This article discusses findings of a qualitative study on strategies of othering observed in anti-immigrant discourse, by analysing selected examples from the UK and Polish media, together with data collected from interviews with migrants. The purpose is to identify discursive strategies of othering, which aim to categorise, denigrate, oppress and ultimately reject the stigmatised or racialised ‘other’. We do not offer a systematic comparison of the data from the UK and Poland; instead, we are interested in what is common in (...) the discursive practices of these two countries/contexts. In using newspaper together with interview data, we are combining representation and experience in identifying not only strategies of othering, but also how these are perceived by and affect the othered individuals. The paper uses the following data: 40 newspaper articles – 20 from the UK and 20 from Poland, and 19 interviews – 12 from Poland and 7 from the UK. The analysis that follows identifies five shared strategies of othering: a) Stereotyping; b) Whiteness as the norm; c) Racialisation; d) Objectification; e) Wrongly Ascribed Ethnicity. We conclude with the research limitations and outlining possible next stages, such as working with a larger corpus, investigating frequency, or including other media genres. (shrink)

Background:The concept of conscientious objection is well described; however, because of its nature, little is known about real experiences of nursing professionals who apply objections in their practice. Extended roles in nursing indicate that clinical and value-based dilemmas are becoming increasingly common. In addition, the migration trends of the nursing workforce have increased the need for the mutual understanding of culturally based assumptions on aspects of health care delivery.Aim:To present (a) the arguments for and against conscientious objection in nursing practice, (...) (b) a description of current regulations and practice regarding conscientious objection in nursing in Poland and the United Kingdom, and (c) to offer a balanced view regarding the application of conscientious objection in clinical nursing practice.Design:Discussion paper.Ethical considerations:Ethical guidelines has been followed at each stage of this study.Findings:Strong arguments exist both for and against conscientious objection in nursing which are underpinned by empirical research from across Europe. Arguments against conscientious objection relate less to it as a concept, but rather in regard to organisational aspects of its application and different mechanisms which could be introduced in order to reach the balance between professional and patient’s rights.Discussion and conclusion:Debate regarding conscientious objection is vivid, and there is consensus that the right to objection among nurses is an important, acknowledged part of nursing practice. Regulation in the United Kingdom is limited to reproductive health, while in Poland, there are no specific procedures to which nurses can apply an objection. The same obligations of those who express conscientious objection apply in both countries, including the requirement to share information with a line manager, the patient, documentation of the objection and necessity to indicate the possibility of receiving care from other nurses. Using Poland and the United Kingdom as case study countries, this article offers a balanced view regarding the application of conscientious objection in clinical nursing practice. (shrink)

Review of Anna Tomaszewska's _The Contents of Perceptual Experience: A Kantian Perspective_, De Gruyter Open, Warsaw/Berlin 2014.

In the paper, Jan Łukasiewicz’s program of the logicization of philosophy is presented and discussed. Łukasiewicz, known mostly for his invention of trivalent logic as well as his achievements in propositional calculus and metalogic, had always been concerned with the methodological condition of philosophy. He finally found “the measure of exactness” in mathematical logic. According to him, only the use of logical tools may provide philosophical investigations with an appropriate level of exactness. He expressed his views most firmly and directly (...) in the paper, “A call for the method of Philosophy”. Łukasiewicz proposed giving philosophical theories the form of axiomatic systems by indicating the primitive terms of their language, selecting suitable axioms, and explicitly determining the applied rules of inference. All the theses of these systems should be consequences of the accepted axioms and confronted with the data of experience and the results of science. Łukasiewicz’s program is presented together with its inspirations and prospects. (shrink)

Commentary on Camilla Hawthorne's "Black Mediterranean Geographies.".

Both Novalis and Günderrode provide grounds for a number of different kinds of hope. The first part of this chapter briefly sketches the most obvious of these: the hope for union with loved ones after death. This section also explains Günderrode’s metaphysics, which entails significant differences from Novalis in the other areas of hope that she identifies. Part two explores “epistemological hope”: the hope for knowledge or experience of that which lies outside the limitations of reason. Part three considers Günderrode’s (...) “moral hope,” which emerges from her critique of Kantian morality. Finally, parts four and five consider “political hope” and “ontological hope,” i.e., hope for improvement in the world as a whole and human society in particular. For Novalis, this famously takes the form of “raising,” “Romanticizing” or “cultivating,” effected by human beings. In Günderrode, this kind of improvement is largely beyond human control (although human beings can contribute to it), leaving us in a state of hopeful ambiguity regarding the possibility of the eventual realization of an “immortal ideal” for the earth and the establishment of ideal human communities. (shrink)

This chapter explores the importance of writing by early nineteenth-century women for post-structuralist accounts of philosophy of art in German Idealism and Romanticism. Work by Romantic writers Karoline von Günderrode and Bettina Brentano-von Arnim is related to post-structuralist analyses of the sublime, the fragment, the work of art, and the artist/genius.

There is an ongoing debate in the metaphysics of dispositions regarding which type of modality governs their manifestation. This paper assumes as its default position the view that dispositions manifest by conditional necessity; that is, when in appropriate circumstances dispositions manifest necessarily. From this standpoint, the paper engages critically with an existing alternative in the literature, put forward most prominently by Mumford and Anjum, and known as dispositional modality. According to this latter view, even when in appropriate manifestation conditions, dispositions (...) only merely tend towards their manifestation. By raising difficulties for this alternative, the paper offers indirect support for the conditional necessity view. (shrink)

Many studies have deduced subterranean dialogues between Hannah Arendt and Carl Schmitt from indirect evidence. This article uses new evidence from marginalia in Arendt’s copy of Nomos of the Earth and finds that she formed, but never published, an incisive critique of Schmitt’s geopolitics. Through an analysis of Arendt’s comments on the topics of soil, conquest, and contract, I show that Arendt deemed Schmitt’s theory to be imperialist and in contradiction with itself. Her reading of Schmitt prompts important new questions (...) regarding the scholarly use of Schmitt’s conception of nomos as a tool of critique against American empire in the post-9/11 era. The marginalia also suggests, against past scholarship, that Arendt thought justice should play a central role in politics. I propose that we look to Arendt’s own conception of nomos, which she developed later, in order to form an alternative geopolitics. Because of her focus on intersubjective world-building, Arendt’s nomos embraces contract and promise-mak... (shrink)

Every kind of exploration is touched in some way by a philosophy of persons; touched and often vitally enhanced. This collection sets out to mine this rich seam of influence, bringing together authors keen to strike new developments and applications. Together, they have put their philosophy of persons to work in fields as wide-ranging as the moral and the metaphysical, the practical and the political, the cultural and the cosmological. In doing so, they have drawn on and illustrated the depth (...) and breadth of modern Personalist thought, demonstrating its crucial relevance to debates across the entire philosophical spectrum. (shrink)

This article aims to reflect on the genesis of The Birth of Tragedy based on Nietzsche's readings of Lectures on Fine Art and Literatur and Lectures on Dramatic Art by August Schlegel. Such readings, begun during his studies in Pforta, span his first years lecturing in Basel until they ultimately took shape in Nietzsche's first work. The goal is to analyze this trek of readings, in order to encover the development process of Nietzsche's thinking regarding the central issues of his (...) first work, such as the Apollonian and Dionysian, epic poetry and dramatic poetry. (shrink)

Nel dibattito contemporaneo sul cosmopolitismo, una delle posizioni più originali e complesse è stata espressa da Jürgen Habermas. Egli si è soffermato sul tema della globalizzazione della politica e dell’internazionalizzazione del diritto, interrogandosi a lungo sul destino dell’Europa e dell’Occidente e ha aderito alla tesi della domestic analogy. Ha previsto la possibilità di superare lo stato di natura estendendo la democrazia sul piano sovranazionale, attraverso una proiezione, su scala globale, del modello contrattualista. Nel corso del lavoro, analizziamo la teoria habermasiana (...) e i mutamenti che essa ha subito nel corso degli anni. Prendiamo quindi in considerazione uno tra i più rilevanti corollari della teoria: la fiducia, in termini di aspettative politiche, che Habermas ripone nei confronti dell’Unione Europea. (shrink)

It has long been accepted that participating in music, either as a performer, listener, and/or composer can contribute to human flourishing. This volume explores a fourth musical activity, the act of music scholarship, and reveals how engagement with the cultural, social, and political practices surrounding music contributes to human flourishing in a way that listening, performing, and even composing alone cannot. Music and Human Flourishing contains chapters by eleven prominent scholars representing the fields of musicology, ethnomusicology, and music theory. The (...) chapters are divided into three general categories—Contemplation, Critique, and Communication—and cover a broad range of topics and music traditions. In Part I, Contemplation, contributors explore a specific facet of music’s connection to human flourishing and contemplate new approaches for future action. Part II, Critique, contains chapters that challenge past assumptions of the various roles of music in society and highlight the effects that unconscious bias and stereotyping have had on music’s effectiveness to facilitate human flourishing. Part III interacts broadly with the concept of Communication and features chapters that explore how ethnicity, gender, religion, and technology influence one’s ability to connect with others through music. Collectively, the chapters demonstrate how the process of thinking and writing about music and human flourishing can lead to revelations about cultural identity, social rituals, political ideologies, and even spiritual transcendence. (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate in the metaphysics of dispositions regarding which type of modality governs their manifestation. This paper assumes as its default position the view that dispositions manifest by conditional necessity; that is, when in appropriate circumstances dispositions manifest necessarily. From this standpoint, the paper engages critically with an existing alternative in the literature, put forward most prominently by Mumford and Anjum, and known as dispositional modality. According to this latter view, even when in appropriate manifestation conditions, dispositions (...) only merely tend towards their manifestation. By raising difficulties for this alternative, the paper offers indirect support for the conditional necessity view. (shrink)

Recently, hinge epistemologists have applied Wittgenstein’s metaphor of hinges to religious belief. The most prominent proposal in this context is Pritchard’s “quasi-fideism”. This paper examines some historical precursors of the notion of religious hinges, with the aim of shedding more light on it. After outlining the framework of hinge epistemology and its application to religious belief, I briefly examine the views of Thomas Reid and John Henry Newman as acknowledged forerunners of this framework (or cognate views). Next, I turn to (...) two hitherto unacknowledged forerunners, the pragmatists William James and Charles S. Peirce. I then focus on some insights that the pragmatists offer. On this basis, I conclude that religious beliefs are a special class of hinges. As such, while they can be defended through hinge epistemology, they cannot constitute a model through which we can interpret the nature of hinges in general. (shrink)

The primary goal of this paper is to provide substantial motivation for exploring an Acquaintance account of phenomenal consciousness, on which what fundamentally explains phenomenal consciousness is the relation of acquaintance. Its secondary goal is to take a few steps towards such an account. Roughly, my argument proceeds as follows. Motivated by prioritizing naturalization, the debate about the nature of phenomenal consciousness has been almost monopolized by representational theories. Among them, Self-Representationalism is by far the most antecedently promising. However, on (...) thorough inspection, Self-Representationalism turns out not explanatorily or theoretically better than the Acquaintance account. Indeed, the latter seems to be superior in at least some important respects. Therefore, at the very least, there are good reasons to take the Acquaintance account into serious consideration as an alternative to representational theories. The positive contribution of this paper is a sketch of an account of consciousness on which phenomenal consciousness is explained partly in representationalist terms, but where a crucial role is played by the relation of acquaintance. (shrink)

The shooting bias hypothesis aims to explain the disproportionate number of minorities killed by police. We present the evidence mounting in support of the existence of shooting bias and then focus on two dissenting studies. We examine these studies in light of Biddle and Leuschner’s “inductive risk account of epistemically detrimental dissent” and conclude that, although they meet this account only partially, the studies are in fact epistemically and socially detrimental as they contribute to racism in society and to a (...) social atmosphere that is hostile to science as scholars working on issues of racism come under attack. We emphasize this final point via recourse to Kitcher’s “Millian argument against the freedom of research.”. (shrink)

The article presents interpersonal relations and mutual influences between German logician Heinrich Scholz and Polish scholars, first of all Jan Łukasiewicz. The background for presenting these relationships consists of reflections on the development of logic in Poland and various conceptions of how to apply logic to philosophical issues. Firstly, Jan Łukasiewicz’s program of logicisation of philosophy and his search for allies is presented. Secondly, the forms of cooperation between Łukasiewicz and Scholz, as well as contacts between the latter and other (...) Polish scholars are sketched. Finally, forms of Scholz’s help to Polish friends during the tumultuous period of World War II are examined. The article provides also some reflections on the approach to logic in various European centers of analytic philosophy and historical comments on the continuity of philosophical and logical schools. (shrink)

This chapter considers the philosophical contributions of German writer Karoline von Günderrode (1780–1806). Günderrode is an original, though neglected, thinker engaged with German Idealism and Romanticism, whose writings reflect on the same problems that preoccupied other philosophers working in these traditions. Her work participates in debates regarding the question of free will, the nature of the self, the nature of consciousness, what happens to us after we die, the vocation of humankind, the relationship between the self and nature and between (...) these and the Absolute or the divine, the role of gender in social life, ideals for political arrangements, and the pursuit of virtue and beauty. Günderrode’s writings provide a rich and relatively unexplored perspective on these topics. After a biography and overview of Günderrode’s writings, the chapter summarizes key areas of Günderrode’s thought. These include Günderrode’s metaphysical claims, unique accounts of love and death, models of consciousness and identity, political theory (especially regarding revolution), contributions to early nineteenth century understandings of gender, and nascent ethics and aesthetics. The last section of the chapter considers ways that Günderrode might have influenced several well-known nineteenth century thinkers, notably Clemens Brentano, Georg Friedrich Creuzer, and Bettina Brentano-von Arnim – and, through the latter, the Young Hegelians and American Transcendentalism. (shrink)

This paper considers how women and gender are conceptualised within early German Romanticism and argues that work by early German Romantic women should be addressed in scholarship on this movement. The chapter addresses feminist critiques of early German Romanticism as exemplified by the work of Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis, concluding that an essentialist view of traditional gender characteristics informs central aspects of these writers’ work, including their view of the relationship between human beings and nature and their theories of language (...) and poetry. The paper argues that a thoroughgoing critique of gender categories and development of the implications of this critique are found in the early German Romantic writings, not of Schlegel and Novalis, but of Dorothea Veit-Schlegel and Karoline von Günderrode. (shrink)

Karoline von Günderrode’s reputation as a mystical writer makes her a likely candidate as a proponent of a negative philosophy. However, the historical emphasis on Günderrode’s mystical and lyrical writings reflects gender stereotypes about women’s writing and ignores Günderrode’s strengths as an epic and historical writer. It is therefore important to approach claims about Günderrode’s supposed mysticism carefully. This paper is a preliminary attempt to investigate Günderrode’s claims about knowledge, including knowledge of the absolute, asking: What does Günderrode think knowledge (...) is? What does she think the purpose of knowledge is—i.e., what does she think knowledge gets us, or does for us? And how do her claims differ from those philosophers, such as Novalis, whose thinking on knowledge (including of the absolute) seems to resemble hers? I argue that Günderrode maintains that human beings can experience, or “know,” a reality behind the discrete objects and events that comprise the world of appearances, and that she integrates this idea into a coherent worldview in a unique way. Specifically, I argue that Günderrode reconceptualizes the nature of death and selfhood in specific ways that allow her to make sense of the possibility of experiencing the true nature of the world behind the divisions that are characteristic of human knowledge and existence. (shrink)

This chapter considers the philosophical contributions of German writer Karoline von Günderrode (1780–1806). Günderrode's work participates in debates regarding the question of free will, the nature of the self, the nature of consciousness, what happens to us after we die, the vocation of humankind, the relationship between the self and nature and between these and the Absolute or the divine, the role of gender in social life, ideals for political arrangements, and the pursuit of virtue and beauty. Günderrode’s writings provide (...) a rich and relatively unexplored perspective on these topics. After a biography and overview of Günderrode’s writings, the chapter summarizes key areas of Günderrode’s thought. These include Günderrode’s metaphysical claims, unique accounts of love and death, models of consciousness and identity, political theory (especially regarding revolution), contributions to early nineteenth century understandings of gender, and nascent ethics and aesthetics. The last section of the chapter considers ways that Günderrode might have influenced several well-known nineteenth century thinkers, notably Clemens Brentano, Georg Friedrich Creuzer, and Bettina Brentano-von Arnim – and, through the latter, the Young Hegelians and American Transcendentalism. (shrink)

Karoline von Günderrode (1780–1806) has long enjoyed a reputation as a Romantic poet, but her philosophical contributions have largely been neglected. This paper is one of the first to address Günderrode’s political thought, especially her view of the interrelationship between human society and the broader environment. The paper argues that Günderrode develops resources for reconceiving the relationship of human beings to the nonhuman and to each other that work against an instrumentalizing view of nature and programmatic political ideals. Günderrode’s normative (...) restraint, concept of harmony, and view of human beings as part of and the same in kind as the rest of nature contribute to a vision of sociality, grounded in her metaphysics, that envisions small communities fostering connections between human beings and the nonhuman. On Günderrode’s model, these connections can grow and strengthen and eventually, perhaps, enable the emergence of the single, perfect organism that she calls the “realized idea of the earth.”. (shrink)

Calvino’s apology of multiplicity starts with the exposure, revealed by his take on typically modern novels, of some fundamental contradictions underlaying the modern quest for knowledge, which are definitely not alien to our day education. Then, when Calvino goes on to explore how twentieth century literature transcended those difficulties, he provides us with a valuable inspiration for how education could cope with its ambiguous relation to knowledge, still deeply rooted in the modern approach. Guided by Calvino’s readings, we are shown (...) that literature can succeed in its epistemological (r)evolution. Meanwhile, education, as it seems, is still struggling to overcome its entanglement with the unreachable goal of teaching everything about everything, to cope with the infinity and complexity of that everything, making reflecting upon education’s epistemological stance in the twenty-first century very much a necessity, one that I will try to pursue in the following pages After a methodological introduction, the paper starts by placing Calvino’s examination of beautiful, yet unsuccessful literary attempts at an exhaustive account of the world in the context of education, to show how their unattainable ambitions are mirrored in pedagogical practice, pointing out to the “modern spirit” underlying both the aforementioned novels’ and contemporary education’s relation to knowledge. Then, with the help of J. Rancière’s take on education, I will try and make educational sense of Calvino’s account of Bouvard and Pécuchet failed quest to know everything there is to be known, and relate it to the particular model of knowledge at work in education, one that needs to be questioned. Finally, I will draw on Calvino’s praise of “the contemporary novel as (…) a method of knowledge” (SM, p. 105), and particularly on his analysis of Perec’s masterpiece La Vie mode d’emploi, and his rehabilitation of the idea of arbitrariness, to outline some reflections about how an educational multiplicity, where “everything is in everything” could come to life (Rancière, 1991, p. 26). (shrink)

In 1804, when asked by the aspiring writer Clemens Brentano why she had chosen to publish her work, Karoline von Günderrode wrote that she longed “mein Leben in einer bleibenden Form auszusprechen, in einer Gestalt, die würdig sei, zu den Vortreflichsten hinzutreten, sie zu grüssen und Gemeinschaft mit ihnen zu haben.” In light of this kind of statement, it is perhaps not surprising if, despite some exceptions, much of the still relatively scant literature on Günderrode reads her works largely in (...) terms of how they articulate and manifest Günderrode’s desires, frustrations, and character, for the most part ignoring their imaginary, creative, and intellectual aspects. This interpretation of the author’s works as biography is, in Günderrode’s case, often accompanied by an interpretation of her biography, particularly her suicide, as literary work. This paper is not the first to question the conflation of Günderrode’s life, death, and writing, but it is one of only a handful that aim to address the autopoietic element of Günderrode’s work in a way that does not reduce her writings to biographical and psychological expressions, or Günderrode herself to an image – or a legend – encapsulated by her writings and her relationship to them. This paper argues that Günderrode’s own position on what the self is has been largely neglected as a result of this conflation, and that taking this position into account changes how we understand Günderrode’s articulations of self in her writings. Thus this paper has two goals: to address difficulties in articulating and even constituting oneself sincerely when one’s efforts are unrecognized, belittled, censored, and forced to conform to the conventions of a society in which one is marginalized; and to unearth a neglected and potentially rich account of the modern self. (shrink)

This paper argues that Karoline von Günderrode’s unique account of the socially constructed self provides a model for satisfying relationships and a stable self on the basis of a fragmented and untransparent subjectivity. Günderrode views experience as a discontinuous series of moments out of which a self can be constructed in two ways, both involving interactions with others. One of these is narrative; the other is a form of immediate experience, including experiencing together with others, that precedes narrative accounts of (...) identity. For Günderrode, the most important ways of interacting with others involve sharing thoughts, feelings and experiences without attempting to integrate these into a more holistic image of, or story about, the person with whom one is interacting. The result is a model for relationships between transitory, opaque selves that creates a basis for social interaction and the construction of identity that can survive and flourish without a stable self that is completely known to itself and others. -/- This journal is open access and includes so many wonderful articles. (shrink)

Kazimierz Twardowski was the founder of the Lvov-Warsaw School, one of the greatest phenomena in the European culture. The School had its representatives in all scientific disciplines, logic and mathematics including. Among his pupils are such great figures of European philosophy like: Jan Łukasiewicz, Stanisław Leśniewski, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Władysław Tatarkiewicz and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. The paper presents his life and various fields of his rich activity, as well as the list of his main works and the greatest achievements in philosophy. He (...) is best known in the world as the author of the distinction presentation-object-content, act-product, as well as the supporter of the postulate of clarity of thought and speech and the critic of psychologism, relativity of truth, symbolomania and pragmatophobia in science. (shrink)

In her essays and speeches, Clara Zetkin argues that the workers’ movement and the women’s movement are co-dependent, and that it is only if male and female workers cooperate that they will be able to overcome economic and social injustices and inequalities. Furthermore, she analyzes different forms of oppression, explains how they relate to and enable one another, and makes appeals for international solidarity with oppressed people everywhere.

In this chapter, Lou Andreas-Salomé explores the erotic (widely conceived), as it discloses a pre-reflective and foundational aspect of life. The erotic, for Salomé, is prior to the split between mind and body, even between the individual and nature, as a totality. In her view, the erotic is related to sexuality but also to art, creativity, and even religion. The chapter establishes Salomé as a philosopher who carves out an independent intellectual space between Nietzsche and Freud.

In this chapter, Edith Stein offers an analysis of empathy with others, which she sees as a fundamental trait of the human being. In her view, empathy is a condition of possibility for sociality and sympathy, rather than the other way around. She grounds empathy in human embodiment, more precisely in the way in which the human being is embodied mind and minded body. Stein’s work on empathy represents a pathbreaking contribution to phenomenology and shows how she makes active use (...) of and goes beyond the works of Edmund Husserl, Alexander Pfänder, and others. (shrink)

An English translation of, and commentary on, German writer Karoline von Günderrode's poem "Muhammad's Dream in the Desert," in Issue 2 of Synkrētic: The Journal of Indo-Pacific Philosophy (reprinted with modifications from an earlier entry on my blog Trail of Crumbs) This journal is open-access and full of run reads.

Fetal surgery has been practised for some decades now. However, it remains a highly complex area, both medically and ethically. This paper shows how the routine use of ultrasound has been a catalyst for fetal surgery, in creating new needs and new incentives for intervention. Some of the needs met by fetal surgery are those of parents and clinicians who experience stress while waiting for the birth of a fetus with known anomalies. The paper suggests that the role of technology (...) and visualisation techniques in creating and meeting such new needs is ethically problematic. It then addresses the idea that fetal surgery should be restricted to interventions that are life-saving for the fetus, arguing that this restriction is unduly paternalistic. Fetal surgery poses challenges for an autonomy-based system of ethics. However, it is risky to circumvent these challenges by restricting the choices open to pregnant women, even when these choices appear excessively altruistic. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the linguistic concept of implicit offensiveness. On the one hand, implicitness will be juxtaposed with indirectness as the two concepts are not conceived of here as synonymous. On the other hand, a typology of offensiveness (vs offensive language and vs offendedness) will be proposed, as well as the overarching term ‘covert meaning’ that will span figurative implicitness and non-figurative implicitness. The gradability of various forms of covert meaning and its (...) overlap with overt meaning (subsuming explicit literal meaning and implicit literal meaning) will also be discussed. In the analysis, two sample implicit concepts will be examined (irony vs sarcasm) based on corpus data (of general English and dedicated offensiveness corpus) and using non-contextual embeddings. Theory-wise, the paper demonstrates that implicitness is a complex term which is fuzzy and gradable; methodology-wise, it shows how computational tools can be used to attest theoretical assumptions related to offensive covert terms. (shrink)

In this chapter, Gerda Walther weds her interest in political and social questions with phenomenological approaches and concerns, homing in on the nature of a social community. By posing and responding to a series of questions regarding the nature and structure of a community, Walther distinguishes community from society and argues that community is crucially connected to subjective feeling. In addition, she contends—contra Edith Stein and Edmund Husserl—that the feeling of community both differs from and precedes the feeling of empathy.

Values have always tended to play a central role in discourse on the environment, a tendency which is currently particularly evident in the biodiversity context. Traditionally, arguments about the environment have invoked instrumental value to highlight the necessity or utility of a healthy environment for people and intrinsic value to emphasize the importance of protecting nature for its own sake. More recently, this value dichotomy has been challenged, and the notion of a third value category – relational value – has (...) been introduced into the political and social conservation discussion. In the field of environmental philosophy, the idea of a third category of environmental value already has a longer tradition. This article describes and compares several philosophical accounts of third-category environmental value to contribute to a better characterization of relational value and thus to a better understanding of the role this type of value can play in environmental discourse and policy. (shrink)

This chapter presents selections from Bettina Brentano von Arnim’s 1840 Günderode. Günderode is based on a correspondence between Brentano von Arnim and her friend Karoline von Günderrode. In its attempt to convey an intimate and engrossing dialogue between the two friends, Günderode is an exemplary realization of the romantic ideals of sym-philosophy and sociability. A hit in Germany and the United States, Günderode delves into fundamental philosophical questions, including the value of philosophy and its potential to grasp and describe human (...) experience, and the relationship between philosophy and art. (shrink)

An article publicising the philosophical contributions of German women writers in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

In this chapter, Rosa Luxemburg examines the basic structure of wage labor. For Luxemburg, wage labor is a condition for the systemic, economical exploitation of one free human being by another. Luxemburg analyzes the capitalists’ thinking about wages, their interest in extending the workday and in lowering the pay, and the conflict of interest between the worker and the owner of capital. She also discusses the role of trade unions in keeping not only the real wages but also the social (...) wages above the level of mere sustenance for the individual worker. (shrink)