In this analysis of one of the most difficult and neglected topics in Hegelian studies, Songsuk Susan Hahn tackles the status of contradiction in Hegel's ...

Reflective equilibrium is a proposal to justify general norms (not only moral norms) by adjusting them to a pre-systematic practice. The paper investigates the method of constructing a reflective equilibrium as a method for ‘disappointed connoisseurs’ with regard to alternative ways of justification. The example of no-smoking norms that have emerged within the last twenty years serves several purposes: It is used to illustrate under which conditions requests for justification arise and to investigate which role a worked-out practice can play (...) in the justification of general norms. Additionally, the construction of a reflective equilibrium with respect to a no-smoking norm shows the necessity of implementing systematic considerations in the process of justification. The paper closes with some remarks concerning the characteristic quality of justification one can achieve by the method of reflective equilibrium. (shrink)

The Impossibility of Poetry Adorno's aesthetic theory bears the profound scars of his personal experience of fascism. Even after Auschwitz, he feared that modern bourgeois society is a breeding ground for new forms of fascist terror. It was said that, after Auschwitz, one could no longer write poems. But Adorno insisted that postwar art is an indispensable means for telling the truth about how the social order was fundamentally changed by that catastrophe.1 Not to tell the truth is to be (...) guilty of complicitous silence; yet, the unbearable truth is that society is pervasively and radically evil. As long as…. (shrink)

Hegel's most interesting and controversial claims about nonconceptual knowledge arise in contexts of value. This paper examines the relation between nonconceptual and conceptual knowledge in Hegel's Phenomenology, specifically in connection with early Greek aesthetics. I take up Hegel's claim that the ancient Greeks expressed in their myths, religious narratives, sculpture, and artistic materials certain high powered philosophical truths which they shouldn't express in words. I raise a paradox about his claims and show how his claims about ineffable knowledge clash with (...) his general propositional criterion of knowledge, namely, that for something to count as knowledge it must be expressible in words. However I argue that Hegel's thoughts about the matter were coherent and I solve the paradox. (shrink)

The Leipzig anatomist Werner Spalteholz (1861–1940) started studies on the anastomoses between the coronary arteries of the heart in 1906. He confirmed the thesis, that “the transparency of tissues depends first of all on the refraction index of permeating liquid”, and began to produce transparent organ specimens. The 1st International Hygiene Exposition 1911 in Dresden showed 370 specimens produced by Spalteholz and was a great success. Later Spalteholz worked in the scientific Council of the Hygiene Museum. The exhibition “Transparent man”, (...) shown in 1925, testified to the great extent of knowledge that was passed on to the population with the help of these specimens. The “transparent human being” was not only an attractive and instructive collection for exhibition and educational purposes, but also a didactic concept. Fritz Tschackert (1887–1958) created the “transparent man” for the 2nd International Hygiene Exposition in Dresden in 1930. Today the “transparent woman” is the highlight of the museum's permanent exhibition. (shrink)

Why wasn’t Hume a sceptic about matters of taste? He was a thoroughgoing sceptic about fundamental matters in traditional metaphysics, such as cause, causal necessitation, inductive inferences, the self, even external objects. Yet, without exception, Hume’s aesthetics is read as abruptly reversing his sceptical position and promoting a timeless and objective standard for judging beauty. I reject the dominant approach for displacing the gains of his scepticism. To impute to Hume knowledge of a standard that depends essentially on a relation (...) to certain persons makes him sound more like an idealist than an empiricist philosopher with naturalistic leanings. Instead, I read his aesthetic naturalism against the background of his sceptical commitments, by reconstructing his dilemma of taste along the lines of his general scepticism about cause. I argue that he deduces ‘that’ an unknown standard is operative, but in a qualified sense not ruled out by his scepticism. (shrink)

Comprising general norms with an analysis of the classical retrospective concept of responsibility allows rejecting the demand for a new prospective concept of responsibility. Problems caused in a complex way by cumulative actions not intended to cause harm, do require new general norms instead. These general norms must have certain features if they should serve to guide behaviour on the one hand and be a measure for the ascription of retrospective responsibility on the other hand: They have to be sufficiently (...) concrete particularly with respect to the actions that have to be omitted or performed. On the contrary, abstract demands for rescuing the world or avoiding harm are not efficient means of guiding action and do not take into account the complex causal structure of the underlying problems. (shrink)

Regeln lassen sich als allgemeine, bedingte Handlungsanleitungen rekonstruieren, die Typen von Agenten in Typen von Situationen, Typen von Handlungen gebieten, verbieten, erlauben. Aus Regeln lassen sich im Verbund mit Situationsbedingungen einzelne Normen folgern. Regeln können einerseits durch Setzung und andererseits durch informelles Sich-Einspielen in Kraft kommen. Für das wirtschaftliche Handeln spielen Regeln sowohl als handlungsbeschränkende Gebots- und Verbotsnormen als auch als Handlungsmöglichkeiten erweiternde Gebilde eine Rolle.

I would like to ask what kind of answers one might expect when asking this question in an interdisciplinary context, in which social science, philosophy and jurisprudence play important roles.