This collection broadens the scientific discussion of modularity by bringing together experts from a variety of disciplines, including artificial life, ...

English Summary: Although most religions claim peace as a goal to pursue, religions have been used as justification for violence again and again. Since September 11th, 2001 the Western and Eastern world has been confronted again with violence in the name of religion. As a fundamentalist understanding of religion is a fruitful basis for war and terror, it is essential to empower the liberal movements in the world religions, to support a peaceful community of people from different cultures and religions. (...) Therefore, it is of central importance for our own religious self-concept how faith and reason can be combined to make it possible to feel at home in our own religion and to welcome a pluralistic society. German description: Obwohl in den meisten Religionen Frieden als anzustrebendes Ziel gilt, wurden Religionen immer wieder zur Legitimation von Gewalt genutzt. Seit den Ereignissen des 11. September 2001 ist die westliche und ostliche Welt erneut konfrontiert mit der Gewalt im Namen der Religion. Insofern ein fundamentalistisches Religionsverstandnis den Nahrboden fur Krieg und Terror bildet, kommt es darauf an, die liberalen Krafte und Stromungen in den Weltreligionen zu starken, um ein friedliches Zusammenleben von Angehorigen verschiedener Kulturen und Religionen zu fordern. Fur das eigene religiose Selbstverstandnis ist daher von zentraler Bedeutung, wie Glaube und Vernunft so aufeinander bezogen werden konnen, dass es moglich ist, sowohl in der eigenen Religion beheimatet zu sein als auch die pluralistische Gesellschaft zu bejahen. Mit Beitragen von Michael Grossmann, Rabeya Muller, Wolfgang Pfuller, Andreas Rossler, Arnulf von Scheliha, Christian Wiese, Hans-Georg Wittig, Werner Zager und Ingo J. Zollich. (shrink)

According to Kant, as far as the realisation of humanity is concerned, man is dependent on knowledge. But which science guarantees him an insight into what it means to be a human being? Philosophy? Anthropology? Philosophical anthropology? This study’s problem-oriented development of the question: ‘What is man?’ deals with the anthropological concepts of Scheler, Plessner, Portmann and Gehlen, drawing on the insights of classical philosophy. The focus of its critique is the biologism that is symptomatic of the failure of the (...) attempt to clarify the nature of man in comparative distinction to the form of existence of the animal. With reference to Herder, who understands man as a linguistic being, this book outlines the first steps on the path to overcoming the programme of modern anthropology through a form of ‘philosophy from language’. (shrink)

Sind wir in unserem Denken, Entscheiden und Handeln frei? Diese Frage beschäftigt Menschen nicht erst seit der neueren Hirnforschung. Bereits die Römer kennen die Vorstellung eines willentlich handelnden Subjekts und haben daher den Begriff des Willens (voluntas) geprägt. Und auch die biblische Tradition von den Geboten Gottes, die der Mensch befolgen soll, legte einen solchen Gedanken nahe. Aus diesen Überlieferungssträngen schöpfend, verfasste der Kirchenvater Augustin seine Schrift De libero arbitrio (Über den freien Willen). Durch die weitere Theologie- und Philosophiegeschichte zieht (...) sich dann die Auseinandersetzung darüber, in welchem Mass der menschliche Wille frei bzw. unfrei ist. So bestritt etwa Luther gegen Erasmus die Willensfreiheit in Fragen des Heils. Die Beiträge des Bandes bedenken das Thema der Willensfreiheit jedoch nicht nur in theologischer und philosophischer Hinsicht, sondern beziehen auch biologische, psychologische und ethische Perspektiven mit ein, die den gegenwärtig geführten Debatten verpflichtet sind."-- Back cover. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Die bürgerliche Welt" verfügbar.

"Rastafari practitioners have continually resisted social sciences definition of what outsiders called a millenarian movement. They maintained against these efforts of categorization that Rastafari as a lived and living philosophy combines ancient roots with ever emerging routes. These historical, dynamic and creative dimensions challenge any homogenizing attempts to freeze the 'movement' in time and space. African origins are as important as Diasporean experiences for Rastafari in the manifold struggles to downstroy slavery and oppression. But the strong universal appeal towards the (...) realization of equal rights and justice implodes analytical and practical limitations of a Black Atlantic culture. This volume brings together contributions from well-known Rastafari practitioners and social scientists as a counter to the unilateral politics of outside definition, identification, and misrepresentation. They discuss Rastafari as an experimental philosophy; its historical and contemporary global culture dimensions and its contribution to issues such as decolonization, reparation and repatriation. ". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guilt History:Benjamin's Sketch "Capitalism as Religion"Werner Hamacher (bio)Translated by Kirk Wetters (bio)History as Exchange EconomySince history cannot be conceived as a chain of events produced by mechanical causation, it must be thought of as a connection between occurrences that meets at least two conditions: first that it admit indeterminacy and thus freedom, and second that it nonetheless be demonstrable in determinate occurrences and in the distinct form of (...) their coherence. Relations can thus be called historical and can be recognized as historical only if they are determined by neither necessity nor chance, and if their causality is of a different order than the mechanical. The temporal structure of history can therefore be characterized on the one hand by the distinct connection of its elements—and on the other hand by the dissolution of all connections that do not assist these elements in achieving their independence.A temporal nexus that clearly does not satisfy these conflicting requirements has been characterized in one of the oldest texts of occidental philosophy as the time of guilt. According to the sentence of Anaximander (from about 500 BC), handed down by Simplicius in his commentary (530 AD) on Aristotle's Physics, the origin and end of all things is subordinated to the law of necessity (katà tó kreòn). "They must pay penance and be judged for their injustice, according to the order of time (katà tèn tou chrónou táxin)"—so the fragment reads in the translation offered by Nietzsche in his treatise "Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks." According to Anaximander, the sequence of time orders the rise and fall of all things and orders them in accordance with the law of guilt and punishment so that becoming (génesis) is a guilt (adikía) that must be expiated in perishing. Time and more precisely its táxis, the positing of time, is thought in Anaximander's sentence as an order of guilt and retribution, debt and payback. It is a time of economy in the sense that it is the time of law—and precisely a law that is valid for all beings, a táxis, a decree, an ordinance and an ordering—in which the unavoidable incurring of guilt is atoned in an equivalent penance that is just as unavoidable. The strict coherence of guilt and penance is ascertained by the principle of their equivalence. Time is therefore conceived here as a double process of coming into being and perishing, [End Page 81] a process that occurs in such a way that the genesis is erased in its passing away—so that time is thus erased by time itself.In Anaximander's sentence, however, time is not only the double-process of coming into being and passing away, it is—as a táxis—the common and constantly enduring medium of the exchange of the contrary but equivalent motions of coming into being and perishing. It is the time of the quid pro quo of everything that is generated and passes away within time. Its measure is a justice that represents itself as a táxis and thereby as the positing and the law of all becoming and vanishing, the law of physis and its demise as an onto-economic law. This taxiological order of time places every realm of the natural and human world under a law of substitution without exception; this also allows ethical, juridical, and economic concepts to substitute for one another within this order. The ethical dimension of justice, thus circumscribed by the order of time, is reduced to the juridical dimension of the decree, and both now define themselves according to the calculus of "an exchange economy in an eternally unchanging household of nature."1 It can only, however, be a matter of an ethics of time to the extent that this ethics, already juridified and economized, is subordinated to the schema of exchange, trade, and the equivalence of guilt and retribution. The time of history, ethical time, is thus interpreted in Anaximander's sentence as a normative time of inculpation and expiation. Whatever enters this táxis of time is thereby already guilty and can... (shrink)

A translation of Werner Hamacher’s essay “Andere Schmerzen,” which he was unable to complete before his death on July 7, 2017. The essay analyzes the connection between pain and language in the work of Pindar, Sophocles, Cicero, Seneca, Kant, Hegel, and Valéry.

Zusammenfassung Die Gewaltforschung nimmt seit ca. 20 Jahren auch in der Alten Geschichte einen ihr gebührenden Platz ein. Dabei kann mittlerweile mit digitalen Methoden auf die ‚big data‘ der antiken Quellen (Literatur, Inschriften, Münzen, Papyri) zugegriffen werden. An der Universität Hamburg entsteht derzeit das Informationssystem ERIS: Hamburg Information System on the Representation of Greek and Roman Violence, das alle Erwähnungen bzw. Beschreibungen von Gewalt in der antiken Historiographie und Biographie mit soziologischen Parametern annotiert und somit ein großes Quellencorpus auf elektronischem (...) Wege thematisch suchbar macht. Die folgende Machbarkeitsstudie, auch Methodensicherungsinstrument genannt (‚proof of concept/principle‘), wird anhand des Vergleichs dreier Plutarch-Viten die Leistungsfähigkeit des Systems erweisen: Die Bestätigung bekannter Sachverhalte mit einer neuen Methode lässt hoffen, dass das System auch bei der Suche in größeren Datenbeständen, die nicht mehr durch die Leseleistung eines Individuums erschlossen werden können, zu sinnhaften und validen Ergebnissen führt. Im Folgenden wird dargelegt, wie ERIS Fragestellungen der Gewaltsoziologie sowie der Alten Geschichte aufgreift und mit den Potentialen der Digital Humanities verknüpft und weiterführt. (shrink)

A translation of Werner Hamacher’s essay “Andere Schmerzen,” which he was unable to complete before his death on July 7, 2017. The essay analyzes the connection between pain and language in the work of Pindar, Sophocles, Cicero, Seneca, Kant, Hegel, and Valéry.

On the Brink begins with a consideration of Kant's treatment of time as representation and of Hegel's treatment of the writing of history and the end of art, all while taking up other key figures in the history of philosophy. The book then moves to an exploration of language in a variety of manifestations, from translation to complaint and greeting. It concludes by analyzing political and social questions that continue to haunt us today--the conception of work, not least in National (...) Socialism, and our relationship to democracy. Taken together, Werner Hamacher's essays offer trenchant historical, political, and rhetorical interventions into the history of philosophy, literature, and our contemporary political situation. (shrink)