‘Enlightenment’ (in German, ‘Aufklärung’) is not simply the name of a movement or development whose existence is uncontroversial. Rather, the claim ‘The 18th century was the age of enlightenment’ or ‘In Germany, there was the Enlightenment’ entail certain claims which need to be discussed. This article argues that some of these claims are false and that therefore the claim ‘The Enlightenment does not exist’ is true.

Is causal analysis an appropriate method to discover causal laws? Some prerequisites for any successful application of mathematical causal models are worked out and discussed. It can be shown that these prerequisites cannot be fulfilled by present models and there are strong reasons to assume that they cannot be satisfied by any model. Therefore causal analysis will probably be of no importance for the discovery of causal laws in sociology.

Ernst Cassirers 1932 erschienene Darstellung der »Philosophie der Aufklärung« zählt zu den herausragenden Standardwerken zur Bestimmung der Leitgedanken der Epoche. »Die eigentliche ›Philosophie‹ der Aufklärung ist und bleibt«, so Cassirer, »etwas anderes als der Inbegriff dessen, was ihre führenden Denker [...] gedacht und gelehrt haben«. Entsprechend sah er das auszeichnende Merkmal seiner historischen Rekonstruktion der Epoche darin, »daß sie nicht die Geschichte der einzelnen Denker und ihrer Lehren, sondern eine reine Geschichte der Ideen der Aufklärungszeit zu geben suchte, und daß (...) sie diese Ideen selbst nicht nur in ihrer abstrakt-theoretischen Fassung darlegen, sondern in ihrer unmittelbaren Wirksamkeit aufzeigen und sichtbar machen wollte«. (shrink)

Enlightenment and Science. - Extensive conference report about a meeting organised by Rainer Enskat and Andreas Kleinert, which took place on 25 and 26 January 2007 in the rooms of the IZEA and the Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Sciences, in Halle (Saale), Germany. The topic of the conference was the question, which had become urgent since the 18th century, whether enlightenment through science is possible or necessary despite science.

In the late seventies and early eighties, two subjects became recurrent in the interventions made by Foucault on interviews, conferences and his lessons at Collège de France: a particular approach to the text Was ist Aufklärung?, written by Kant, and the conscious study of the forms adopted by the Greek Parrhesia. Even though both subjects are anchored to different historical foundations, there is a noticeable the effort made by Foucault with aims at determining —into the theoretical and practical place of (...) his crossing-over thinking— a specific sense for the philosophical enterprise he was personally involved. Unfortunately, his death in 1984 left the new working program incomplete. The objectives of this writing are: 1) to shallowly characterize both of this notions and 2) to articulate some of the crossing points between Aufklärung and Parrhesía, in order to reactivate the problem of the specificity of the philosophical work, according to the line being followed by this French philosopher. (shrink)

During the last years the focus of sociological justice research has been on the measurement of justice attitudes of the people outside the laboratory via large scale and internationally comparative surveys. Within these surveys one attempt has been to identify the social determinants and the consequences of individual justice attitudes. However, the theoretical foundation of this research within exiting sociological theories and concepts has been neglected. Therefore, the sociological justice research is so far not able to provide theoretically sound answers (...) to at least two questions: (1) why do people think justice is important, and (2) what are the reasons for substantively different justice attitudes? By using the theory of social production functions and the goal-framing theory this contribution tries to overcome this shortcoming and suggests an explanation why justice is seen as a desirable goal and why norms of justice are in the very own interest of the individual. Assumptions are derived under which conditions individuals declare themselves in favor of a specific principle of justice to solve conflicts of allocation and distribution. The aim of this paper is to derive theoretically substantive and empirically testable predictions based on a general theory of action and thus to contribute to a stronger theoretical foundation of sociological justice research. (shrink)

Ethnomethodology criticises sociological objectivism in a double sense: a) concerning the idea of “objectively” given social facts; b) concerning the idea of objectivity as a realistic claim of common sense and scientific knowledge. The theoretical alternative presented by Garfinkel and his followers consists a) in an analysis of the interpretative procedures, by which common sense beliefs in the objectivity of reality are constituted; b) in the intention, to take practical reasoning not as a source, but as a topic of empirical (...) study. The paper argues that while the proposed analysis of practical activities conveys a useful approach, its epistemological implications lead to inconsistencies and problematical consequences. (shrink)

It is argued that sociological evolutionary theory can be regarded as a revised and extended version of classical evolutionism which explains not only structural differentiation but any form of macro-social dynamics. This explanatory programme finds its micro-foundation in an theory of individual and social action which allows for the identification of typical social dilemmata which in turn serve as a selectors for reproducible institutional arrangements. At the same time modern evolutionary dynamics unites quite different social- scientific disciplines into a coherent (...) theoretical frame. (shrink)

Enlightenment and Science. - Short conference report about a meeting organised by Rainer Enskat and Andreas Kleinert, which took place on 25 and 26 January 2007 in the rooms of the IZEA and the Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Sciences, in Halle (Saale), Germany. The topic of the conference was the question, which had become urgent since the 18th century, whether enlightenment through science is possible or necessary despite science.

Der kommunikative Vernunftbegriff von Jürgen Habermas ist mit spezifischen sozio-ökonomischen Problemen behaftet, die eine gesellschaftstheoretische Flankierung notwendig machen.

Die historische Aufklärung hat eine Reihe ihrer wichtigsten Leitgedanken im Feld der Praktischen Philosophie entwickelt. Aus der Orientierung an der Praxis erwuchsen Veränderungen, die das überkommene System der Wissenschaften und das Gefüge der gesellschaftlichen Institutionen ebenso betrafen wie die Formen der Kommunikation und nicht zuletzt die Regeln der individuellen Lebensführung. Der vorliegende Band versucht im Ausgang von Einzelanalysen und aus der Eigenperspektive der Epoche wichtige Grundzüge des denkgeschichtlichen und kulturellen Wandels zu beschreiben, um der Frage nach den Wirkungen der aufklärerischen (...) Praxislehren eine historische Grundlage zu geben. (shrink)

Resumo: O objetivo deste texto é desenvolver a articulação que Foucault faz entre o diagnóstico do presente e a construção de um pensamento crítico acerca do conceito de autonomia a partir do texto de Kant Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? . Trata-se, portanto, da aproximação de Foucault à herança histórica da Aufklärung analisada por Kant, a partir de uma perspectiva ética para pensar a modernidade. Para tanto, trataremos neste artigo de como Kant descreve o processo da Aufklärung, da relação (...) deste texto de Kant com sua Crítica e, por fim, os desdobramentos destas análises naquilo que Foucault entende ser uma "atitude crítica" da modernidade.Palavras-chave: Foucault - Kant - modernidade.: The aim of this text is to develop the articulation that Foucault makes between the diagnosis of the present and the building of a critical thought about the concept of autonomy from Kant's text Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? . It is, therefore, Foucault's approach to the historical heritage of the Aufklärung analyzed by Kant, from an ethical perspective to think about modernity. To this end, we will discuss in this article how Kant describes the process of Aufklärung, the relation of Kant's text with his Critique and, finally, the ramifications of these analyzes on what Foucault regards as a "critical attitude" of modernity. (shrink)