principio de orden jurídico-político, y otro, como estándar moral del trato debido al paciente. Cuando la dignidad es entendida en el primer sentido, nos encontramos con un concepto muy general, que cumple un rol fundacional y de orientación de las normas relacionadas con las prácticas biomédicas. En cambio, cuando es utilizada en el segundo sentido, intenta captar la exigencia (...) moral de tratar siempre al paciente como “persona”, es decir, con el mayor cuidado y respeto. Para clarificar el significado de la dignidad como principio, se apela a la distinción entre principios y normas elaborada en el campo de la filosofía jurídica. La dignidad como estándar moral de la relación médico-paciente se ilustra en base a una serie de estudios empíricos. (shrink)

The article focuses on a controversy between historians and psychoanalysts around the testimonial value of a Holocaust survivor (Serena N.). The survivor’s account of the Auschwitz uprising includes factual exaggerations, which has led historians to discard it. Psychoanalysts on the contrary stressed that the testimony accounted for something else: the possibility of resistance in the concentration camp, which gave the inmates hope in their struggle for survival. Survivors’ testimonies, so the argument, have both an epistemological and an ethical content. While (...) philosophy’s insistence on the epistemological dimension of testimony has long generated a disregard for this ethical dimension, it would be equally wrong to construe a pure ethicality of testimony. Testimony is, first and foremost, an entangled social practice, which has tobe acknowledged in its agonal, its aporetic and its performative implications. (shrink)

Dieser Band versammelt Beiträge zu den drei klassischen Disziplinen der Philosophie – dem Wahren, dem Guten, dem Schönen. Ihre Autoren zeichnet aus, dass sie aus dem akademischen Umfeld Michael Sukales zu seiner Zeit am Institut für Philosophie an der Carl-von-Ossietzky-Universität Oldenburg stammen. Ihm ist dieses Buch zum Abschied von seiner aktiven Lehrtätigkeit in Oldenburg gewidmet. Die thematische Vielfalt der enthaltenen Texte spiegelt die Bandbreite seines philosophischen Schaffens wider.

El presente texto ofrece las líneas fundamentales de la interpretación que Julius Ebbinghaus realiza de la filosofía del derecho de Kant. En primer lugar, expone la famosa “tesis de la independencia” presentada en numeroso trabajos por J. Ebbinghaus. En segundo lugar, centra su atención en el diagnóstico que hace J. Ebbinghaus de los casos de “injusticia extrema” y se pone en relación la fórmula de Radbruch con la filosofía del derecho de Kant. Por último, y frente al positivismo jurídico, J. (...) Ebbinghaus sitúa los límites de la dominación política en el derecho de la humanidad. Las consecuencias normativas de dicho derecho se ponen de manifiesto en caso de injusticia extrema, cuyo ejemplo paradigmático lo ofrece la Alemania Nacionalsocialista. A partir la ley de la humanidad, Julius Ebbinghaus ofrece una justificación kantiana del concepto de delitos de lesa humanidad. (shrink)

Since Jürgen Habermas' speech for the Peace Price of the German Book Trade in October 2001, secular reason – personified by one of its main protagonists – has been able to debate with religion anew. For the purpose of an unbiased encounter between philosophy and religion, Habermas introduced the term “postsecular” back then in order to emphasize that this dialogue was inevitably necessary, all the more in the face of religiously motivated terrorism. Nonetheless, this willingness to debate was accompanied by (...) the conviction that secular reason itself, as a matter of fact, would be “ideologically neutral”. However, taking the necessity of accomplishing the confrontation with “world” (Weltbewältigung) seriously, the reflection on world view as a whole unveils its implied tasks of granting metaphysical and existential certainty (metaphysische Sicherheit), therefore resulting in the statement that there cannot be a neutral world view at all. Only dialogue as exchange of beliefs generates the general framework within which the discursive issues of world views are separated from their existential aspects, thus enabling a reasonably conducted debate without endangering the existential certainty of its participants. As a consequence, the neutrality of world views exclusively rests in dialogue and is no unique feature of secular reason at all. Eventually, this leads to the reconsideration of the conditions that must be given for an argument to be called “rational”. The article tries to point out that an argument in political contexts, whether given by a religious or a secular person, should only be acknowledged rational if it takes at least all living people – regardless of their group affiliations – into account. (shrink)

In his recently published posthumous works "Prefiguration" and "The Rigorism of Truth" Hans Blumenberg surprisingly steps into the area of political history that he had left widely unconsidered in "Work on Myth". While "Prefiguration" tackles the “demonic” aspects of Napoleon and Hitler that Blumenberg tries to dismantle and bring into derision, in "Rigorism of Truth" he attacks Hannah Arendt's phrase of the Banality of Evil in relation to the Jerusalem trial against Adolf Eichmann in 1961. In this latter issue Blumenberg (...) defends the demonic he sees culminated in the form of Eichmann to assert what he calls the “mythical dimension“ in the Israeli process of nation-building. To him, Eichmann represents a prototypical demon incarnate that must be slaughtered by the heroic character seen in young state Israel. This obviously turns Blumenberg's criticism of Napoleon and Hitler into an affirmation of political myths that, on the face of it, appears to be a contradiction in terms. The essay focuses on this theoretical tension and tries to point out that significance (“Bedeutsamkeit”) is not only a necessity for individual self-assertion (“Selbstbehauptung”) but also a category of communality that must be handled with care. (shrink)