"Italia laica" is the result of research carried out in recent years on the philosophy and culture of the Italian secular matrix, through the work of great thinkers such as Alberti, Machiavelli, Pomponazzi, Bruno and Galileo, then reinforced in the Enlightenment. The central theme is the emergence of an Italian 'civil wisdom', based on the primacy of critical knowledge and science in all its forms and ethics of a strictly worldly character that Italy has given to culture and civilization of (...) Europe. (shrink)

The lives of non-human animals, their ways of being and seeing, their experiences and knowledge, and their relationships with each other, continue to be ignored, discounted, written over and destroyed by anthropocentric practices and endeavours. Within the vestiges of colonialism, this silence and occlusion co-opts and consumes animals, physically and culturally, into the servitude of human interests, and selective narratives of history and progress. Decolonising Animals brings together critical interrogations, case studies and creative explorations that identify and examine how non-human (...) animals are affected by and respond to colonial structures and processes. Included in this collection are the perspectives of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, artists and activists and the ways in which they have questioned colonial ways of knowing, engaging with and representing animals. Importantly, the book presents suggestions for how humans can decolonise their relationships with non-human animals and with each other. (shrink)

Das Buch eröffnet ein neues Forschungsfeld praxeologischer Demokratieforschung. Statt von bestimmten theoretischen Konzeptionen auszugehen, was Demokratie ist oder sein soll, wird untersucht, wie Demokratie praktisch gemacht wird. Wie wird der,,demos" zum Subjekt des Regierens gemacht, als politischer Akteur mit kollektivem Willen und Handlungsmacht? Das Buch verfolgt den Ansatz, nach konkreten praktischen Formen zu suchen, in denen Repräsentationen des Willens von kollektiven Subjekten hergestellt und geltend gemacht werden. Dabei entfaltet sich ein Blick auf die Multiplizität und Dynamik der Demokratie. Die Herausgebenden (...) Dr. Jan-Peter Voß ist Gastprofessor für Technik und Gesellschaft an der RWTH Aachen. Dr. Hagen Schölzel ist Universitätsassistent am Institut für Politikwissenschaft der Universität Wien. (shrink)

Johannes Duns Scotus (1266-1308) was one of the greatest medieval theologians. He joined the Franciscan order and soon stood out because of his acumen. The ideas he developed about the non-necessity of reality became very influential, also in Reformed theology. The life of Duns Scotus is difficult to reconstruct. This biography provides an overview of the state of research and therefore of the life of Duns in his native Scotland, England, where he was educated, France, where he taught, and Germany, (...) where he died. (shrink)

Die Möglichkeit, Walter Benjamins Allegorie-Begriff in akademischen Untersuchungen mit der Prosa Jean Pauls in Verbindung zu bringen, wurde von Benjamin noch selbst abgewogen: in der Rezension einer frühen Abhandlung zu diesem Thema, die er für zu kurz gegriffen befand. Ein solches Vorhaben, das beste Chancen böte, dürfe sich nämlich nicht auf literaturwissenschaftliche und geistesgeschichtliche Perspektiven beschränken. Notwendig sei vielmehr, auch die Dimension der Alltagskultur einzubeziehen und Jean Pauls Hinabgreifen in Tiefen des Volkstums und der Tradition zu berücksichtigen. Diesem Hinweis Benjamins (...) folgt die vorliegende Untersuchung. Indem sie sich auf den Bereich der materiellen Kultur konzentriert, legt sie eine Geschichte der Theorie der Dingwelt offen. Jean Pauls ästhetische Überlegungen zur projektiven Belehnung der Dingwelt mit seelischen Regungen wurden von Aby Warburg aufgegriffen und für seine kulturwissenschaftliche Methode fruchtbar gemacht. Dabei erschliesst er unter anderem einen Traditionsstrang des Denkens von materieller Kultur im ästhetischen und kultur anthropologischen Kontext, der geprägt ist von aus der Antike herrührenden abergläubischen Vorstellungen über die Einflüsse der Planeten auf die menschliche Geistesverfassung wie etwa die Saturnfürchtigkeit. (shrink)

Although community is a core sociological concept, its meaning is often left vague. In this article it is pointed out that it is a social form that has deep connections with human social nature. Human social life and human social history can be seen as unflagging struggles between two contradictory behavioral modes: reciprocity and status competition. Relative to hunter-gatherer societies, present society is a social environment that strongly seduces to engage in status competition. But at the same time evidence increases (...) that communal living is strongly associated with well being and health. A large part of human behavior and of societal processes are individual and collective expressions of on the one hand succumbing to the seductions of status competition and one the other hand attempts to build and maintain community. In this article some contemporary examples of community maintaining, enrichment and building are discussed. The article concludes with a specification of structural conditions for community living and a short overview of ways in which the Internet affects these conditions. (shrink)

Although community is a core sociological concept, its meaning is often left vague. In this article it is pointed out that it is a social form that has deep connections with human social nature. Human social life and human social history can be seen as unflagging struggles between two contradictory behavioral modes: reciprocity and status competition. Relative to hunter-gatherer societies, present society is a social environment that strongly seduces to engage in status competition. But at the same time evidence increases (...) that communal living is strongly associated with well being and health. A large part of human behavior and of societal processes are individual and collective expressions of on the one hand succumbing to the seductions of status competition and one the other hand attempts to build and maintain community. In this article some contemporary examples of community maintaining, enrichment and building are discussed. The article concludes with a specification of structural conditions for community living and a short overview of ways in which the Internet affects these conditions. (shrink)

Humanitarian aid’s psycho-therapeutic turn in the 1990s was mirrored by the increasing emotionalization and subjectivation of fund-raising campaigns. In order to grasp the depth of this interconnectedness, this article argues that in both cases what we see is the post-Fordist production paradigm at work; namely, as Hardt and Negri put it, the direct production of subjectivity and social relations. To explore this, the therapeutic and mental health approach in humanitarian aid is juxtaposed with the more general phenomenon of psychologization. This (...) allows us to see that the psychologized production of subjectivity has a problematic waste-product as it reduces the human to Homo sacer, to use Giorgi Agamben’s term. Drawing out a double matrix of a de-psychologizing psychologization connected to a politicizing de-politicization, it will further become possible to understand psycho-therapeutic humanitarianism as a case of how, in these times of globalization, psychology, subjectivity and money are all interrelated. (shrink)

Wittgensteins Grammatikbegriff ist eigentümlich weit gefasst, das heißt er beinhaltet nicht nur die Regeln für die Anordnung von Wörtern, sondern letztlich alles, was zur Bedeutung eines Begriffes beiträgt. Wittgenstein sieht Grammatik als gleichermaßen mit Willkürlichem und mit Nicht-Willkürlichem verwandt an, wobei der Willkür durch die menschliche Natur und soziale Praktiken Grenzen gesetzt sind. Dieses Buch untersucht genau diese Grenzen mit den Mitteln und Ergebnissen der neuesten linguistischen und kognitionswissenschaftlichen Forschung näher, um die zunächst recht spekulativ anmutenden Argumente Wittgensteins für die (...) Möglichkeit alternativer Grammatiken in Bereichen wie den Farben, der Arithmetik u.a. zu prüfen und über deren Ergebnisse Rückschlüsse zu ziehen auf Grammatiken allgemein und deren Willkürlichkeit. (shrink)

This chapter discusses three different ways of talking about mood enhancement. First, if we do want to enhance, what is good enhancement? Second, if one wants to enhance, what is the usefulness of enhancement? Third, if we want to enhance, what might be the beneficial (or harmful) effects? To illustrate the conceptual analysis in this chapter, two classes of drugs to enhance mood are used. First is the class of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and the other class is of (...) beta blocking agents, which are claimed to be good as “memory‐smoothing” drugs. Three different ways of using the terms “good” or “bad” are shown to be in play in mood enhancement: instrumental goodness and badness, utalitarian goodness and badness, and benefactorial goodness and badness. Mood‐improving and memory‐smoothing drugs may serve different purposes, which are linked to the general purpose of improving the mood or smoothing memories. (shrink)

Humanitarian aid’s psycho-therapeutic turn in the 1990s was mirrored by the increasing emotionalization and subjectivation of fund-raising campaigns. In order to grasp the depth of this interconnectedness, this article argues that in both cases what we see is the post-Fordist production paradigm at work; namely, as Hardt and Negri put it, the direct production of subjectivity and social relations. To explore this, the therapeutic and mental health approach in humanitarian aid is juxtaposed with the more general phenomenon of psychologization. This (...) allows us to see that the psychologized production of subjectivity has a problematic waste-product as it reduces the human to Homo sacer, to use Giorgi Agamben’s term. Drawing out a double matrix of a de-psychologizing psychologization connected to a politicizing de-politicization, it will further become possible to understand psycho-therapeutic humanitarianism as a case of how, in these times of globalization, psychology, subjectivity and money are all interrelated. (shrink)

Next SectionEvidence based medicine is rightly at the core of current medicine. If patients and society put trust in medical professional competency, and on the basis of that competency delegate all kinds of responsibilities to the medical profession, medical professionals had better make sure their competency is state of the art medical science. What goes for the ethics of clinical trials goes for the ethics of medicine as a whole: anything that is scientifically doubtful is, other things being equal, ethically (...) unacceptable. This particularly applies to so called orphaned fields of medicine, those areas where medical research is weak and diverse, where financial incentives are lacking, and where the evidence regarding the aetiology and treatment of disease is much less clear than in laboratory and hospital based medicine. Examples of such orphaned fields are physiotherapy, psychotherapy, medical psychology, and occupational health, which investigate complex syndromes such as RSI, whiplash, chronic low back pain, and chronic fatigue syndrome. It appears that the primary ethical problem in this context is the lack of attention to the orphaned fields. Although we agree that this issue deserves more attention as a matter of potential injustice, we want to argue that, in order to do justice to the interplay of heterogeneous factors that is so typical of the orphaned fields, other ethical models than justice are required. We propose the coordination model as a window through which to view the important ethical issues which relate to the communication and interaction of scientists, health care workers, and patients. (shrink)

This article is dedicated to a reconstruction of some events and achievements, both personal and scientific, in the life of the Neapolitan mathematician Pasquale del Pezzo, Duke of Caianello.

"Ratgeber für das tägliche Leben, Lebenshilfe-Breviere, Literatur zum Zeitmanagement erlebt im Moment eine große Konjunktur. Psychologen, Theologen und Philosophen, aber auch Manager und ehemalige Mönche kümmern sich um dieses Themenfeld. Solche alltagsethische Orientierungsliteratur versucht, die gegenwärtige starke Nachfrage zu bedienen und gleichzeitig alte Traditionen aus der Philosophie der Antike, aus der Theologie der Kirchenväter und des Klosterlebens sowie aus der Alltagspsychologie aufzunehmen. Dieses Phänomen bedarf der theologischen Analyse aus Perspektiven der Sozialethik, der praktischen wie der systematischen Theologie. Es ergeben sich (...) Fragen nach dem Verständnis von Alltag, nach einer zeitgemäßen modernen Spiritualität. Im vorliegenden Band werden aktuelle alltagsethische Entwürfe analysiert; in einem zweiten Schritt werden konstruktive theologische Perspektiven entwickelt.". (shrink)

This book argues that Protestant theological ethics not only reveals basic virtue ethical characteristics, but also contributes significantly to a viable contemporary virtue ethics. Pieter Vos demonstrates that post-Reformation theological ethics still understands the good in terms of the good life, takes virtues as necessary for living the good life and considers human nature as a source of moral knowledge. Vos approaches Protestant theology as an important bridge between pre-modern virtue ethics, shaped by Aristotle and transformed by Augustine of Hippo, (...) and late modern understandings of morality. The volume covers a range of topics, going from eudaimonism and Calvinist ethics to Reformed scholastic virtue ethics and character formation in the work of Søren Kierkegaard. The author shows how Protestantism has articulated other-centered virtues from a theology of grace, affirmed ordinary life and emphasized the need of transformation of this life and its orders. Engaging with philosophy of the art of living, Neo-Aristotelianism and exemplarist ethics, he develops constructive contributions to a contemporary virtue ethics. (shrink)

This article explores nation building as an organizational accomplishment and uses the concept of boundary object to explain how the groups that compose the nation cooperate. Specifically, the article examines the mechanisms devised to secure a flow of money from the Irish-American and Jewish-American diasporas to their respective homelands. To overcome problems associated with conventional philanthropy, Irish and Jewish nationalists issued bonds and sold them to their American compatriots as a hybrid of a gift and an investment. In the Irish (...) case, disagreements about the entitlement to the proceeds resulted in the termination of the bond project. In the Jewish case, the bond served as a boundary object allowing American and Israeli Jews to cooperate despite ongoing tensions. The Israeli bond provided Jewish-Americans with an additional way to invest themselves financially and emotionally in Israel. This bond is an example of a socio-technical mechanism used to create national attachments. (shrink)

David R. Loy gehört zu den derzeit renommiertesten buddhistischen Denkern mit westlichem Hintergrund. Mit seiner an unterschiedliche religiöse Traditionen anknüpfenden Philosophie der Nondualität beansprucht Loy eine interreligiöse Grundlage, auf der er zugleich eine auf die konkreten Herausforderungen der Gegenwart abzielende Sozial- und Umweltethik etabliert. Neben einer chronologischen Einführung in das Leben und Werk Loys bietet das Buch auch eine umfassende systematische Analyse seines Denkens.