Introduces contemporary American philosophy of technology through six of its leading figures. The six American philosophers of technology whose work is profiled in this clear and concise introduction to the field—Albert Borgmann, Hubert Dreyfus, Andrew Feenberg, Donna Haraway, Don Ihde, and Langdon Winner—represent a new, empirical direction in the philosophical study of technology that has developed mainly in North America. In place of the grand philosophical schemes of the classical generation of European philosophers of technology, the contemporary American generation addresses (...) concrete technological practices and the co-evolution of technology and society in modern culture. Six Dutch philosophers associated with Twente University survey and critique the full scope and development of their American colleagues’ work, often illustrating shifts from earlier to more recent interests. Individual chapters focus on Borgmann’s engagement with technology and everyday life; Dreyfus’s work on the limits of artificial intelligence; Feenberg’s perspectives on the cultural and social possibilities opened by technologies; Haraway’s conception of the cyborg and its attendant blurring of boundaries; Ihde’s explorations of the place of technology in the lifeworld; and Winner’s fascination with the moral and political implications of modern technologies. American Philosophy of Technology offers an insightful and readable introduction to this new and distinctly American philosophical turn. Contributors are Hans Achterhuis, Philip Brey, René Munnik, Martijntje Smits, Pieter Tijmes, and Peter-Paul Verbeek. (shrink)

Machines will attain human levels of intelligence by the year 2040, predicts robotics expert Hans Moravec. And by 2050, they will have far surpassed us. In this mind-bending new book, Hans Moravec takes the reader on a roller coaster ride packed with such startling predictions. He tells us, for instance, that in the not-too-distant future, an army of robots will displace workers, causing massive, unprecedented unemployment. But then, says Moravec, a period of very comfortable existence will follow, as (...) humans benefit from a fully automated economy. And eventually, as machines evolve far beyond humanity, robots will supplant us. But if Moravec predicts the end of the domination by human beings, his is not a bleak vision. Far from railing against a future in which machines rule the world, Moravec embraces it, taking the startling view that intelligent robots will actually be our evolutionary heirs. "Intelligent machines, which will grow from us, learn our skills, and share our goals and values, can be viewed as children of our minds." And since they are our children, we will want them to outdistance us. In fact, in a bid for immortality, many of our descendants will choose to transform into "ex humans," as they upload themselves into advanced computers. We will become our children and live forever. In his provocative new book, the highly anticipated follow-up to his bestselling volume Mind Children, Moravec charts the trajectory of robotics in breathtaking detail. A must read for artificial intelligence, technology, and computer enthusiasts, Moravec's freewheeling but informed speculations present a future far different than we ever dared imagine. (shrink)

In this article, I respond to some criticisms raised in Evan Fales’ review of my book The Epistemology of Spirit Beliefs that was published in this journal. The points I will address are the following: (i) Fales’ complaint about unclarity in my epistemological position, (ii) his complaint about my insufficient presentation of alternative explanations, and (iii) his complaint about my use of the terms ‘naturalism’ and ‘naturalistic explanation’.

Hans Joas is one of the foremost social theorists in Germany today. Based on Joas’s celebrated study of George Herbert Mead, this work reevaluates the contribution of American pragmatism and European philosophical anthropology to theories of action in the social sciences. Joas also establishes direct ties between Mead’s work and approaches drawn from German traditions of philosophical anthropology. Joas argues for adding a third model of action to the two predominant models of rational and normative action—one that emphasizes the (...) creative character of human action. This model encompasses the other two, allowing for a more comprehensive theory of action. Joas elaborates some implications of his model for theories of social movements and social change and for the status of action theory in sociology in the face of competition from theories advanced by Luhmann and Habermas. The problem of action is of crucial importance in both sociology and philosophy, and this book—already widely debated in Germany—will add fresh impetus to the lively discussions current in the English-speaking world. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

For centuries, the ancient Chinese philosophical text the _Daodejing (Tao Te Ching)_ has fascinated and frustrated its readers. While it offers a wealth of rich philosophical insights concerning the cultivation of one's body and attaining one's proper place within nature and the cosmos, its teachings and structure can be enigmatic and obscure. Hans-Georg Moeller presents a clear and coherent description and analysis of this vaguely understood Chinese classic. He explores the recurring images and ideas that shape the work and (...) offers a variety of useful approaches to understanding and appreciating this canonical text. Moeller expounds on the core philosophical issues addressed in the _Daodejing_, clarifying such crucial concepts as Yin and Yang and Dao and De. He explains its teachings on a variety of subjects, including sexuality, ethics, desire, cosmology, human nature, the emotions, time, death, and the death penalty. The _Daodejing_ also offers a distinctive ideal of social order and political leadership and presents a philosophy of war and peace. An illuminating exploration, The _Daodejing_ is an interesting foil to the philosophical outlook of Western humanism and contains surprising parallels between its teachings and nontraditional contemporary philosophies. (shrink)

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Justice, equality, and righteousness—these are some of our greatest moral convictions. Yet in times of social conflict, morals can become rigid, making religious war, ethnic cleansing, and political purges possible. Morality, therefore, can be viewed as pathology-a rhetorical, psychological, and social tool that is used and abused as a weapon. An expert on Eastern philosophies and social systems theory, Hans-Georg Moeller questions the perceived goodness of morality and those who claim morality is inherently positive. Critiquing the ethical "fanaticism" of (...) Western moralists, such as Immanuel Kant, Lawrence Kohlberg, John Rawls, and the utilitarians, Moeller points to the absurd fundamentalisms and impracticable prescriptions arising from definitions of good. Instead he advances a theory of "moral foolishness," or moral asceticism, extracted from the "amoral" philosophers of East Asia and such thinkers as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Niklas Luhmann. The moral fool doesn't understand why ethics are necessarily good, and he isn't convinced that the moral perspective is always positive. In this way he is like most people, and Moeller defends this foolishness against ethical pathologies that support the death penalty, just wars, and even Jerry Springer's crude moral theater. Comparing and contrasting the religious philosophies of Christianity, Daoism, and Zen Buddhism, Moeller presents a persuasive argument in favor of amorality. (shrink)

More and more, we present ourselves and encounter others through profiles. A profile shows us not as we are seen directly but how we are perceived by a broader public. As we observe how others observe us, we calibrate our self-presentation accordingly. Profile-based identity is evident everywhere from pop culture to politics, marketing to morality. But all too often critics simply denounce this alleged superficiality in defense of some supposedly pure ideal of authentic or sincere expression. This book argues that (...) the profile marks an epochal shift in our concept of identity and demonstrates why that matters. You and Your Profile blends social theory, philosophy, and cultural critique to unfold an exploration of the way we have come to experience the world. Instead of polemicizing against the profile, Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio outline how it works, how we readily apply it in our daily lives, and how it shapes our values—personally, economically, and ethically. They develop a practical vocabulary of life in the digital age. Informed by the Daoist tradition, they suggest strategies for handling the pressure of social media by distancing oneself from one’s public face. A deft and wide-ranging consideration of our era’s identity crisis, this book provides vital clues on how to stay sane in a time of proliferating profiles. (shrink)

Undersøgelser af sammenhængen mellem tysk filosofi og nazismens teorier med særlig vægt på Martin Heidegger (1889-1976).

Radical democratic thinking is becoming intrigued by the material situatedness of its political agents and by the role of nonhuman participants in political interaction. At stake here is the displacement of narrow anthropocentrism that currently guides democratic theory and practice, and its repositioning into what we call ‘the nonhuman condition’. This Critical Exchange explores the nonhuman condition. It asks: What are the implications of decentering the human subject via a new materialist reading of radical democracy? Does this reading dilute political (...) agency? Or should this be seen, on the contrary, as an invitation for new voices and demands to enter into democratic assemblages? How might engagement with the more-than-human disrupt or extend theories of radical democracy? Hans Asenbaum and Amanda Machin discuss the human democratic subject both through radical democratic and new materialist lenses. They suggest that a new materialist decentred subject does not lose agency but further gains political responsibility in radical democracy. Jean-Paul Gagnon highlights the possibility of becoming through loss. In losing our anthropocentric arrogance—our understanding of being other and better than animal—we become more connected and discover our place in human-nonhuman assemblages. Melissa Orlie agrees that something can be gained through renouncing dominant human fantasies and presents a ‘radical democratic naturalism’. By renouncing land violence and acknowledging nature’s subjectivity, we can further nonexploitative radical democratic politics. This is where the notion of ‘tidalectic’ processes introduced by James L. Smith is helpful. Focusing on water and the Indigenous knowledges around rivers, he considers how democracy and community can be reimagined as plural, cyclical and attentive to the nonhuman with which the human is inevitably entangled. Diana Leong offers a different approach. Considering the nonhuman from the perspective of Black Studies demands an awareness to how blackness has long been constituted as non- or partially human. (shrink)

Hans Kelsen is considered by many to be the foremost legal thinker of the twentieth century. During the last decade of his life he was working on what he called a general theory of norms. Published posthumously in 1979 as Allgemeine Theorie der Normen, the book is here translated for the first time into English. Kelsen develops his "pure theory of law" into a "general theory of norms", and analyzes the applicability of logic to norms to offer an original (...) and extreme position which some have called "normative irrationalism". Examining the views of over 200 philosophers and legal theorists on law, morality, and logic, and revising several of his own earlier positions, Kelsen's final work is a mandatory resource for legal and moral philosophers. (shrink)

Philosophy, Socrates declared, is the art of dying. This book underscores that it is also the art of learning to live and share the earth with those who have come before us. Burial, with its surrounding rituals, is the most ancient documented cultural-symbolic practice: all humans have developed techniques of caring for and communicating with the dead. The premise of Being with the Dead is that we can explore our lives with the dead as a cross-cultural existential a priori out (...) of which the basic forms of historical consciousness emerge. Care for the dead is not just about the symbolic handling of mortal remains; it also points to a necropolitics, the social bond between the dead and living that holds societies together—a shared space or polis where the dead are maintained among the living. Moving from mortuary rituals to literary representations, from the problem of ancestrality to technologies of survival and intergenerational communication, Hans Ruin explores the epistemological, ethical, and ontological dimensions of what it means to be with the dead. His phenomenological approach to key sources in a range of fields gives us a new perspective on the human sciences as a whole. (shrink)

The central aim of this paper is to present a Boolean algebraic approach to the classical Aristotelian Relations of Opposition, namely Contradiction and (Sub)contrariety, and to provide a 3D visualisation of those relations based on the geometrical properties of Platonic and Archimedean solids. In the first part we start from the standard Generalized Quantifier analysis of expressions for comparative quantification to build the Comparative Quantifier Algebra CQA. The underlying scalar structure allows us to define the Aristotelian relations in Boolean terms (...) and to propose a 3D visualisation by transforming a cube into an octahedron. In part two, the architecture of the CQA is shown to carry over, both to the classical quantifiers of Predicate Calculus and to the modal operators—which are given a Generalized Quantifier style re-interpretation. In this way we provide an algebraic foundation for Blanché’s Aristotelian hexagon as well as a 3D alternative to his 2D star-like visualisation. In a final part, a richer scalar structure is argued to underly the realm of Modality, thus generalizing the 3D algebra with eight (2 3 ) operators to a 4D algebra with sixteen (2 4 ) operators. The visual representation of the latter structure involves a transformation of the hypercube to a rhombic dodecahedron. The resulting 3D visualisation allows a straightforward embedding, not only of the classical Blanché star of Aristotelian relations or the paracomplete and paraconsistent stars of Béziau (Log Investig 10, 218–232, 2003) but also of three additional isomorphic Aristotelian constellations. (shrink)

Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) was a German sociologist and system theorist who wrote on law, economics, politics, art, religion, ecology, mass media, and love. Luhmann advocated a radical constructivism and antihumanism, or "grand theory," to explain society within a universal theoretical framework. Nevertheless, despite being an iconoclast, Luhmann is viewed as a political conservative. Hans-Georg Moeller challenges this legacy, repositioning Luhmann as an explosive thinker critical of Western humanism. Moeller focuses on Luhmann's shift from philosophy to theory, which introduced new (...) perspectives on the contemporary world. For centuries, the task of philosophy meant transforming contingency into necessity, in the sense that philosophy enabled an understanding of the necessity of everything that appeared contingent. Luhmann pursued the opposite--the transformation of necessity into contingency. Boldly breaking with the heritage of Western thought, Luhmann denied the central role of humans in social theory, particularly the possibility of autonomous agency. In this way, after Copernicus's cosmological, Darwin's biological, and Freud's psychological deconstructions of anthropocentrism, he added a sociological "fourth insult" to human vanity. A theoretical shift toward complex system-environment relations helped Luhmann "accidentally" solve one of Western philosophy's primary problems: mind-body dualism. By pulling communication into the mix, Luhmann rendered the Platonic dualist heritage obsolete. Moeller's clarity opens such formulations to general understanding and directly relates Luhmannian theory to contemporary social issues. He also captures for the first time a Luhmannian attitude toward society and life, defined through the cultivation of modesty, irony, and equanimity. (shrink)

Emmanuel Lévinas (1906-1995) zählt nicht nur zu den wichtigsten Ethikern im 20. Jahrhundert. Vor allem entwirft er einen anderen Anfang der Ethik, die nicht auf der gesellschaftlichen Ebene oder als grosse Idee und Erzählung entsteht. Ethik entspringt vielmehr in der konkreten Zwischenmenschlichkeit, wenn man vom Anderen in die Verantwortung gerufen wird - und zwar durch die Verletzlichkeit seines nackten Gesichtes wie durch die Anrede. Die ethische Beziehung verdankt sich dabei nicht etwa der Gleichheit, der Nähe oder der Geschwisterlichkeit, sondern der (...) Andersheit des Anderen, seiner Ferne und vor allem seiner Fremdheit, die sich nicht hintergehen lassen. Damit gründet Lévinas die Gesellschaft nicht nur auf die Zwischenmenschlichkeit, sondern auch auf die Pluralität. So wenig wie die Ethik universelle Ansprüche erheben kann, lässt sich Gerechtigkeit als ein allgemeines Prinzip entwerfen. Vielmehr muss sie den Individuen in deren unendlicher Andersheit gerecht werden. In dieser Unendlichkeit blitzt im nackten Gesicht das Antlitz Gottes auf, denkt Lévinas aus der jüdischen Tradition heraus. Das lässt sich auch rein säkular verstehen, dass alle Menschen anders sind. Sie als Gleiche zu behandeln, unterwirft sie totalen politischen Ansprüchen, macht sie zu gehorsamen Untertanen. In Auseinandersetzung mit Sartre entwickelt Lévinas eine individualistische Ethik der Verantwortung, die jeden Menschen betrifft, indem sie aus der Zwischenmenschlichkeit heraus die Mündigkeit konstituiert. So verfolgt der Einzelne nicht primär seine Interessen, sondern übernimmt Verantwortung für den Anderen: Die Wende der Ethik im 20. Jahrhundert - von Sartre, de Beauvoir und Lacan inspiriert, von Derrida und Butler fortgeschrieben, bestehen zudem Parallelen zu Arendt und Foucault. (shrink)

This volume presents six lively conversations with Hans-Georg Gadamer (born 1900), one of the twentieth century's master philosophers. Looking back over his life and thought, Gadamer takes up key issues in his philosophy, addresses points of controversy, and replies to his critics, including those who accuse him of having been in complicity with the Nazis. A genial and direct conversationalist, Gadamer is here captured at his best and most accessible. The interviews took place between 1989 and 1996, and all (...) but one appear in English for the first time in this volume. The first three conversations, conducted by Heidelberg philosopher Carsten Dutt, deal with hermeneutics, aesthetics, and practical philosophy and the question of ethics. In a fourth conversation, with University of Heidelberg classics professor Glenn W. Most, Gadamer argues for the vital importance of the Greeks for our contemporary thinking. In the next, the philosopher reaffirms his connection with phenomenology and clarifies his relation to Husserl and Heidegger in a conversation with London philosopher Alfons Grieder. In the final interview, with German Nazi expert Dörte von Westernhagen, Gadamer describes his life as a struggling young professor in Germany in the 1930s and refutes accusations of his complicity with the Nazis. These conversations are a lucid introduction for readers new to the philosopher's thought, and for experts they present an invaluable commentary on Gadamer's most important themes. (shrink)

The directionality of space-number association (SNA) is shaped by cultural experiences. It usually follows the culturally dominant reading direction. Smaller numbers are generally associated with the starting side for reading (left side in Western cultures), while larger numbers are associated with the right endpoint side. However, SNAs consistent with cultural reading directions are present before children can actually read and write. Therefore, these SNAs cannot only be shaped by the direction of children’s own reading/writing behavior. We propose six distinct processes (...) – one biological and five cultural/educational – underlying directional SNAs before formal reading acquisition: (i) Brain lateralization, (ii) Monitoring adult reading behavior, (iii) Pretend reading and writing, and rudimentary reading and writing skills, (iv) Dominant attentional directional preferences in a society, not directly related to reading direction, (v) Direct spatial-numerical learning, (vi) Other spatial-directional processes independent of reading direction. In this mini-review, we will differentiate between these processes, elaborate when in development they might emerge, discuss how they may create the SNAs observed in preliterate children and propose how they can be studied in the future. (shrink)

This essay traces the roots of Wittgenstein’s Pyrrhonism to Mauthner, and argues that Wittgenstein’s later views moved even closer to those of Mauthner, although Wittgenstein never became as thoroughgoing a Pyrrhonian as Mauthner had been. It is argued that Mauthner’s neo-Pyrrhonian view of language was “responsible for the linguistic turn in Wittgenstein’s thinking and thereby indirectly also for the whole linguistic turn in 20th-century analytic philosophy”.

Hans Vaihinger was an important and fascinating figure in German philosophy in the early twentieth century, founding the well-known journal Kant-studien. Yet he was overshadowed by the burgeoning movements of phenomenology and analytical philosophy, as well as hostility towards his work because of his defense of Jewish scholars in a Germany controlled by Nazism. However, it is widely acknowledged today that The Philosophy of 'As If' is a philosophical masterwork. Vaihinger argues that in the face of an overwhelmingly complex (...) world, we produce a simpler set of ideas, or idealizations, that help us negotiate it. When cast as fictions, such ideas provide an easier and more useful way to think about certain subjects, from mathematics and physics to law and morality, than would the truth in all its complexity. Even in science, he wrote, we must proceed "as if " a material world exists independently of perceiving subjects; in behaviour, we must act "as if " ethical certainty were possible; in religion, we must believe "as if" there were a God. He also explores the role of fictions in the history of philosophy, going back to the ancient Greeks and the work of Leibniz, Adam Smith and Bentham. The Philosophy of 'As If' was a powerful influence on the emerging philosophical movement of pragmatism and was ground-breaking in its anticipation of the central role that model-building and simulation would come to play in the human sciences. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by Michael Rosenthal, which provides a fascinating and important background to Vaihinger's life and the legacy of The Philosophy of 'As If'. (shrink)

Technology is no longer confined to the laboratory but has become an established part of our daily lives. Its sophistication offers us power beyond our human capacity which can either dazzle or threaten; it depends who is in control. _Living in a Technological Culture_ challenges traditionally held assumptions about the relationship between `man-and-machine'. It argues that contemporary science does not shape technology but is shaped by it. Neither discipline exists in a moral vacuum, both are determined by politics rather than (...) scientific inquiry. By questioning our existing uses of technology, this book opens up wider debate on the shape of things to come and whether we should be trying to change them now. As an introduction to the philosophy of technology this will be valuable to students, but will be equally engaging for the general reader. (shrink)

Wanneer ben je sexy, en wie bepaalt dat eigenlijk? Gelden dezelfde normen voor mannen en vrouwen? En hoe moeten we als maatschappij omgaan met de toenemende druk om er hot uit te zien? In dit boek zoekt filosoof Hans Maes een antwoord op deze vragen. Onderweg reflecteert hij over sekssymbolen, over de erotiserende werking van macht en rijkdom, en over de rol van kunst. Hij buigt zich over de notie van seksuele authenticiteit en lanceert ten slotte ook een oproep (...) voor betere pornografie. (shrink)

Extensive measurement is called weak if the axioms allow two objects to have the same scale value without being indifferent with respect to the order. Necessary and/or sufficient conditions for such representations are given. The Archimedean and the non-Archimedean case are dealt with separately.

What is art? What counts as an aesthetic experience? Does art have to beautiful? Can one reasonably dispute about taste? What is the relation between aesthetic and moral evaluations? How to interpret a work of art? Can we learn anything from literature, film or opera? What is sentimentality? What is irony? How to think philosophically about architecture, dance, or sculpture? What makes something a great portrait? Is music representational or abstract? Why do we feel terrified when we watch a horror (...) movie even though we know it to be fictional? -/- In Conversations on Art and Aesthetics, Hans Maes discusses these and other key questions in aesthetics with ten world-leading philosophers of art: Noël Carroll, Gregory Currie, Arthur Danto, Cynthia Freeland, Paul Guyer, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Jerrold Levinson, Jenefer Robinson, Roger Scruton, and Kendall Walton. -/- The exchanges are direct, open, and sharp, and give a clear account of these thinkers' core ideas and intellectual development. They also offer new insights into, and a deeper understanding of, contemporary issues in the philosophy of art. (shrink)

These autobiographical reflections by a major contemporary philosopher offer an enjoyable and enlightening tour not only of his own intellectual development but of the rich and fruitful collaboration of minds during a rich period in German cultural history. Hans-Georg Gadamer, the author of Truth and Method, traces his "philosophical apprenticeships" with some of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. Perhaps more than anyone else, Hans-Georg Gadamer, who is Professor Emeritus at the University of Heidelberg, is the (...) doyen of German philosophy and the recognized chief theorist of hermeneutics. His book Reason in the Age of Science (MIT Press paperback) is an ideal introduction to his thought and to the problems of hermeneutics more generally. Philosophical Apprenticeships is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy. (shrink)

Prominent advocates of posthumanism such as Nick Bostrom and Ray Kurzweil make the case that a drastic increase in the human lifespan would be intrinsically good. This question of the value of an extended lifespan has perhaps become more pressing as medical and scientific advances are seemingly bringing us closer and closer to being able to extend our lives in the way posthumanists envision. In this paper I intend to use Martin Heidegger’s work on death and freedom to develop a (...) potential objection to the claim that an indefinite healthspan is intrinsically desirable. The basic plan will be to make the case that the structure of human agency is such that truly free action is possible only on the basis of the essential finitude of our existence. Assuming that we take this sort freedom to be an important good, we would lose something of crucial importance if we were to radically extend the human healthspan. I am not claiming to present an entirely conclusive argument against posthumanism, or even enhancing the human healthspan to posthuman proportions, but rather, I see my argument here as adding another currently valued dimension of human existence that could very well be lost if we move decisively in the posthumanist direction. (shrink)

The commodification of science—often identified with commercialization, or the selling of expertise and research results and the “capitalization of knowledge” in academia and beyond—has been investigated as a threat to the autonomy of science and academic culture and criticized for undermining the social responsibility of modern science. In From Commodification to the Common Good, Hans Radder revisits the commodification of the sciences from a philosophical perspective to focus instead on a potential alternative, the notion of public-interest science. Scientific knowledge, (...) he argues, constitutes a common good only if it serves those affected by the issues at stake, irrespective of commercial gain. Scrutinizing the theory and practices of scientific and technological patenting, Radder challenges the legitimacy of commercial monopolies and the private appropriation and exploitation of research results. His book invites us to reevaluate established laws and to question doctrines and practices that may impede or even prohibit scientific research and social progress so that we might achieve real and significant transformations in service of the common good. (shrink)

Preliminary Material /Hans Adler and Rainer Godel -- Formen des Nichtwissens im Zeitalter des Fragens /Hans Adler and Rainer Godel -- Das gewisse Etwas der Aufklärung /Hans Adler -- Zur Prekarität der Aufklärung. Vernunftkritik und das Paradigma der Anthropologie (Taine, Horkheimer / Adorno, Foucault, Lyotard) /Heinz Thoma -- Von den berechenbaren Grenzen des Nichtwissens zur Zeit der Aufklärung /Eberhard Knobloch -- L'effi cace de la raison /Bertrand Binoche -- Aufgeklärtes Nicht-Wissen /Rainer Enskat -- 'Fabelhaft' und 'wunderbar' in (...) Aufklärungsdiskursen. Zur Genese des modernen Mythosbegriffs /Stefan Matuschek -- Un-Möglichkeit der Ausnahme: Die Wunderkritik der Aufklärung /Daniel Weidner -- La sagacité de l'esprit. La conjecture au XVIIIe siècle /Denis Thouard -- Séjourner dans la contradiction. L'idée de «nouvelles Lumières» et les contradictions de l'universalism /Etienne Balibar -- Doing Without Knowing in Kant and Diderot: Experiments in Enlightenment /Claudia Brodsky -- Ways of Being Ignorant: A Field Guide /Arnd Bohm -- Wissenwollen trotz Nichtwissenkönnens. Von den Erkenntnisgrenzen der psychologischen und pädagogischen Wissenschaften des späten 18. Jahrhunderts /Gunhild Berg -- "Ein Abgrund innerer dunkeln Kräfte". Nichtwissen in den Bildungsdiskursen der Aufklärung /Stefan Metzger -- "There is nothing so intrinsically rational as religion is." Zum Versuch einer vernünftigen Entschlüsselung des Nicht-mehr-Wissbaren in der Frühaufklärung /Insa Kringler -- Ein falsches Bild. Oder: Was passiert, wenn Katharsis Form wird? Zu Lessings Emilia Galotti /Ralf Simon -- Die Schattenseiten der Seele: Zu Johann Georg Sulzers Theorie der dunklen Vorstellungen /Élisabeth Décultot -- Arten der Unwissenheit im anthropologischen Diskurs der Aufklärung /Angela Holzer -- Die Zone der Unbestimmtheit - Melancholiediskurs zwischen Wissen und Nichtwissen /Cornelia Bogen -- Die Produktion des Nicht-Wissens vom Selbst: Autobiographie bei Goethe und Hegel /Fritz Breithaupt -- "Charakter" - Die Konkurrenz einer metaphorischen und einer begriffl ichen Erkenntnisform des Nicht-/Wissens vom Menschen /Monika Sproll -- Unzuverlässige Leser - unzuverlässige Erzähler; oder: Literarische Wege aus dem Nicht-Wissen /Rainer Godel -- Labyrinthe der Aufklärung. Goethes Roman Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre /Harald Tausch -- Nichtwissen in Johann Gottfried Herders Geschichtsphilosophie /Luca Crescenzi -- Ins Narrenschiff mit Sokrates! Formen des Abderitismus bei Christoph Martin Wieland /Geneviève Espagne -- Zur Interdependenz von Wissen und Nichtwissen. Anthropologie als Aufklärungskritik bei Christoph Martin Wieland /Antonio Roselli -- Nichtwissen und Glaube. Zur Erkenntnistheorie und Ethik Friedrich Heinrich Jacobis /Mark-Georg Dehrmann -- Darstellung und Gegendarstellung von Aufklärung. Handlung, Erzählung und Schein in Schillers Geisterseher /Dirk Oschmann -- Wissen und Nicht-Wissen von anderen Menschen. Das Problem der Gemütererkenntnis von Gracián bis Schiller /Daniel Fulda -- Historische Vaterschaftsprozesse: Nichtwissen, verborgenes und verkehrtes Wissen bei Goethe, Hogarth und Kleist /Alexander Košenina -- Translating Knowledge and Prescribing Taste: English Enlightenment Critics /Sabine Volk-Birke -- Autorenverzeichnis /Hans Adler and Rainer Godel -- Namenregister /Hans Adler and Rainer Godel. (shrink)