The aim of this paper is to show how Has Jonas arrived to develop a completely new concept of responsibility by operating a sort of reversion of the classic theories of responsibility. If in the past the holder of power obligated the subjected to justify himself, in Jonas' conception it is the fragile and the vulnerable being that becomes the instance of justification for the powerful in face to which he has to respond. Thus, in The Principle of Responsibility the (...) power relations are reversed in a way that the more power one holds, the more responsibility he has in regard to the fragile and the weak. (shrink)

This book offers a detailed analysis of Beauvoir's concepts of freedom and recognition concerning their impact on a philosophy of gender.

On the Value of Love -/- The main purpose of the article is to show by means of an analysis of the development of the different philosophical conceptions of love in the history of philosophy that there is a deep connection between the problems of love and those of values, even this connection is not always been explicitly thematized. Through a discussion of the connection between love and knowledge, love and autonomy, love and mysticism, and the role of romantic love, (...) the author puts the question if love endows the value of the beloved or if, on the contrary, love opens up the mind for values that would remain otherwise hidden for us. The analysis also displays the consequences of the different philosophical conceptions of love for the understanding of the gender problematic and some global problems concerning the meaningfulness of life, human creativity, and the multiple forms of love, including religious love and perception. (shrink)

Political Correctness or Virtue Terror?Discussing the different meanings of the concept of political correctness, the author argues that it is a part of a profound change in culture within Western democracies that has led to a differentiation and deepening of human and fundamental rights. At the same time, it is shown that political correct-ness was adopted by the political right and used as a fight against this differentiation of human and fundamental rights in the Western liberal democracies, in order to (...) defame them by linking the corre-sponding prohibitions of discrimination and equality measures with virtue terror. (shrink)

Is there something as masculine and feminine values? Attempt of an everyday language approach The aim of the paper is to answer a question that has often been raised but not thoroughly explored, namely, whether there are masculine and feminine values. In axiology values are mostly considered in a gender-blind way, while in feminist critique, e.g., in difference feminism, there is a valorization of the feminine but a differentiated axiological consideration is not undertaken. By the use of the hermeneutic method (...) of interpretation and linguistic analysis, as well as of an axiological and feminist critical approach, the paper will unfold some ambiguities, and respectively the possible answers of the question, by showing the crucial importance of the value system, which defines the order of discourse and thus legitimizes or puts in question the sociocultural order. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to make visible Max Scheler's great contribution to philosophical research on virtues and values, and to re-integrate it into the current discourse. Christoph Halbig's marginal reference to Scheler provides a good opportunity for this. Since both authors pursue completely different objectives, the question arises as to how much of Halbig's approach to a theory of action can be reconciled with Scheler's personalist understanding of virtue. While Halbig seeks criteria for assessing the actions of others, (...) Scheler points to the empowerment supplied by virtue itself. The author argues that Scheler already anticipated some ideas, which has led to a new awareness of virtues in contemporary psychology. (shrink)

On the Confusuions about the Gender Questionor does the Roman Catholic Church need a Reformation? The main purpose of this article is to show that fivehundred years after Luther, the concept of gender bears the same power for reformation as Luther's theses did bevor. Through a discussion of the connection between the horrific cases of abuse in the catholic church and its anti-genderism it is pointed out, that, instead of using gender as a tool for preventing sexualized violence, catholic church (...) attacks gender-studies as gender-ideology. In explaining the concept of gender in detail and by showing how power and sexuality is interwoven and hidden behind a veil of love mystic, it is made clear how the confrontation with gender would bring the necessary reform into the structures of the catholic church. (shrink)

A review on Herta Nagl-Docekal's book Innere Freiheit. Grenzen der nachmetaphysischen Moralkonzeptionen.. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2014, 237 pp.

A book review of Jan Assman's book on Total Religion.

Philosophy of Emotions between Feeling-Theories, Cognition-Theories, and AxiologyThe article addresses some central philosophical issues in the current philosophical research on emotions. There are, on the one hand, those theories that owe their ancestry to the work of William James, arguing that emotions are bodily feelings or perceptions of bodily feelings; and, on the other hand, those theories that owe their ancestry to Aristotle and Brentano arguing that emotions are cognitive, world-directed intentional states. The author points out that emotions became the (...) focus of vigorous interest in philosophy as well as in other branches of the cognitive sciences. In view of the proliferation of the increasingly fruitful exchanges between researchers of different stripes, it is no longer useful to speak of the philosophy of emotions as a research area isolated from the approaches of other disciplines, as for example psychology, neurology, and evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Sartre's and Beauvoir's Antinaturalism as Critique of the Concepts of Gender Relations in ModernitySartre's and Beauvoir's antinaturalism can be seen as the rejection of the attribution of some particu-lar "nature" to specific social groups in order to deny essential aspects of their human being or even of their humanity as such. Since the existential approach starts from the lived experience and includes praxis as a crucial factor of becoming oneself, it makes possible to show some phenomena of human being and (...) human relations that remains invisible on the abstract philosophical level. One of these central phenomena is gender, respectively gender relations, and the interconnected mecha-nisms of oppression and social exclusion. The aim of the article is to reconstruct Sartre's and Beauvoir's antinaturalist conceptions and to compare it in order to articulate their consequences for the gender problematic. (shrink)

Virtue as Value: A Comparison between Christoph Halbig and Max Scheler The aim of the following contribution is to compare the virtue conceptions of Christoph Halbig and Max Scheler in order to scrutinize their common positions and differences and thus to answer two questions: Firstly, is it true that Scheler's approach is based on the basic assumptions of the recursive theory of virtues, as Halbig asserts this? Secondly, can the virtues be defined as attitudes, or should they be conceived as (...) qualities of the person? In addition, the author examines the connection of virtues and emotions more closely and shows that virtues can be regarded as a kind of transformers from the negative to the positive, because they fix the right way of dealing with negative emotions and because they switch over the negative basic mood into a positive and joyful one. The reflection of these questions is embedded in a constant reference to Aristotle's understanding of virtues. (shrink)

Dieser Band präsentiert, gemeinsam mit anderen Beiträgen, die anlässlich der Gedenkfeier zum 100. Geburtstag von Leo Gabriel gehaltenen Vorträge am Institut für Philosophie der Universität Wien. Lange vor den gegenwärtigen Bestrebungen zu einer europäischen Integration hat Gabriel die Entwicklung der geistigen Gestalten Europas und das Verhältnis von Einheit und Vielheit integrativ zu erfassen versucht. Die Autorinnen und Autoren erörtern die Quellen sowie die Aktualität des integralen Denkens und vergleichen es mit phänomenologisch-existentialistischen, hermeneutischen, strukturalistischen und postmodernen Theorien. Überdies beinhaltet der Band (...) Zeugnisse und unveröffentlichte Manuskripte von Leo Gabriel. Aus dem Inhalt: Peter Kampits: Vorwort - Yvanka B. Raynova: Einleitung: Verantwortung für das Ganze - Leo Gabriel: Gestalten und Strukturen des integrativen Denkens - Leo Gabriel: Wissenschaft und Wertordnung (Unveröffentlichtes Manuskript) - Leo Gabriel Jr.: Von der Suche nach dem Ganzen zur Sucht nach Veränderung - Augustinus Karl Wucherer-Huldenfeld: Zur Aktualität des integralen Denkens Leo Gabriels - Sigrid Pöllinger: Wladimir S. Solowjew und der Begriff der All-Einheit - Günther Pöltner: Radikale Pluralität. Zur Problematik eines postmodernen Paradigmas - Yvanka B. Raynova: Integrales Denken im europäischen Kontext: Gabriel - Heidegger - Ricoeur - Roland Faber: "Insistenz". Zum "Nicht-Sein" Gottes bei Levinas, Deleuze und Whitehead - Rolf Kühn: Sinnlichkeit als Offenbarung. Eine phänomenologische Analyse zum Denken Simone Weils - Karl Baier: Der Mensch als Person und Anatman. Überlegungen zu einer Grundfrage im buddhistisch-christlichen Dialog - Werner Gabriel: Philosophisches Denken als Weg der Erlösung. Ein interkultureller Vergleich - Arno Böhler: Über die Dummheit: Einblick in den Abgrund des Denkens - Jürgen Trinks: Das offene Feld der Phantasie und die Fallstricke der Einbildung - Laurie Calhoun: The Paradox of Love and the Paradox of Morality: Triangular Reflections in Carol Reed's "The Third Man" - Yvanka B. Raynova: Leo Gabriel: Eine ausgewählte Bibliographie. (shrink)

A review of Yvanka Raynova's monograph Sein, Sinn und Werte: Phänomenologische und hermeneutische Perspektiven des europäischen Denkens. Frankfurt am Main, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien: 2017, 331 S.