Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 66 Heft: 1 Seiten: 134-141.

Prof. Dr. Frieder Otto Wolf, President of the Humanistischer Verband Deutschlands, provides an overview of the main currents of modern humanism in Germany. He describes the central stream of German humanism as practical, in that it combines the principled imperative to overcome all structures and situations in which people are not treated as human beings with seeking to widen the horizons of humane existence in the arts and sciences and in capabilities of leading a fulfilling life. This (...) humanism compels resort to other criteria than nature, such as those logical, emotive, cultural, in order to gauge the acceptability of value claims. The practical efforts to humanize society and widen human horizons requires engagement in public policy debates and social organizing and programming on consensus issues. Accordingly, the HVD works on such diverse issues as strengthening the rights to bodily integrity and sexual autonomy, preventing economic collapse, accommodating immigrants, protecting personal privacy, limiting the use of military force, building intra- and international peace, and exposing anti-humanist prejudice. (shrink)

Prof. Dr. Frieder Otto Wolf, President of the Humanistischer Verband Deutschlands, provides an overview of the main currents of modern humanism in Germany. He describes the central stream of German humanism as practical, in that it combines the principled imperative to overcome all structures and situations in which people are not treated as human beings with seeking to widen the horizons of humane existence in the arts and sciences and in capabilities of leading a fulfilling life. This (...) humanism compels resort to other criteria than nature, such as those logical, emotive, cultural, in order to gauge the acceptability of value claims. The practical efforts to humanize society and widen human horizons requires engagement in public policy debates and social organizing and programming on consensus issues. Accordingly, the HVD works on such diverse issues as strengthening the rights to bodily integrity and sexual autonomy, preventing economic collapse, accommodating immigrants, protecting personal privacy, limiting the use of military force, building intra- and international peace, and exposing anti-humanist prejudice. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Disbelief/Dissent/Unbelief/Atheism After Positivism Against False Simplifications Transforming Metaphysical Questions from Urgent Problems into Interesting Puzzles Rejecting Any Answers From Presumed “Higher Instances” Scientific Solutions to Problems and Philosophical Answers to Questions Struggling Toward Humanism Notes.

"Humanismus" ist eine kulturelle Bewegung, ein Bildungsprogramm, eine Epoche, eine Tradition, eine Weltanschauung, eine Form von praktischer Philosophie, eine politische Grundhaltung, welche für die Durchsetzung der Menschenrechte und für humanitäre Praxis eintritt. Das Kompendium erfasst die einfachen und allgemeinen Begriffe in ihrem Zusammenhang und stellt den Nutzen für die Erkenntnis gegenwärtiger Probleme in Medizin, Ethik, Ökonomie, Recht und Politik dar. Der Band enthält einen systematischen Teil und einen Teil mit den Grundbegriffen. Die verschiedenen Richtungen und Institutionen der humanistischen Bewegung in (...) Geschichte und Gegenwart werden im Umriss sichtbar gemacht und die neuen Felder und Aufgaben, die der Humanismusforschung durch die Entwicklung der modernen Medizin, der Menschenrechtspolitik und der Geschlechterstudien, der digitalen Revolution und der Globalisierung entstanden sind. Das humanistische Erbe aus Antike, Renaissance und Aufklärung wird kritisch mit diesen neuen globalen Anforderungen vermittelt. (shrink)

The transition to socialism is only conceivable at the concrete meeting-point of a variety of contradictions. In this regard, the ecological crisis reinterpreted in terms of a Marxist theory of capital manifests a paradoxical primacy.

Elle a besoin de voix qui, au-delà de l'urgence des décisions, prennent un peu de distance pour regarder la vie sous un jour imprévu. Ce jour, nous avons voulu le répandre sur ce que nous avons appelé la vie en Europe.

This book examines what we can gain from a critical reading of Marx's final manuscript and his conclusion of the "systematic presentation" of his critique, which was the basis for Engels's construction of the third volume of his infamous 'Capital'. The text introduces the reader to a key problem ́of Marx's largely implicit epistemology, by exploring the systematic character of his exposition and the difference of this kind of 'systematicity' from Hegelian philosophical system construction. The volume contributes to establishing a (...) new understanding of the critique of political economy, as it has been articulated in various debates since the 1960s - especially in France, Germany, and Italy - and as it had already been initiated by Marx and some of his followers, with Rosa Luxemburg in a key role. All the chapters are transdisciplinary in nature, and explore the modern day relevance of Marx's and Luxemburg's theoretical analysis of the dominance of the capitalist mode of production. (shrink)

A collection of essays on philosophy and politics on the occasion of the 65th birthday of the radical philosopher Frieder Otto Wolf.

A collection of essays on politics, philosophy, and the crisis of Marxism, referring back to Althusser's theoretical initiatives of the late 1970s and the Portuguese revolution of 1974.

Kant’s formula of universal law (FUL) is standardly understood as a test of the moral permissibility of an agent’s maxim: maxims which pass the test are morally neutral, and so permissible, while those which do not are morally impermissible. In contrast, I argue that the FUL tests whether a maxim is the cause or determining ground of an action at all. According to Kant’s general account of causality, nothing can be a cause of some effect unless there is a law-like (...) relation between the putative cause and effect. Applied to the case of action, no maxim can be the cause of an agent’s action unless there is a law-like relation between maxims of that kind and actions of that kind. The special capacity to act according to maxims as law-like causes is what Kant calls a will; the basic constitutive principle of the will is a non-normative principle I call the categorical declarative. While the actions of a perfectly good will would be described by the categorical declarative alone, human action is determined not only by the causality of the will, but also by competing causes, namely those stemming from inclination. There is thus need for a causal test for putative maxims. The test contained in the FUL is meant to determine whether an action could be grounded solely on the agent’s maxim, or whether it requires a cause external to the will. This account permits one to build eventual distinctions concerning the morality of actions on prior and independent distinctions concerning their causality. (shrink)

Seite dualität: Anarchismus 121. Konsequenzen der individualitätszerstörenden Gleichheitstheorie: Stellung der Frau 123; unhistorische Denkweise 123; ...

This 2005 book is a critical examination of Michel Foucault's relation to ancient Greek thought, in particular his famous analysis of Greek history of sexuality. Wolfgang Detel offers an understanding of Foucault's theories of power and knowledge based on modern analytical theories of science and concepts of power. He offers a complex reading of the texts which Foucault discusses, covering topics such as Aristotle's ethics and theory of sex, Hippocratic dietetics, the earliest treatises on economics, and Plato's theory of love. (...) The result is a philosophically rich and probing critique of Foucault's later writings, and a persuasive account of the relation between ethics, power and knowledge in classical antiquity. His book will have a wide appeal to readers interested in Foucault and in Greek thought and culture. (shrink)

Following its publication in Germany in 1963, Otto Friedrich Bollnow's Human Space quickly became essential reading within a cross-disciplinary field of subject areas including architecture, anthropology, and philosophy. In this first English translation, Bollnow conceives the human experience of space not merely as a philosophical problem but also as an extension of his research into psychology, human behavior, and the conventional domains of architecture: living in a building, in an apartment, in a house. Human Space is a remarkable investigation (...) of space as we experience it, by a man many consider to be the father of spatial and architectural anthropology. This lush hardcover edition includes an afterword by Joseph Kohlmaier that situates the work in the context of philosophical and architectural discussion. (shrink)

ArgumentAnimals played an important role in the formation of psychoanalysis as a theoretical and therapeutic enterprise. They are at the core of texts such as Freud's famous case histories of Little Hans, the Rat Man, or the Wolf Man. The infantile anxiety triggered by animals provided the essential link between the psychology of individual neuroses and the ambivalent status of the “totem” animal in so-called primitive societies in Freud's attempt to construct an anthropological basis for the Oedipus complex in (...) Totem and Taboo. In the following, we attempt to track the status of animals as objects of indirect observation as they appear in Freud's classical texts, and in later revisionist accounts such as Otto Rank's Trauma of Birth and Imre Hermann's work on the clinging instinct. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Freudian conception of patients' animal phobias is substantially revised within Hermann's original psychoanalytic theory of instincts which draws heavily upon ethological observations of primates. Although such a reformulation remains grounded in the idea of “archaic” animal models for human development, it allows to a certain extent to empiricize the speculative elements of Freud's later instinct theory and to come to a more embodied account of psychoanalytic practice. (shrink)