Walther SCHWEIDLER: Wittgensteins Philosophiebegriff, Freiburg/München: Alber Verlag 1983. Susanne THIELE: Die Verwicklungen im Denken Wittgensteins, Freiburg/München: Alber Verlag 1983.

Walther SCHWEIDLER: Wittgensteins Philosophiebegriff, Freiburg/München: Alber Verlag 1983. Susanne THIELE: Die Verwicklungen im Denken Wittgensteins, Freiburg/München: Alber Verlag 1983.

Focusing on the concept of freedom, Leslie Paul Thiele makes Heidegger's philosophical works speak directly to politics in a postmodern world. Neither excusing Heidegger for his political sins nor ignoring their lesson, Thiele nonetheless refrains from polemic in order creatively to engage one of the greatest philosophers of our time. The product of this engagement is a vindication of a democratic and ecological politics firmly grounded in philosophic inquiry. Using Heidegger's understanding of freedom as a point of departure, (...) Timely Meditations lays out the philosophic and political nature and potential of freedom in thought, speech, and deed. This disclosive freedom is contrasted to both modern (positive and negative) and postmodern (Nietzschean and Foucaultian) variations. The result is an original and provocative study that challenges our present understanding of liberty while underlining dangerous collusion with the contemporary forces of technology. Timely Meditations marks an increasingly rare achievement today. For unlike many theorists who attempt to steer a course into the world of postmodern politics, Thiele does so without forsaking philosophic foundations and without abandoning practical hopes and tasks for rhetorical diversions. Originally published in 1995. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

During the 1980s, when a flexibleapproach to research, known asfarmer-back-to-farmer, was developed, theInternational Potato Center (CIP) became famousfor participatory research. Subsequently itappeared to have lost leadership in this field.This article documents participatory researchactivities in CIP over the past thirty years tofind out what happened. Even in the 1980s,implementation of participatory research wasactually limited. Participatory research in thecenter grew unevenly, with little clearencouragement from the CGIAR. Decentralizationof social scientists in the 1990s led to thefragmentation of participatory research and, inthe absence of (...) any clear champion, it seemedthat it might wither away. Recently, increasinginterest in IPM, donor support, and therecruitment of international staff who havebeen exposed to other currents of participatoryresearch and training has led to a revival ofinterest. This needs to be carefully nurturedto ensure that the flexibility for whichparticipatory research in CIP earlier gainedworld renown is retained. (shrink)

The paper deals with some of the developments in analysis against the background of Hilbert's contributions to the Calculus of Variations. As a starting point the transformation is chosen that took place at the end of the 19th century in the Calculus of Variations, and emphasis is placed on the influence of Dirichlet's principle. The proof of the principle (the resuscitation ) led Hilbert to questions arising in the 19th and 20th problems of his famous Paris address in 1900: theexistence (...) in a generalized sense, and theregularity of solutions of elliptic partial differential equations. By this new concept Hilbert pointed out two very important issues the history of which is closely tied up with the rise of modern analysis. Further on, Hilbert'stheorem of independence of the Calculus of Variations, an important contribution to its formal apparatus as well as to its field theory, is briefly discussed. But even as Hilbert published his first essential results, he was turning his attention to another area of mathematics that differs in an important respect from the Calculus of Variations:integral equations. Hilbert did so because he recognized that in this branch by its flexibility he was coming closer to his goal of an unifying methodological approach to analysis. (shrink)

In his recent works on daily face-to-face encounters, Zahavi claims that the phenomenon of sharing involves reciprocity. Following Zahavi’s line of thought, we wonder what exactly reciprocity amounts to and how the shared experience emerges from the dynamic process of interaction. By turning to the highly specialized field of elite sports dance, we aim at exploring the way in which reciprocity unfolds in intensive deliberate practices of movement. In our analysis, we specifically argue that the ongoing dynamics of two separate (...) flows of movement constitute a shared experience of dancing together. In this sense, moving together, in sports dance, is a practical way of understanding each other. In agreement with Zahavi, our analysis emphasizes the bi-directed nature of sharing. However, at the same time, we contribute to Zahavi’s ongoing endeavour as the special case of sports dance reveals how reciprocity can be deliberately shaped through the mutual coordination and affective bound dynamics of movement. Our article thus both pursues the methodological point that qualitative research of expert competences can constructively enrich phenomenological analysis and indicates how movement can be fundamental to the reciprocity of shared experience. (shrink)

Die politische Ideengeschichte kennt nicht viele Autoren, die derart umstritten sind, wie der Abbé Sieyés: Für manche Interpreten ist er Wegbereiter des Jakobiner-Terrors, für andere dagegen der Vater des parlamentarischen Regierungssystems unserer Zeit. Der vorliegende Band unterzieht diese und ähnliche Klischees einer kritischen Prüfung.

A jury and two valid options are given. Each agent of the jury picks exactly one of these options. The option with the most votes will be chosen by the jury. In the N-couple model of Althöfer and Thiele, the jury consisted of 2N agents. These agents form N independent couples, with dependencies within the couples. The authors assumed that the agents who form a couple have the same competence level. In this note, we relax this assumption by allowing (...) different competence levels within the couples. We show that the theoretical results of Althöfer and Thiele remain valid under this relaxation. (shrink)

Open Peer Review: Educational Philosophy and Theory (EPAT)Michael A. Peters, Beijing Normal University, PR ChinaIn 2016 EPAT started experimenting with open peer review for articles that were part...

During the 1980s, when a flexibleapproach to research, known asfarmer-back-to-farmer, was developed, theInternational Potato Center (CIP) became famousfor participatory research. Subsequently itappeared to have lost leadership in this field.This article documents participatory researchactivities in CIP over the past thirty years tofind out what happened. Even in the 1980s,implementation of participatory research wasactually limited. Participatory research in thecenter grew unevenly, with little clearencouragement from the CGIAR. Decentralizationof social scientists in the 1990s led to thefragmentation of participatory research and, inthe absence of (...) any clear champion, it seemedthat it might wither away. Recently, increasinginterest in IPM, donor support, and therecruitment of international staff who havebeen exposed to other currents of participatoryresearch and training has led to a revival ofinterest. This needs to be carefully nurturedto ensure that the flexibility for whichparticipatory research in CIP earlier gainedworld renown is retained. (shrink)

In What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari make the claim that ‘[i]t may be that believing in this world, in this life, becomes our most difficult task, or the task of a mode of existence still to be discovered on our plane of immanence today. This is the empiricist conversion.’ What are we to make of such a calling? The paper explicates why and in what sense this statement is of exemplary significance both for an appropriate understanding of Deleuze's political (...) thought and for a most timely conceptualisation of politics in a world so clearly defined by immanence, and nothing but immanence. I argue that Deleuze's rigorously constructive approach to the world is not beyond politics, as some recent readings have declared. Rather, we have to appreciate that in Deleuze and Guattari's demand for a ‘belief in this world’ the political intersects with the dimension of the ethical in such a way that our understanding of both is transformed. Only after this ‘empiricist conversion’ can we truly think of a Deleuzian politics that does justice to a plane of immanence ‘immanent only to itself’. (shrink)

RésuméLa responsabilité individuelle de l'homme est une notion centrale en théologie musulmane. Or une justification rationnelle de notre responsabilité morale présuppose que nos actes sont d'une certaine manière sous notre contrôle. Pour les théologiens, il était donc important de formuler une théorie de l'acte humain qui tienne compte de l'autodétermination humaine. Cet article analyse les réflexions d'al-Bāqillānī au sujet de l'acte humain dans le contexte des discussions qui eurent lieu en son temps. Je récapitulerai brièvement la théorie muʿtazilite du libre (...) arbitre, théorie à laquelle s'opposa l’école ašʿarite en formulant sa propre position. Ensuite, j'esquisserai les fondements du point de vue d'Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ašʿarī qui proposa de fonder l'autodétermination humaine sur le caractère volontaire de l'acte humain. Finalement, je discuterai comment al-Bāqillānī développe sa théorie en partant des idées d'al-Ašʿarī. Sur la base des volumes préservés de la Hidāyat al-mustaršidīn d'al-Bāqillānī, j'argumenterai qu'il envisage de donner plus de cohérence à la célèbre théorie de l’ “acquisition” en soutenant deux principes: a) l'acte humain est créé par Dieu; b) il existe cependant une corrélation réelle entre l'homme et son acte “acquis”. (shrink)

As screen-based virtual worlds have gradually begun facilitating more and more of our social interactions, some researchers have argued that the virtual worlds of these interactions do not allow for embodied social understanding. The aim of this article is to examine exactly the possibility of this by looking to esports practitioners’ experiences of interacting with each other during performance. By engaging in an integration of qualitative research methodologies and phenomenology, we investigate the actual first-person experiences of interaction in the virtual (...) worlds of the popular team-based esports practices Counter Strike: Global Offensive and League of Legends. Our analysis discloses how the practitioners’ interactions essentially depend on intercorporeality – understood as a form of reciprocity of bodily intentionality between the players. This is an intercorporeality that is present throughout the players’ performance, but which especially comes to the front when they engage in feinting. Acknowledging the intercorporeality integral to at least some esports practices helps fuzzying the sharp division between virtuality and embodied social understanding. Doing so highlights the fluidity of our embodied condition, and it raises interesting questions concerning the possibility of yet other forms of embodied sociality in a wider range of virtual formats in the world. (shrink)

A reformulation of our understanding of freedom is required if we are adequately to confront the environmental crisis. Engaging the debate between biocentric ecologists and sociocentric ecologists, I argue that the biocentric effort to ascribe rights (negative liberty) to nature is misbegotten. In turn, I suggest that the sociocentric effort to seek ecological realignment through the extension of human reason (positive liberty) is equally problematic. Martin Heidegger, who rejects both “negative” and “positive” notions of liberty, offers an understanding of human (...) freedom that constitutes an ecologically attuned alternative. (shrink)

We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in between stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story.... We need a story that will educate us, a story that will heal, guide, and discipline us. Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth.