Friedrich Nietzsche has emerged as one of the most important and influential modern philosophers. For several decades, the book series Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) has set the agenda in a rapidly growing and changing field of Nietzsche scholarship. The scope of the series is interdisciplinary and international in orientation reflects the entire spectrum of research on Nietzsche, from philosophy to literary studies and political theory. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that undergo a strict peer-review process. The (...) book series is led by an international team of editors, whose work represents the full range of current Nietzsche scholarship. (shrink)

One of the century's greatest philosophers, without whom there would be no Sartre, no Foucault, no Frankfurt School, Martin Heidegger was also a man of great failures and flaws, a Faustus who made a pact with the devil of his time, Adolf Hitler. The story of Heidegger's life and philosophy, a quintessentially German story in which good and evil, brilliance and blindness are inextricably entwined and the passions and disasters of a whole century come into play, is told in this (...) brilliant biography. Heidegger grew up in Catholic Germany where, for a chance at pursuing a life of learning, he pledged himself to the priesthood. Soon he turned apostate and sought a university position, which set him on the path to becoming the star of German philosophy in the 1920s. Rüdiger Safranski chronicles Heidegger's rise along with the thought he honed on the way, with its debt to Heraclitus, Plato, and Kant, and its tragic susceptibility to the conservatism that emerged out of the nightmare of Germany's loss in World War I. A chronicle of ideas and of personal commitments and betrayals, Safranski's biography combines clear accounts of the philosophy that won Heidegger eternal renown with the fascinating details of the loves and lapses that tripped up this powerful intellectual. The best intellectual biography of Heidegger ever written and a best-seller in Germany, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil does not shy away from full coverage of Heidegger's shameful transformation into a propagandist for the National Socialist regime; nor does it allow this aspect of his career to obscure his accomplishments. Written by a master of Heidegger's philosophy, the book is one of the best introductions to the thought and to the life and times of the greatest German philosopher of the century. (shrink)

Excerpt from Rene Descartes Descartes zieht sich in die Niederlande zuruck. Naheres uber die dortigen Zustande. 2. Verwerfung aller dog matiscben Voraussetzungen. Allgemeine metaphysische Grundlegung. 3. Es fehlt ihr noch die systematische Durch bildung. 4. Beschaftigung mit den mannigfachsten natur wissenschaftlichen Problemen. Heitere Stimmung des Philo 80phen. 5. Ausarbeitung einer Weltbildungstheorie. Die Grunde, weswegen das _werk nicht veroffentlicht wird. 6. Uber Descartes' Beurteilung der wissenschaftlichen Ver dienste Galileis 7. Liebesverhaltnis zwischen Descartes und einer Hollanderin. 8. Herausgabe einer Reihe wissenschaft licher (...) Werke. Charakteristik der Abhandlung uber die Methode. 9 Die Dioptrik. Technische Begabung des Philo 80phen. 10. Uber die Meteore. Ll. Geometrie. Uber die Ausdehnung und Grenzen der mathematischen Wissenschaft. Hohere Analysis. Descartes' Verhaltnis zu den abstrakten Problemen der Mathematik. Unvollkommenheit der Natur philosophie. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Theories of graded causation attract growing attention in the philosophical debate on causation. An important field of application is the controversial relationship between causation and moral responsibility. However, it is still unclear how exactly the notion of graded causation should be understood in the context of moral responsibility. One question is whether we should endorse a proportionality principle, according to which the degree of an agent’s moral responsibility is proportionate to their degree of causal contribution. A second question is whether (...) a theory of graded causation should measure closeness to necessity or closeness to sufficiency. In this paper, we argue that we should indeed endorse a proportionality principle and that this principle supports a notion of graded causation relying on closeness to sufficiency rather than closeness to necessity. Furthermore, we argue that this insight helps to provide a plausible analysis of the so-called ‘Moral Difference Puzzle’ recently described by Bernstein. (shrink)

In this communication recent evidence from cognitive neuroscience is presented showing that believing is a fundamental brain function. It integrates the perception of information from the environment with personal perspective taking (“what does it mean to me?”) as the basis for predictive coding of action. Observing that another person becomes injured can make one believe that the pain in the injured person is similar to pain that oneself has experienced previously. This first-person perspective has been called empathy and includes primal (...) beliefs about potentially pain eliciting objects and painful events in the sense of “what does it mean to you?”. Furthermore, observing other people to suffer involves the conceptual belief that their condition is aversive and burdensome. Believing in love and peace involves the perspective of “what does it mean to us?”. Contradictory events may cause the sensation of pain and suffering in the afflicted individuals resulting in mutual distrust and eventually disruption of social bonds. In conclusion, beliefs play an important, though long underestimated role in cognitive neuroscience of pain and suffering and more generally for the cultural notions of deities and evil. (shrink)

Der Band geht zurück auf die Tagung „Der aufrechte Gang im windschiefen Kapitalismus“, die im Januar 2016 in Weimar stattgefunden hat. Ihr Ziel war es, unterschiedliche Traditionen zusammenzuführen, Modelle kritischen Denkens zu vergegenwärtigen und neue Perspektiven der Gesellschaftstheorie zu eröffnen. Die Beiträge widmen sich der Standortbestimmung kritischer Theorien. Sie reflektieren auf ihre Ursprünge, loten ihr zeitdiagnostisches Potential aus und dokumentieren ihren interdisziplinären Charakter. Der „aufrechte Gang“ im Denken bedeutet, sich von der Übermacht des Bestehenden nicht einschüchtern zu lassen, konformistischer Akzeptanz (...) wie irrationaler Sinngebung zu widerstehen und die Möglichkeit des Neuen, die Utopie, wach zu halten. (shrink)

Diese Studie analysiert die Konzepte «Wissenskulturen» und «Experimentalkulturen», um sich dem Problem der Repräsentation mittels einer Mehrfaktoren-Analyse zu nähern.

Chemical structures are among the trademarks of our profession, as surely chemical as flasks, beakers and distillation columns. When someone sees one of us busily scribbling formulas or structures, he or she has no trouble identifying a chemist. Yet these familiar objects, which accompany our work from start to end, from the initial doodlings (Fig. I) to the final polished artwork in a publication (Fig. II), are deceptively simple. They raise interesting and difficult questions about representation. It is the intent (...) of this article to reflect upon molecular graphics. (shrink)

This introductory chapter gives a general survey of the research context, along with brief descriptions of the chapters collected here, indicating how they contribute to the three-year project which provided that context. Focusing on absolute notions of necessity and possibility, the project's principal aims were to explore the most fundamental questions and issues centred on them — ranging from scepticism about modal notions themselves, anti-realist view such as non-cognitivism, and the tenability of any sort of realism about modal facts, through (...) to questions about the metaphysics, logic, and epistemology of modality which any broadly realist view must answer. (shrink)

The degree of success in creating quality care for people suffering from dementia is limited despite extensive research. This article describes Healthcare providers’ experience with the ethical challenges and possibilities in the relationship with patients suffering from dementia and its impact on quality care. The material is based on qualitative, in-depth individual narrative interviews with 12 professional Healthcare providers from two different nursing homes. The transcribed interview texts were subjected to a phenomenological–hermeneutical interpretation. To provide quality care to patients with (...) dementia, the Healthcare providers emphasized the importance of sensing and understanding the patients’ emotional and bodily expressions through sentient attentiveness and recognition of the patient as a person. They also described reciprocity of expressions in the relationship where the patient recognized them both as persons and Healthcare providers. The analyses of the findings are, inter alia, discussed in light of Løgstrup’s relational philosophy of ethics. (shrink)

Both in scholarship on the Weimar Republic and in historical research in general, many conceptions of ‘crisis’ tend to remain vague and difficult to operationalize. These operational defects of the concept of crisis arise inevitably, we argue, from the concept’s constitutive link to human perception on the one hand and from its subsumption of complex interconnections of historical processes within different subsystems on the other. Frequently today, in both ordinary and historiographical usage, this basic openness of the concept of crisis (...) is foreclosed when it is deployed with a solely negative connotation of ‘downfall’ and ‘decline’, or of something being thrown into question or jeopardy. Such uses obscure a way in which a crisis can evoke not only the pessimistic sense of a threat to the old order but also the optimistic scenario of a chance for renewal. A one-sidedly negative understanding of crisis as prelude to calamity, we argue here, is problematic for historical research for two reasons. Firstly, it obscures comprehension of the consciousness of actors in the relevant period who at any particular moment can have had no prior knowledge of the crisis’s outcome. Secondly, it tends to reify the relevant crisis and to occlude its basic character as something narratively constructed in the accounts of both contemporaries and subsequent historiography. (shrink)

This collection of essays, first published in German in 1995, has been written by the foremost representative of the hermeneutical approach in German philosophy. It offers a quite original interpretation of the tradition of German Idealist thought - Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel. Rüdiger Bubner seeks to cast fresh light on the genuine philosophical innovations in the complex of issues and aspirations which dominated German intellectual life from 1780 to 1830. His major question is: in what way did the Idealists change (...) philosophy, reformulate traditional issues, and especially, reinterpret traditional figures? His answer to this question involves focusing on the literary and cultural spirit of the time, thus broadening the question of philosophical innovation and locating it within the wider framework of innovations and continuities within the Western intellectual tradition itself. This collection will be of special interest to students of German philosophy, literary theory and the history of ideas. (shrink)

This commentary argues that, in discussing the racial and cultural identities of cinematic representations of humanoid AI robots, nuances and differentiations are beneficial. It suggests that the essay on which the present text comments does not sufficiently acknowledge the range of identities found in AI films, in particular in Alex Garland's Ex Machina.

So we stand more or less on our own when trying to make sense of a specifically transcendental way of argumentation. Fortunately we are not all that alone, since independently of a direct Kantian influence the problem of transcendental arguments has stimulated a considerable debate among analytical philosophers. And we still have Kant’s own text. We shall start, therefore, by reminding ourselves of this debate and then go back to Kant. We shall deliberately not proceed the other way round in (...) order to avoid as much as possible what one may call a Kantian bias. The representatives chosen for analytical philosophy are Wittgenstein, Quine, and Strawson. We shall then consider the Kantian account of the meaning of the term "transcendental". After this preparation we are in a position to examine the claim of a ‘transcendental deduction,’ which is one of the most controversial issues arising from the Critique of Pure Reason. (shrink)

The author was invited by the organizers of the Benin symposium on the encounter between rationalities to contribute from the particular perspective of his research experience in ethno-mathematics – the study of mathematical ideas and practices as embedded in their cultural contexts. In this article he tries to contribute to the understanding of mathematical reasoning, as embedded in cultural practices, by means of illuminating some complementary aspects of geometrical exploration in diverse cultural contexts. He ends by offering a few comments (...) on possible educational implications. (shrink)

The influence of the Platonic theory of forms is to be found in nearly all periods in the history of Western philosophy. Much less well known is the fact that in all ages Arabic philosophers also discussed Platonic forms in their written works, although they had no access to Plato s Dialogues. This study analyses how this conception was given doctrinal content without recourse to Plato s works, and presents the relevant Arabic works in German translation for the first time. (...) They offer a first insight into a branch of the reception of Platonism that has not yet been researched, but which is often clearly influenced by Islam.". (shrink)

Over the last two decades, the capabilities approach has become an increasingly influential theory of development. It conceptualises human wellbeing in terms of an individual's ability to achieve functionings we have reason to value. In contrast, the African ethic of ubuntu views human flourishing as the propensity to pursue relations of fellowship with others, such that relationships have fundamental value. These two theoretical perspectives seem to be in tension with each other; while the capabilities approach focuses on individuals as the (...) locus of ethical value, an ubuntu ethic concentrates on the relations between individuals. In this article, we ask: to what extent is the capabilities approach compatible with this African ethical theory? We argue that, on reflection, relations play a much stronger role in the capabilities approach than often assumed. There is good reason to believe that relationality is part of the concept of a capability itself, where such relationality has intrinsic ethical value. This understanding of the ethical centrality of relations grounds new normative perspectives on the capabilities approach, and offers a more comprehensive grasp of the relevance of relationships to empirical enquiry. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Die absolute Form" verfügbar.

100 years ago, the editors of the Journal of Educational Psychology conducted one of the most famous studies of experts’ conceptions of human intelligence. This was reason enough to prompt the question where we stand today with making sense of “intelligence”. In this paper, we argue that we should overcome our anthropocentrism and appreciate the wonders of intelligence in nonhuman and nonbiological animals instead. For that reason, we study two cases of octopus intelligence and intelligence in machine learning systems to (...) embrace the notion of intelligence as a non-unitary faculty with pluralistic forms. Furthermore, we derive lessons for advancing our human self-understanding. (shrink)

A response to Lindsay Craig's essay, The So-Called Extended Synthesis and Population Genetics.

Corporate sustainability reports are supposed to provide a complete and balanced picture of corporate sustainability performance. They are, however, usually voluntary and thus prone to interpretation and even greenwashing tendencies. To overcome this problem, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) provides standardized reporting guidelines challenging companies to report positive and negative aspects of an organization’s sustainability performance. However, the reporting of “negative aspects” in particular can endanger corporate legitimacy if perceived by the stakeholders as not being in line with societal norms (...) and values. Starting from the theoretical lenses of economics-based disclosure theories and socio-political theories of disclosure, the focus of this study therefore was to analyze the communicative legitimation strategies companies use to report “negative aspects,” i.e., negative ecological and social impact caused by corporate activity. Using qualitative content analysis of GRI-oriented sustainability reports from companies listed on the US Dow Jones Industrial Average Index and on the German DAX Index, we identified six legitimation strategies. We discuss these strategies regarding to symbolic and substantial management of legitimacy. We show that symbolic legitimation strategies aiming at modifying the perception of legitimizing stakeholders dominate in the reports at hand. Such persuasion, however, does not meet the requirement of impartiality as postulated by the GRI guidelines. Building upon this conclusion we propose a concise characterization of “negative aspects” and develop a GRI-compliant schema of reporting about them. In doing so, we offer a way to improve the overall “balance” of sustainability reporting contributing to a true and fair view in sustainability disclosure. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 63 Heft: 6 Seiten: 1158-1168.