For decades there has been a controversial debate over how far religious faith communities are specifically engaged in ecological practices (EP). Therefore we studied four Austrian and two German Benedictine monasteries religious ethics and spirituality as a means of a driving force for initiating EP. We draw upon theories of organizational learning processes and capacity-building of sustainability to interpret our empirical findings. The majority of monasteries are highly engaged in EP, initiated either as an outcome of individual activities or through (...) a specific mostly informally acting group, but rarely an organizationally or systematically integrated goal of the monasteries, or a focus of capacity building. Monasteries follow a technical and economic decision-making process in implementing EP. Spirituality plays a limited role in the initiation of EP. The environment of monasteries–acceptance or critique against ecological practices–influences the monasteries decisions. Institutionalization of ecological practices into the monasteries organizational structure is rare. (shrink)

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1. Bd. Johannes Duns Scotus.--2. Bd. Die nachscotistische Scholastik.--3. Bd. Der Augustinismus in der Scholastik des späteren Mittelalters.--4. Bd. Der Endausgang der mittelalterlichen Scholastik. Der Übergang der Scholastik in ihr nachtridentinisches Entwickelungsstadium. 2 v.

Th. 1. Güterlehre. -- Th. 2. Tugendlehre. -- Th. 3. Pflichtenlehre.

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

Advanced old age has been characterized as a biologically highly vulnerable life phase. Biological, morbidity-, and cognitive impairment-related factors play an important role as mortality predictors among very old adults. However, it is largely unknown whether previous findings confirming the role of different wellbeing domains for mortality translate to survival among the oldest-old individuals. Moreover, the distinction established in the wellbeing literature between hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing as well as the consideration of within-person variability of potentially relevant mortality predictors has (...) not sufficiently been addressed in prior mortality research. In this study, we examined a broad set of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing indicators, including their levels, their changes, as well as their within-person variability, as predictors of all-cause mortality in a sample of very old individuals. We used data from the LateLine study, a 7-year longitudinal study based on a sample of n = 124 individuals who were living alone and who were aged 87–97 years at baseline. Study participants provided up to 16 measurement occasions between 2009 and 2016. Dates of death were available for 118 individuals who had deceased between 2009 and 2021. We ran longitudinal multilevel structural equation models and specified between-person level differences, within-person long-term linear change trends, as well as the “detrended” within-person variability in three indicators of hedonic and four indicators of eudaimonic wellbeing as all-cause mortality predictors. Controlling for age, gender, education, and physical condition and testing our sets of hedonic and eudaimonic indictors separately in terms of their mortality impact, solely one eudaimonic wellbeing indicator, namely, autonomy, showed significant effects on survival. Surprisingly, autonomy appeared “paradoxically” related with mortality, with high individual levels and intraindividual highly stable perceptions of autonomy being associated with a shorter residual lifetime. Thus, it seems plausible that accepting dependency and changing perceptions of autonomy over time in accordance with objectively remaining capabilities might become adaptive for survival in very old age. (shrink)

We all know that ships are safest in the harbor; but alas, that is not what ships are built for. They are destined to leave the harbor and to confront the challenges that are waiting beyond the harbor mole. A similar challenge confronts the practice of research. Research at work cannot play it safe and stay in whatever theoretical and methodological harbors in which it may have found shelter in the past. Still less can it examine and maintain its foundations (...) in the dry dock. Research is more like a ship that must be repaired on the open sea. Yet foundationalist ideas persist in the practice of research. Counter to what is often assumed, today’s dominating model for research--the fallibilist model of critical rationalism--has not really overcome the empirical foundationalism of earlier, positivist research practices. This paper analyses two major foundationalist traps that are currently in the upswing and work against reflective research practice. (shrink)

Karl Buhler (1879-1963) was one of the leading theoreticians of language of the twentieth century. This is an English translation of Buhler's theory that begins with a survey on 'Buhler's legacy' for modern linguistics (Werner Abraham), followed by the Theory of Language, and finally with a special 'Postscript: Twenty-five Years Later!'.

Hegel 's classic Phenomenology of Spirit is considered by many to be the most difficult text in all of philosophical literature. In interpreting the work, scholars have often used the Phenomenology to justify the ideology that has tempered their approach to it, whether existential, ontological, or, particularly, Marxist. Werner Marx deftly avoids this trap of misinterpretation by rendering lucid the objectives that Hegel delineates in the Preface and Introduction and using these to examine the whole of the Phenomenology. Marx (...) considers selected materials from Hegel 's text in order both to clarify Hegel 's own view of it and to set the stage for an examination of post-Hegelian philosophy. The primary focus of Marx's book is on the account. Hegel gives of the phenomenological journey from natural consciousness to philosophical wisdom. In showing that Hegel 's many statements concerning consciousness 'finding itself' or 'knowing itself' in its world can be understood as discovering the rationality of the conditioning world, Marx offers a solution to several sets of interrelated problems that have troubled students of Hegel. His book contains valuable analyses of the relation between Hegel 's thought and that of Descartes and Kant as well as that of Karl Marx, and it also sheds considerable light on the question of the internal unity or coherence of the Phenomenology. (shrink)

Karl Marx's Capital is critique of the capitalistically organised social relations of reproduction. It recognises economic categories as perverted social categories and asks about the manner in which human social practice manifests itself in the form of independent economic categories and laws that unfold as if governed by invisible principles. He says, the capitalist relations are beyond human control and he argues that the indi-viduals act under economic compulsion and are controlled by the products of their own labour. His (...) critique says, in the capitalist social relations the individuals act as personification of economic categories. The immense wealth of capitalist society is abstract, it appears in the form of money as more money. In these wealth-relations, time is money, the satisfaction of human needs a mere sideshow. Yet, the economic categories are purely social forms. Critique of political economy is social critique of economic inversion, it is about the sheer unrest of live as the hidden misery of economic things. (shrink)

This article explores a new scientific understanding of cooperative processes within the natural world, and demonstrates how this understanding could reshape our need for community. From this a new approach to a global ethics can be extrapolated. Instead of looking back in an attempt to rescue ancient values the author offers hope in looking forward. The author proposes to use a synchronizing process he calls Collective Orchestration to describe a dialectical transition from individuals to wholes. He employs concepts gained from (...) system theory, cybernetics, and chaos theory to make his point. Collective Orchestration offers a novel solution to the problem of Macro evolution, the evolutionary developing of brand new species. From this naturalistic foundation the author derives a new global ethics, based on the principles of self-organization, cooperation, and connectedness. (shrink)

Seit den 50er Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts war umstritten, welches Gewicht Nietzsches Nachlass für sein Philosophieren und das Bild seiner Philosophie zukommt. Sagten die einen, hier vor allem Karl Schlechta, der Nietzsches Werke neu herausgab, es stehe nichts im Nachlass, was sich nicht auch im veröffentlichten Werk finde, so Karl Löwith und Martin Heidegger, „Was Nietzsche zeit seines Schaffens selbst veröffentlicht hat, ist immer Vordergrund. Die eigentliche Philosophie bleibt als,Nachlaߑ zurück" (Heidegger). Beides ist aus heutiger Sicht unhaltbar. Die (...) neue manuskriptgetreue Edition des Nachlasses in diplomatischer Transkription lässt die Frage nun methodisch entscheiden. Der international renommierte Nietzsche-Forscher Werner Stegmaier, der Jahrzehnte lang auch die Nietzsche-Studien und die Reihe Monographien und Texte zur Nietzscheforschung mitherausgegeben hat, legt dazu eine grundlegende Studie zur neuen textnahen oder kontextuellen, differentiellen und chronologischen Nietzsche-Interpretation vor. Diese lässt den Denker an der Arbeit, in seinem experimentellen philosophischen Orientierungsprozess beobachten. Daraus werden auch seine berühmten Lehren vom Übermenschen, vom Willen zur Macht, von der ewigen Wiederkunft und von den Herren der Erde in Also sprach Zarathustra neu verständlich. (shrink)

The book introduces a conception of discourse ethics, an intersubjectivist version of Kantian ethics. Analyzing contributions from Jürgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel, Wolfgang Kuhlmann, Albrecht Wellmer, Robert Alexy, Klaus Günther, Rainer Forst, Marcel Niquet and others, it reconstructs critical discussions on the justification of the principle of morality (part I) and on the various proposals on how to apply it (part II). It defends an alternative model of how discourse ethics can provide guidance under non-ideal circumstances and avoid both arbitrariness (...) and rigorism. (shrink)

This article identifies a distinct strand of 20th-century liberal thought that was exemplified by Isaiah Berlin, Raymond Aron and, to a lesser extent, Karl Popper. I offer a stylized account of their common ideas and shared political sensibility, and argue that their primarily negative liberalism was a variety of what Judith Shklar called the `liberalism of fear' — which put the imperative to avoid cruelty and atrocity first. All three founded their liberalism on a `politics of knowledge' that was (...) directed primarily against Marxist philosophies of history and less against the idea of bureaucratic planning, as, in contrast, was the case with Friedrich von Hayek's thought. Moreover, all three subscribed to more or less explicit versions of value pluralism, and claimed that, in the circumstances of modernity, Weber's `clash of values' was exacerbated and required a particularly prudential approach to politics; this prudential management of value conflicts in turn was best entrusted to cultivated bureaucratic elites. All shared an image of a tolerant and humane society — essentially an idealized version of Britain — but said perhaps too little on the question how societies without the appropriate traditions of moderation and compromise were to be liberalized. (shrink)

This article identifies a distinct strand of 20th-century liberal thought that was exemplified by Isaiah Berlin, Raymond Aron and, to a lesser extent, Karl Popper. I offer a stylized account of their common ideas and shared political sensibility, and argue that their primarily negative liberalism was a variety of what Judith Shklar called the `liberalism of fear' — which put the imperative to avoid cruelty and atrocity first. All three founded their liberalism on a `politics of knowledge' that was (...) directed primarily against Marxist philosophies of history and less against the idea of bureaucratic planning, as, in contrast, was the case with Friedrich von Hayek's thought. Moreover, all three subscribed to more or less explicit versions of value pluralism, and claimed that, in the circumstances of modernity, Weber's `clash of values' was exacerbated and required a particularly prudential approach to politics; this prudential management of value conflicts in turn was best entrusted to cultivated bureaucratic elites. All shared an image of a tolerant and humane society — essentially an idealized version of Britain — but said perhaps too little on the question how societies without the appropriate traditions of moderation and compromise were to be liberalized. (shrink)

Mangan’s hypothesis, that consciousness is an information-bearing medium, presents an alternative to Dennett’s brand of functionalism, and Dennett’s counterattacks have yet to address Mangan’s main assertion. The medium hypothesis does not entail Cartesian theater assumptions concerning the localization, causal status, and “filling in” of consciousness in the brain. In principle, it is compatible with distributed information transfer between different media, epiphenomenalism, and gaps in visual experience. However, Mangan’s strongest empirical argument, based on consciousness’ limited “bandwidth,” does not necessarily show (...) that transduction between media of different information-bearing capacities occurs between the brain and consciousness. The features of consciousness that he attributes to a lower bandwidth medium can be explained in terms of functional constraints on a single medium. Furthermore, empirical results showing gaps and anomalies in visual experience speak against consciousness being a medium. (shrink)

Die von Karl Menger und seinen Mitarbeitern (darunter Kurt Gödel) herausgegebenen "Ergebnisse eines Mathematischen Kolloquiums" zählen zu den wichtigsten Quellenwerken der Wissenschafts- und Geistesgeschichte der Zwischenkriegszeit, mit bahnbrechenden Beiträgen von Menger, Gödel, Tarski, Wald, John von Neumann und vielen anderen. In diesem Band liegt der Inhalt erstmals gesammelt vor. Der Nobelpreisträger Gerard Debreu schrieb die Einleitung, die Kommentare wurden vom Logiker und Gödel-Biographen John Dawson jr., dem Topologen Ryszard Engelking und dem Wirtschaftstheoretiker Werner Hildenbrand verfasst. Außerdem enthält der (...) Band einen biographischen Aufsatz über Karl Menger sowie einen von Menger verfassten Überblick über die wichtigsten topologischen und geometrischen Arbeiten des Kolloquiums. (shrink)

Karl Jaspers zählt zu den bedeutendsten Philosophen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Obwohl es bereits eine international etablierte Jaspersforschung gibt, haben die meisten seiner Werke jedoch noch keinen angemessenen Eingang in die historische und systematische Lehre der Philosophie gefunden. Diese Aufsatzsammlung gibt erstmals einen Einblick in die wichtigsten Begriffe seines philosophischen Denkens. Zu diesen Begriffen gehören Begriffe wie Grenzsituation, Freiheit, Menschenbild, Kommunikation, Philosophischer Glaube, Chiffre, Böses, Wahrheit, Vernunft, Gehäuse, Wissenschaft, Logik, Sprachphilosophie, Psychopathologie, Psychologie der Weltanschauung, Ethik, Einsamkeit, Erziehung, Politik, Universität, Achsenzeit, (...) Philosophia perennis und interkulturelle Philosophie. Einige dieser Begriffe wurden von Jaspers geprägt und gingen dauerhaft als neue Begriffe in die Philosophie, die Psychologie und die Psychopathologie ein. Die anderen Begriffe knüpfen zwar dem Wortlaut nach an die klassische Tradition der europäischen Philosophie an, wurden von Jaspers jedoch im Sinne einer Weltphilosophie umgestaltet und erweitert. Dieser Sammelband ist nicht nur ein einführendes Kompendium für Studierende der Philosophie, der verschiedenen Theologien der Weltreligionen sowie der Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften. Er kann auch philosophisch Interessierten den Zugang zur Philosophie von Jaspers erleichtern. (shrink)