Der Biologe Erich Wasmann SJ ging in seinem Buch “Die moderne Biologie und die Entwicklungstheorie” und in seinen Berliner Vorträgen 1907, in denen er sich mit dem Monisten Ernst Haeckel auseinandersetzte, das Problem der Evolution an. In Bezug auf die Entwicklung des Menschen vertrat er in beiden eine offene Position: Er hielt die Entwicklung des Menschen aus dem Tierreich für nicht erwiesen, rechnete jedoch damit, dass sie eines Tages bewiesen werden könnte, und betonte, dass sie nicht prinzipiell der Offenbarung widerspreche. (...) Dies führte zu Klagen in Rom. Der Jesuitengeneral Wernz erklärte, es sei “theologice certum”, dass der Mensch auch dem Leibe nach nicht aus dem Tierreich abstammen könne. Wasmann solle daher in künftigen Neuauflagen seines Buches nur die biologische Seite behandeln und Spekulationen über die prinzipielle Vereinbarkeit einer Humanevolution mit der Offenbarung unterlassen. Dies hatte zur Folge, dass es keine Neuauflage mehr gab.The Jesuit and biologue Erich Wasmann dealt in his book “Die moderne Biologie und die Entwicklunstheorie” and in his Berlin conferences in 1907, dealing with the monist Ernst Haeckel, the problem of evolution. Regarding the evolution of mankind, he defended an open position: he judged that it had not been proved, but reckoned with the possibility that it could be proved one day, and insisted that there would be no contradiction with Christian revelation. That provoked, in the time of the Modernist crisis, complaints to Rome. The Jesuit General Wernz declared that it would be “theologice certum” that mankind could not descend, not even regarding the body, from animal ancestors. Therefore Wasmann should deal, in future editions, only with the biological questions and omit speculations about the theoretical compatibility of human evolution with the revelation. That had the consequence, that no new edition of the book was ever published. (shrink)

This book is a statement of confession to the human beings that we are. We do not have to spiritualise ourselves into pure reason or move to heaven as spiritual beings in order to be truly human. Metaphysics and religion have fulfilled their mission to satisfy our basic need to exceed reality. It is no longer the art of thinking and the art of believing that dominate the artistic self-creation of the human being, but the art of sharing life successfully. (...) In combination with illuminating, but not disenchanting, enlightenment, the author applies a new method in this context: enlightening transfiguration. This makes it possible for him to fully interpret the happiness that we owe to the evolution of life. (shrink)

Aristotle's Categories can easily seem to be a statement of a naïve, pre-philosophical ontology, centered around ordinary items. Wolfgang-Rainer Mann argues that the treatise, in fact, presents a revolutionary metaphysical picture, one Aristotle arrives at by (implicitly) criticizing Plato and Plato's strange counterparts, the "Late-Learners" of the Sophist. As Mann shows, the Categories reflects Aristotle's discovery that ordinary items are things (objects with properties). Put most starkly, Mann contends that there were no things before Aristotle. The author's argument consists (...) of two main elements. First, a careful investigation of Plato which aims to make sense of the odd-sounding suggestion that things do not show up as things in his ontology. Secondly, an exposition of the theoretical apparatus Aristotle introduces in the Categories--an exposition which shows how Plato's and the Late-Learners' metaphysical pictures cannot help but seem inadequate in light of that apparatus. In doing so, Mann reveals that Aristotle's conception of things--now so engrained in Western thought as to seem a natural expression of common sense--was really a hard-won philosophical achievement. Clear, subtle, and rigorously argued, The Discovery of Things will reshape our understanding of some of Aristotle's--and Plato's--most basic ideas. (shrink)

The present volume contains the lectures and papers given at the 1994 international conference on hermeneutics in Halle (Germany). The conference aimed at a state of the art in the light of recent developments in science and humanities. The place in which the conference was held is renowned for its centuries-old tradition in hermeneutics and among the lectures there are indeed some devoted to this history. For the most part, however, the papers concentrate on present-day problems in fields as different (...) as comparative literature, religious studies, bible exegesis, esthetics, social sciences, intercultural dialogue. The theme of the conference, "strangeness and familiarity", reflects the tension in which any interpretation process is situated and that any theory of interpretation has to account for. The contributions to the volume are in German and French. (shrink)

The paper is a critical comment on D. Hoffman. The Scrambling Theorem: A simple proof of the logical possibility of spectrum inversion. Consciousness and Cognition, 2006, 15, 31–45.

En este artículo, Hans Rainer Sepp estudia el cuadro de El Greco, Laocoonte, pasando desde la descripción puramente formal del cuadro y el análisis simbólico del mismo hasta el análisis fenomenológico del conjunto pictórico. Análisis que reflejará no sólo la realidad de un mundo cambiante que se mueve entre el todo y la nada sino también la presencia del autor dentro del cuadro, creando un mundo aparente, una Troya toledana, que refleja el drama del artista, hostigado por el compromiso (...) ético y la alternativa de la huída. Por ello, tal vez Laocoonte pueda ser visto como la respuesta de El Greco ante el dilema de la obra de arte. In this paper, Hans Rainer Sepp studies El Greco's Laocoon, from the purely formal description and symbolic analysis to the phenomenological analysis of the pictorial whole. Analysis that highlights not only the reality of a changing world that moves between all and nothing, but the author's presence in the picture, creating a seeming world, a Troy-Toledo, and reflecting the drama of the artist, harassed by the ethical commitment and the alternative of the escape. Perhaps Laocoon can be seen as El Greco's answer to the dilemma of art. (shrink)

Der Beitrag der Mathematik zur Naturwissenschaft besteht darin, Erkenntnisse a priori von den (empirischen) Gegenständen der letzteren zu gewinnen und - unter der Voraussetzung, daß es überhaupt Empirisches gibt - , die Existenz solcher Gegenstände a priori zu sichern. Die Aufgabe der Metaphysik ist es, besondere Begriffe ( in bezug auf die körperliche Natur) zu bilden und die Prinzipien für deren mathematische Konstruktion zu entwickeln. Die so "metaphysischkonstruierten" Begriffe werden dann durch Angabe empirischer Modelle physikalisch interpretiert.

A new approach to the historiography of the history of philosophy was first proposed near the end of the eighteenth century. It is useful to regard it as an alternative to two others, sometimes conceived of as exhausting the possibilities: a purely philosophical approach, and a purely historical one, both of which I consider in section I. The bulk of the paper is devoted to what I call "the modern historiography of the history of philosophy" . Its origins are closely (...) tied to the renewal of philology. Section III recounts the methodological innovations of the New Philology and their relevance for approaching texts--including philosophical ones--from the past. In section IV, I consider some moves made by early proponents of "modern historiography"--in particular their implicit demand for an internal rather than an external history of philosophy, that is, an account that allows us to understand how and why philosophy has changed through time, in terms of philosophical factors: how, for example, one set of philosophical considerations led to a certain view; how reflecting on that view led philosophers to perceive various difficulties, and to perceive philosophical responses to those difficulties, and so on. The goal is to exclude, to as great an extent as possible, external factors, that is, factors which are not themselves philosophical views or arguments. In section V, I turn to Christian A. Brandis whose methodological reflections and historiographical practice mark an enormous advance over his predecessors and even over some of his successors, like W. Jaeger. I conclude by arguing that some "philosophical" objections brought against the way of proceeding advocated by Brandis fail. In the course of describing this new approach and its origins, I hope also to make clear why it is more attractive than the two other possibilities briefly considered in section I. (shrink)

Over the past 15 years, Rainer Forst has developed a fundamental research programme within the tradition of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. The core of this programme is a moral account of the basic right of justification that humans owe to one another as rational beings. This account is put to work by Forst in articulating - both historically and philosophically - the contexts and form of justice and of toleration. The result is a powerful theoretical framework within which to (...) address issues such as transnational justice and multicultural toleration. In this volume, Forst sets out his ideas in an extended essay, which is responded to be influential interlocutors including: Andrea Sangiovanni, Amy Allen, Kevin Olson, Anthony Laden, Eva Erman and Simon Caney. The volume concludes with Forst's response to his interlocutors. (shrink)

This article examines the appearances of Augustus in Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars outside Augustus' own Life. It shows how Suetonius contrasts the positive image of Augustus drawn in the Life of Augustus with the distortion of this image by Augustus’ successors, depicted in the later Lives. In their reception, he is still presented as an ideal to follow, yet as a role model for cruelty (Tiberius), adultery and military failure (Caligula), or lyre-playing (Nero)—roles which Suetonius’ real Augustus never or (...) only marginally assumed. Thus in a series of close and intratextual readings, this article invites a more general reassessment of Suetonius’ work: it suggests that the Lives of the Caesars draw a more critical image of the Principate than has often been said, that they are more consciously part of an image-making process and, above all, that they should more commonly be understood as one whole work, rather than read individually and in isolation. (shrink)

Interactive social cognition theory and approaches of developmental psychology widely agree that central aspects of emotional and social experience arise in the unfolding of processes of embodied social interaction. Bi-directional dynamical couplings of bodily displays such as facial expressions, gestures, and vocalizations have repeatedly been described in terms of coordination, synchrony, mimesis, or attunement. In this paper, I propose conceptualizing such dynamics rather as processes of affective resonance. Starting from the immediate phenomenal experience of being immersed in interaction, I develop (...) the philosophical notion of affective resonance to refer to a dynamic entanglement of moving and being-moved in relation. The concept of affective resonance makes visible that the interaction dynamic itself creates an affective experience rather than transmitting internal feeling states between pre-existent individuals. This leads to a philosophical framework in which relationality and ontogeny are primary over separate individuals, and in which the naturalistic distinction of a fundamental physical level versus an emerging level of social processes has to be given up. (shrink)

Data analytics and data-driven approaches in Machine Learning are now among the most hailed computing technologies in many industrial domains. One major application is predictive analytics, which is used to predict sensitive attributes, future behavior, or cost, risk and utility functions associated with target groups or individuals based on large sets of behavioral and usage data. This paper stresses the severe ethical and data protection implications of predictive analytics if it is used to predict sensitive information about single individuals or (...) treat individuals differently based on the data many unrelated individuals provided. To tackle these concerns in an applied ethics, first, the paper introduces the concept of “predictive privacy” to formulate an ethical principle protecting individuals and groups against differential treatment based on Machine Learning and Big Data analytics. Secondly, it analyses the typical data processing cycle of predictive systems to provide a step-by-step discussion of ethical implications, locating occurrences of predictive privacy violations. Thirdly, the paper sheds light on what is qualitatively new in the way predictive analytics challenges ethical principles such as human dignity and the (liberal) notion of individual privacy. These new challenges arise when predictive systems transform statistical inferences, which provide knowledge about the cohort of training data donors, into individual predictions, thereby crossing what I call the “prediction gap”. Finally, the paper summarizes that data protection in the age of predictive analytics is a collective matter as we face situations where an individual’s (or group’s) privacy is violated using dataotherindividuals provide about themselves, possibly even anonymously. (shrink)

In this collection of essays, the first translation into English of the ground-breaking 'Normativität und Macht' (Suhrkamp 2015), Rainer Forst presents a new approach to critical theory. Each essay reflects on the basic principles that guide our normative thinking. Forst's argument goes beyond 'ideal' and 'realist' theories and shows how closely the concepts of normativity and power are interrelated, and how power rests on the capacity to influence, determine, and possibly restrict the space of justifications for others. By combining (...) insights from the disciplines of philosophy, history, and the social sciences, Forst revaluates theories of justice, as well as of power, and provides the tools for a critical theory of relations of justification. Translated from German. (shrink)

The concept of toleration plays a central role in pluralistic societies. It designates a stance which permits conflicts over beliefs and practices to persist while at the same time defusing them, because it is based on reasons for coexistence in conflict - that is, in continuing dissension. A critical examination of the concept makes clear, however, that its content and evaluation are profoundly contested matters and thus that the concept itself stands in conflict. For some, toleration was and is an (...) expression of mutual respect in spite of far-reaching differences, for others, a condescending, potentially repressive attitude and practice. Rainer Forst analyses these conflicts by reconstructing the philosophical and political discourse of toleration since antiquity. He demonstrates the diversity of the justifications and practices of toleration from the Stoics and early Christians to the present day and develops a systematic theory which he tests in discussions of contemporary conflicts over toleration. (shrink)

Rainer Forst develops a critical theory capable of deciphering the deficits and potentials inherent in contemporary political reality. This calls for a perspective which is immanent to social and political practices and at the same time transcends them. Forst regards society as a whole as an ‘order of justification’ comprising complexes of different norms referring to institutions and corresponding practices of justification. The task of a ‘critique of relations of justification’, therefore, is to analyse such legitimations with regard to (...) their validity and genesis and to explore the social and political asymmetries leading to inequalities in the ‘justification power’ which enables persons or groups to contest given justifications and to create new ones. Starting from the concept of justification as a basic social practice, Forst develops a theory of political and social justice, human rights and democracy, as well as of power and of critique itself. In so doing, he engages in a critique of a number of contemporary approaches in political philosophy and critical theory. Finally, he also addresses the question of the utopian horizon of social criticism. (shrink)

Research on cognition and emotion during the past 30 years has made reasonable progress in theory, methods and empirical research. New theories of the cognition–emotion relation have been proposed, emotion research has become more interdisciplinary, and improved methods of emotion measurement have been developed. On the empirical side, the main achievement of the past 30 years is seen to consist in the reduction of the set of serious contenders for a theory of emotions. Still, several important issues are not fully (...) resolved, including the computational implementation of appraisal processes, the nature of emotions, and the link between emotions and actions. Also, quantitative theories of the cognition–emotion relation need to be refined and tested, and improved theories of the link between emotions and bodily and facial expressions need to be developed. To counter the dangers of theoretical fragmentation and knowledge loss, more efforts should be devoted to the analysis, reconstruction, comparison and integration of important theories and hypotheses in the field of emotion, as well as to the systematization of arguments in favor and against these theories and hypotheses. (shrink)

Mental-threshold egalitarianism, well-known examples of which include Jeff McMahan’s two-tiered account of the wrongness of killing and Tom Regan’s theory of animal rights, divides morally considerable beings into equals and unequals on the basis of their individual mental capacities. In this paper, I argue that the line that separates equals from unequals is unavoidably arbitrary and implausibly associates an insignificant difference in empirical reality with a momentous difference in moral status. In response to these objections, McMahan has proposed the introduction (...) of an intermediate moral status. I argue that this move ultimately fails to address the problem. I conclude that, if we are not prepared to give up moral equality, our full and equal moral status must be grounded in a binary property that is not a threshold property. I tentatively suggest that the capacity for phenomenal consciousness is such a property, and a plausible candidate. (shrink)

_Contexts of Justice,_ highly acclaimed when it was published in Germany, provides a significant new intervention into the important debate between communitarianism and liberalism. Rainer Forst argues for a theory of "contexts of justice" that leads beyond the narrow confines of this debate as it has been understood until now and posits the possibility of a new conception of social and political justice. This book brings refreshing clarity to a complex topic as it provides a synthesis of traditions and (...) theories that leads to a truly original approach. Forst makes a four-part distinction to decipher the debate between communitarianism and liberalism. These four parts concern the constitution of the self, the neutrality of law, the ethos of democracy, and the opposition between universalism and contextualism. He shows that a comprehensive theory of justice needs to take these different contexts adequately into account. He discusses recent debates about discursive democracy and feminist critiques of liberalism, and addresses such topics as multiculturalism and civil society. (shrink)

It is surprising how far one can get by thinking things through. (Alec Fisher [2004], The logic of real arguments, p. 1)In the first part of the article, the central role of theory in emotion psych...