In this chapter, we explore the question of on what grounds reports of clinical ethics support in general, including especially clinical ethics consultation, can or should be evaluated when using a peer review system. It is our contention that to evaluate clinical ethics consultation within a peer review system aiming at transparency and fairness, a defined and shared criteria of evaluation, i.e. an evaluation standard is required. When evaluating a performed ethics consultation, we can roughly distinguish between an internal standard, (...) which refers to the conceptualization of clinical ethics consultation held by the respective consultant or by the assessed clinical ethics support service themselves, and external standards. Most important is the way how an external standard is being defined: Is it just the standard of another service or colleague? Or is it the result of a larger consensus-building process of a relevant body representing a larger group of colleagues, such as the ASBH? Or does it even rely on the “evidence” of related research? An external standard, however, may rest on criteria that are not – or not fully – accepted by the evaluated CESS or individual ethics consultant. Identifying the internal standard of an observed ethics consultant’s work may also be challenging. From the evaluator’s perspective the responsibility for making an internal standard known and unequivocal lies with the “author” of the material. The potential gap between internal and external standards marks a methodological difficulty that as such has to be addressed within peer review evaluation. (shrink)

The issue of intersubjectivity has taken on some urgency in the recent Hegel literature: M. Theunissen views inter subjectivity as the unifying factor of the system whereas J. Habermas declares it altogether absent from Hegel, tracing its origins rather to American pragmatism. Hösle's study, a bird's-eye view of the entire system with admirable scholarly and argumentative sharpness, seems at first to fall squarely within the position taken by Critical Theory.

"... elegant and provocative... Exhibit[s] a subtle mastery of Heidegger's works." —Review of Metaphysics "... splendidly precise study of Heidegger... to be recommended not only to Heidegger scholars but also to those interested in the question of what philosophical thinking has as its task in the modern technological world." —Religious Studies Review "... indispensable to understanding the later Heidegger." —Choice.

We consider particles prepared by a single slit diffraction experiment. For those particles the standard deviation σ p of the momentum is discussed. We find out that σ p =∞ is not an exception but a rather typical case. A necessary and sufficient condition for σ p <∞ is given. Finally, the inequality σ p Δx≥π ℏ is derived and it is shown that this bound cannot be improved.

This is not a work of mine. For some reason, I am unable to remove it from my page. It is a list of Dr. Reiner Schürmann's lecture notes for courses that he taught at the New School for Social Research (aka The New School).

« La déconstruction, c’est la pulvérisation d’un socle spéculatif où la vie trouverait son assise, sa légitimation, sa paix. » Autrefois son élève, Reiner Schürmann identifie dans l’oeuvre de Heidegger un impensé, le principe d’anarchie. Contre cette métaphysique occidentale qu'il s'applique à déconstruire, le penseur de la présence aurait fait de l'être et de l'agir une seule et même question. Et sapé ainsi toute possibilité de définir un fondement rationnel sur lequel construire une philosophie pratique. Que l'agir humain, à l'époque (...) technologique, se trouve privé d'arché : voilà ce que cette étude majeure, lisant Heidegger à rebours, a permis de dévoiler. (shrink)

Background and aim Child and adolescent forensic psychiatry is fraught with complex medical, legal, and social tensions. The ethical challenges this entails for inhospital treatment have hardly been investigated, and specific support for health care professionals is lacking. This study identifies ethical issues and problems in this area and develops a tool for early detection and intervention of ethical problems in clinical practice. Methods A systematic literature search and an observational study in adolescent forensics at the University Psychiatric Clinics Basel (...) are conducted. The observation data are evaluated using a qualitative content analysis. The instrument is developed based on the results using a new method. Results In the literature search, 14 valid publications were identified that mainly address ethical conflicts in legal psychiatry, such as professional role conflicts, ethical problems in diagnostics and assessment, or confidentiality issues. Empirical or empirical–normative studies are missing. In the observational study, 24 ethical issues and specific conflicts were identified. Ethical questions about moral competencies of the adolescents, the quality of treatment, the handling of rules and sanctions, and freedom and privacy are particularly common. The Instrument for Early Detection and Intervention of Ethical Problems (FIEP) contains the four core elements risk factors, indicators, intervention planning and decision-making. Conclusions Inhospital treatment in forensic child and adolescent psychiatry reveals a broad spectrum of ethical issues with specific ethical problems, which are hardly investigated in literature so far. The FIEP instrument developed here supports health care practitioners in recognizing ethical problems at an early stage and addressing them efficiently. (shrink)

In this paper we assume that ‘theory’ is important for Clinical Ethics Support Services (CESS). We will argue that the underlying implicit theory should be reflected. Moreover, we suggest that the theoretical components on which any clinical ethics support (CES) relies should be explicitly articulated in order to enhance the quality of CES.A theoretical framework appropriate for CES will be necessarily complex and should include ethical (both descriptive and normative), metaethical and organizational components. The various forms of CES that exist (...) in North-America and in Europe show their underlying theory more or less explicitly, with most of them referring to some kind of theoretical components including ‘how-to’ questions (methodology), organizational issues (implementation), problem analysis (phenomenology or typology of problems), and related ethical issues such as end-of-life decisions (major ethical topics).In order to illustrate and explain the theoretical framework that we are suggesting for our own CES project METAP, we will outline this project which has been established in a multi-centre context in several healthcare institutions. We conceptualize three ‘pillars’ as the major components of our theoretical framework: (1) evidence, (2) competence, and (3) discourse. As a whole, the framework is aimed at developing a foundation of our CES project METAP.We conclude that this specific integration of theoretical components is a promising model for the fruitful further development of CES. (shrink)

In this paper we assume that ‘theory’ is important for Clinical Ethics Support Services (CESS). We will argue that the underlying implicit theory should be reflected. Moreover, we suggest that the theoretical components on which any clinical ethics support (CES) relies should be explicitly articulated in order to enhance the quality of CES.A theoretical framework appropriate for CES will be necessarily complex and should include ethical (both descriptive and normative), metaethical and organizational components. The various forms of CES that exist (...) in North‐America and in Europe show their underlying theory more or less explicitly, with most of them referring to some kind of theoretical components including ‘how‐to’ questions (methodology), organizational issues (implementation), problem analysis (phenomenology or typology of problems), and related ethical issues such as end‐of‐life decisions (major ethical topics).In order to illustrate and explain the theoretical framework that we are suggesting for our own CES project METAP, we will outline this project which has been established in a multi‐centre context in several healthcare institutions. We conceptualize three ‘pillars’ as the major components of our theoretical framework: (1) evidence, (2) competence, and (3) discourse. As a whole, the framework is aimed at developing a foundation of our CES project METAP.We conclude that this specific integration of theoretical components is a promising model for the fruitful further development of CES. (shrink)

" --John Sallis In Broken Hegemonies, the late distinguished philosopher Reiner Schürmann offers a radical rethinking of the history of Western philosophy from the Greeks through Heidegger.

The text presented here is an edited transcription of a thirteen-page unpublished typescript titled “Heidegger and the Mystical Tradition” by Reiner Schürmann. It dates back to the time following the completion of Schürmann’s book on Meister Eckhart and exhibits the preliminary conception of the former’s famous ‘practical a priori.’ Focusing on the relation between Heidegger’s meditative thinking and a mystical tradition inaugurated by Meister Eckhart, the text retrieves the steps of the latter’s path to Releasement as a practical transformation of (...) existence (Part I). In so doing, it provides a detailed account of Releasement as the condition for a peculiar experience of thinking “in which one fundamental attitude manifests itself throughout an itinerary of human existence and which tends to make this itinerary the very condition for the understanding of truth.” By hinging on Heidegger’s different acceptations of ‘letting-be’—as well as on his verbal understanding of Being as Anwesen (presencing) and Ereignis (appropriation-event)—the text indicates Releasement as the coincidence of Being’s and man’s ways to be and shows how it is in the very “urgency of a new existence and thought” that the proximity between Heidegger and Meister Eckahrt’s mystical tradition comes to the fore. (shrink)

Background and aim Healthcare professionals are regularly exposed to moral challenges in patient care potentially compromising quality of care and safety of patients. Preventive clinical ethics support aims to identify and address moral problems in patient care at an early stage of their development. This study investigates the occurrence, risk factors, early indicators, decision parameters, consequences and preventive measures of moral problems. Method Semi-structured expert interviews were conducted with 20 interprofessional healthcare professionals from 2 university hospitals in Basel, Switzerland. A (...) Likert scale questionnaire was completed by the interviewees and analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results Healthcare professionals are frequently exposed to a variety of moral problems, such as end-of-life decisions, resource allocation and assessing the patient's will or decisional capacity. Thirty-four different risk factors for moral problems are identified, e.g. patient vulnerability, divergent values or world views, inadequate resources or poor ethical climate. Twenty-one early indicators are recognised such as disagreement between healthcare professionals, patients and relatives, emotional disturbances, gut feeling or conflict of conscience. A variety of preventive measures are suggested and presented in a preventive clinical ethics support process model. The most helpful measures are early ethical conversations with colleagues, early team-internal ethical case discussions and an ethics-trained contact person on the ward. Ethics training, kerbside consultations, proactive ethics consultations, ethics screening and rounds are also considered helpful. Conclusions Clinical ethics support services should not only offer reactive and complex, but also proactive and low-threshold support for healthcare professionals, patients and relatives. (shrink)

Cognitive modeling of human behavior has advanced the understanding of underlying processes in several domains of psychology and cognitive science. In this article, we outline how we expect cognitive modeling to improve comprehension of individual cognitive processes in human-agent interaction and, particularly, human-robot interaction (HRI). We argue that cognitive models offer advantages compared to data-analytical models, specifically for research questions with expressed interest in theories of cognitive functions. However, the implementation of cognitive models is arguably more complex than common statistical (...) procedures. Additionally, cognitive modeling paradigms typically have an explicit commitment to an underlying computational theory. We propose a conceptual framework for designing cognitive models that aims to identify whether the use of cognitive modeling is applicable to a given research question. The framework consists of five external and internal aspects related to the modeling process: research question, level of analysis, modeling paradigms, computational properties, and iterative model development. In addition to deriving our framework from a concise literature analysis, we discuss challenges and potentials of cognitive modeling. We expect cognitive models to leverage personalized human behavior prediction, agent behavior generation, and interaction pretraining as well as adaptation, which we outline with application examples from personalized HRI. (shrink)

The paper argues that human dignity is the normative, legally binding base of human rights. Since the Declarations of human rights in 1776/1789 it is no longer possible to base dignity on a universal morality. This results in two main consequences. Firstly, it is necessary to strictly shift the concept of dignity away from a dignity of the human creature, human nature or mankind to the dignity of personality and citizenship, respectively. Secondly, determining the rights of the individual is a (...) definite political practice and not only the application of a correct understanding of what constitutes dignity in theory. Slavery is not a problem of false thinking or morality, but a degrading practice. (shrink)

We consider the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of position and momentum in 3-dimensional spaces of constant curvature K. The uncertainty of position is defined coordinate independent by the geodesic radius of spherical domains in which the particle is localized after a von Neumann–Lüders projection. By applying mathematical standard results from spectral analysis on manifolds, we obtain the largest lower bound of the momentum deviation in terms of the geodesic radius and K. For hyperbolic spaces, we also obtain a global lower bound (...) \, which is non-zero and independent of the uncertainty in position. Finally, the lower bound for the Schwarzschild radius of a static black hole is derived and given by \, where \ is the Planck length. (shrink)

On Heidegger's Being and Time is an outstanding exploration of Heidegger's most important work by two major philosophers. Simon Critchley argues that we must see Being and Time as a radicalization of Husserl's phenomenology, particularly his theories of intentionality, categorial intuition, and the phenomenological concept of the a priori. This leads to a reappraisal and defense of Heidegger's conception of phenomenology. In contrast, Reiner Schürmann urges us to read Heidegger 'backward', arguing that his later work is the key to unravelling (...) Being and Time . Through a close reading of Being and Time Schürmann demonstrates that this work is ultimately aporetic because the notion of Being elaborated in his later work is already at play within it. This is the first time that Schürmann's renowned lectures on Heidegger have been published. The book concludes with Critchley's reinterpretation of the importance of authenticity in Being and Time . Arguing for what he calls an 'originary inauthenticity', Critchley proposes a relational understanding of the key concepts of the second part of Being and Time : death, conscience and temporality. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag geht der Frage nach, worin [die Spezifik von Praxis-Konzeptionen besteht und worin sie nicht besteht. Die These ist, dass Praxis-Konzeptionen mit allen Intentionalitäts-Konzeptionen brechen - also z. B. nicht einfach die sog. geistigen Intentionen materialisieren. Positiv bedeutet das, dass Praxis-Konzeptionen ihren Ausgangspunkt in Vollzügen nehmen, die durch ein,passives Moment' mitkonstituiert sind. Nebenbei soll an Theorietraditionen erinnert werden, die in aktuellen prax/stheoretischen Debatten verloren zu gehen drohen. Abschließend wird exemplarisch die Relevanz für sportwissenschaftliche Kontexte aufgezeigt.

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag macht einen methodologischen Vorschlag für den Umgang mit einem Folgeproblem eines anti-positivistischen Wissenschaftsverständnisses. Wenn man, gegen den Positivismus, nur noch „theoriegeladene“ Daten kennt, kann es keinen induktivistischen Weg zum gesicherten Wissen mehr geben. Was kann dann aber eine methodologische Entsprechung sein? Das Konzept von Prototypen möchte auf diese Frage eine Antwort sein. Es liefert zugleich eine Reformulierung von „Evidenz“, die mit der Vorstellung einer unmittelbaren Gewissheit gebrochen hat. So kann dann beispielsweise gesagt werden, dass der Olympische Sport (...) der Prototyp des Sports der Moderne ist, was wiederum nötig ist, um eine Kulturgeschichte des Sports von einer Universalgeschichte unterscheiden zu können. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Um Veränderungen im sportlichen Handeln als solche kennzeichnen und analysieren zu können, schlägt das Forschungsprogramm Sport der Medialen Moderne vor, sportliche Phänomene in den Kontext einer Gesellschaftstheorie zu stellen. Der Artikel stellt einen ersten Entwurf dieser Gesellschaftstheorie dar. Anliegen ist es, bestimmte, für die moderne Gesellschaft basale Kategorien herauszustellen. Denn Begriffe bilden die Wirklichkeit nicht unmittelbar ab, sondern Wirklichkeit ist immer vermittelt durch Kategorien, die den Begriffen zu Grunde liegen. Die Herausstellung ermöglicht eine bedingte Bestimmung des Verhältnisses von klassischer (...) Moderne und Postmoderne. Des Weiteren ermöglicht sie einen Vergleich verschiedener empirischer Begriffe. Beides ermöglicht die Analyse von Veränderungen z.B. des Olympismus in der Postmoderne im Vergleich zur klassischen Moderne. (shrink)

What distinguishes aesthetic thinking from other forms of thinking, such as logical, for instance? In order to clarify this question, the following contribution deals with a reception-aesthetic problem that has been controversially discussed in English-language aesthetics for decades as the ‘paradox of fiction’. It will be shown that the intentional orientation of mind and imagination towards the non-existent, the counterfactual, and the fictive belongs to the decisive peculiarity of aesthetic thinking. Its productivity consists in the process of playing through the (...) possible and imaginable and thereby transcending and thwarting the given and the existing. (shrink)

Cette " contribution à la très ancienne doctrine des principes"s'effectue sous forme de topologie : elle cherche à relever les lieux d'extraction phénoménaux et langagiers des principes qui ont exercé les hégémonies qu'elle examine, c'est-à-dire qui ont fonctionné comme des normes pour l'agir et le savoir. Les hégémonies sont celles sous et par lesquelles l'Occident a jusqu'à présent vécu (à savoir agir, pensé et acquis des connaissances). Elles délimitent l'ère de la métaphysique dont notre âge vit le dépérissement. Il y (...) en a trois : la grecque, la latine et la moderne, chacune régie par un principe : respectivement, l'Un, la nature et la conscience de soi. Chacune se déploie dans une langue, qui lui donne ses paramètres : le grec, le latin et le moderne vernaculaire. Ces trois régimes articulent à la fois l'histoire de l'Occident et de la philosophie. En quoi ces hégémonies sont-elles brisées? La topologie discerne trois sortes de principes : d'une part les ultimes, à savoir la natalité ou l'être-pour-la-naissance, et la mortalité ou l'être-pour-la-mort, qui perdurent au travers des âges ; d'autre part les suprêmes et les dernières, qui ont des destins, temporels limités. Les principes suprêmes sont entitatifs : par exemple, chez Kant, Dieu, l'âme et le monde. Les principes derniers sont relationnels. Plus souvent appelés " fantasmes hégémoniques " ou " référents derniers " - un vocabulaire que l'auteur élucide dans l'introduction - ils constituent les hégémonies. Par son effet sur le langage, la natalité institue les principes derniers en nous les faisant poser, tandis que la mortalité les destitue en les brisant de l'intérieur. Co-originaires, les deux principes ultimes forment " le phénomène absolument premier ", le différend tragique. Leur étude appartient à l'analytique des ultimes, qui sert d'outillage à la topologie, et par-là précède. La topologie n'analyse les principes derniers qu'au moment de leur émergence ou institution, et de leur disparition ou destitution (d'où l'organisation de l'ouvrage). Le souci directeur de la topologie est de nous en apprendre plus sur les nuits qui ont assombri notre terrible siècle (en particulier sur les souffrances que l'Occident s'est infligé au cours de la seconde guerre mondiale) et sur celles qui nous menacent (par exemple l'asphyxie à laquelle nous mène la destruction de l'environnement). En effet, elle part de la conviction que ces assombrissements ne peuvent avoir que " des origines lointaines et profondes ". (shrink)

This book offers a collection of essays in contemporary political philosophy from a wide range of Continental viewpoints. The authors include some of the most prominent European and European-oriented philosophers and political thinkers of our day. Two sections out of four focus on the debate between prescriptive and descriptive types of political thinking. On the prescriptive or normative side, Karl-Otto Apel, Robert Paul Wolff, Robert Spaemann, Hans Jonas, and Jean-Francois Lyotard discuss current forms of legitimating political life via some ultimate (...) grounding. On the descriptive or phenomenological side, Bernhard Waldenfels, Michel Henry, William J. Richardson, Jürgen Link, and Vincent Descombes argue that an understanding of praxis is always implied as one reaches insights into the life-world; there is no need to either construe or set normative standards for action. The remaining two sections deal with transcendental and institutional types of political philosophy, respectively. Manfred Riedel, Stanley Rosen, Thomas Seebohm, and Ludwig Siep develop Kant’s search for “a priori” conditions in the public realm; explicitly or implicitly, they confront the ancient Greek with the modern Enlightenment conceptions of life in public. Lastly, Agnes Heller, Alain Touraine, Reinhart Koselleck, and Bertram Schefold put to work many ways of looking at the life of our institutions. (shrink)

Reiner Schürmann a été appelé « l’un des philosophes majeurs du xx e siècle » et « le continuateur peut-être le plus important d’une pensée de la mystique dans la lignée d’Eckhart et de Heidegger ». Nombre des chercheurs qui connurent Schürmann ou s’intéressent aujourd’hui à son œuvre souscriraient volontiers à de tels jugements, dans la mesure où cette œuvre déploie, comme nulle autre, les conséquences philosophiques et politiques de ce que Maître Eckhart et Heidegger appellent le délaissement ou le (...) laisser être ( Gelassenheit ). Pourtant, presque rien n’a été dévoilé des deux bornes entre lesquelles s’inscrit le cheminement personnel de Schürmann quant au délaissement : sa découverte de ce concept – ou, plus exactement, de ce mode de vie – lors de ses études auprès des dominicains du Saulchoir, et la manière dont le délaissement a pu façonner sa mort trois décennies plus tard. Ces parties précoce et tardive de son œuvre, consacrées au délaissement et à sa mise en acte, sont toutefois cruciales pour comprendre le parcours de Schürmann et donc pour apprécier ce qu’il peut aujourd’hui offrir à la pensée et à l’existence. Si, dans ses œuvres publiées, Schürmann minimise l’importance de l’expérience chrétienne du délaissement, voire critique en elle une figure dérivée et même trompeuse de la Gelassenheit, c’est bien elle qui lui a permis de s’engager sur son chemin de pensée. C’est elle aussi qui, à plus d’un titre, l’attendait au terme de son parcours, lequel apparaît alors comme un cercle faisant retour en soi. (shrink)

On January 16, 1966, Reiner Schürmann wrote a letter to Martin Heidegger in which he submitted two questions for the philosopher’s consideration, and requested a conversation with him. Schürmann was a twenty-four year old friar at the Dominican Faculties of Philosophy and Theology of the Saulchoir, at Essonnes in France, where he had begun his studies in 1962. At the time, he was on a stay of study with Professor Bernhard Welte at the University of Freiburg. Heidegger responded on February (...) 4, inviting the young man to his home in Freiburg. On March 11, the very day of the visit, Schürmann related the content of his discussion with the philosopher to an anonymous correspondent. The three pieces of correspondence were found tucked away in one of the numerous Heidegger volumes of Schürmann’s library. The two letters are naturally written in German, whereas the report is in French. We here publish a translation of these documents. (shrink)

In a prior article, “Symbolic Difference,” I followed the indications provided by certain data in order to focus on the ontological locus of the symbol. A difference then appeared in the origin, which revealed itself through gesture, sign, use, and trace. The symbol, distended by definition between man and his origin, is the privileged region of language where this difference is thematized for itself. The search for the concealment-manifestation at work in the symbol led to the difficult problems surrounding its (...) interpretation, and it culminated with a summons or provocation towards existence. I mentioned some historical examples in which the symbol’s efficacy with regard to a life was blatant: the symbol opens up a path whose course makes one experience the origin. The condition of this experience is to “live without why,” to let that which is, be. (shrink)

In a prior article, “Symbolic Difference,” I followed the indications provided by certain data in order to focus on the ontological locus of the symbol. A difference then appeared in the origin, which revealed itself through gesture, sign, use, and trace. The symbol, distended by definition between man and his origin, is the privileged region of language where this difference is thematized for itself. The search for the concealment-manifestation at work in the symbol led to the difficult problems surrounding its (...) interpretation, and it culminated with a summons or provocation towards existence. I mentioned some historical examples in which the symbol’s efficacy with regard to a life was blatant: the symbol opens up a path whose course makes one experience the origin. The condition of this experience is to “live without why,” to let that which is, be. (shrink)

In a prior article, “Symbolic Difference,” I followed the indications provided by certain data in order to focus on the ontological locus of the symbol. A difference then appeared in the origin, which revealed itself through gesture, sign, use, and trace. The symbol, distended by definition between man and his origin, is the privileged region of language where this difference is thematized for itself. The search for the concealment-manifestation at work in the symbol led to the difficult problems surrounding its (...) interpretation, and it culminated with a summons or provocation towards existence. I mentioned some historical examples in which the symbol’s efficacy with regard to a life was blatant: the symbol opens up a path whose course makes one experience the origin. The condition of this experience is to “live without why,” to let that which is, be. (shrink)

Plessner’s philosophical anthropology is presented as a non-naturalistic philosophy of nature. Such a position is attractive and indispensable, for instance, to all debates concerning personhood and human dignity. Plessner’s work rests on a conception of philosophy that distinguishes without exception the contents of possible experiences from their conditions of possibility. Thus, Plessner’s anthropology is a theory of categorial contents, but not in the aprioric sense according to which they would be assumed to be prior to all experience. Plessner avoids such (...) a misconception by structuring his philosophy in a reflexive way. Therefore his basic philosophical category or idea—eccentric positionality—doesn’t mean a property of human or any natural beings, but the categorial frame called personhood which is in use when we identify empirical properties of humans. The challenge in understanding personhood as conceptually independent of empirical properties consists in distinguishing between the contingency of personhood and arbitrariness. (shrink)

In one of the Four Seminars that have now become accessible in Japanese, Heidegger makes a brief remark which, if correctly understood, tells one how his entire work should be read. In order to avoid misapprehensions about his very starting point, he writes, “after Being and Time thinking replaced the expression ‘meaning of being’ with ‘truth of being’. And so as to avoid any misapprehension about truth, so as to exclude its being understood as conformity, ‘truth of being’ has been (...) elucidated as ‘locality of being’—truth as the locus-character of being. That presupposes, however, an understanding of what a locus is. Hence the expression topology of being.”. (shrink)

Nature is what culture relates to, and culture is what the mind makes of the conditions in which it finds itself. Whether the concept of second nature opens up a more interesting way of thinking about the anthropological problem, that consists in the opposition between mind and nature, is examined in the following contribution, in the light of a debate that arose around John McDowell's book Mind and World. The guiding thesis is that an ontology of mental being is needed (...) to explain the mind's peculiar way of referring to the absent in a present way. (shrink)

It is not self-evident that God and the world, friendship and love, owe any allegiance to words. On the shore of a lake surrounded by pine trees, I say “this lake is surrounded by pine trees.” As soon as the words are spoken, immediacy is lost. Wherever I turn, words are already there.

It is not self-evident that God and the world, friendship and love, owe any allegiance to words. On the shore of a lake surrounded by pine trees, I say “this lake is surrounded by pine trees.” As soon as the words are spoken, immediacy is lost. Wherever I turn, words are already there.

Es ist keine bloße Metapher, wenn wir sagen, etwas stelle sich jemandem dar. Vielmehr kommt darin zum Ausdruck, dass sprachliche oder bildliche Darstellungen bestimmte Auffassungsweisen ihrer jeweiligen Gegenstände buchstäblich vor-stellen. Auf diese Weise vermitteln Darstellungen zwischen Geist und Welt bzw. zwischen Selbst und Anderen. Gleichgültig, ob wir selbst etwas erzählen oder etwas in der Zeitung lesen, ob wir ein Bild ins Netz stellen oder einen Film schauen, stets haben wir es mit Darstellungen zu tun, die Vorstellungen artikulieren und erzeugen. Der (...) Doppelsinn von Repräsentation als mentale Vorstellung und mediale Darstellung hat darin seinen guten Grund. Das Buch entfaltet eine Darstellungstheorie in therapeutisch-kritischer Absicht. Es zielt darauf, Darstellungspraxen als spezifisch menschlich, weil geistig und freiheitlich zu qualifizieren, um im Streit der Interpretationen bessere von schlechteren unterscheiden zu können. How it is that the mind is directed at the world? Far differently, the world exists in the minds of anyone, because it is mediated through perspectives and perceived only in aspects. No matter whether we tell a story, read something in the newspaper, or watch a movie, we always deal with representations that articulate and generate imaginations. This is the origin of the double meaning of representation as mental imagination and medial presentation. The book develops a theory of representation with a critical and therapeutic intention. It aims at qualifying representational practices as specifically human due to their mental and liberal character in order to be able to distinguish better from worse interpretations. (shrink)

The article compares the philosophies of Ernst Cassirer and Helmuth Plessner concerning the modes of modernity. Plessner is one of those thinkers, who are most consistent in accepting modernity, whereas Cassirer is not. The point that generates this different level is the explicit self-reflection of Plessner in contrast to a systematic silence of Cassirer. One can see this difference by analysing the role of scepticism within these two modes of anthropology.

To English language readers, Kostas Axelos is known for a single book on Marx --a regrettably small sample when compared to the number of his additional books in French, Greek, or German, and shamefully small in light of the stature of his thinking.

Responding adequately to the behaviour of human and non-human animals in our environment has been crucial for our survival. This is also reflected in our exceptional capacity to detect and interpret biological motion signals. However, even though our emotions have specifically emerged as automatic adaptive responses to such vital stimuli, few studies investigated the influence of biological motion on emotional evaluations. Here, we test how the motion of animals affects emotional judgements by contrasting static animal images and videos. We investigated (...) this question (1) in non-fearful observers across many different animals, and (2) in observers afraid of particular animals across four types of animals, including the feared ones. In line with previous studies, we find an idiosyncratic pattern of evoked emotions across different types of animals. These emotions can be explained to different extents by regression models based on relevant predictor variables (e.g. familiarity, dangerousness). Additionally, our findings show a boosting effect of motion on emotional evaluations across all animals, with an additional increase in (negative) emotions for moving feared animals (except snakes). We discuss implications of our results for experimental and clinical research and applications, highlighting the importance of experiments with dynamic and ecologically valid stimuli. (shrink)