This volume offers 11 papers that cover the wide spectrum of influences on Rudolf Carnap’s seminal work, Der Logische Aufbau der Welt. Along the way, it covers a host of topics related to this important philosophical work, including logic, theories of order, science, hermeneutics, and mathematics in the Aufbau, as the work is commonly termed. The book uncovers the influences of such neglected figures as Gerhards, Driesch, Ziehen, and Ostwald. It also presents new evidence on influences of well-known figures in (...) philosophy, including Husserl, Rickert, Schlick, and Neurath. In addition, the book offers comparisons of the Aufbau with the work of contemporary scientists such as Weyl and Wiener as well as features new archival findings on the early Carnap.This book will appeal to researchers and students with an interest in the history and philosophy of science, history of analytic philosophy, the philosophy of the Vienna Circle, and the philosophy in interwar Germany and Austria. (shrink)

Die Dilthey-Forschung der letzten Jahre hat Dilthey tendenziell von dem Bild einer rein 'kontinentalen' Philosophie der Hermeneutik des Lebens weggerückt. Vielmehr war sein Wissenschaftsverständnis holistisch und einem umfassenden Erfahrungsbegriff verpflichtet. Statt Geistes- und Naturwissenschaften einander entgegenzusetzen, brachte er eine empiristisch eingestellte akademische Philosophie auf den Weg.

The situationist movement in psychology and, more recently, in philosophy has been associated with a number of striking claims, including that most people do not have the moral virtues and vices, that any ethical theory which is wedded to such character traits is empirically inadequate, and that much of our behavior is causally influenced, to significant degrees, by psychological influences about which we are often unaware. Yet Christian philosophers have had virtually nothing to say about situationist claims. The goal (...) of this paper is to consider whether Christians should start to be worried about them. (shrink)

In recent centuries Christians of various denominations have endorsed many different political philosophies that they see as being truly biblical in their approach. Over this time there has been an increasing hostility, by some Christians, towards free markets and political philosophies that hold human liberty as the highest goal such as libertarianism and classical liberalism. This criticism is unwarranted and misplaced as libertarianism and free markets are not only compatible with Christianity, they are also the most biblically sound of all (...) economics systems and political philosophies endorsed by Christians today. Therefore, this paper will argue that Christians of all denominations should endorse free markets and libertarianism if they wish to create a world that follows biblical principles and the teachings of Jesus. (shrink)

Arab Christians and the Qurʾan from the Origins of Islam to the Medieval Period. Edited by Mark Beaumont. History of Christian-Muslim Relations, vol. 35. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Pp. xiv + 216. $120, €104.

Die Überlieferung des Briefwechsels zwischen Christian Wolff (1679–1754) und Ernst Christoph von Manteuffel (1676–1749) ist ein singulärer Glücksfall. Die in der Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig aufbewahrten Bände enthalten den nahezu geschlossen und damit am umfangreichsten erhaltenen Briefwechsel in der Gesamtkorrespondenz Christian Wolffs. Die historisch-kritische Edition des Briefwechsels stellt Materialien bereit, die die Wolff- und Aufklärungsforschung auf eine neue Grundlage stellen. Der Briefwechsel erlaubt neben bisher unbekannten biographischen Details aus Wolffs Marburger Zeit und den ersten Jahren seines Wirkens nach der Rückkehr (...) an die Universität Halle Einblicke in Wolffs und Manteuffels Positionen innerhalb der politischen, philosophischen, theologischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Debatten der Zeit. Darüber hinaus eröffnet der Briefwechsel einen innovativen Einblick in die Funktionen eines wissenschaftspolitischen und epistolären Netzwerks, das von Graf Manteuffel zum Zwecke der europaweiten Verbreitung des Wolffianismus unterhalten und gepflegt wurde. Das Editionsprojekt wurde im Rahmen eines Kooperationsvertrags zwischen der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg und der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig am Internationalen Zentrum für die Erforschung der europäischen Aufklärung (IZEA) der Universität Halle durchgeführt. ************ The survival of the correspondence between Christian Wolff (1679–1754) and Christoph von Manteuffel (1676–1749) is a singular piece of luck. The volumes preserved in Leipzig University Library contain the almost complete and thus largest surviving exchange of letters in all of Wolff’s correspondence. This historical-critical edition presents material which sets the study of Wolff and of the Enlightenment on a new footing. As well as previously unknown biographical details about Wolff’s time in Marburg and his first years of activity after his return to the University of Halle, it provides insights into Wolff’s and Manteuffel’s positions within the political, philosophical, theological and scientific debates of the period. In addition the correspondence opens up an innovative perspective on the functions of a scholarly political and epistolary network which Count Manteuffel maintained and nurtured in order to spread Wolffianism throughout Europe. The edition is part of a collaborative project between the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and the Saxon Academy of Sciences, based at the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies at the University of Halle. (shrink)

From 1968 to 1991 the acclaimed film theorist Christian Metz wrote several remarkable books on film theory. These books set the agenda of academic film studies during its formative period. Metz's ideas were taken up, digested, refined, reinterpreted, criticized and sometimes dismissed, but rarely ignored. This volume collects and translates into English a series of interviews with Metz, who offers readable summaries, elaborations, and explanations of his sometimes complex and demanding theories of film. We also discover the contents of (...) his unpublished manuscript on jokes, his relation to Roland Barthes, and the social networks operative in the French intellectual community during the 1970s and 1980s."--Back cover. (shrink)

Brings together the key writings of Ferdinand Christian Baur across theology, biblical studies, early Christian history, and philosophy, showing his crucial role in the development of 19th-century thought.

Applied Christian Ethics addresses selected themes in Christian social ethics. Part one shows the roots of contributors in the realist school; part two focuses on different levels of the significance of economics for social justice; and part three deals with both existential experience and government policy in war and peace issues.

This collection provides the first in-depth introduction to the theory of the religious imagination put forward by renowned philosopher Douglas Hedley, from his earliest essays to his principal writings. Featuring Hedley's inaugural lecture delivered at Cambridge University in 2018, the book sheds light on his robust concept of religious imagination as the chief power of the soul's knowledge of the Divine and reveals its importance in contemporary metaphysics, ethics and politics. Chapters trace the development of the religious imagination in (...) class='Hi'>Christian Platonism from Late Antiquity to British Romanticism, drawing on Origen, Henry More and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, before providing a survey of alternative contemporary versions of the concept as outlined by Karl Rahner, René Girard and William P. Alston, as well as within Indian philosophy. By bringing Christian Platonist thought into dialogue with contemporary philosophy and theology, the volume systematically reveals the relevance of Hedley's work to current debates in religious epistemology and metaphysics. It offers a comprehensive appraisal of the historical contribution of imagination to religious understanding and, as such, will be of great interest to philosophers, theologians and historians alike. (shrink)

In the moral and spiritual vacuum left in Russia by the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989-1991, some of the thinkers who first opposed the Leninist revolution of 1917 have come to a new prominence, and among these is the religious philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948). He expressed a passionate protest against the revolution and was clearly the most comprehensive contemporary critic of the revolutionary project from a Christian perspective. From his consistently religious perspective he foresaw with precision much (...) of the inhuman and tyrannical potential of the revolutionary project. (shrink)

This is an edited transcript of a conversation to be included in the collection "Conversations on Rational Choice". The conversation was conducted in Munich on 7 and 9 February 2016.

The shift of interest from community to individuality and freedom brought by modernity challenged the central place once occupied by religion, pushing it to the outskirts of human life. All these led to an increased indifference towards any transcendental guarantor that could act in a neutral reason-governed space. In the case of Islam, such a situation is impossible to tolerate, because it would mean God’s desecration by reducing the Qur’an to the statute of a simple book like many others that (...) offer an opinion on a Supreme Being who does not decide the destiny of humanity any more, but becomes a simple matter of opinion. While Western Christianity adjusted to modernity reaching even to justify the developments which led to a dissolution of sacred, stating that they were consistent with its essence, Islam accepted modernity only to the extent of this one’s capacity to verify the realities stated by the Qur’an. (shrink)

Contemporary Christian ethics encounters the challenge to communicate genuinely Christian normative orientations within the scientific debate in such a way as to render these orientations comprehensible, and to maintain or enhance their plausibility even for non-Christians. This essay, therefore, proceeds from a biblical motif, takes up certain themes from the Christian tradition (in particular the idea of social justice), and connects both with a compelling contemporary approach to ethics by secular moral philosophy, i.e. with Axel Honneth's reception (...) of Hegel, as based on Hegel's theory of recognition. As a first step, elements of an ethics of recognition are developed on the basis of an anthropological recourse to the conditions of intersubjective encounters. These conditions are then brought to bear on the idea of social justice, as developed in the social-Catholic tradition, and as systematically explored in the Pastoral Letter of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice For All (1986). Proceeding from this basis, aspects of a Christian ethics of community service with regard to long-term care can be defined. (shrink)

These five letters from Christian von Ehrenfels to Alexius Meinong contain a written record of how Ehrenfels' dissertation plans came about, based on his reading and commenting on Meinong's work.