Introduction: the foundation of justice -- Practical reason and justifying reasons: on the foundation of morality -- Moral autonomy and the autonomy of morality : toward a theory of normativity after Kant -- Ethics and morality -- The justification of justice: Rawls's political liberalism and Habermas's discourse theory in dialogue -- Political liberty: integrating five conceptions of autonomy -- A critical theory of multicultural toleration -- The rule of reasons: three models of deliberative democracy -- Social justice, justification, and power (...) -- The basic right to justification: toward a constructivist conception of human rights -- Constructions of transnational justice: comparing John Rawls's the law of peoples and Otfried Höffe's democracy in an age of globalisation -- Justice, morality, and power in the global context -- Toward a critical theory of transnational justice. (shrink)

Alfred Tarski was a nominalist. But he published almost nothing on his nominalist views, and until recently the only sources scholars had for studying Tarski’s nominalism were conversational reports from his friends and colleagues. However, a recently-discovered archival resource provides the most detailed information yet about Tarski’s nominalism. Tarski spent the academic year 1940-41 at Harvard, along with many of the leading lights of scientific philosophy: Carnap, Quine, Hempel, Goodman, and (for the fall semester) Russell. This group met frequently to (...) discuss logical and philosophical topics of shared interest. At these meetings, Carnap took dictation notes, which are now stored in the Archives of Scientific Philosophy. Interestingly, and somewhat surprisingly, the plurality of notes covers a proposal Tarski presents for a nominalist language of unified science. This chapter addresses the following questions about this project. What, precisely, is Tarski’s nominalist position? What rationales are given for Tarski’s nominalist stance—and are these rationales defensible? Finally, how is Tarskian nominalism of 1941 related to current nominalist projects? (shrink)

Je weiter die Verwissenschaftlichung unserer Lebenswelt fortschreitet, desto dringender stellt sich die Frage nach dem Status und dem sinnvollen Umgang mit Wissenschaft. Buchstaben-Folgen rekonstruiert das Projekt abendländischer Wissenschaft vor dem Hintergrund der Differenz von Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit. Die Reflexion auf das komplizierte Verhältnis zwischen gesprochener Sprache und Schrift sowie auf die entsprechenden - medial unterschiedlichen - Darstellungsformen von Wissen ermöglicht ein angemesseneres Verständnis der ambivalenten Rolle von Wissenschaft in unserer Kultur. Eine in ihrem Status und ihrer Reichweite mißverstandene Wissenschaft kann (...) leicht zur Ideologie werden. Das Buch führt zwei Debatten zusammen, die bisher noch kaum verknüpft worden sind: die interdisziplinäre Debatte der 80er und 90er Jahre um die kulturellen Auswirkungen von Schrift und Schriftlichkeit einerseits und die von Heidegger wesentlich angestoßene und bis heute anhaltende philosophische Diskussion um Status und Reichweite wissenschaftlicher Weltdarstellungen andererseits. In einer doppelten - medienhistorischen und medien-phänomenologischen - Perspektive erläutert der Autor, welche praktischen Entstehungsbedingungen und welchen Status wissenschaftliche Aussagen als >verdauerte sprachliche Handlungen haben, was bestimmte Mißverständnisse von Wissenschaft sind und wie diese Mißverständnisse gerade durch die schriftliche Form der Wissensdarstellung evoziert werden. Der erste Teil des Buches zeigt im Anschluß an Arbeiten von Jan Assmann, Christian Stetter und anderen, wie die Erfindung und Verbreitung der Alphabetschrift in Griechenland die Ausprägung eines formalen Sprachumgangs, die Entstehung von formaler Logik und logisch-enzyklopädischer Wissenschaft als episteme zugleich ermöglicht und herausgefordert hat. Im zweiten Teil des Buches werden zentrale Texte Heideggers im Kontext schriftphilosophischer Überlegungen neu gedeutet. Heideggers kritische Diagnose, daß die Geburtsstunde der okzidentalen Wissenschaft zugleich die Geburtsstunde der abendländischen Wissenschaftsmetaphysik ist, wird verständlich, wenn man sie mit der unreflektierten konstitutiven Schriftlichkeit des Wissenschaftsprojektes in Zusammenhang bringt. Seinsvergessenheit wird im Kern als Schriftvergessenheit verstehbar. Die Darstellung bewegt sich in einem spannungsreichen Verhältnis zu den schriftphilosophischen Thesen von Jacques Derrida und dessen Projekt einer Grammatologie. Die explizite Auseinandersetzung mit Derridas extrem erweitertem Schriftbegriff und mit dessen Kritik am vermeintlichen Präsentismus Heideggers bilden das abschließende Kapitel von Buchstaben-Folgen. Rainer Totzke, geb. 1966. 1988-1955 Studium der Journalistik und Kulturwissenschaften an der Universität Leipzig; 1995-2000 Promotionskolleg Ambivalenzen der Okzidentali-sierung. (shrink)

Si la " critique philosophique de l'art " peut constituer l'axe central d'une approche de la pensée de Walter Benjamin, c'est d'abord parce que l'art représente l'élément par lequel l'homme accède à sa propre temporalité. Le passé individuel, l'origine commune, le projet militant se cristallisent dans le geste artistique. La mémoire elle-même est une forme d'art, non moins que l'anticipation d'un avenir désirable. Investi du pouvoir de définir ainsi l'humanité de l'homme, l'art devient éminemment critiquable : Benjamin n'a jamais cru (...) que pratiquer la " critique " dispensât d'être philosophe. La critique, au contraire, n'a d'autre lieu que la philosophie, sous sa forme la plus épurée. On touche ici du doigt le fascinant pouvoir intégrateur de la pensée benjaminienne, capable de conjuguer l'autobiographique et le politique, la précision analytique et l'élan éthique, la déconstruction et la métaphysique. Quand Benjamin a été si souvent morcelé en personnalités contradictoires, sous la plume parfois d'un seul et même commentateur, c'est une image très cohérente, très homogène, qui nous semble ressortir des diverses contributions de ce recueil. (shrink)

Das Buch beschAftigt sich mit psychologischen Theorien und mit empirischer Forschung in der Psychologie. Am Beispiel der Theorie der kognitiven Dissonanz von Festinger beschreibt und analysiert der Autor den Aufbau einer psychologischen Theorie, ihre Entwicklung im Zuge empirischer Forschungsprozesse und die wesentlichen Kennzeichen einer theorieorientierten experimentalpsychologischen Forschung. Diesen Betrachtungen liegt die strukturalistische Theorienkonzeption nach Sneed und StegmA1/4ller zugrunde - ein relativ neuer wissenschaftsphilosophischer Ansatz, der ursprA1/4nglich als non-statement view bezeichnet wurde. In diesem Rahmen werden insbesondere die Beziehungen zwischen Theorie und (...) Experiment sowie die Probleme der ValiditAt empirischer Untersuchungen neu analysiert. (shrink)

Fifty years after his death, Walter Benjamin remains one of the great cultural critics of this century. Despite his renown, however, Benjamin's philosophical ideas remain elusive/m-/often considered a disaggregated set of thoughts not meant to cohere. This book provides a more systematic perspective on Benjamin, laying claim to his status as a philosopher and situating his work in the context of its time. Exploring Benjamin's theory of language, spoken and nonspoken, Rainer Rochlitz shows how Benjamin reconceptualized traditional ideas of (...) language, art, and history. Offering an expansive assessment of a unique twentieth-century thinker, this volume provides an indispensable guide for readers of Benjamin's recently released collected works. (shrink)

This book provides a unique presentation of Simone Weilʹs life, work, and her contributions to feminist thought. Long before postmodern or deconstructionist ideas became current, Weil was concerned with recognizing the absence of consistency and the continual presence of reversals and contradictions in life. The struggle to clarify her "reading" of reality and her perceptions of meaning was an ongoing one and she challenged contemporary views on complex issues such as human nature, good and evil, divinity, and truth. In this (...) introduction to Simone Weilʹs ideas, and the political and intellectual circumstances of her work, the authors make Weilʹs complex and at times elusive ideas accessible to readers. They offer their own interpretation of her work and delineate how Weilʹs ideas evolved, while providing compelling excerpts from Weilʹs writings to let her speak for herself. Her work offers a voice for those segments of society that are generally underrepresented, misrepresented, or totally silent in conventional historical and philosophical writings. -- Back cover. (shrink)

Rainer Forst develops a critical theory capable of deciphering the deficits and potentials inherent in contemporary political reality. This calls for a perspective which is immanent to social and political practices and at the same time transcends them. Forst regards society as a whole as an ‘order of justification’ comprising complexes of different norms referring to institutions and corresponding practices of justification. The task of a ‘critique of relations of justification’, therefore, is to analyse such legitimations with regard to (...) their validity and genesis and to explore the social and political asymmetries leading to inequalities in the ‘justification power’ which enables persons or groups to contest given justifications and to create new ones. Starting from the concept of justification as a basic social practice, Forst develops a theory of political and social justice, human rights and democracy, as well as of power and of critique itself. In so doing, he engages in a critique of a number of contemporary approaches in political philosophy and critical theory. Finally, he also addresses the question of the utopian horizon of social criticism. (shrink)

English summary: Gilduin (1155) was, from 1113, the first abbot of the community of the Canons Regular of St Augustine, soon to become an abbey, under the auspices of St Victor of Marseille, on the left bank of the river Seine. After the death of his confrere Hugh, who was of German descent and the leading figure of the Victorines, on 11 February 1141, abbot Gilduin took care that the writings of Hugh were collected and compiled in a representative complete (...) edition. This 'Gilduin-edition' - as it is called in Medieval scholarship - comprises four volumes, the first of which is reconstructed herewith and presented in print. This volume follows the 2008 edition of Hugh's theological summa, De sacramentis christiane fidei. Then as now we are dealing with a critical albeit historical text. This new volume contains nine works, among which the first ever complete edition of Hugh's Cronica surely stands out. German description: Gilduin (+ 1155) war ab 1113 der erste Abt der einige Jahre zuvor gegrundeten und bald zur Abtei erhobenen Gemeinschaft von Augustinerchorherren unter dem Patronat des hl. Victor von Marseille, auf dem linken Ufer der Seine. Nach dem Tode seines Mitbruders Hugo, des aus Deutschland stammenden fuhrenden Kopfes der Viktoriner, am 11. Februar 1141 hat Abt Gilduin dafur gesorgt, daa die Schriften Hugos gesammelt und in einer reprasentativen Gesamtausgabe zusammengestellt werden. Diese in der internationalen mediavistischen Forschung so genannte,Gilduin-Ausgabe' der Werke Hugos von Saint-Victor umfaat vier Bande, deren erster hiermit rekonstruiert und im Druck vorgelegt wird. Dieser Band folgt somit auf unsere im Jahre 2008 besorgte Ausgabe der theologischen Summe Hugos, De sacramentis christiane fidei. Damals wie heute handelt es sich um einen kritischen, wenngleich historischen Text. Dieser neue Band umfaat neun Werke, unter denen insbesondere die uberhaupt erste vollstandige Ausgabe von Hugos Cronica hervorzuheben ist. (shrink)

New Materialisms brings into focus and explains the significance of the innovative materialist critiques that are emerging across the social sciences and humanities. By gathering essays that exemplify the new thinking about matter and processes of materialization, this important collection shows how scholars are reworking older materialist traditions, contemporary theoretical debates, and advances in scientific knowledge to address pressing ethical and political challenges. In the introduction, Diana Coole and Samantha Frost highlight common themes among the distinctive critical projects that (...) comprise the new materialisms. The continuities they discern include a posthumanist conception of matter as lively or exhibiting agency, and a reengagement with both the material realities of everyday life and broader geopolitical and socioeconomic structures. Coole and Frost argue that contemporary economic, environmental, geopolitical, and technological developments demand new accounts of nature, agency, and social and political relationships; modes of inquiry that privilege consciousness and subjectivity are not adequate to the task. New materialist philosophies are needed to do justice to the complexities of twenty-first-century biopolitics and political economy, because they raise fundamental questions about the place of embodied humans in a material world and the ways that we produce, reproduce, and consume our material environment. Contributors Sara Ahmed Jane Bennett Rosi Braidotti Pheng Cheah Rey Chow William E. Connolly Diana Coole Jason Edwards Samantha Frost Elizabeth Grosz Sonia Kruks Melissa A. Orlie. (shrink)

This essay explores the development of Simone Weil's conception of obedience across religious, political, and ethical contexts. By bringing together these strands of Weil's thought, it aims to illuminate some important connections in her treatment of obedience throughout these diverse topics. The author argues that Weil's political treatment of obedience is deeply influenced by ideas in Christian thought, and that this account is situated within an understanding of obedience in the natural world which is itself ethically loaded. Hence it is (...) suggested that Weil's account of obedience has something to offer philosophy today: namely, a conception of obedience which recognises the practical and ethical need for obeying others, but which is distinct from the mere submission to power. (shrink)

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) calls for medical practitioners to “integrate” our best available evidence into clinical practice. A significant amount of the literature on EBM takes this integration to be unproblematic, focusing on questions like how to interpret evidence and engage with patient values, rather than critically looking at how these features of EBM can be implemented together. Other authors have also commented on this gap in the literature, for example, identifying the lack of clarity about how patient preferences and evidence (...) from trials is supposed to be integrated in practice. In this paper, I look at this issue from an epistemological perspective, (looking at how different types of knowledge in EBM can be used to make sounds judgements). In particular, I introduce an epistemological issue for this integration problem, which I call the epistemic integration problem. This is essentially the problem of how we can use information that is both general (eg, about a population sample) and descriptive (eg, about what expected outcomes are) to reach clinical judgements that are individualized (applying to a particular patient) and normative (about what is best for their health). (shrink)

Iris Murdoch was a philosopher and novelist who wrote extensively on the themes of love, goodness, religion, and morality. In this article, we explore her notion of ‘moral vision’; the idea that morality is not just about how we act and make choices, but how we see the world in a much broader sense.

Daniel Bell and Wang Pei’s recent monograph, Just Hierarchy, seeks to defend hierarchical relationships against more egalitarian alternatives. This paper addresses their argument, offered in one chapter of the book, in favour of a hierarchical relationship between human and nonhuman animals. This relationship, Bell and Pei argue, should conform to what they call “subordination without cruelty:” it is permissible to subordinate and exploit animals for human ends, provided that we do not treat them cruelly. We focus on three aspects of (...) their view: their argument for a hierarchical view; their understanding of cruelty; and their account of the heightened duties they claim we owe to nonhuman animals who are intelligent, domesticated, and/or “cute.” We argue that the reasons that Bell and Pei offer fail to support their conclusions, and that, even if one accepts a hierarchical view, the conclusions that Bell and Pei draw about the permissibility of practices such as killing animals for food do not follow. We conclude by emphasizing philosophers’ responsibility to thoroughly test their arguments and to engage with existing debates, especially when the practices they seek to justify involve harms of great magnitude. (shrink)

This paper is a historical, legal and philosophical analysis of the concept of human dignity in German and Kenyan constitutional law. We base our analysis on decisions of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, in particular its take on life imprisonment and its 2006 decision concerning the shooting of hijacked airplanes, and on a close reading of the Constitution of Kenya. We also present a dialogue between us in which we offer some critical remarks on the concept of human dignity (...) in the two constitutions, each one of us from his own philosophical perspective. (shrink)

Interactive social cognition theory and approaches of developmental psychology widely agree that central aspects of emotional and social experience arise in the unfolding of processes of embodied social interaction. Bi-directional dynamical couplings of bodily displays such as facial expressions, gestures, and vocalizations have repeatedly been described in terms of coordination, synchrony, mimesis, or attunement. In this paper, I propose conceptualizing such dynamics rather as processes of affective resonance. Starting from the immediate phenomenal experience of being immersed in interaction, I develop (...) the philosophical notion of affective resonance to refer to a dynamic entanglement of moving and being-moved in relation. The concept of affective resonance makes visible that the interaction dynamic itself creates an affective experience rather than transmitting internal feeling states between pre-existent individuals. This leads to a philosophical framework in which relationality and ontogeny are primary over separate individuals, and in which the naturalistic distinction of a fundamental physical level versus an emerging level of social processes has to be given up. (shrink)

Cartesian scepticism poses the question of how we can justify our belief that other humans experience consciousness in the same way that we do. Wittgenstein’s response to this scepticism is one that does not seek to resolve the problem by providing a sound argument against the Cartesian sceptic. Rather, he provides a method of philosophical inquiry which enables us to move past this and continue our inquiry without the possibility of solipsism arising as a philosophical problem in the first place. (...) In this paper, I propose that Wittgenstein’s method of dismissing the Cartesian sceptic can also be applied to the problems posed by the ‘moral sceptic’, who denies the truth of all ethical or moral claims. I will argue that in the same way Wittgenstein’s focus on public language enables us to dismiss the traditional problem of other minds, a focus on public moral practices or language-games also enables us to dismiss the idea that moral claims are always ‘meaningless’, ‘false’ or ‘nonsensical’. On this account, the moral sceptic is misguided in much the same way as the solipsist who implicitly admits the existence of other minds in her practices. The moral sceptic who still engages in moral activities also implicitly admits the existence of meaningful moral positions. Wittgenstein’s dismissal of the Cartesian sceptic, as I understand it, can be broadly divided into two parts. The first part is an account of language acquisition. This part outlines how we might come to see other humans as conscious, thinking, feeling beings from a causal perspective. This suggests that we can arrive at an understanding of other minds as a primary perception itself - without needing to posit this perception as a kind of deductive or inductive hypothesis. Secondly, we can see how this relates to an epistemic model of language. This focuses on the role of language as something which consists of rule-governed activities, where the existence of other minds is embedded in our understanding of the world as a kind of grammatical rule, rather than an observational hypothesis. From both these arguments the Cartesian sceptic is,, irrelevant to some forms of philosophical inquiry. This is because the sceptic takes the existence of other minds to be a rational hypothesis/inference when it is not. I suggest that this approach can be applied to moral scepticism if we take certain normative claims as grammatical dispositions, rather than rational or metaphysical propositions. Hence, the moral sceptic who offers a rational or logical critique of these moral foundations is not necessarily saying anything relevant to our practices – the moral stances which they refute as rationally meaningless were never based on purely rational or logical hypotheses in the first place. (shrink)

La educación en línea forzada por la pandemia del 2020, puede ser un trampolín de oportunidades para la inclusión de personas con discapacidad visual gracias a las tecnologías de asistencia; o bien, las puede dejar fuera por el analfabetismo que existe en la sociedad con respecto a dónde encontrar y cómo usar dichas tecnologías de asistencia para favorecer la inclusión de este colectivo. Por ello, es de vital importancia implementar tecnologías de asistencia y metodologías didácticas innovadoras, que permitan aprendizajes significativos (...) y generen motivación en los estudiantes con discapacidad visual para participar de manera más proactiva. El juego y la formación aleatoria de equipos que permiten las plataformas potencializa la capacidad adaptativa de estos estudiantes en la comunidad educativa, al tiempo que se ejerce el derecho a la accesibilidad mediante la información en múltiples formatos de diseño universal para el aprendizaje. En este ensayo la autora, quien conduce una sala tiflotécnica en una universidad politécnica, discute el tipo de tecnologías digitales que coadyuvan a eliminar barreras al aprendizaje de personas con discapacidad visual, colectivo al que ella misma pertenece, con el propósito que se puedan generar el tipo de escenarios educativos que requieren. (shrink)

In this collection of essays, the first translation into English of the ground-breaking 'Normativität und Macht' (Suhrkamp 2015), Rainer Forst presents a new approach to critical theory. Each essay reflects on the basic principles that guide our normative thinking. Forst's argument goes beyond 'ideal' and 'realist' theories and shows how closely the concepts of normativity and power are interrelated, and how power rests on the capacity to influence, determine, and possibly restrict the space of justifications for others. By combining (...) insights from the disciplines of philosophy, history, and the social sciences, Forst revaluates theories of justice, as well as of power, and provides the tools for a critical theory of relations of justification. Translated from German. (shrink)

Data analytics and data-driven approaches in Machine Learning are now among the most hailed computing technologies in many industrial domains. One major application is predictive analytics, which is used to predict sensitive attributes, future behavior, or cost, risk and utility functions associated with target groups or individuals based on large sets of behavioral and usage data. This paper stresses the severe ethical and data protection implications of predictive analytics if it is used to predict sensitive information about single individuals or (...) treat individuals differently based on the data many unrelated individuals provided. To tackle these concerns in an applied ethics, first, the paper introduces the concept of “predictive privacy” to formulate an ethical principle protecting individuals and groups against differential treatment based on Machine Learning and Big Data analytics. Secondly, it analyses the typical data processing cycle of predictive systems to provide a step-by-step discussion of ethical implications, locating occurrences of predictive privacy violations. Thirdly, the paper sheds light on what is qualitatively new in the way predictive analytics challenges ethical principles such as human dignity and the (liberal) notion of individual privacy. These new challenges arise when predictive systems transform statistical inferences, which provide knowledge about the cohort of training data donors, into individual predictions, thereby crossing what I call the “prediction gap”. Finally, the paper summarizes that data protection in the age of predictive analytics is a collective matter as we face situations where an individual’s (or group’s) privacy is violated using dataotherindividuals provide about themselves, possibly even anonymously. (shrink)