Wolf Graf von Baudissin is well known for his reformatory concept of the armed forces called Innere Führung. He emphasises the idea of building up a Western German army, a new start in a democratic environment. Baudissin’s ideas are born out of the experience of injustice and inhumanity shown by many German soldiers and the organisational structure of the Wehrmacht. After World War II German military leaders excused the absence of morals in their conduct with the necessity of obedience. Innere (...) Führung means that the soldier is a human being, thus guided by his individual conscience and eternal law. Innere Führung has moreover a second meaning: It forms a military organisation which guarantees the individual soldier freedom, human and political rights, participation in military and political decisions, and responsibility for his acts. Therefore, Innere Führung is a concept to anchor democracy in military structures. Because of the actual problems of military missions abroad the founding ideas of Innere Führung are still of increasing importance. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that sensibility‐invariantism about ‘funny’ is defensible, not just as a descriptive hypothesis, but, as a normative position as well. What I aim to do is to make the realist commitments of the sensibility‐invariantist out to be much more tenable than one might initially think them to be. I do so by addressing the two major sources of discontent with sensibility‐invariantism: the observation that discourse about comedy exhibits significant divergence in judgment, and the fact that disagreements (...) about comedy, unlike disagreements about, say, geography, often strike us as fundamentally intractable. (shrink)

In this paper I offer an account of the meaning of must and can within the framework of possible worlds semantics. The paper consists of two parts: the first argues for a relative concept of modality underlying modal words like must and can in natural language. I give preliminary definitions of the meaning of these words which are formulated in terms of logical consequence and compatibility, respectively. The second part discusses one kind of insufficiency in the meaning definitions given in (...) the first part, which arise from the ex falso quodlibet paradox of logical consequence. In stepwise fashion, I make an attempt to avoid most of the consequences of this paradox for the meaning definitions of must and can. (shrink)

The Bhagavadgita is one of the most renowned texts of Hinduism because it contains discussions of important issues such as liberation and the nature of action as well as the revelation of the Krishna as the highest god and creator of the universe. It is included in the ancient Indian Mahabharata epic at one of its most dramatic moments, that is, when the final battle is about to begin. In contrast to many other studies, this book deals with the relationship (...) between the Bhagavadgita and its epic contexts. On the basis of a thorough analysis of the text Angelika Malinar argues that its theology delineates not only new philosophical concepts and religious practices but also addresses the problem of righteous kingship and appropriate use of power. Malinar concludes by considering the Bhagavadgita's historical and cultural contexts and those features of the text that became paradigmatic in later Hindu religious traditions. (shrink)

I will assume (without explicitly argue for it here) that the verb’s external argument is not an argument of the verb root itself, but is introduced by a separate head in a neo-Davidsonian way. The content argument can be saturated by DPs denoting the kinds of things that can be believed or reported.

Situation semantics was developed as an alternative to possible worlds semantics. In situation semantics, linguistic expressions are evaluated with respect to partial, rather than complete, worlds. There is no consensus about what situations are, just as there is no consensus about what possible worlds or events are. According to some, situations are structured entities consisting of relations and individuals standing in those relations. According to others, situations are particulars. In spite of unresolved foundational issues, the partiality provided by situation semantics (...) has led to some genuinely new approaches to a variety of phenomena in natural language semantics. In the way of illustration, this article includes relatively detailed overviews of a few selected areas where situation semantics has been successful: implicit quantifier domain restrictions, donkey pronouns, and exhaustive interpretations. It moreover addresses the question of how Davidsonian event semantics can be embedded in a semantics based on situations. Other areas where a situation semantics perspective has led to progress include attitude ascriptions, questions, tense, aspect, nominalizations, implicit arguments, point of view, counterfactual conditionals, and discourse relations. (shrink)

The adjectival passive construction that is traditionally called ‘Zustandspassiv’ (‘state passive’) in German seems to have the same syntactic and semantic properties as its English cousin, except that it is easier to identify. German state or adjectival passives select the auxiliary sein (‘be’), and are therefore clearly distinguished from verbal or ‘Vorgangs’- passives (‘process passives’), which use the auxiliary werden (‘get’, ‘become’). In spite of their appearance, German state passives do not form a homogenious class, however. There are two important (...) subclasses that behave differently with respect to the adverbial immer noch (‘still’), for example2. (shrink)

The last section made it clear that an analysis which at first seems to fail is viable after all. It is viable if we let it depend on a partition function to be provided by the context of conversation. This analysis leaves certain traits of the partition function open. I have tried to show that this should be so. Specifying these traits as Pollock does leads to wrong predictions. And leaving them open endows counterfactuals with just the right amount of (...) variability and vagueness. (shrink)

What are facts, situations, or events? When Situation Semantics was born in the eighties, I objected because I could not swallow the idea that situations might be chunks of information. For me, they had to be particulars like sticks or bricks. I could not imagine otherwise. The first manuscript of “An Investigation of the Lumps of Thought” that I submitted to Linguistics and Philosophy had a footnote where I distanced myself from all those who took possible situations to be units (...) of information. In that context and at that time, this meant Jon Barwise and John Perry. (shrink)

English summary: Until well into the 18th century, the concept of the soul played a major role in the scientific, religious, aesthetic and metaphysical discussion of humanity representing the highest level of existence. In modernity, this concept of the soul has lost its significance. It seems to have been replaced by terms such as subjectivity, personality and individuality. At the same time a symbolic added value which deifies clear description appears to have attached itself to the definition of the soul. (...) These developments and their interpretation are examined by the contributions in this collection. The volume includes contributions from Roderich Barth, Ulrich Barth, Jurgen Brunner, Brigitte Boothe, Jorg Dierken, Dirk Evers, Ferdinand Fellmann, Daniel Fulda, Johannes Hubner, Marco Ivaldo, Malte Dominik Kruger, Martin Kurthen, Rudolf Lang Thaler, Wolfgang Mack, Notger Slenzcka, Florian Steger and Anne Steinmeier. German description: Der Begriff der Seele hatte bis ins 18. Jahrhundert hinein eine prominente Stellung in naturwissenschaftlichen, religiosen, asthetischen und metaphysischen Erorterungen des Menschlichen als hochster Stufe des Lebendigen. Diese Stellung hat der Seelenbegriff in der Moderne eingebusst. Er scheint von Begriffen wie Subjektivitat, Personalitat und Individualitat abgelost worden zu sein. Gleichwohl scheint der Bezeichnung der Seele ein symbolischer Mehrwert anzuhaften, der sich allerdings einer klaren Fassung entzieht. Diesen Entwicklungen und ihren Deutungen gehen die Beitrage des Sammelbandes nach. Eine Leitfrage ist dabei: Steht die Rede von der Seele fur die prareflexive Selbstgegebenheit der Subjektivitat, wie sie sich vorrangig in der Leiberfahrung und (allenfalls?) nachrangig in der Wissenschaftsreflexion ausdruckt? (shrink)

Multi-stakeholder initiatives have been praised as vehicles for tackling complex sustainability issues, but their success relies on the reconciliation of stakeholders’ divergent perspectives. We yet lack a thorough understanding of the micro-level mechanisms by which stakeholders can deal with these differences. To develop such understanding, we examine what frames—i.e., mental schemata for making sense of the world—members of MSIs use during their discussions on sustainability questions and how these frames are deliberated through social interactions. Whilst prior framing research has focussed (...) on between-frame conflicts, we offer a different perspective by examining how and under what conditions actors use shared frames to tackle ‘within-frame conflicts’ on views that stand in the way of joint decisions. Observations of a deliberative environmental valuation workshop and interviews in an MSI on the protection of peatlands—ecosystems that contribute to carbon retention on a global scale—demonstrated how the application and deliberation of shared frames during micro-level interactions resulted in increased salience, elaboration, and adjustment of shared frames. We interpret our findings to identify characteristics of deliberation mechanisms in the case of within-frame conflicts where shared frames dominate the discussions, and to delineate conditions for such dominance. Our findings contribute to an understanding of collaborations in MSIs and other organisational settings by demonstrating the utility of shared frames for dealing with conflicting views and suggesting how shared frames can be activated, fostered and strengthened. (shrink)

Theoretical models and correlational research suggest that anger and disgust play different roles in moral judgment. Anger is theorized to underlie reactions to crimes against persons, such as battery and unfairness, and disgust is theorized to underlie reactions to crimes against nature, such as sexual transgressions and cannibalism. To date, however, it has not been shown that induction of these two emotions has divergent effects. In this experiment we show divergent effects of anger and disgust. We use sounds to elicit (...) anger and disgust, and participants are then asked to consider moral vignettes. As compared to disgust and control condition, anger increases severity of judgments about crimes against persons, and disgust increases severity of judgments about crimes against nature, but not conversely. (shrink)

This paper pursues some of the consequences of the idea that there are (at least) two sources for distributive/cumulative interpretations in English. One source is lexical pluralization: All predicative stems are born as plurals, as Manfred Krifka and Fred Landman have argued. Lexical pluralization should be available in any language and should not depend on the particular make-up of its DPs. I suggest that the other source of cumulative/distributive interpretations in English is directly provided by plural DPs. DPs with plural (...) agreement features can ‘release’ those features to pluralize adjacent verbal projections. If there is a lexical source for distributive/cumulative interpretations, there should be instances of such interpretations with singular DPs. But there should also be cases of distributive/cumulative interpretations that require the presence of DPs with plural agreement morphology. (shrink)

Krebs (philosophy, U. of Frankfurt, Germany) provides a systematic study of whether nature has intrinsic value or is only valuable for human beings, with an ...

They are expressives, too. There is a phonology. There is a syntax. There is a compositional semantics. There are interesting interactions to investigate. German, Greek, and Papago are known examples of discourse particle languages. Intonation has been said to have similar uses in other languages.

Unlike human beings, landscapes, cities and buildings cannot feel anything in the literal sense. They do not have nervous systems. Nevertheless, we attribute “Stimmungen” such as peacefulness and melancholy to them. On what basis? With what right? And why does it matter anyway? This paper attempts an answer to this bunch of questions. The first section clarifies the concept of “Stimmung,” by distinguishing its three major meanings, namely harmony, mood and atmosphere. Section two discusses various models of how “Stimmung” is (...) infused into our natural and artificial environment. Section three lists several ways of how we experience atmosphere, preparing the ground for the specifically aesthetic claim in section four: how, when we experience atmosphere aesthetically, we respond to it by resonating or feeling at home. (shrink)

The bio-ethical debate on PGD and embryonie stem-cell research is characterized by many paradoxes, regarding the moral status of earliest human life between ›nature‹ and ›subjectivity‹. The ›conditio humana‹, however, is not defined by biological features. As a cultural factor, it focuses on the self-realization of the subject in contexts of social acknowledgement. Against this background, the article deals with the anthropological metaphor of the image-of-god and its peculiar character of not being an image. This allows us to explain a (...) ›negative‹ concept of anthropology, analogaus to the dialectical model of ›docta ignorantia‹. On the one hand, this concept of a human being avoids a definition of its very beginning as coming tagether of ›nature‹ and ›subjectivity‹, whereas, on the other hand, the absolute dignity of the human is emphasized. By this line of thought some argurnents are clarified, which have arisen in the bioethical debate for and against PGD and stern-cell research. (shrink)

Friedrich Schleiermachers Verständnis des Menschlichen verbindet eine Vielzahl von Aspekten. Sie betreffen sowohl die sozialen Bedingungen des Lebens etwa durch Politik und Ökonomie als auch die individuellen Ausprägungen von Charakter und Herz, von Geschmack und Stilempfinden. Zwischen allem walten Wechselbezüge. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes, die die Vorträge des 6. Kongresses der Internationalen Schleiermacher-Gesellschaft aus dem Jahr 2015 dokumentieren, erkunden insbesondere die subjektiven Dimensionen des individuellen Lebens. Hierfür steht in symbolischer Prägnanz der Begriff der Seele. Er markiert die Innenseite in der (...) Dynamik von Darstellung und kommunikativem Austausch, die für die Entwicklung je eigener Prägungen unerlässlich ist. Im Fokus der Beiträge steht das breite Spektrum von Selbstverhältnissen in sozialen Prozessen, die für die Sphären Bildung und Erziehung, Frömmigkeit und Kirche sowie Literatur und Ästhetik im interdisziplinären Austausch erschlossen und aufeinander bezogen werden. (shrink)

Identity and Individuality are key subjects of modernity. They are categorically unfolded by Schleiermacher's conception, that individual identity is constituted by an ethic process and is closely linked to its complementary, the universal of sociality. In the first instance this essay explicates this conception in the poeticised romantic early work ‘Monologen’ and thereupon it connects with his mellower dogmatic-theological main work ‘Glaubenslehre’. In the ‘Monologen’ individuality is constituted by imagining a human transcendental ‘realm of spirits’ as the background for looking (...) at the individuals in the ‘world’. On the other hand the ‘Glaubenslehre’ interlaces ethic-religious processes of the constitution of identity with institutionalised communication between empirically different individuals in the context of ecclesiology. Associated with a coupling of ‘spirit’ and ‘world’ this makes a structural openness possible for the real plurality right up to divergence and difference. (shrink)

In the current debate of possible ways to reform the structure and organisation of the protestant church in Germany the general question has come up, whether concepts of the Lutheran church, which are founded on ecclesiology or protestant ecclesiastical law, in principle prohibit institutional changes or not. Regarding this problem, the essay discusses the institution of the Protestant church in aspects of theology and ecclesiasticallaw. The CA assumes that religious belief constitutes the church and gives structure to it as a (...) means for spiritual communication between the faithful. Starting from this point the essay argues that the church is essentially non-institutional. Nevertheless it is a part of the dialectics of the concept of the institutionally organised church that even this non-institutionality gains itself an institutional structure. Because of this the essay pleads for a pragmatic view on church institutions: there are reasons to change or to cling to these structures, but these reasons are only pragmatic ones, when the concept of the church, which is derived from theology and protestant ecclesiasticallaw, is considered as given. (shrink)

Theology as a confessional discipline is challenged to prove its academic character. Only the distanced view to religion, as it is significant for non-confessional religious studies, seems to be in a position to deal with the cultural phenomenon called ‘religion’ in a serious academic manner. Theology should to live up to the challenge by proposing itselfs specific concept of ‘religion’. It is in this field, that we find the topic of an fruitful and dialectical encounter between both disciplines, theology and (...) religious studies. On the one hand, theories of religion, as they arose in the context of modern protestantism, can show, that ‘religion’ embodies the concept, by which this confessional tradition transcends its own particularity towards the universality of the human. On the other hand, modern religous studies have evidenced, that we have ‘religion’ only in the particular diversity of practised religions. Against this background, the paper argues for a specific protestant concept of religion, which works out the dialectic between particularity and universality in terms of the relation of the divine absolute and the human individual – focussing on the transparent constitution of the freedom of individuals. The paper concludes with reflections on a concept of modern culture, which allows for realisation of this freedom. (shrink)

Der Band präsentiert die Akten des Schleiermacher-Kongresses 2017 zum Thema,,Reformation und Moderne". Dabei geht es nicht nur um Schleiermacher als Denker der Transformation des reformatorischen Erbes in die Moderne im Gebiet des Religiösen, sondern auch um Wechselbezüge weiterer Bereiche des sozio-kulturellen Lebens zwischen Geselligkeitsformen, Politik, Kunst und Philosophie. Die Beiträge stehen unter den Leitbegriffen,,Pluralität",,,Subjektivität" und,,Kritik", die als Schlüsselkonzepte der Moderne gelten können.

The essay revisits the complex phenomenon of religion, in light of the articulations and differentiations between theology, philosophy of religion, and religious studies, particularly within the social, cultural context of modernity and the Enlightenment categories of rationality, freedom, and science, in major thinkers such as Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch.