This paper is part of a book symposium on Theodore Sider's Writing the Book of the World.

Este artigo se propõe a mostrar a centralidade que a questão do sofrimento adquire nas filosofias de Arthur Schopenhauer e Theodor Adorno. O ponto de partida é um recorte preciso na obra de ambos os autores visando a uma reconstrução breve da metafísica de Schopenhauer, com ênfase na concepção de Vontade, desenvolvida em O mundo como vontade e como representação, de 1818, e a uma apresentação dos conceitos principais que compõem a concepção de dialética negativa, exposta por Adorno na (...) obra homônima de 1966. Por fim, defendo a tese de que, de um lado, Adorno se aproxima de Schopenhauer ao conceder uma centralidade à questão sofrimento e, mais especificamente, a um sofrimento corporal ou físico. Por outro lado, mostro que há elementos inconciliáveis entre as duas filosofias na medida em que a noção de dialética negativa pretende se afastar de toda forma de idealismo, e o sistema metafísico desenvolvido por Schopenhauer não teria sido capaz, na leitura de Adorno, de romper efetivamente com a filosofia idealista. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the existence of a Dialectical school proper against criticisms brought forward by Klaus Döring and by Jonathan Barnes. Whereas Döring claims that there was no Dialectical school separate from the Megarians, Barnes takes issue with my claim (argued for in “Dialektiker und frühe Stoiker bei Sextus Empiricus”) that most of the reports in Sextus on the dialecticians refer to members of the Dialectical school. Barnes contends that these dialecticians are in fact Stoic logicians. As against (...) Döring, I argue that the passage in Diogenes Laertius II 113 (first drawn attention to by David Sedley) which talks of a the Megarian Stilpo winning over disciples from the Dialecticians is not refuted by Döring’s arguments. It clearly shows that the Dialecticians and the Megarians at the time were taken to be different philosophical sects. As against Barnes I insist on the differences between the report in Ps.-Galen’s Historia 9 and the Sextan report on the theory of sign in AM VIII. These reports offer incompatible definitions of the indicative sign. Moreover, the classification of simple propositions reported by Sextus at AM VIII 96f. cannot be a truncated version of the (Stoic) list to be found in Diogenes Laertius VII 69f. since in Sextus’ report one of the three classes of simple propositions is labelled middle (meson). This is a certain sign that we are dealing with a triad, and hence that this list is meant to be complete. Therefore the classification found in Sextus and attributed to the dialecticians and the one in Diogenes Laertius reporting Stoic material do come from different sources. (shrink)

_This book features a CD of rarely performed music, including a specially commissioned rap by Erik Weiner of Walter Benjamin's "Thesis on the Philosophy of History." _ Theodor W. Adorno was the prototypical German Jewish non-Jew, Walter Benjamin vacillated between German Jew and Jewish German, Gershom Scholem was a committed Zionist, and Arnold Schönberg converted to Protestantism for professional reasons but later returned to Judaism. Carl Djerassi, himself a refugee from Hitler's Austria, dramatizes a dialogue between these four men (...) in which they discuss fraternity, religious identity, and legacy as well as reveal aspects of their lives-notably their relations with their wives-that many have ignored, underemphasized, or misrepresented. The desire for canonization and the process by which it is obtained are the underlying themes of this dialogue, with emphasis on Paul Klee's _Angelus Novus _(1920), a canonized work that resonated deeply with Benjamin, Adorno, and Scholem (and for which Djerassi and Gabrielle Seethaler present a revisionist and richly illustrated interpretation). Basing his dialogue on extensive archival research and interviews, Djerassi concludes with a daring speculation on the putative contents of Benjamin's famous briefcase, which disappeared upon his suicide. (shrink)

_This book features a CD of rarely performed music, including a specially commissioned rap by Erik Weiner of Walter Benjamin's "Thesis on the Philosophy of History." _ Theodor W. Adorno was the prototypical German Jewish non-Jew, Walter Benjamin vacillated between German Jew and Jewish German, Gershom Scholem was a committed Zionist, and Arnold Schönberg converted to Protestantism for professional reasons but later returned to Judaism. Carl Djerassi, himself a refugee from Hitler's Austria, dramatizes a dialogue between these four men (...) in which they discuss fraternity, religious identity, and legacy as well as reveal aspects of their lives-notably their relations with their wives-that many have ignored, underemphasized, or misrepresented. The desire for canonization and the process by which it is obtained are the underlying themes of this dialogue, with emphasis on Paul Klee's _Angelus Novus _, a canonized work that resonated deeply with Benjamin, Adorno, and Scholem. Basing his dialogue on extensive archival research and interviews, Djerassi concludes with a daring speculation on the putative contents of Benjamin's famous briefcase, which disappeared upon his suicide. (shrink)

A reflection on everyday existence in the 'sphere of consumption of late Capitalism', this work is Adorno's literary and philosophical masterpiece.

This celebrated work is the keystone of the thought of the Frankfurt School. It is a wide-ranging philosophical and psychological critique of the Western categories of reason and nature, from Homer to Nietzsche.

It is still a widespread assumption that metaphysics and ontology deal with roughly the same questions. They are supposed to be concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and to give an account of the meaning of 'existence' or 'being' in line with the broadest possible metaphysical assumptions. Against this, Markus Gabriel proposes a radical form of ontological pluralism that divorces ontology from metaphysics, understood as the most fundamental theory of absolutely everything. He argues that the concept of existence (...) is incompatible with the existence of the world and therefore proposes his innovative no-world-view. In the context of recent debates surrounding new realism and speculative realism, Gabriel also develops the outlines of a realist epistemological pluralism. His idea here is that there are different forms of knowledge that correspond to the plurality of fields of sense that must be acknowledged in order to avoid the trap of metaphysics. (shrink)

This book is an unrivalled indictment of the banality of mass culture - Adorno's finest essays are collected here, offering the reader unparalleled insights ...

Written after his return to Germany in 1949, the articles, essays, and radio talks included in this volume speak to the pressing political, cultural, and ...

Adorno's efforts to salvage the contemporaneity of Hegel's thought form part of his response to the increasingly tight net of social control in the aftermath of ...

"Early in the 1960s Adorno gave four courses of lectures on the road leading to Negative Dialectics, his magnum opus of 1966. The second of these was concerned with the topics of history and freedom. In terms of content, these lectures represented an early version of the chapters in Negative Dialectics devoted to Kant and Hegel. In formal terms, these were improvised lectures that permit us to glimpse a philosophical work in progress." -- Cover, p. [4].

The paper discusses the active part in the process of perceiving, usually expressed by the Greek word krinein. It is argued that krinein in one of its uses means "to judge" in the sense of judging a case, i. e. deciding it. It is not used for making statements. A second meaning of the Greek word is that of discerning or discriminating, and it is this meaning that plays a central part in Aristotle's theory of perception.

Those who wish to claim that all facts about grounding are themselves grounded (“the meta-grounding thesis”) must defend against the charge that such a claim leads to infinite regress and violates the well-foundedness of ground. In this paper, we defend. First, we explore three distinct but related notions of “well-founded”, which are often conflated, and three corresponding notions of infinite regress. We explore the entailment relations between these notions. We conclude that the meta-grounding thesis need not lead to tension with (...) any of the three notions of “well-founded”. Finally, we explore the details of and motivations for further conditions on ground that one might add to generate a conflict between the meta-grounding thesis and a well-founded constraint. We explore these topics by developing and utilizing a formal framework based on the notion of a grounding structure. (shrink)

The question as to what makes a perfect Aristotelian syllogism a perfect one has long been discussed by Aristotelian scholars. G. Patzig was the first to point the way to a correct answer: it is the evidence of the logical necessity that is the special feature of perfect syllogisms. Patzig moreover claimed that the evidence of a perfect syllogism can be seen for Barbara in the transitivity of the a-relation. However, this explanation would give Barbara a different status over the (...) other three first figure syllogisms. I argue that, taking into account the role of the being-contained-as-in-a-whole formulation, transitivity can be seen to be present in all four first figure syllogisms. Using this wording will put the negation sign with the predicate, similar to the notation in modern predicate calculus. (shrink)

This volume makes available in English for the first time Adorno’s lectures on metaphysics. It provides a unique introduction not only to metaphysics but also to Adorno’s own intellectual standpoint, as developed in his major work Negative Dialectics. Metaphysics for Adorno is defined by a central tension between concepts and immediate facts. Adorno traces this dualism back to Aristotle, whom he sees as the founder of metaphysics. In Aristotle it appears as an unresolved tension between form and matter. This basic (...) split, in Adorno’s interpretation, runs right through the history of metaphysics. Perhaps not surprisingly, Adorno finds this tension resolved in the Hegelian dialectic. Underlying this dualism is a further dichotomy, which Adorno sees as essential to metaphysics: while it dissolves belief in transcendental worlds by thought, at the same time it seeks to rescue belief in a reality beyond the empirical, again by thought. It is to this profound ambiguity, for Adorno, that the metaphysical tradition owes its greatness. The major part of these lectures, given by Adorno late in his life, is devoted to a critical exposition of Aristotle’s thought, focusing on its central ambiguities. In the last lectures, Adorno’s attention switches to the question of the relevance of metaphysics today, particularly after the Holocaust. He finds in metaphysical experiences, which transcend rational discourse without lapsing into irrationalism, a last precarious refuge of the humane truth to which his own thought always aspired. This volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in Adorno’s work and will be a valuable text for students and scholars of philosophy and social theory. (shrink)

Construction of the Aesthetic intends to recuperate the sphere of the aesthetic from the dialectic of existence: 'not to forget in dreams the present world, but to change it by the strength of an image.'.

A landmark work from the founder of the Frankfurt School. A key work in the study of Adorno, of interest to students and general readers alike.

An intense and lively debate on literature and art between thinkers who became some of the great figures of twentieth-century philosophy and literature.

Bertrand Russell offered an influential paradox of propositions in Appendix B of The Principles of Mathematics, but there is little agreement as to what to conclude from it. We suggest that Russell's paradox is best regarded as a limitative result on propositional granularity. Some propositions are, on pain of contradiction, unable to discriminate between classes with different members: whatever they predicate of one, they predicate of the other. When accepted, this remarkable fact should cast some doubt upon some of the (...) uses to which modern descendente of Russell's paradox of propositions have been put in recent literature. (shrink)

To celebrate the 270th anniversary of the De Gruyter publishing house, the company is providing permanent open access to 270 selected treasures from the De Gruyter Book Archive. Titles will be made available to anyone, anywhere at any time that might be interested. The DGBA project seeks to digitize the entire backlist of titles published since 1749 to ensure that future generations have digital access to the high-quality primary sources that De Gruyter has published over the centuries.

Ethical issues at the workplace have once again become topical and important due to considerable adverse publicity surrounding reports of unethical business practices by corporate managers. Accordingly, this paper re‐visits the question of whether gender, age and work experience do have an effect on ethical judgement, using 655 business students as respondents. This is necessary as business students are likely to become managers during their career and will face complex ethical concerns and dilemmas in their daily, routine affairs. The findings (...) currently demonstrate that females are more ethically aware than their male counterparts – that is, there are differences between males and females regarding ethical judgement. There is also evidence to suggest that age is a factor that does impact on ethical judgement. However, we also found evidence to suggest that in some cases, the age factor does not necessarily have a significant impact on ethical awareness. The results further indicate that there is a difference in ethical judgement related to work experience. However, at the same time, in one question there is no evidence to suggest the claim that work experience does impact significantly on ethical judgement. Overall, it appears that ethical awareness does increase alongside work experience. (shrink)

The doctrine that whatever could exist does exist leads to a proliferation of possibly concrete objects given certain principles of recombination. If, for example, there could have been a large infinite number of concrete objects, then there is at least the same number of possibly concrete objects in existence. And further cardinality considerations point to a tension between the preceding doctrine and the Cantorian conception of the absolutely infinite. This paper develops a parallel problem for a variety of possible worlds (...) accounts of modality which eschew the commitment to a plethora of possibly concrete objects. Moreover, the difficulty is importantly different from more familiar threats of paradox exemplified by certain descendants of Russell's paradox of propositions and Kaplan's paradox. (shrink)

Kant’s Categorical Imperative (CI) is to be taken as a necessary and sufficient condition for any action that is permissible, i. e. not prohibited. The class of permissible actions contains actions which are allowed as well as those which are morally required. If to perform an action and to abstain from this action can be taken to be ‘practical opposites’, then an action that is morally required for, a duty, is an action whose practical opposite is prohibited, and vice versa. (...) The class of actions which are merely allowed (neither prohibited nor morally required for) contains all and only those actions who together with their practical opposites belong to the class of permissible (not prohibited) actions. The paper then adduces passages from Kant’s ethical writings on the CI supporting these distinctions. (shrink)

I argue, firstly, that the accounts of 'accident' in Aristotle's Met. V 30 and in Top. I 5 cannot be used to elucidate each other: the Metaphysics passage tries to disentangle the uses of a Greek word, the Topics passage introduces technical terms for Aristotle's semantics. I then argue that the positive definition in Top. I 5 is to be understood in the following way: X is an accident of Y iff X belongs to Y and if there is a (...) Z such that X can belong to Z and also not belong to Z. Thus, being white is an accident of snow. I finally argue that certain shortcomings in the Topics account lead Aristotle to redefine accident in the Posterior Analytics. (shrink)

It is argued that recollection in Plato's "Meno" is used as a metaphor, though not one for a priori knowledge: the point of comparison is the analogy between the processes of learning in the sense of coming to know from an error and recollecting something one has forgotten. Recollecting in this sense as well as correcting an error implies the becoming aware of a lack of knowledge previously unnoticed. It is shown that the geometry lesson (82b9-85b7) is intended to bring (...) out this analogy. It is argued further that the error to be corrected by the staging of the geometry lesson is an error of Meno's concerning the nature of knowledge. It is finally argued that Socrates' speech in 81a5-d5 is a parody of a Gorgian speech and that the learning-is-recollection statement in this passage is an allegorical conceit in the manner of Gorgias and Empedocles. (shrink)

Much of our behavior is guided by our understanding of events. We perceive events when we observe the world unfolding around us, participate in events when we act on the world, simulate events that we hear or read about, and use our knowledge of events to solve problems. In this book, Gabriel A. Radvansky and Jeffrey M. Zacks provide the first integrated framework for event cognition and attempt to synthesize the available psychological and neuroscience data surrounding it. This synthesis (...) leads to new proposals about several traditional areas in psychology and neuroscience including perception, attention, language understanding, memory, and problem solving.Radvansky and Zacks have written this book with a diverse readership in mind. It is intended for a range of researchers working within cognitive science including psychology, neuroscience, computer science, philosophy, anthropology, and education. Readers curious about events more generally such as those working in literature, film theory, and history will also find it of interest. (shrink)

Carnap’s seminal ‘Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology’ makes important use of the notion of a framework and the related distinction between internal and external questions. But what exactly is a framework? And what role does the internal/external distinction play in Carnap’s metaontology? In an influential series of papers, Matti Eklund has recently defended a bracingly straightforward interpretation: A Carnapian framework, Eklund says, is just a natural language. To ask an internal question, then, is just to ask a question in, say, English. (...) To try to ask an external question is to try, absurdly, to ask a question in no language at all. Finding that so trivial an I/e distinction can’t help to explain Carnap’s deflationary metaontology, Eklund is led to attribute to Carnap a view he calls ontological pluralism. In this paper, I show that Eklund misreads Carnap, and I argue that this misreading obscures fundamental features of Carnap’s philosophy. I then defend an account of frameworks as what Carnap called semantical systems, and I place this account in the context of Carnap’s philosophical program of explication. Finally, I discuss the role that frameworks and the I/e distinction play in ESO, showing that ESO provides no reason to attribute the doctrine of ontological pluralism to Carnap. (shrink)

This paper (1) criticizes Patzig's explanation of Aristotle's reason for calling his first figure syllogisms perfect syllogisms, i.e. the transitivity relation: it can only be used for Barbara, not for the other three moods. The paper offers (2) an alternative interpretation: It is only in the case of the (perfect) first figure moods that we can move from the subject term of the minor premiss, taken to be a predicate of an individual, to the predicate term of the major premiss. (...) This contention is supported (i) by Aristotle's wording of the dictum de omni et nullo and (ii) by Aristotle's use of a formula which puts the minor term in the first position when he first states Barbara and Celarent. (shrink)

I try to show that Aristotle does not restrict 'praxis' to those activities which have their end in themselves. NE VI 5, 1140b6-7 need not to be taken as an argument in favour of the restricted interpretation: the wording of the passage is compatible with the interpretation that the end of a praxis is (another) praxis (e.g. eupraxia), the end of a poiesis on the other hand is never a poiesis. This interpretation fits better the use of 'praxis' throughout the (...) NE. MM A 34, 1197a4-12 is discarded since the MM is not written by Aristotle. Next I discuss the relation between the verbs 'prattein' and 'poiein' on the one hand and the corresponding nouns 'poiesis' and 'praxis' on the other, in order to determine their exact meaning. To conclude, Aristotle's distinctions are compared to certain tenets of H. Arendt in her 'Vita Activa'. (shrink)

At the book's core are illuminating studies of thc founders of modern music - Mahler, Schoenberg and Berg, and an important 'dialectical portrait' of Stravinsky ...

This paper appeals to the phenomenon of dreaming to provide a novel defense against arguments from evil. The thrust of the argument is as follows: when we wake up after a nightmare we are often filled entirely with relief, and do not consider ourselves to have actually suffered very much at all; and since it is epistemically possible that this whole life is simply a dream, it follows that it is epistemically possible that in reality there is very little suffering. (...) This epistemic possibility decisively undermines a key premise of both logical and evidential arguments from evil. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) was a cultural philosopher, sociologist, literary critic, and historian of music who, along with Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Erich Fromm, founded the Frankfurt School. Against Epistemology is one of his most important works.

Introduction: Setting the scene -- The soul, Dharma, and liberation -- The supreme person's descent -- The path of enlightened action -- The path of classical yoga -- The vision of the supreme, I -- Quitting the body, the ephemeral, and eternal worlds -- The vision of the supreme, II -- Seeing the supreme in this world -- The revelation -- Stages of devotion -- The vision of the supreme in the heart -- The three Gusas -- The journey from (...) bondage to liberation -- The divine and the demonic -- The manifestation of the three Gusas in human life -- Summary and conclusion: Surrender to Kusa alone. (shrink)

The Kohlberg Gilligan Controversy has received intermittent but inconclusive attention for many years, perhaps reflecting the difficulty of bridging the two positions. This article explores the published evidence for Gilligan's claims of gender difference, gender identity difference, and role of caring in people's ethics. It seems that the evidence for pronounced gender differences in ethical attitudes within business is weak, even if gender identity is used instead of physical gender. The main propositions of Care Theory and recent advances in its (...) thinking are discussed. Special focus emerges on the notion of Attachment which seems to be the Care Theory ingredient both most able to survive critical scrutiny and most promising for bridging the divide between the Kohlberg and Gilligan paradigms. The Social Bonding Model and other possible bridge building conceptual structures are introduced. Finally, Max Weber's division between ethics of conviction and ethics of responsibility provides an overarching perspective both of the gap still to be bridged and the need to keep trying to bridge it. (shrink)

Die Studie befaßt sich mit Kritik und Rezeption des scholastischen Aristoteles beim jungen Luther. Der Autor behandelt Fragen der Aristoteles-Rezeption des jungen Luther: Welchen Aristoteles meinte der junge Luther jeweils in seinen zahlreichen Stellungnahmen zu "Aristoteles"? Was ist deren genauer Inhalt? Wie argumentiert Luther in seiner Auseinandersetzung mit Aristoteles, und welche Probleme ergeben sich dabei? Welches sind die unterschiedlichen Formen dieses Rezeptionsverhältnisses? Die systematischen Probleme, die sich dabei zeigen, analysiert der Autor an ihrem historischen Ort.