In reply to H. Bußhoff's paper I give another outline of Lakatos' approach to normative theories in order to reduce the misunderstandings Bußhoff seems to have fallen victim to. . In particular, I try to show that he is wrong in claiming there is a vicious circle in this approach or my interpretation of it . Finally, I expose for criticism his alternative methodology of political science which propagates a theory of a "third type", suggesting that he takes too little (...) seriously problems he calls academical although their importance has been shown not only by Lakatos but by political philosophers as Rawls and Nozick. (shrink)

Summary I try to apply Lakatos's metacriterion of the rationality of normative philosophies of science to normative political theories, stressing that Lakatos's metacriterion is not only an extension of Popper's idea of tests by potentially falsifyingdescriptive basic judgments to tests by potentially falsifyingnormative judgments. Rather, its application is a test by demonstrating the tested theory's capability of reconstructing its own history as rational. Finally I argue that the tradition of utilitarian political theories is fittest to be confirmed by a Lakatosian (...) test. (shrink)

The paper's aim is to contribute to a better understanding of Weber's methodology by clarifying the difference of Weber's concept of Verstehen from Dilthey's concept of Verstehen, and by answering the question of how Weber's claim to objectivity of his Verstehende Soziologie is compatible with his claim that the specific method of his Verstehende Soziologie, the idealtypical construction, is empirically irrefutable. My thesis is that there are three classes of ideal types in Weber: concepts of 'historical individuals', concepts of 'objective (...) possibilities' and idealtypical classifying concepts. Common to them is the end to grasp the individual character of a social phenomenon. Their different functions in realizing this end justify to describe Weber's Verstehende Soziologie as a system, in which social phenomena are presented as if they were the result of conscious human decisions. (shrink)

I understand the claim that there is a right to work as the claim that involuntary unemployment is an injustice that requires of justice enforcement institutions to stop it. I argue that in present conditions of high productivity it is more consistent with the liberal tradition to proclaim a right to develop one’s capabilities than a right to work. The steps of my argument are: (1) An important though not the only reason for considering unemployment unjust has been what I (...) call the Promethean idea of society. (2) The Promethean idea is implied by the liberal idea of rights. (3) There are two conceptions of the Promethean idea, the centralist and the autonomous one. (4) Only the latter is acceptable. (5) Involuntary unemployment is unjust even if the dole is decently high. (6) The injustice of unemployment can be stopped only by institutions that enable everyone to use their capabilities in realizing the Promethean idea. (7) One such institution is basic income. (8) As employment is not necessary for survival, we should replace the right to work with a right to develop one’s capabilities. (shrink)

Tugendhat’s remarks on religion and mysticism are explored in section 5 and 6 of this paper. To this end I outline, in section 1, the role that the criticism of religion has played from its beginnings in philosophy’s self-understanding and its focus on reasoning, which philosophers opposed to the non-reasoning justification of religion. In section 2, I consider philosophy’s relation to empirical statements and to the empirical sciences; in section 3, I discuss Tugendhat’s substitution of anthropology for metaphysics; and in (...) section 4, his moral theory. (shrink)

Carver's interpretation of Marx's value theory (Terrell Carver, ?Marx's Commodity Fetishism?, Inquiry, Vol. 18 [1975]) is accepted, but his rejection of it criticized by explicating the reasons Marx gives for his theory after his faulty analysis of exchange-value at the very beginning of Capital. The central concept of abstract labour is shown to relate commodity exchange to other forms of distribution; by being compared to these the function of commodity exchange is recognized as the attachment of an amount of abstract (...) labour to a commodity, and exchange-value as that which determines that amount What it means to say value is thought to inhere in commodities is explicated. (shrink)

I agree with Van Parijs that a theory of justice must meet the condition of indicating institutions that eliminate compulsory unemployment, but argue that his basic income is another form of unemployment compensation with all the disadvantages such compensations suffer from. In particular, it does not advance real freedom, but is liable to contribute to narrow political ends. I indicate an alternative and explicate, since Van Parijs disregards it, the right to work and its basis in the common property of (...) natural resources. Finally, I compare the two competing conceptions of a good life that underlie his recommendation of a basic income and my rejection of it. (shrink)

Wittgensteins "Philosophische Untersuchungen," von N. Malcolm.--Kritische Notiz zu einigen Begriffen in Wittgensteins Philosophie, von P. F. Strawson.--Wittgenstein über die Privatsprache, von N. Garver.--Der Zugang zu Wittgensteins Spätphilsophie, von S. Cavell.--Ausgewählte Bibliographie der Schriften über Ludwig Wittgenstein, zusammengestellt von Ulrich Steinvorth (p. 157-[171]).

Gibt es Bedingungen gerechten Handelns, die die Politik zu beachten hat? Namhafte Philosophen aus dem deutschen Sprachraum begründen in diesem Buch, warum sich politisches Handeln am Maßstab der Gerechtigkeit orientieren muss, und zeigen am Beispiel aktueller politischer Probleme, welchen Beitrag die Philosophie zur Klärung der Prinzipien einer gerechten Politik zu leisten vermag.

The paper reformulates empirical naturalism by 4 theses, points out a Popperian trend to its resuscitation, argues for its central thesis by rejecting formal objections that the good cannot be defined by any, any descriptive, or any empirical, concept, and material objections that the good is something different from happiness, esp, that it is justice, and conjectures about a motive for rejecting naturalism.

In this small book, Ulrich Steinvorth describes the reasons why analytic philosophy, which started as an anti-metaphysical project, has become a strong advocate of metaphysics, and why it must become synthetic, normative, and naturalistic. Steinvorth argues that self-regulation is the common property of all being, that we can talk of an increase or escalation of self-regulation in the evolution of being, and that self-regulation becomes self-determination in man. Considering objections to this view related to questions of free will, consciousness, the (...) naturalistic fallacy, and teleology, he draws on cybernetics, dual process theory, physical cosmology, and Leibniz’s idea of measuring the goodness of a world by the number of possibilities opened up by the world. To test his approach and show its political relevance, he applies it to political liberalism. (shrink)

Eine philosophische Diskussion der Euthanasie muß unterscheiden: zwischen aktiver und passiver Euthanasie, zwischen Heiligkeit des Lebens und der Heiligkeit der Autonomie oder Selbstverfügung, zwischen Recht und Moralität, zwischenBarmherzigkeitund Gerechtigkeit für Patienten und Barmherzigkeit und Gerechtigkeit für deren Angehörige. Meggle beachtet keine dieser Unterscheidungen oder vericennt ihre Bedeutung, und er löst nicht einmal seinen Anspruch ein, aus der „Eigenperspektive des Euthanasanden" zu argumentieren.

Eine philosophische Diskussion der Euthanasie muß unterscheiden: zwischen aktiver und passiver Euthanasie, zwischen Heiligkeit des Lebens und der Heiligkeit der Autonomie oder Selbstverfügung, zwischen Recht und Moralität, zwischenBarmherzigkeitund Gerechtigkeit für Patienten und Barmherzigkeit und Gerechtigkeit für deren Angehörige. Meggle beachtet keine dieser Unterscheidungen oder vericennt ihre Bedeutung, und er löst nicht einmal seinen Anspruch ein, aus der „Eigenperspektive des Euthanasanden" zu argumentieren.

In the first part of the paper, I describe the role labour, under conditions no longer existent, played for the perfection of individuals in Locke′s political philosophy. Or to use a more up-to-date term, I describe labour′s emancipatory role. In the second part, I examine the conditions for realizing Locke′s aim of a society of autonomous individuals with a minimum of state power and market coercion, starting from a society whose members are becoming increasingly economically superabundant.

Die englische Wikipedia erklärt ihn als »a collection of political philosophies and movements that uphold liberty as a core principle.« Doch diese Beschreibung trifft auch auf den Liberalismus zu. Den Libertarismus unterscheidet vom Liberalismus etwas, das ihn öffentlichkeitswirksam und in den USA zu einer politischen Partei machte.

Our acting and thinking can be guided by two ends which may combine but are irreducible nevertheless: the end of satisfying one’s interests and the end of distinguishing between true and false, right and wrong. Recognition of the difference between these ends led philosophers before the modem age to contrasting the life of power and the life of spirit or mind. Modern philosophers, in particular pragmatists, utilitarians and communication theorists, tried to show that truth and justice can be conceived of (...) without implying an opposition to power and mind. I argue that they are wrong. (shrink)

interpretation of Marx's economic theory of value. which has been widely accepted up to this day, is based on Marx's approach to a theory of value in his third volume of Capital. But the theory of value of the first volume of Capital, implied by Marx's analyses in the first volume of Capital and only summarized in its first chapter, is inconsistent with the third volume's approach. It is consistent with theories of value which do not hold that prices are (...) deter mined by labour. (shrink)

One of the first objections raised against Marx’ Kapital was that it was an idealistic construction a priori of capitalist economy. Since Marx agreed that his book could seem to be so, we may assume that the analyses of Kapital are not only empirical. I try to show that (1) the analyses of the first chapters of Kapital give a conceptual construction of a model of commodity exchange made up both of generally recognized and of new definitions of commodity exchange, (...) (2) that the model cannot be used for predicting the end of capitalist economy but that (3) it can be applied to reality because (a) the generally recognized definitions correspond to the ordinary usage of the words, (b) the new definitions are in accordance with true empirical statements about capitalist exchange, (c) the model has allowed true predictions about capitalist economy to be deduced, and (4) that therefore it can be used as a reason for putting an end to capitalist economy. (shrink)

I propose a conception of critical theory that is an alternative to that of the Frankfurt School and Habermas. It is based on the assumptions that critical theory is not unique but started off with the 5th century BC movement of the sophists that aimed at an understanding of society free from superstition and prejudice, can be better understood by considering the history of social thinking, does not look for knowledge for knowledge’s sake but for solving practical problems, distinguishes basic (...) social problems from dependent problems, looks for and defends a value to guide it both in its research and its solutions, prefers the value of capability development to that of happiness. (shrink)

A rational moral code must satisfy the condition of completeness. This same condition applies to a set of moral rights, where it takes the form of requiring that all the rights in that set be compossible: that their respective correlatively entailed duties be jointly fulfillable. Such joint fulfillability is guaranteed only by a set of fully differentiated individual domains. And if moral rights are to play any independent role in moral reasoning - any role logically independent of the values that (...) bring persons into conflict - those domains must be determined by rules which are not derived from those values. (shrink)

Recognition is an important function of labour, as Schlothfeld claims, but only under given capitalist conditions. It is the very point of the introduction of basic income, if embedded in a suitable education system, that it would allow people to receive recognition from all kinds of activities they regard as meaningful rather than from stultifying wage labour.