In Flip Thinking, Berthold Gunster, the founder of the Dutch omdenken--or flip thinking--philosophy, presents fifteen strategies to transform your thinking away from limitations and negativities and towards possibilities and opportunities. From disrupting (turn all the rules upside down) to flaunting (play up what you want to hide) and from importing (get the enemy on board) to amplifying (do more of what works), Gunster's strategies and stories will have you approaching even the most challenging problems--from an annoying neighbor to an (...) angry colleague to an unhappy partner--in a whole new way. (shrink)

A unitary transformation replaces the given description of a quantum system by an equivalent one. It is observed, however, that not all members of a set of unitarily equivalent Hamilton operators are equally well suited for identifying the corresponding classical systems. A criterion is proposed for recognizing the privileged representatives of the set. A few explicit examples are reported that show the criterion at work.

This article is concerned with extensions of a continuous ordering R on a set X to a subset P of the power set of X. The underlying topology will be the Hausdorff metric topology. We will see that continuous extensions of R do not require that P contain every nonempty finite subset of X. Therefore, the analysis can be applied to consumer theory and inverse choice functions. In analogy to these functions budget correspondences are established which relate alternatives x with (...) certain subsets of X, according to the extended ordering. (shrink)

Berthold-Bond (philosophy, Bard College) traces the project through Hegel's epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of history. Paper edition ($18.95) not seen. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The German term “Antiziganismus” could be translated as “antigypsyism”, but the semantic roots are, in fact, different. Coined in the 1980s, “Antiziganismus” might be misconceived as a sheer abstraction: a “close reading” of the term's context could indeed partially justify the assumption that it in many ways reproduces certain impacts and implications of its better known equivalent – an actively employed anti-Semitism. However, the article's main thesis is that “Antiziganismus” denotes a term in its own right. This status cannot be (...) challenged even by the most recent development, which is an interest group's attempt to internationalize the scope of the term by coining the derivative “antiziganism”. (shrink)

Order and change in nature have been for a long time understood in philosophy and theology as founded in divine reason. In the neo-Darwinist theory of evolution, their explanation is reduced to material change without reason. Molecular biologists like M. Behe and W. Demski argue that any reductionist explanation of living beings must be wrong. The evolution of irreducible complex structures is impossible on the basis of random variation and natural selection alone, and must be the result of intelligent design. (...) The article argues that ID-theory, unlike Biblical Creationism, is a challenge for neo-Darwinism and for modern theology as well—for, unlike the Roman magisterium, many Catholic theologians try to harmonize reductive explanation with the notion of creation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Talking Cures, the Clinic, and the Value of the IneffableDaniel Berthold (bio)KeywordsMadness, disease, the normal, the abnormal, the ineffable, Hegel, Kierkegaard, LacanI am most grateful to my readers, James Phillips and Louis Sass, who have led me to several new insights by suggesting ways of complicating my reading of a Lacanian approach to Hegel's and Kierkegaard's conceptions of madness. I am a Kierkegaard and Hegel scholar, with very (...) little pretense to expertise about Lacan and regrettably even less about the theory and practice of psychiatry. In submitting my essay to Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Philosophy, I was hoping to entice a community of practitioners and theoreticians I have great respect for to consider the musings of a philosopher on topics which engage them as thinkers and actors in their professions. I could not possibly have hoped for more intelligent and provocative replies than I have been given by my two respondents.Phillips' framing of his response in terms of the distinction between the "madness of the philosophers" and the "madness of the clinic" is very helpful. It is a distinction that is indeed central to the question of the possibility of dialogue between philosophers and clinicians—so central, in fact, that it is generous of Phillips not to reproach me for failing to mention it. On the one hand, the challenge for philosophers is to show that their descriptions are not merely metaphoric and that their preoccupation with the dark side of human experience connects in some way with the reality of disease, so that there is some way for clinicians to translate their language into the language of psychiatry. Otherwise, philosophers will have only poetic or literary interest for the psychiatrist or psychologist.On the other hand, the challenge for clinicians is the extent to which they are open to moving beyond a reduction of "mental illness" to a purely biological conception of disease. One needn't go so far—nor should we—as Thomas Szasz or Michel Foucault in seeing "mental disease" as itself merely a metaphor. But granting the evidence of underlying organic disorder, symptoms nevertheless display themselves as mental and behavioral states (what Hegel calls "shapes of consciousness") that, as Hegel argued, are paralleled in "normal" experience, so that the distinction between disease and normality (and hence illness and metaphor) is often elusive. Madness "has the healthy consciousness for its presupposition," Hegel writes, because the healthy mind is still grappling with the same sorts of contradictions and feelings of alienation, the same "infinite pain" which characterizes insanity. Madness is not the absolute "other" of rationality, but an echo of it (1978, 3:382, 408).Hegel himself accepted the medicalization of madness that began to occur in the late eighteenth [End Page 325] century, and rejected the metaphysical and theological categories of what was called "romantic medicine." But he also cautioned against the narrowness of the "somatic" school which he felt lacked sufficient explanatory value if not connected to a "speculative" (i.e., philosophic) framework (see Berthold-Bond 1995, ch. 2).It might even be argued that every person seeking therapy is first of all suffering from "philosophic" madness, at least in the sense that initially she does not understand her own suffering as "disease," but experiences her torment in the vocabulary of the philosopher. Thus the philosopher's descriptions are the closest to the subject's own self-understanding, and while the therapist must seek to rephrase these descriptions into the vocabulary of the clinic (just as Hegel, for example, translated his own philosophic description of the madness of his friend Hölderlin in the Phenomenology as the "lost soul" whose "light dies away within it" into the medical category of Wahnsinn—mania or frenzy, which today we would call schizophrenia—in the classificatory scheme of mental disorder he gives in the Encyclopaedia; 1977, 400; 1978, 408)—there is a real question about which vocabulary is a metaphor for the other.The second main point Phillips addresses, which is taken up in different ways by Sass as well, has to do with the relation between speech and silence in madness. Phillips finds that Kierkegaard offers a more complex and subtle view than... (shrink)

Aufsteigen oder verarmen, Beschleunigung oder Stillstand - im Werk des französischen Soziologen Pierre Bourdieu spielt Zeit eine grosse Rolle. Die Wochenzeitung Nr. 10/2009. Wir danken Berthold Vogel für die Erlaubnis, diesen Text zu reproduzieren. Der Begriff der Prekarität avancierte in den vergangenen Jahren zum Signalwort neuer sozialer Ungleichheiten. Das gilt insbesondere mit Blick auf die Arbeitswelt. Im Begriff der Prekarität geht es aber nicht nur um den Zuwachs von - Sociologie – Nouvel article.

Background The German Diagnosis-Related Groups (G-DRG) system has led to a revenue-orientated hospital financing system. This article examines the ethical implications and consequences of this system using the example of reconstructive measures (defect care) in patients with oral cavity carcinoma. At the same time, the interplay between the G‑DRG system and guideline development must also be scrutinized. This is preceded by introductory information on oral cavity carcinoma and the existing treatment options: conventional reconstruction techniques versus cost-intensive high-end surgery. Methods The (...) case scenario “treatment of medium-sized defects after tumor resection” forms the methodological basis and argumentative reference point of the study. Results and discussion The G‑DRG system and the economic incentives lead to far-reaching ethical implications concerning the demand-orientated treatment of patients and lead to multidimensional interactions. The existing tendency towards high-end surgery harbors the risk of overuse and misuse and, therefore, runs counter to the principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence. The one-sided indication in favor of high-end surgery also suggests that patient information is given in a directive manner (violation of respect for patient autonomy). Moreover, costly high-end procedures counteract the principle of economic efficiency and, thus, touch on issues of distributive justice. Finally, the clinical favoring of high-end procedures also affects logic within medicine, namely the publication landscape (publication bias), the design of the relevant guidelines, and surgical expertise. Conclusions There is a need to raise the awareness of all those working in the field of surgery (surgeons, guideline experts, reviewers). (shrink)

While neither Hegel nor Marx can be called “ecologists” in any strict sense of the term, they both present views of the human-nature relationship which offer important insights for contemporary debates in philosophical ecology. Further, while Marx and Engels began a tradition of sharply distinguishing their own views of nature from those of Hegel, careful examination reveals a substantial commonality of sentiment. The essay compares Hegel and Marx (and Engels) in terms of their basic conceptions of nature, their critiques of (...) Romanitic nature-worship, their notions of how a meaningful unity with nature requires the act of socially transforming nature, their respective calls for a new science of nature, and their attitudes towards technology. I argue that we can uncover a largely shared humanistic orientation toward nature, and I situate this view within contemporary debates about the anthropocentric or non-anthropocentric foundation of ecological thinking. (shrink)

In this article I will discuss various aspects of Hegel’s radical critique of metaphilosophy. This critique announces a clear-cut departure from the widely held conviction in the philosophic tradition that in order to gain a firm foundation for science, a preliminary examination of the capacity and nature of knowledge is required. Hegel’s position is that such a propaedeutic is impossible. In the first part of this article, I will show how Hegel’s position can be illuminated in terms of his criticism (...) of Kant’s philosophic methodology and in terms of a comparison with Plato’s solution to the Meno paradox. In the second part, I will ask the question whether Hegel’s own philosophic method is consistent with his criticism of metaphilosophy. This question arises most clearly when we reflect on Hegel’s frequent claim that in order for the philosopher to write the science of knowledge, he or she needs “only to watch” or “merely to look on” at the way consciousness develops its knowledge of objects. We must consider whether such a “language of spectatorship,” as we might call it, does not contradict the evident conclusion of Hegel’s critique of metaphilosophy, viz., that the philosopher cannot attain a distanced perspective from knowledge without at the same time abandoning knowledge. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Das German Diagnosis Related Groups (G-DRG)-System hat zu einem weitgehend erlösorientierten Krankenhausfinanzierungssystem geführt. Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden die ethischen Implikationen und Folgen dieses Systems am Beispiel rekonstruktiver Maßnahmen (Defektversorgung) bei Patient*innen mit Mundhöhlenkarzinomen herausgearbeitet. Dabei gilt es zugleich, das Wechselspiel von G‑DRG-System und Leitlinienentwicklung zu beleuchten. Vorangestellt werden einführende Angaben zum Mundhöhlenkarzinom und den bestehenden Behandlungsoptionen: konventionelle Rekonstruktionstechnik versus kostenintensive High-End-Chirurgie. Methodische Grundlage und argumentativer Bezugspunkt der Arbeit ist das theoretische Fallszenario „Versorgung mittelgroßer Defekte nach Tumorresektion“. Das G‑DRG-System und (...) die dadurch geschaffenen ökonomischen Anreize haben weitreichende ethische Implikationen in der bedarfsorientierten Behandlung von Patient*innen und führen zu mehrdimensionalen Wechselwirkungen. Die bestehende Tendenz zur High-End-Chirurgie birgt das Risiko der Über- und Fehlversorgung und läuft demnach den Prinzipien Benefizienz und Nonmalefizienz zuwider. Die einseitige Indikationsstellung zugunsten der High-End-Chirurgie lässt zudem auf eine direktive Patientenaufklärung schließen (Verstoß gegen das Prinzip des Respekts der Patientenautonomie). Kostspielige High-End-Verfahren konterkarieren überdies das Wirtschaftlichkeitsgebot und berühren somit zugleich Fragen der Verteilungsgerechtigkeit. Schließlich wirkt die klinische Bevorzugung von High-End-Verfahren auch auf die innermedizinische Logik, namentlich auf die Publikationslandschaft (publication bias), die Ausgestaltung der betreffenden Leitlinien sowie auf die chirurgische Expertise. Zu fordern ist eine Sensibilisierung aller in der Chirurgie tätigen Akteur*innen (Chirurg*innen; Leitlinienexpert*innen, Gutachter*innen). (shrink)

Criticism of Hegel has been a central preoccupation of “postmodern” philosophy, from critical theory and deconstruction to Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and Foucauldian “archaeology.” One of the most frequent criticisms is that Hegel's invocation of “absolute knowledge” installs him in a position of authorial arrogance, of God‐like authority, leaving the reader in a position of subservience to the Sage's perfect wisdom. The argument of this article is that this sort of criticism is profoundly ironic, since Hegel's construction of the role of (...) the Sage possessing absolute knowledge is in fact an elaborate mask covering over a radical project of disappearance of the author by which it becomes the reader who is left to author the text. The article explores Hegel's commitment to his own death as an author in his invention of a new method of demonstration, his epistemology, his philosophy of language, his theory of desire, and even in the seemingly least likely place of all, his portrait of “absolute knowledge.”. (shrink)

Bd. 1. Lehrer an der Universität -- Bd. 2. Referent am Vortragspult.

Apparitions takes a new look at the critical legacy of one of the 20th century's most important and influential thinkers about music, Theodor W. Adorno. Bringing together an international group of scholars, the book offers new historical and critical insights into Adorno's theories of music and how these theories, in turn, have affected the study of contemporary art music, popular music, and jazz. The essays review the impact of Philosophy of New Music a fter World War II, examine Adorno's struggle (...) to adapt his aging philosophy to the new music of the 1950s and 1960s, and trace his influence on recent composers. Several essays in this volume also re-evaluate Adorno's controversial contribution to the study of popular music and jazz, as well as his theories of mass media and mass culture in the context of an increasing consolidation of corporate and political power in the entertainment industry. This volume will be indispensable for both scholars and students of Adorno, who seek a historical context and a critical assessment of some of his most influential as well as most contested writings on music. (shrink)

The mid-twentieth century saw a change in paradigms of art history: iconology. The main claim of this novel trend in art history was that renown Renaissance artists created imaginative syntheses between their art and contemporary cosmology, philosophy, theology and magic. The Neo-Platonism in the books by Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola became widely acknowledged for their lasting influence on art. It thus became common knowledge that Renaissance artists were not exclusively concerned with problems intrinsic to their work, but (...) that their artifacts encompassed a much larger intellectual and cultural horizon. This volume brings together historians - both those concerned with the history of their own discipline and also those whose research is on the art and culture of the Italian Renaissance itself - with historians from a wide variety of specialist fields, in order to engage with the contested field of iconology. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Renaissance history, Renaissance studies, historiography, philosophy, theology, gender studies, and literature. (shrink)