Though he is known primarily for his mathematics, John Wallis was also a prominent natural philosopher and experimentalist. Like many experimental philosophers, including his colleagues in the Royal So­ciety, Wallis sought to identify the mathematical laws that govern natural phenomena. However, I argue that Wallis’s particular understanding of the laws of nature was informed by his reading of a thirteenth–century optical treatise by Robert Grosseteste, De lineis, angulis et figuris, which expresses the principle that “Nature doth not work by (...) Election.” Wallis’s use of this principle in his Discourse of Gravity and Gravitation helps to clarify his understanding of natural laws. According to Wallis, since nature cannot choose to act one way or another, natural phenomena are unfailingly regular, and it is this that allows them to be predicted, generalized, and described by mathematical rules. Furthermore, I argue that Wallis’s reading of Grosseteste reveals one way that medieval scholarship contributed to the “mathematization of nature” in the early modern period: historically–minded scholars like Wallis found insightful philosophical principles in medieval sources, and they transformed and redeployed these principles to suit the needs of early modern natural philosophy. (shrink)

Gerhard Richter's groundbreaking study argues that the concept of "afterness" is a key figure in the thought and aesthetics of modernity. It pursues questions such as: What does it mean for something to "follow" something else? Does that which follows mark a clear break with what came before it, or does it in fact tacitly perpetuate its predecessor as a consequence of its inevitable indebtedness to the terms and conditions of that from which it claims to have departed? Indeed, (...) is not the very act of breaking with, and then following upon, a way of retroactively constructing and fortifying that from which the break that set the movement of following into motion had occurred? The book explores the concept and movement of afterness as a privileged yet uncanny category through close readings of writers such as Kant, Kafka, Heidegger, Bloch, Benjamin, Brecht, Adorno, Arendt, Lyotard, and Derrida. It shows how the vexed concepts of afterness, following, and coming after shed new light on a constellation of modern preoccupations, including personal and cultural memory, translation, photography, hope, and the historical and conceptual specificity of what has been termed "after Auschwitz." The study's various analyses—across a heterogeneous collection of modern writers and thinkers, diverse historical moments of articulation, and a range of media—conspire to illuminate Lyotard's apodictic statement that "after philosophy comes philosophy. But it has been altered by the 'after.'" As Richter's intricate study demonstrates, much hinges on our interpretation of the "after." After all, our most fundamental assumptions concerning modern aesthetic representation, conceptual discourse, community, subjectivity, and politics are at stake. (shrink)

Published posthumously in 1908, Ecce Homo was written in 1888 and completed just a few weeks before Nietzsche’s complete mental collapse. Its outrageously egotistical review of the philosopher’s life and works—featuring chapters called Why I Am So Wise and Why I Write Such Good Books—are redeemed from mere arrogance by masterful language and ever-relevant ideas. In addition to settling scores with his many personal and philosophical enemies, Nietzsche emphasizes the importance of questioning traditional morality, establishing autonomy, and making a commitment (...) to creativity. Essential reading for students of philosophy, this unique memoir is crucial to an understanding of Nietzsche’s other works. (shrink)

This important book charts the development of philosophical thinking about history over the past 250 years, combining extracts from key texts with new explanatory and critical discussion. The book is designed to make the work of thinkers such as Hume, Herder, Hegel, Dilthey, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault accessible to students with no prior knowledge of Western philosophy. An introductory section is followed by nine further chapters exploring contrasting schools of thought. The volume reveals the origins of contemporary trends in the (...) discipline and relates wider philosophical reflections to the study of history itself. It also points to connections between philosophy of history and literary and cultural theory which have developed in recent decades. (shrink)

Although Walter Benjamin's writings are considered to be among the most powerful theoretical enterprises of the twentieth century, his ideas are resistant to cooptation by the doctrines of various critical programs. These essays engage this resistance by examining the ghostly in Benjamin's work. The contributors show that the haunting truths Benjamin offers point towards new forms of responsibility. These truths reside in a figurative elsewhere, a ghostly space that his texts delimit but never fully inhabit, and these essays seek to (...) do justice to the ghosts of Benjamin. Issues explored include: the status of the image in Benjamin's literary reflections and in his meditations on cinema and visual culture; abiding Benjaminian notions of messianism, aura, reproducibility, semblance, and melancholy; Benjamin's relation to Freud; his innovative rethinking of history, virtuality, and translation; and his reflections on tragedy and prophecy, the geometrical dimensions of writing, and the relation between eros and language. (shrink)

Die gängigen Prognosen, nach denen die Religionen im Kontext der Moderne oder im Zuge der Globalisierung an Bedeutung verlieren würden, haben sich nicht bestätigt. Das Gegenteil ist der Fall: Jenseits von nihilistischen Entwürfen und virtuellen Konstruktionen öffneten sich auch und gerade in der Literatur Räume für die Belebung religiöser Weltsicht. Ausgehend von Heinrich Böll und seiner Anfang der 1960er Jahre eingeleiteten Distanzierung von der Institution Kirche, wird am Beispiel von Botho Strauß und Peter Handke, die seit den 1970er und 1980er (...) Jahren eine ins Metaphysische zielende Subjektivität repräsentieren, eine Renaissance des Religiösen konstatiert, die sich in den Werken des jüngeren Autors Ralf Rothmann seit den 1990er Jahren mit selbstbewusster Deutlichkeit fortschreibt. Anhand der geistesgeschichtlichen Trias Gnostizismus, Philosophie und Mystik nimmt die Verfasserin eine Fokussierung vor, die die ästhetischen Konzeptionen der Autoren deutlich werden lässt und sie zueinander in Beziehung setzt. (shrink)

Mental health professionals who care for asylum seekers in Western European countries increasingly encounter problems for which standard diagnostic and therapeutic protocols and institutional healthcare policies offer no ready answers. In the following case vignettes some of these problems can be identified.

Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.

Gegen das Streben der Moderne nach Widerspruchsfreiheit, Ordnung und Einheit aktiviert die Postmoderne die Begriffe Differenz, Widerstreit und Ambivalenz. Dieser Wandel lat auch die Bildungsphilosophie nicht unberuhrt. In diesem Buch wird untersucht, welche Auswirkungen postmoderne Ideen auf Bildungsphilosophie und -praxis haben konnen. Im Zentrum der Auseinandersetzung steht die Kritik an der modernen Identitats- und Subjektkategorie und der Versuch, diese aus postmoderner Sicht neu zu bestimmen und gewinnbringend auf die Erwachsenenbildung zu beziehen.

Theories of discourse bring to realism new ideas about how knowledge develops and how representations of reality are influenced. We gain an understanding of the conceptual aspect of social life and the processes by which meaning is produced. This collection reflects the growing interest realist critics have shown towards forms of discourse theory and deconstruction. The diverse range of contributions address such issues as the work of Derrida and deconstruction, discourse theory, Eurocentrism and poststructuralism. What unites all of the contributions (...) is a sense that it is essential to provide a realist alternative to the hitherto dominance of social constructionism, hermeneutics and postmodernism, over many of the issues discussed. By developing a realist perspective the different authors attempt to embed discourse within the structured nature of the reality of the world. Realism can situate language, discourse and ideology within context specific, or 'causally efficacious' circumstances. Realism can help to uncover issues of power, representation, and subjectivity and how discursive and other social practices produce real effects. This can help us understand the manner in which social structures are reproduced through various forms of ideology and discourse. And by knowing this, we can start to address questions concerning human emancipation and how the world is to be transformed. (shrink)

Rule-following is a normative doing and therefore needs to be reconsidered in a metaethical framework. Rule-following will be discussed in the light of cognitivism and non-cognitivism. It will be shown that neither cognitivism nor non-cognitivism are sufficiently good accounts for conceptualizing rule-following, because they are held captive by a quasi-mechanistical picture of rule-following. This idea stems from Stanley Cavell´s and John McDowell´s approach to rule-following. McDowell appeals to the idea that we participate in “shared forms of life” and therefore are (...) able to follow rules correctly. I believe that his quietist view can be amplified by conceptualizing different modes of following a rule. We can also follow a rule e.g. ironically and still grasp the conceptual content of the rule adequately. (shrink)

Introduction : the art of reading -- Adorno and the uncoercive gaze -- Buried possibility : Adorno and Arendt on tradition -- The inheritance of the constellation : Adorno and Hegel -- Judging by refraining from judgment : Adorno's artwork and its Einordnung -- The literary artwork between word and concept : Adorno and Agamben reading Kafka -- The artwork without cardinal direction : notes on orientation in Adorno -- False life, living on : Adorno with Derrida -- Conclusion : (...) a kind of leave-thinking. (shrink)

Religion: A Study in Beauty, Truth, and Goodness covers the wide array of elements, including the concepts of ultimate being, scripture, ritual, morality, and beauty, which make up the fascinating entity known as religion. Taking a phenomenological approach that emphasizes the standpoint of the religious believer--a view from the inside of religion--Kent Richter uses the categories of experience, belief, and behavior ("Beauty, Truth, and Goodness") as a way to think about religion in general. This approach helps students understand both (...) the great variety in religious traditions and the internal coherence that religion holds for its practitioners. (shrink)

Robert Stern investigates how scepticism can be countered by using transcendental arguments concerning the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience, language, or thought. He shows that the most damaging sceptical questions concern neither the certainty of our beliefs nor the reliability of our belief-forming methods, but rather how we can justify our beliefs.

Theodor W. Adorno's multifaceted work has exerted a profound impact on far-ranging discourses and critical practices in late modernity. His analysis of the fate of art following its alleged end, of ethical imperatives "after Auschwitz," of the negative dialectic of myth and freedom from superstition, of the manipulation of consciousness by the unequal siblings of fascism and the culture industry, and of the narrowly-conceived concept of reason that has given rise to an unprecedented exploitation of nature and needless human suffering, (...) all speak to central concerns of our time. The essays collected here analyze the full range of implications emanating from Adorno's demand that the task of critical thinking be to imagine a mode of being in the world that occurs in and through a language that has liberated itself from the spell of an alleged historical and political inevitability, what he once tellingly called a "language without soil." Adorno' s finely chiseled sentences perform a ceaseless gesture of thoughtful vigilance, a vigilance understood not in the sense of moralizing or ethical normativity but of a rigorous attention to the presuppositions of thinking itself. The volume's fresh readings conspire to yield a refractory and unorthodox Adorno, a suggestive and at times infuriating thinker of the first order, whose intellectual gestures sponsor politically conscious modes of theoretical speculation in a late modernity that may still have a future because its language and aspirations are without soil. Also included is an annotated translation of a seminal interview Adorno gave in 1969 concerning the relationship of Critical Theory to political activism. In it, the dialectical interplay between thought and action forcefully emerges. (shrink)

What is right in the corporation is not what is right in a man's home or in his church," a former vice-president of a large firm observes. "What is right in the corporation is what the guy above you wants from you." Such sentiments pervade American society, from corporate boardrooms to the basement of the White House. In Moral Mazes, Robert Jackall offers an eye-opening account of how corporate managers think the world works, and of how big organizations shape (...) moral consciousnss. Based on extensive interviews with managers at every level of two industrial firms and of a large public relations agency, Moral Mazes takes the reader inside the intricate world of the corporation. It is a world where hard work does not necessarily lead to success, but where sharp talk, self-promotion, powerful patrons, and sheer luck might; where intense competition is masked by cheerfully bland public faces; where intentions are cloaked and frankness is simply one of many guises; and where words are always provisional and accountability often depends on the ability to outrun mistakes. In this topsy-turvy world, managers must bring often unforgiving technology and always difficult people together to make money, an uncompromising task demanding continual compromises with conventional verities. Moral issues are translated into practical concerns and into issues of public relations. Sooner or later, managrs ask themselves: How does one act in such a world and maintain a sense of personal integrity? Moral Mazes is a brilliant, sometimes disturbing, often wildly funny study of corporate thinking, decision-making, and morality. It is an analytical work of great importance, one filled with compelling real life stories of the men and women charged with running the business of America. It is a book for anyone interested in how big organizations actually function, or who is concerned with the current moral malaise in our public life. (shrink)

The study discusses the wooing of Agariste which was proclaimed at Olympia by Kleisthenes, the tyrant of Sicyon, inviting everybody who thought himself worthy to be his son-in-law. At the final banquet his favorite, Hippokleides, danced away his marriage by acting out a bizarre dance. However, his reaction was: „It does not matter to Hippocleides!“ (Hdt. 6,129,4). It will be proposed that Kleisthenes tried to dominate the competition and to establish an enduring hierarchy between himself and the suitors by taking (...) advantage of his position as Olympic champion, giver of the women, tyrant, and host. Thus, Hippokleides’ behavior could be understood as a self-confident rejection of Kleisthenes’ way of constituting individual status, a way which actually suspended the competition. (shrink)

In this book, Dr. Robert J. Levine reviews federal regulations, ethical analysis, and case studies in an attempt to answer these questions.

Permissivism says that for some propositions and bodies of evidence, there is more than one rationally permissible doxastic attitude that can be taken towards that proposition given the evidence. Some critics of this view argue that it condones, as rationally acceptable, sets of attitudes that manifest an untenable kind of arbitrariness. I begin by providing a new and more detailed explication of what this alleged arbitrariness consists in. I then explain why Miriam Schoenfield’s prima facie promising attempt to answer the (...) Arbitrariness Objection, by appealing to the role of epistemic standards in rational belief formation, fails to resolve the problem. Schoenfield’s strategy is, however, a useful one, and I go on to explain how an alternative form of the standards-based approach to Permissivism – one that emphasizes the significance of the relationship between people’s cognitive abilities and the epistemic standards that they employ – can respond to the arbitrariness objection. (shrink)

This is a paradigmatic work of contemporary philosophy.

Twenty years ago, the biopsychosocial model was proposed by George Engel to be the new paradigm for medicine and psychiatry. The model assumed a hierarchical structure of the biological, psychological and social system and simple interactions between the participating systems. This article holds the thesis that the original biopsychosocial model cannot depict psychiatry's reality and problems. The clinical validity of the biopsychosocial model has to be questioned. It is argued that psychiatric interventions can only stimulate but not determine their target (...) systems, because intervention and outcome are only loosely coupled. Thus, psychiatric interventions have in principle limited ranges which differ according to the type of intervention and according to the system to be stimulated. Psychosocial interventions face far more obstacles to be overcome than psychopharmacogical therapy. (shrink)

This is the most important book on Hegel to have appeared in the past ten years. Robert Pippin offers a completely new interpretation of Hegel's idealism, which focuses on Hegel's appropriation and development of kant's theoretical project. Hegel is presented neither as a precritical metaphysician nor as a social theorist, but as a critical philosopher whose disagreements with Kant, especially on the issue of intuitions, enrich the idealist arguments against empiricism, realism and naturalism. In the face of the dismissal (...) of absolute idealism as either unintelligible or implausible, Pippin explains and defends an original account of the philosophical basis for Hegel's claims about the historical and social nature of selfconsciousness, and so of knowledge itself. (shrink)

Over the past decade, clinical ethics has received growing attention in Germany as in most European countries. In the mid-1990s, most European countries made efforts to establish healthcare ethics committees and clinical ethics consultation services. The development of clinical ethics discourse and activities in Germany, however, was delayed and, consequently, is still in its natal phase. Until the end of the 1990s, the only institutionalized bodies of ethical reflection were the research ethics committees at university medical centers and at the (...) State Physician Chambers. In March 1997, the Catholic and Protestant hospital association in Germany recommended the implementation of HECs, modeled after the American HECs. Consequently, the establishment of clinical ethics consultation in the form of HECs started in Germany in denominational hospitals, followed by a small but increasing number of community hospitals. (shrink)

In this article an attempt is made to localize epistemological violence and to unravel and unmask power structures, including points of friction between the migrating individual and the local community. In addition, a new type of subject is presented, which, on the one hand, reveals the power structures inherent in the individual and in the society containing it, and on the other hand, through the extended model of existence, offers opportunities for a coexistence, which would be marked by solidarity and (...) fairness and would occur by way of interpersonal connections. Using examples of power structures in language courses, in universities, and in the loss of cultural values through migration, epistemic violence is tracked and presented not only theoretically, but also factually. (shrink)

Reinhart Koselleck is among the most original German theorists of history and historiography. His international reputation is due in part to his contributions as theorist and editor of the remarkable lexicon Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (GG). The GG is an exceptional reference work that goes far towards realizing Koselleck's program and distinctive version of Begriffsgeschichte (the history of concepts, conceptual history). What is presented here is a translation in full of Koselleck's own entry on Krise (crisis). Few articles in the GG demonstrate (...) more successfully Koselleck's theoretical concerns, his method, and innovative use of sources. (shrink)

The first step in planning a lexicon of European political and legal concepts is to decide upon how it is to be organised. Among the principal alternatives are the formats of three German reference works on the history of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte) and the methods associated with John Pocock and Quentin Skinner. Although these German and Anglophone styles are often regarded as incompatible, on closer inspection, they turn out to be in many respects complementary, as Skinner has recently acknowledged. What would (...) such a format look like? Is it possible to overcome the difficulties inherent in attempting a lexicon combining continental and Anglophone political and legal concepts? (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe's paper ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ 1 seems clearly to have failed in its task. Kurt Baier describes the paper as ‘widely discussed and much admired’ 2 and Peter Winch has called one of its three theses ‘enormously influential’ 3 within moral philosophy.