In this short introductory article the origin of this special issue in a Cambridge conference in 2019 is briefly sketched. Moreover, the specific approach which the organizers wanted to highlight is elucidated. Also, a preview is offered of the various contributions to this special issue.

This article examines the rise of modern secular, individualistic and rational legal thought from a historical point of view. It will be argued that the well known assumption needs to be critized, that the philosophical background of this development can only be traced back to Hobbes, Locke and Kant. Instead, the two authors of this article will point out that it was rather Ockham who first mentioned notions of modern liberal democracy in his philosophical opus. Furthermore, it will be shown (...) that the traditional interdisciplinary discourse on Thomas Hobbes falls short of a serious discussion of the most critical arguments. On a normative level it will be asked, what a Hobbesian (or for example Kantian discourse-ethical) conception can do for a normative justification of liberal democracy, nationally and transnationally. (shrink)

Baselitz is one of the most important artists of today. His works can be found in major museums around the world. For over 30 years, photographer Benjamin Katz has been documenting Baselitz at work in different studios. This volume now captures Baselitz's exceptional life at work and at home. Benjamin Katz is famous for his photographic portraits of artists. Among his previous subjects are Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, Rosemarie Trockel, and Martin Kippenberger. Because Katz is friends with (...) most of the artists, he is able to capture them when they are completely at ease. But, as he explains in this book, he prefers to photograph people while they are in the process of doing something. Katz shows Baselitz with paintbrush and hammer, and dog and cigar - the close relationship between the two artists is almost palpable. The photographs are the result of a friendship in an artistic world that they have been sharing for many decades. Cornelia Gockel's essay discusses Katz's unique, new window on the world of Georg Baselitz. (shrink)

Powerful ultrastructural tools are providing new insights into neuronal circuits, revealing a wealth of anatomically‐defined synaptic connections. These wiring diagrams are incomplete, however, because functional connectivity is actively shaped by neuromodulators that modify neuronal dynamics, excitability, and synaptic function. Studies of defined neural circuits in crustaceans, C. elegans, Drosophila, and the vertebrate retina have revealed the ability of modulators and sensory context to reconfigure information processing by changing the composition and activity of functional circuits. Each ultrastructural connectivity map encodes multiple (...) circuits, some of which are active and some of which are latent at any given time. (shrink)

Plato -- Aristotle -- Christianity -- Aquinas -- Hobbes -- Hume -- Kant -- Mill -- Nietzsche -- Virtue after Nietzsche.

This paper explores one organisation’s journey into non-financial reporting, initially motivated by a crisis in public confidence that threatened the organisation’s legitimacy to the present with the organisation embracing integrated reporting. The organisation’s journey is framed through a legitimation lens and is illustrated by aligning internal reflections with external outputs guided by predominant paradigms of good practice, such as the GRI guidelines and more recently integrated reporting 〈IR〉. We find that the organisation’s relationship with external guidelines has evolved from pragmatic (...) adoption as a means of seeking external legitimation to the present position where those that prepare external reports are informed by the organisation’s strategic positioning and not constrained by the promulgation of voluntary guidelines. From the case study, we suggest that the International Integrated Reporting Council may face two hurdles: First, organisations may define social norms based on a broader definition of stakeholders than the definition currently published by the IIRC. The second hurdle is to convince report preparers that adopting integrated reporting 〈IR〉 will positively impact on capital flows. (shrink)

First published in 2010, Cornelia Vismann’s article has already attained the status of a classic. In a formulation inspired by linguistic theory, the author argues that the relation between cultural techniques and media can be understood in analogy to grammatical operations. Thus, cultural techniques define the agency of media and execute the procedural rules which the latter set in place. Together, they articulate a critique of subjectivity and sovereignty that proceeds by re-examining the notion of ‘culture’ via its agricultural (...) origins to the current moment when the ‘preservation of cultural techniques’ has entered legal and academic discourse. Ultimately, despite their apparent separation from praxis, cultural techniques continue to proliferate through axes of substitution and displacement. (shrink)

The following text provides a conceptual and theoretical introduction to a collection of essays written by members of the multidisciplinary network of scholars, artists and cultural producers named ‘Poetics of Resistance’, which seeks to analyse and encourage discussion of the relationships between creativity, culture and political resistance, in the context of neoliberal globalization. The introduction also provides a critical glossary of a set of loosely interlinking keywords, following Raymond Williams, that mark points of encounter and departure between the approaches of (...) the various authors (not to be confused with the list of keywords used to index each article). Rather than presenting a completed research project, this issue serves as a basis for continuing collaborative research and dialogue in the field, and invites readers to join in the ongoing debate. The contributors to this issue are Paulina Aroch Fugellie, Burghard Baltrusch, Arturo Casas, María do Cebreiro Rábade Villar, Roberto Echavarren, Marcos Giadas Conde, Cornelia Gräbner, Nathalia Jabur, Thomas Muhr and David Wood. (shrink)

The reign of paper files would seem to be over once files are reduced to the status of icons on computer screens, but Vismann's book, which examines the impact of the file on Western institutions throughout history, shows how the creation of order in medieval and early modern administrations makes its returns in computer architecture.

Published posthumously in 1908, Ecce Homo was written in 1888 and completed just a few weeks before Nietzsche’s complete mental collapse. Its outrageously egotistical review of the philosopher’s life and works—featuring chapters called Why I Am So Wise and Why I Write Such Good Books—are redeemed from mere arrogance by masterful language and ever-relevant ideas. In addition to settling scores with his many personal and philosophical enemies, Nietzsche emphasizes the importance of questioning traditional morality, establishing autonomy, and making a commitment (...) to creativity. Essential reading for students of philosophy, this unique memoir is crucial to an understanding of Nietzsche’s other works. (shrink)

While generally accepted as an interpretive theory, Bull’s emblematic text demonstrates strong structural characteristics. Subsequent attributions move between the interpretive or ‘reflexive’ and t...

In recent debates about inequality, many have pointed to the predominant position of the finance. This article highlights that structural power, not lobbying resources, are key to explaining variations across countries. It examines finance-government negotiations over national bank rescue schemes during the recent financial crisis. Given the structural power of finance, the variation in bank bailouts across countries cannot be explained by lobbying differences. Instead of observing organized interest intermediation, we can see that disorganization was crucial for the financial industry (...) to get off the hook and let the government carry the burden of stabilizing the economy. Put differently, structural power is strongest when finance remains collectively inactive. In contrast to traditional accounts of the lobbying influence of finance, the comparison highlights that the lack of organization can have crucial redistributive consequences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.3 (2003) 277-300 [Access article in PDF] Toward a Fragmatics, or Improvisionary Histories of Rhetoric, the Eternally Ad Hoc Cornelia Wells "Even historical truths are on the move, or truth is not the question." —my self "We don't / know much, and are / professors of it." —from Heather McHugh, "Professional Hazard," in McHugh (1987) In writing a history of rhetoric, we might want to (...) know before anything else both what rhetoric is and why we should care to be writing about it. Or we might begin with a notion of or motive for history or, more precisely, for doing or writing (a) history or histories (as opposed of course to History with a capital H, History proper, the "true whole" story and nothing else) of, specifically, rhetoric. 1 Or we might begin with a notion of subjectivity, of who this we is that concerns itself with this writing activity. Or we might focus on the writing itself, asking the question What is writing? or Who can do it? or What can it do? or What is it about? all of which may be much like answering or debating similar questions frequently asked about/of/through rhetoric. Indeed, rhetoric and writing, rhetoric and discourse, tend to be confused, or ecstatically intermingled, terms.Or fixating, as history so frequently does, on the oxymoronic notion of "final" origins, which function backward(ly) as destinations, we might begin with the question/justification of where or when rhetoric itself geographically/historically began and therefore establish the "proper" beginning place for our story of rhetoric to start. But as the contemporary poet Heather McHugh suggests, "where" may be "a narrow inquiry," and also when, for something always came before and generally from somewhere else, so that, ultimately, when and where never can be finally arrived at. 2 So we might, and probably will, follow the indirection or dereliction (as [End Page 277] opposed to direction) of the goddess Dike to Parmenides: "It is all one to me where I begin, for I shall return again." 3 Like Robert Frost, however, I doubt if I shall ever come back. Or not by the same road, believing with Heraclitus, "One cannot step twice into the same river" (or, perhaps less obviously, twice onto the same road) and that anyway it is "weariness to toil at the same tasks and be always beginning," at least beginning in the same place(s) (1979, Fragments LI and LIII). As they commonly say in Australia, a change is as good as a holiday. And anyway change arrives inevitably.So we may as well (as well as not) change our mind and change our route before it changes itself or us. We may as well turn away, before returning, pause from thinking about writing this particular history of rhetoric, about how or where or why to begin such a task in the "first" place (as if we have never previously occupied any other task or place), and consider instead some of the ways that histories of rhetoric have already been written or told or invented. But why should we make this turn? Well, for reconnaissance, I suppose. To get the lay of the land. To see the other side of the mountain. To show we've done our research. Or because a discipline demands continual recounting. To remain intact or stay in touch. Or for auld lang syne. Or so that improvisionarily, at least, "we shall have agreement on [']known['] premises, and the pursuit of further knowledge" (Rorty 1984, 67). Or to take stock. To see what's missing (as if we could say when the universe is full). Or to justify a point of departure. Or a point of entry into a conversation that preceded and therefore necessarily in some residual sense preempted or determined us. Or for just (only?) or unjust (not only?) cause. Or to establish ethos. Or just because. To show we "know." Auguring or augering (not arguing) a procedure Perhaps the best turn is to turn this essay, literally my attempted say, inside out... (shrink)

Over the past decade, clinical ethics has received growing attention in Germany as in most European countries. In the mid-1990s, most European countries made efforts to establish healthcare ethics committees and clinical ethics consultation services. The development of clinical ethics discourse and activities in Germany, however, was delayed and, consequently, is still in its natal phase. Until the end of the 1990s, the only institutionalized bodies of ethical reflection were the research ethics committees at university medical centers and at the (...) State Physician Chambers. In March 1997, the Catholic and Protestant hospital association in Germany recommended the implementation of HECs, modeled after the American HECs. Consequently, the establishment of clinical ethics consultation in the form of HECs started in Germany in denominational hospitals, followed by a small but increasing number of community hospitals. (shrink)

This article contests the popular assumption that literature is ever less politically relevant. Quite the contrary is the case: literature and literary language becomes increasingly important for the alter-globalization movement and for the notion that ‘another world is possible.’ The work of four authors—Manu Chao, Eduardo Galeano, Subcomandante Marcos, and José Saramago—are comparatively analysed in light of their contribution to an alternative globalism and to an alternative practice of politics. All four authors contribute from different perspectives to the literary articulation (...) of a political project. Their work shares characteristics such as the permeability of genres, the emphasis on the poetical over the narrative, a meandering structure that expresses the search for and step-by-step construction of a cultural and political alternative, and an emphasis on translation and encounter as principles of interaction with difference. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz mochte die Autorin den Einstieg in ein neues Forschungsfeld mit dem Namen "Affektlogik" beginnen, dessen Begrunder, Luc Ciompi, den hohen Stellenwert seiner "Hypothese" fur das interdisziplinare Gesprach von Psychologie bzw. Psychiatrie, Neurobiologie, Politik, Philosophie und -- von Ciompi ausdrucklich in diesem Zusammenhang genannt -- der Wissenschaftstheorie entdeckt. (edited).

Reinhart Koselleck is among the most original German theorists of history and historiography. His international reputation is due in part to his contributions as theorist and editor of the remarkable lexicon Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (GG). The GG is an exceptional reference work that goes far towards realizing Koselleck's program and distinctive version of Begriffsgeschichte (the history of concepts, conceptual history). What is presented here is a translation in full of Koselleck's own entry on Krise (crisis). Few articles in the GG demonstrate (...) more successfully Koselleck's theoretical concerns, his method, and innovative use of sources. (shrink)

Dieses Buch schreibt Theorie. Es entwirft am Beispiel von Wilhelm Raabes Erzähltexten zwischen 1856 und 1902 den Grundriss einer ontologischen Narratologie, der über seinen historischen Gegen-stand hinaus systematische Gültigkeit beansprucht. Den Ausgangspunkt bildet die Frage: Was ist Welt?

To examine the ethical issues involved in governmental decisions with potential health risks, we review the history of the decision to raise the interurban speed limit in Israel in light of its impact on road death and injury. In 1993, the Israeli Ministry of Transportation initiated an “experiment” to raise the interurban speed limit from 90 to 100 kph. The “experiment” did not include a protocol and did not specify cut-off points for early termination in the case of adverse results. (...) After the raise in the speed limit, the death toll on interurban roads rose as a result of a sudden increase in speeds and case fatality rates. The committee's decision is a case study in unfettered human experimentation and public health risks when the setting is non-medical and lacks a defined ethical framework. The case study states the case for extending Helsinki type safeguards to experimentation in non-medical settings. (shrink)