Naturalism is the current orthodoxy in analytic philosophy. Naturalism is the conjunction of the (ontological) claim that all that truly exists are the entities countenanced by the natural sciences and the (epistemological) claim that the only true knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge. Drawing on some recent work in Critical Theory, this article argues that naturalism qualifies as an ideology. This is the case because naturalism meets three key aspects shared by paradigmatic cases of ideology: (i) naturalism has practical consequences and implications (...) of a specific kind, (ii) those endorsing naturalism fall prey to a dual deception: having false meta-level beliefs about naturalism as being without alternative, and (iii) naturalism has a tendency towards self-immunisation. The article ends by suggesting we pull naturalism out of our collective cognitive backgrounds onto the main stage of critical discourse, making it a proper topic for philosophical critique again. (shrink)

Conspiracy theories are currently all the rage in philosophy and broader intellectual culture. One of the most common background assumptions in the discourse on conspiracy theories is that conspiracy theorists exhibit certain epistemic vices in the sense of cognitive misconduct. This epistemic vice is mostly seen as a form of irrationality; the corresponding “remedy”, as suggested by some commentators, is a return to the ideals of the Enlightenment. This article argues that this idea is wrongheaded. Upon closer inspection, it becomes (...) clear that conspiracy theorists are actually motivated by the rational Enlightenment ideal of self-thinking in the first place. In contrast to the standard discourse, the article posits that conspiracism is based on a certain form of social scepticism, according to which conspiracy theorists radically mistrust a certain form of expert testimony, namely “official” statements. This form of social scepticism in turn facilitates a naive appropriation of the Enlightenment ideal of self-thinking. The article closes by drawing connections to the ethical and epistemological debate on trust and offers the pessimistic assessment that there are no easy solutions based on individual epistemic virtues. (shrink)

This paper tries to argue the thesis that the painting Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez contains a reflection about art, which deals in the medium of painting with three of the most important problems of aesthetics: the problem of the artist, the artwork and its reception. In order to prove this thesis, the paper analyses the picture with the assumption that Velázquez worked in front of a mirror. Furthermore, the aesthetic problems detected in the painting are developed in terms of (...) a philosophy of art, concluding with the question of how mirroring can be considered a model for the structure of the artwork in general. (shrink)

W artykule ukazano powszechne błędy pisowni w prestiżowej i opiniotwórczej prasie niemieckiej, na podstawie Der Spiegel, Die Welt i Die Zeit. Wybrane laspusy zostały podzielone na sześć kategorii: - typowe błędy ortograficzne - błędy morfologiczne i ortograficzne w wyrazach obcych - błędy wynikające z interferencji intranlingualnej - błędy mające swoje źródło w wymowie danych leksemów - błędy wynikające z nieznajomości istoty lub etymologii danego wyrazu - błędy związane z wpływem języka angielskiego na język niemiecki Poruszono także zagadnienie błędów gramatycznych, (...) które – jak wykazała analiza – również nie są przypadkiem odosobnionym. Przy poszczególnych typach błędów podano jednocześnie ogólne przyczyny ich występowania. (shrink)

Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie analizy tekstów prasowych zamieszczonych w niemieckim „DER SPIEGEL” oraz „SPIEGEL ONLINE” z okresu 31.05.2010 – 07.07.2010 poświęconych wynikom oraz dwóm kluczowym kandydatom wyborów prezydenckich w Polsce 2010 – Jarosławowi Kaczyńskiemu i Bronisławowi Komorowskiemu. W szczególności analizie poddane zostają sformułowania i wyrażenia użyte w tekstach na określenie wyników wyborów oraz obydwu kluczowych postaci zmagań wyborczych, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem potencjałów ewaluacyjnych zawartych w ww. określeniach.

Tematem niniejszego artykułu jest próba odpowiedzi na pytanie, czy i jak zmienił się język niemiecki pod wpływem jego feministycznej krytyki. Wtym celu autorka analizuje dwa pochodzące z tygodnika "Der Spiegel" artykuły, z których jeden - Grete im Wunderland - ukazał się w 1996 roku, a drugi - Die Alpha-Mädchen - w roku 2007. Prezentowana ananliza opiera się na zainicjowanej przez Trömel-Plötz w 1978 r. feministycznej krytyce języka niemieckiego oraz postulowanych przez wyżej wymienioną oraz Louise F. Pusch zmianach tegoż języka.

Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature presents the most thorough and sustained critique of Western epistemology and foundationalism in the second half of the twentieth Century. The work deconstructs philosophy as an autonomous discipline generating a “neutral matrix” to assess knowledge, truth, and rationality, offering philosophical analyses of the mind-body distinction, representation, reference, and truth, and ultimately the concept of knowledge as a “mirror of nature.” The deconstruction of Cartesian dualism undermines the mind as the immaterial ground of absolute (...) certainty; the deconstruction of the Kantian empirical-transcendental distinction destroys the transcendental realm as philosophy’s uniquely accessible and founding domain. Instead, Rorty invites us to reconceive philosophy as an edifying voice in the “conversation of mankind.”. (shrink)

Seit Niccolo Machiavellis Principe (postum) im Jahre 1532 veroffentlicht worden ist, haben sich Generationen von Philosophen, Theologen und Historikern, aber auch von Politikern mit den Thesen des Florentiners auseinandergesetzt. Die Bucher zur Rezeption Machiavellis fullen inzwischen ganze Bibliotheken. Kann man heute - fast funfhundert Jahre spater - noch etwas Neues dazu beitragen? Vielleicht gelingt dies, indem der machiavellische Machtstaat aus interdisziplinarer Perspektive im Spiegel der Zeit beleuchtet wird. Die negative Sicht der Ratschlage Machiavellis an einen neuen Fursten ist mit (...) dem Begriff "Machiavellismus" gebrandmarkt worden. Die Frage, ob der Florentiner selbst ein Machiavellist war, ist heute freilich eher zu verneinen. Die mit dem Schlagwort verbundenen Vorurteile erweisen sich jedoch als resistent gegenuber jedem Gegenargument. Den unterschiedlichen, meist zeitbedingten Interpretationen der Lehre Machiavellis, mit denen der Interpret oft genug nur seine eigenen Anschauungen begrundet, soll in diesem Band nachgespurt werden. (shrink)

Der Mensch hat in den verschiedenen Bereichen des Alltagslebens, der Institutionen, der Wissenschaften und der Philosophie hochst verschiedene Verhaltnisse zu Tieren ausgebildet. Fur praktisch alle besteht eine Asymmetrie zwischen Mensch und Tier. Als Gegenstand des Wirtschaftens, der Wissenschaften und der Kunste unterliegen die Tiere menschlicher Verantwortung. Umgekehrt konnen sie weder Wissenschaften hervorbringen noch im wortlichen Sinne Verantwortung fur den Menschen ubernehmen. Hier bleiben unter anderem zeitgenossische Deutungen naturwissenschaftlicher Theorien zu bedenken. Der vorliegende Band reflektiert aus Sichtweise von neun wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen (...) die verschiedenen Mensch-Tier-Verhaltnisse. Er dokumentiert eine Vortragsreihe von Mitgliedern der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft an der Goethe Universitat Frankfurt am Main im Winter 2012-2013. (shrink)

Sehen, Horen, Riechen, Schmecken, Tasten: Die Autorin fragt nach Entstehung, Begrundung und Folgen dieser tradierten Ordnung der Sinne. Sie fragt auch nach den abweichenden Varianten, die von der antiken Idee des Korpers als ganzheitliches Sensorium uber die hoheren Sinne des Mittelalters bis zu den sinnlichen Vermogen der Aufklarung, wie Einbildungskraft und Dichtungsvermogen, reichen. Im 18. Jahrhundert verstarkte sich zusammen mit der anthropologischen Aufwertung der Sinnlichkeit der Impuls zur Uberschreitung der Funfzahl der Sinne und zur Umordnung der uberkommenen Hierarchie. An Textbeispielen (...) von Platon, Ovid und Goethe untersucht die Autorin uberdies Zusammenhange, aber auch Widerspruche, die zwischen der europaischen Liebeskultur und der Bewertung von Auge und Ohr als hohere, von Geschmack, Geruch und Tasten als niedere Sinne bestehen. (shrink)

The book on "Science and the image of man" pursues different pathways by way of which science contributes to the understanding of human beings as a species: the scope and limits of human cognition are revealed by the history and the mental structure of science in a more precise manner than by any other cultural effort. Insights into the evolution and function of the human brain elucidate the origin and the range of general human capabilities, such as language, self-representation and (...) strategic thought. These capabilities are the products of biological evolution as well as preconditions of cultural development, which is based on traditions rather than on genetic inheritance. At the metatheoretical level, modern science reveals its own intrinsic limitations and is open to different cultural and philosophical interpretations. Human consciousness is a product of evolution of the human brain, and yet it may not be possible to decode the mind-brain relation fully by finite procedures. One of the specifically human capabilities is cognition-based empathy; it may have evolved in conjunction with strategic thought, because it facilitates the prediction of the behaviour of others, but it also motivates altruistic behaviour. Stereotyped controversies between sociologists and social biologists on human ethics appear somewhat outdated; there is a biological basis in humans not only for egoism but, to a limited extent, also for cooperativity and solidarity. Ethical demands should respect the biological conditions of the human species. They imply that cooperativeness is a real but limited resource. It requires activation, but excessive moralism is counterproductive. -/- -/-. (shrink)

This article analyses the relation between reflexivity and mediality (what makes a medium a medium) by presenting concrete situations of optical and specular reflections in literature and film, such as doubles (Doppelgänger) and split figures. Thus it can be shown that since the 18th century every medium is self-reflexive and that the concept of subjectivity has its basis in the interplay of reflexivity and mediality. The subject is an effect of medialitity as may be demonstrated by a new recapitulation of (...) Foucault’s famous Meninas-interpretation. (shrink)

The period between 1830 and 1848 is not only a period of political upheavals, not only the beginning of the so called Industrial Revolution in Germany, but also an extraordinary philosophical era characterized by Hegel’s scholars. The so called Vormärzphilosophie was dominated by two different schools of Hegelianism. There was one faction which saw in the continuation of Hegel’s speculative system philosophy the intellectual fundament of a modern constitutional state. On the other side stood those “philosophers of the future” like (...) the brothers Ludwig and Friedrich Feuerbach or Karl Marx who worked on a complete break with Hegel’s system of science because of its theological roots. Going back to the idea of an absolute spirit meant from this perspective going back to a non-enlightened school of thinking. The philosophy of future was a philosophy with a strong practical accent as Marx had put into words in his 11th thesis on Feuerbach. First step of this practical program was the secularization, which was first of all an educational program, since the church educated the teachers, wrote the school books and prevented any enlightenment of the people. In the consequence people were not only treated as bad sinners, but also as eternal subject with no right of political participation. So the break with Hegel and the Hegelian theory of a Christian state opened the door to a united and democratic Germany. The way to democracy and unity was long. It took – seen from 1848 – 100 years to give Germany a lasting constitution and 140 years to unite. (shrink)

The depiction of the relation of God and man is one of the most difficult challenges of religious philosophy and even more the understanding of God and the human self-conception are deeply entwined. Trying an access to both questions starting from subjectivity, the idea of God is investigated in Descartes, Feuerbach and Husserl. After a discussion of the idea of God in Descartes and its consequences for human aspiration, the opposite standpoint of Feuerbach and his so-called theory of projection will (...) be examined. Finally, aspects from both thinkers are brought together in Husserl’s phenomenological ethics. The idea of God is the entelechy of reason and self-realizing goodness, in which the searching person can realize its own potentials as much as its own abyss, yet is always called to advance beyond herself and toward the ever-beyond God within. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 23 Heft: 1 Seiten: 188-206.