Die schnell anwachsende Hinneigung zur Existentialanalytik, zur Lebensphilosophie und zur Ontologie am Anfang der 30er Jahre zwang Edmund Husserl dazu, die ursprungliche, als transzendentale ausgereifte Phanomenologie in methodischer und systematischer Hinsicht von diesen neuen Tendenzen scharf abzugrenzen. In den Jahren 1930 bis 1932 entwarf Eugen Fink im Auftrag seines Lehrers eine Reihe von Texten zur Phanomenologie, die grundlegende Bedeutung haben sollten fur ein Systematisches Werk der Phanomenologie bzw. als neue Meditations cartesiennes fur das deutsche Publikum gedacht waren. Diese Entwurfe Eugen (...) Finks kulminierten in der VI. Cartesianischen Meditation (1932), die u. a. von Gaston Berger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty und Tran Duc Thao in Frankreich rezipiert wurde, bevor Fink sie im Jahre 1946 als Habilitationsschrift an der Freiburger Universitat einreichte. Der vorliegende Band, der in chronologischer Reihenfolge die im Auftrag Husserls verfassten Entwurfe Finks aus den Jahren 1930-32 veroffentlicht, schliesst unmittelbar an die Bande 1 (Studien zur Phanomenologie) und 3 (Phanomenologische Werkstatt) der Eugen Fink Gesamtausgabe an. In diesen Texten gewinnt Finks origineller Beitrag zur Phanomenologie Husserls in der Freiburger Zeit eine Konturenscharfe, die von Sartre und Merleau- Ponty fruh erkannt wurde. (shrink)

Eugen Fink is considered one of the clearest interpreters of phenomenology and was the preferred conversational partner of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. In Play as Symbol of the World, Fink offers an original phenomenology of play as he attempts to understand the world through the experience of play. He affirms the philosophical significance of play, why it is more than idle amusement, and reflects on the movement from "child's play" to "cosmic play." Well-known for its non-technical, literary style, this (...) skillful translation by Ian Alexander Moore and Christopher Turner invites engagement with Fink's philosophy of play and related writings on sports, festivals, and ancient cult practices. (shrink)

Public opinion can affect the adoption of genome editing technologies. In food production, genome editing can be applied to a wide range of applications, in different species and with different purposes. This study analyzed how the public responds to five different applications of genome editing, varying the species involved and the proposed purpose of the modification. Three of the applications described the introduction of disease resistance within different species, and two targeted product quality and quantity in cattle. Online surveys in (...) Canada, the US, Austria, Germany and Italy were carried out with a total sample size of 3698 participants. Using a between-subject design, participants were confronted with one of the five applications and asked to decide whether they considered it right or wrong. Perceived risks, benefits, and the perception of the technology as tampering with nature were surveyed and were complemented with socio-demographics and a measure of the participants’ moral foundations. In all countries, participants evaluated the application of disease resistance in humans as most right to do, followed by disease resistance in plants, and then in animals, and considered changes in product quality and quantity in cattle as least right to do. However, US and Italian participants were generally more positive toward all scenarios, and German and Austrian participants more negative. Cluster analyses identified four groups of participants: ‘strong supporters’ who saw only benefits and little risks, ‘slight supporters’ who perceived risks and valued benefits, ‘neutrals’ who showed no pronounced opinion, and ‘opponents’ who perceived higher risks and lower benefits. This research contributes to understanding public response to applications of genome editing, revealing differences that can help guide decisions related to adoption of these technologies. (shrink)

This article discusses the moral philosophical problem of recognizing the moral status of an entity from a sociological perspective. The problem of moral status is of direct practical relevance. It is not only a question in moral philosophy but also in the social practices of modern societies whether embryos, newborns, comatose patients or those suffering from dementia should have full moral status or not. Since it is a question of practical relevance it seems appropriate to me to discuss it from (...) the standpoint of a theory of society. I develop my sociological perspective based on the social theory of the co-world , into which I will integrate the theory of functional differentiation . This theoretical perspective in combination with preliminary empirical results leads to the hypothesis that it is a functional element of modern societies that they draw the borders between entities who have full moral status and other beings along the lines of the criterion: living human being. A criterion demanding the exacting quality of displaying at the time in question the properties associated with personhood would be dysfunctional for a modern society. This result requires that Luhmann′s theory of human dignity has to be revised implementing a sociological theory of society′s perspective. (shrink)

Latour is widely considered a critic and renewer of research in the social sciences. The ecologically minded Left has also acclaimed him as a theorist interested in bringing nature back both into sociological theory and into society and politics. To enable a more detailed discussion of Latour’s claims, I will here outline his theory and the ways in which it is related to classical theory, such as Durkheim, and the methodology of the interpretive paradigm, such as Schütz. My thesis is (...) that Latour’s empirical studies may be read as unfolding the methodological consequences of the interpretive paradigm, and that his early work is a brilliant proof of Durkheim’s theory of the morphology of social facts. Latour has now elaborated the insights he gained from concrete laboratory studies toward a general theory of the social, of society, and of politics. These generalizations have made his theory at least partly problematic. The political implication of Latour’s theory of society is a generalization of the call for equality to encompass everything; in other words, Latour criticizes the exclusion of nonhuman entities from political representation. The paper closes by discussing the political consequences of this proposal. (shrink)

In order to delimit the realm of social phenomena, sociologists refer implicitly or explicitly to a distinction between living human beings and other entities, that is, sociologists equate the social world with the world of living humans. This consensus has been questioned by only a few authors, such as Luckmann, and some scholars of science studies. According to these approaches, it would be ethnocentric to treat as self-evident the premise that only living human beings can be social actors. The methodological (...) consequence of such critique is a radical deanthropologization of sociological research. It must be considered an open question whether or not only living human can be social actors. The paper starts with a discussion of the methodological problems posed by such an analysis of the borders of the social world, and presents the results of an empirical analysis of these borders in the fields of intensive care and neurological rehabilitation. Within these fields it must be determined whether a body is a living human body or a symbol using human body. The analysis of these elementary border phenomena challenges basic sociological concepts. The relevant contemporary sociological theories refer to a dyadic constellation as the systematic starting point of their concept of sociality. The complex relationship between at least two entities is understood as the basis of the development of a novel order that functions as a mediating structure between the involved parties. Based upon empirical data, I argue that it is necessary to change this foundational assumption. Not the dyad but the triad must be understood as the foundational constellation. This implies a new understanding of the third actor, which is distinct from the concepts developed by Simmel and Berger and Luckmann. (shrink)

"Ronald Bruzina’s superb translation... makes available in English a text of singular historical and systematic importance for phenomenology." —Husserl Studies "... a pivotal document in the development of phenomenology... essential reading for students of phenomenology twentieth-century thought." —Word Trade "... an invaluable addition to the corpus of Husserl scholarship. More than simply a scholarly treatise, however, it is the result of Fink’s collaboration with Husserl during the last ten years of Husserl’s life.... This truly essential work in phenomenology should find (...) a prominent place alongside Husserl’s own works. For readers interested in phenomenology—and in Husserl in particular—it cannot be recommended highly enough." —Choice "... a thorough critique of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology... raises many new questions.... a classic." —J. N. Mohanty A foundational text in Husserlian phenomenology, written in 1932 and now available in English for the first time. (shrink)

'Principles Of Mental Imagery' offers a broad, balanced, and up-to-date introduction to the major findings of this research and identifies five general principles that can account for most of them. It considers the development of experimental techniques that have solved many of the challenging methodological problems inherent in imagery research and includes recent experimental findings not covered in other imagery books..

ZusammenfassungEs wird als eine offene Frage behandelt, ob der Kreis sozialer Personen, die miteinander sozial handeln und dadurch eine normative gesellschaftliche Ordnung schaffen, mit dem Kreis der biologisch lebendigen Menschen identisch ist. Ein Blick in die historische und ethnographische Forschung lehrt: Es gibt Gesellschaften, in denen auch Tiere, Verstorbene, Götter oder Dämonen als soziale Personen auftreten können, die als verantwortliche Akteure und damit auch als Adressaten von normativen Erwartungen, d. h. als soziale Personen, angesehen werden. Dass nur lebende Menschen, aber (...) auch alle lebenden Menschen als soziale Personen, d. h. verantwortlich handelnde Subjekte, anerkannt werden, muss als ein Charakteristikum der modernen funktional differenzierten Gesellschaft gelten. Der biologisch lebendige Mensch, dem Menschenrechte zukommen, muss als eine soziale Institution begriffen werden. Diese ist im 18. Jahrhundert entstanden. Ihre gesellschaftliche Funktion besteht darin, die auseinanderfallenden Handlungsfelder moderner Gesellschaften zu integrieren. (shrink)

This book fills that lacuna by providing an anthology of readings on theological aesthetics drawn from the first century to the present.A superb sourcebook, "Theological Aesthetics" brings together original texts that are relevant and ...

The period from Plato's birth to Aristotle's death (427-322 BC) is one of the most influential and formative in the history of Western philosophy. The developments of logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and science in this period have been investigated, controversies have arisen and many new theories have been produced. But this is the first book to give detailed scholarly attention to the development of dialectic during this decisive period. It includes chapters on topics such as: dialectic as interpersonal debate between (...) a questioner and a respondent; dialectic and the dialogue form; dialectical methodology; the dialectical context of certain forms of arguments; the role of the respondent in guaranteeing good argument; dialectic and presentation of knowledge; the interrelations between written dialogues and spoken dialectic; and definition, induction and refutation from Plato to Aristotle. The book contributes to the history of philosophy and also to the contemporary debate about what philosophy is. (shrink)

The relevance of Kant to Plessner’s work was long all but ignored and there is hardly any mention of Plessner in the Kant literature. The Plessner renaissance beginning in the 1990s, however, has brought with it a stronger focus on the methodological construction of his theory, so that the Kant connection has at least been acknowledged, but the particular relevance of Kant’s Critique of Judgement has not been systematically explicated. In this essay, I investigate the connection between Kant’s notion of (...) reflective—specifically teleological—judgment and Plessner’s theory. I begin by setting out the characteristics of teleological judgment, with two points being of particular importance: the temporal structure of the final cause and Kant’s reference to an understanding other than the human, that is, to an ordering power other than the human. In a second step, I work out Plessner’s conceptualization of the spatiotemporal appearance of organisms and the way he understands the other of human understanding as nature’s—or history’s—historically evolved and mutable capacity for self-order. He arrives at these conclusions by way of a methodologically controlled process of questioning derived from Kant, which he calls the “principle of the open question.”. (shrink)

One common objection to ethical vegetarianism—that is, vegetarianism for ethical reasons—concerns the morality of the predator-prey relationship. If it is morally acceptable for wolves to kill sheep for food, why is it wrong for human beings to eat meat? The objection raised here is sometimes called the “predation argument.” In this article, I critically examine three versions of the argument.

In the wake of the massive criticism of Kant’s deduction of the categories in the first Critique, Fichte starts providing what he takes an improved version of such a deduction to be. This article aims at investigating the transformation he thereby introduces into the Kantian thought. I will do so mainly with respect to the deduction’s architectonical dimension, i.e. by investigating the role of the deduction for the Wissenschaftslehre as a whole. Concretely, I will defend the following theses: (1) By (...) identifying the deduction of the categories and the metaphysical system, Fichte moves away both from Kant’s conception of a system and from that of a deduction. (2) It is the unique character of Fichte’s conception of a first principle of a system that allows for an identification between system and deduction. (shrink)

This article argues that understanding everyday practices in neurobiological labs requires us to take into account a variety of different action positions: self-conscious social actors, technical artifacts, conscious organisms, and organisms being merely alive. In order to understand the interactions among such diverse entities, highly differentiated conceptual tools are required. Drawing on the theory of the German philosopher and sociologist Helmuth Plessner, the paper analyzes experimenters as self-conscious social persons who recognize monkeys as conscious organisms. Integrating Plessner’s ideas into the (...) stock of concepts used in science and technology studies provides richer descriptions of laboratory life. In particular, this theory allows an understanding of a crucial feature of neurobiological brain research: the construction of the brain as the epistemic object of brain research. As such, the brain must be isolated from the acting and interacting organism in a complicated process. (shrink)

The lived body (Leib) in the phenomenological tradition tends to be thought as the living body of the acting and perceiving subject, which is then analyzed by way of subjective self-reflection. This is true for Husserl (1970) as well as for Merleau-Ponty (1962) and Sartre (1992). When, however, the lived body is made the starting point of analysis in this way, it becomes a general and thus transhistorical condition of experience, and it is only in a second step that social (...) relations and historical formation can be inscribed into it. Plessner’s concept of the lived body (Leib) differs in two ways from this view predominant in phenomenology. First, Plessner does not approach the lived body in terms of a .. (shrink)

Die schnell anwachsende Hinneigung zur Existentialanalytik, zur Lebensphilosophie und zur Ontologie am Anfang der 30er Jahre zwang Edmund Husserl dazu, die ursprungliche, als transzendentale ausgereifte Phanomenologie in methodischer und systematischer Hinsicht von diesen neuen Tendenzen scharf abzugrenzen. In den Jahren 1930 bis 1932 entwarf Eugen Fink im Auftrag seines Lehrers eine Reihe von Texten zur Phanomenologie, die grundlegende Bedeutung haben sollten fur ein Systematisches Werk der Phanomenologie bzw. als neue Meditations cartesiennes fur das deutsche Publikum gedacht waren. Diese Entwurfe Eugen (...) Finks kulminierten in der VI. Cartesianischen Meditation (1932), die u. a. von Gaston Berger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty und Tran Duc Thao in Frankreich rezipiert wurde, bevor Fink sie im Jahre 1946 als Habilitationsschrift an der Freiburger Universitat einreichte. Der vorliegende Band, der in chronologischer Reihenfolge die im Auftrag Husserls verfassten Entwurfe Finks aus den Jahren 1930-32 veroffentlicht, schliesst unmittelbar an die Bande 1 (Studien zur Phanomenologie) und 3 (Phanomenologische Werkstatt) der Eugen Fink Gesamtausgabe an. In diesen Texten gewinnt Finks origineller Beitrag zur Phanomenologie Husserls in der Freiburger Zeit eine Konturenscharfe, die von Sartre und Merleau- Ponty fruh erkannt wurde. (shrink)

Plessner not only formulates a theory of positionality here but also a principle of how to construct this theory with respect to empirical research, a principle he calls the “deduction of the categories of life”. This is described in the literature as “reflexive deduction”. With reference to Plessner’s methodology of theory construction I unfold a new understanding of his theory of the shared world. At present, there are two understandings of the shared world. The traditional understanding of the shared world (...) is primarily concerned with relativizing particular individual selves, whose boundedness to their own standpoint is devalued by the we-form. I call this SWU-1. SWU-1 is not developed in accordance with the principle of reflexive deduction. The second understanding of the shared world, on the other hand, is developed, in accordance with that principle, as a reflexive turning upon the factual state of existing in relationships of touch. This leads to a different understanding of the shared world, which I call SWU-2, or the social undecidedness relation. Such an understanding of the shared world forces us to also reconsider our understanding of the inner and outer worlds. (shrink)

Theories of face-to-face interaction employ a concept of spatial presence and view communication via digital technologies as an inferior version of interaction, often with pathological implications. Current studies of mediatized communication challenge this notion with empirical evidence of “telepresence”, suggesting that users of such technologies experience their interactions as immediate. We argue that the phenomenological concepts of the lived body and mediated immediacy (Helmuth Plessner) combined with the concept of embodied space (Hermann Schmitz) can help overcome the pathologizing of digital (...) communication in social theory and enable descriptions which are truer to the experience of using said technology. From this perspective it appears as an ethnocentric premise to restrict interaction to human actors being present in local space. This restricted understanding of interaction does not allow for an appropriate empirical analysis of the emerging structures of digital communication. (shrink)

Die sozialtheoretischen Diskussionen der letzten Jahrzehnte haben zu neuartigen Anforde-rungen an eine allgemeine Sozialtheorie geführt. Wie muss eine allgemeine Theorie des Sozialen aussehen, • die den Kreis legitimer Akteure als historisch variabel, d.h. als kontingent, begreift, statt ihn selbstverständlicherweise auf den Kreis lebendiger Menschen zu beschrän-ken? • die die Natur-Kultur-Unterscheidung nicht als gegeben voraussetzt, sondern als eine mögliche Ordnung des Zugangs zur Welt begreift? • die Ordnung nicht nur als eine Ordnung des Sozialen analysiert, sondern auch Ma-terialität und die Dimensionen (...) von Raum und Zeit einbezieht? • die Gewalt als ordnungsbildende Kraft begreifen kann? • die eine Perspektive für die Formulierung einer Gesellschaftstheorie erschliesst? Mit Blick auf die allgemeine Theoriedebatte werden in diesem Buch drei Diskussionstränge zusammengeführt: Zum einen das Konglomerat an Debatten um die Notwendigkeit theoretischer Neuorientierungen (”turns“ oder ”Wenden“ wie z.B. linguistic turn, material turn, body turn, pictorial turn oder spatial turn); zum anderen die Problematisierung der Grenzen der Sozialwelt bzw. des Akteursstatus nichtmenschlicher Entitäten; drittens die immer wieder aufflackernden Auseinan-dersetzungen um die Bedeutung von Gewalt für die Gestaltung sozialer Prozesse. Die Theorie der Weltzugänge führt diese Aspekte zu einer Theorie mehrdimensionaler Ordnungsbildung zusammen und entwickelt dabei zugleich eine Perspektive für die Ausarbeitung einer Gesellschaftstheorie. Dieser Schritt ist theoriearchitektonisch notwendig, denn dadurch lassen sich die Sozialtheorie und damit auch die durch sie angeleiteten Forschungen reflexiv historisch situieren - dies ist die Voraussetzung für eine rationale Theoriekonstruktion. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Internationales Jahrbuch für philosophische Anthropologie Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 1 Seiten: 201-218.

Can we find necessary and sufficient conditions for a mental state to be a pain state? That is, does pain have a nature? Or is the term ‘pain’ ambiguous? I argue here that our expression ‘pain’ lacks necessary use conditions if one considers a range of contexts. As use conditions constrain the reference class, I argue that ‘pain’ does not refer to a natural category, but binds together a bunch of loosely resembling phenomena. This leads to problems for scientific and (...) clinical discourse. To solve these, a method of explication is suggested, based on a discursive combination between analysis of first-person reports and theories of natural science. Lastly, I consider the ethical implications of this ambiguity that lead to a reformulation of the goal of pain science: Not alleviation of all pains ought to be our goal, but only manipulation of conscious and negatively emotionally charged pains. (shrink)

Nietzsche's Philosophy traces the passionate development of Nietzsche's thought from the aestheticism of The Birth of Tragedy through to the late doctrines of the "will to power" and "eternal return".Inspired by the phenomenological method of Edmund Husserl and by the work of Martin Heidegger, Fink exposes the central themes of Nietzsche's philosophy, revealing the philosopher who experiences thinking as a fate and who ultimately searches for an expression of his own ontological experience in a negative theology.

General social theory has hardly been concerned with violence. The closest to constituting an exception to this rule are Weber and Foucault. But they largely pass over the symbolic, order-generating significance of violence and leave it open whether and in what way violence, including physical and deadly violence, plays a general role in the formation of order. In this article I argue that the general significance of violence for order formation can only be grasped if sociation is conceptualized starting from (...) embodied actors and systematically takes the figure of the third into account. Doing so leads to the following hypotheses about violence: violence is an antagonistic bodily interaction that communicates moral claims in a symbolically generalized way in reference to a third party. (shrink)

In this rewarding book, Laurie A. Finke challenges assumptions about gender, the self, and the text which underlie fundamental constructs of contemporary feminist theory. She maintains that some of the key concepts structuring feminist literary criticism need to be reexamined within both their historical context and the larger framework of current theory concerning language, representation, subjectivity, and value.

Eugen Fink repense Nietzsche à la fois à partir de toute la tradition philosophique et en direction d'une pensée neuve et métaphilosophique. Hegel, Marx, Husserl et Heidegger accompagnent discrètement cette tentative d'interprétation ouvrante. Remontant jusqu'à la pensée poétique d'Héraclite et anticipant le proche et le lointain avenir, Fink fait surgir l'intuition centrale du penseur de la mort de Dieu et de la volonté de puissance, du nihilisme et du retour éternel du même. Car Nietzsche qui essaie de dépasser la philosophie (...) et la métaphysique, vise à montrer que tout sens est intérieur au monde, le monde lui-même n'ayant pas de sens, puisqu'il se déploie comme jeu. (shrink)

Suppose we morally ought to maximise social welfare. Suppose profit maximisation is a means to maximise social welfare. Does this imply that we morally ought to maximise profits? Many proponents of the view that we have a moral obligation to maximise profits (tacitly) assume the validity of this argument. In this paper, we critically assess this assumption. We show that the validity of this argument is far from trivial and requires a careful argumentative defence.