Das Buch widmet sich der wenig erörterten Frage nach dem Begriff der Macht in der Theologie und Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ausgehend von Theorien bei Arendt, Foucault, Plessner und Jaspers wird der Blick auf die Ontologie der Macht bei Tillich eröffnet. Dabei wird dargestellt, wie er seinem Machtverständnis eine sinntheoretische Wendung gegeben und wie er seine Überlegungen zur Macht mit dem Begriff des Seins in Zusammenhang gebracht hat.

Despite the efforts of such notable thinkers as Sartre, Camus, and Ricoeur to affirm philosophically the being of evil, a systematic critique of the traditional metaphysical understanding of evil as privation of being has not yet been fully worked out. The task of this paper is to sketch out just such a critique and to suggest a more adequate philosophical reflection on the being of evil by turning to the thought of Heidegger. Part 1 examines Heidegger’s commentary on Aristotle’s remarks (...) on steresis. Aristotle is our teacher, Heidegger argues, in learning “to hold on to the wonder” of the steresis-dimension of Being (physis), and, thus, to hold on to the wonder that “lack,” “loss,” “absence” - is. Part II considers Heidegger’s recognition that the k-not at the very heart of our existence is yet much more complex. He turns to the fragments of Parmenides and Heraclitus to bring to light a dissembling-dimension of Being. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.3 (2003) 265-266 [Access article in PDF] Definition Is Limited and Values Inescapable Richard Mullen THIS IS A welcome paper that lays bare some of the presumptions of those who seek to determine the status of psychiatric disorder. At different times debate on the subject reflects stigma, prejudice, needs for coherent categorization, and occasionally just antipsychiatric resentment. As Pickering hints, much philosophical argument may (...) be selected to support a position already chosen.The article illustrates that the likeness argument is insufficient to demonstrate that mental disorders are or are not disorders in any other more profound sense. Similarly perhaps, if a debate were conducted about whether or not a bony fracture, hypertension, obesity, or bacterial infection were real illnesses, the likeness argument might be unfruitful. This is perhaps unsurprising; notions of health and illness, mental or physical, are largely abstractions. In psychiatry, so-called symptoms are themselves abstract classifications of incompletely articulated mental phenomena far more diverse than the definitions and criteria to be found in a diagnostic manual.Argument by analogy is always limited. If my car has a flat tire, the car will be dysfunctional or disordered. Its loss of performance will be the symptoms of the flat tire, which is the lesion. It is a problem quickly diagnosed and treated. If convenient, I suppose my car could have been said to be ill, but this would not lead to any particular insights into the nature of cars, mechanics, health, or anything else.A variety of concepts can be contained within terms such as illness,disease, and disorder. They include the clinicopathological approach (the disease is the organic lesion), the disease is deviance approach, disease as distress, and approaches that consider disease—particularly mental disorder—as largely socially constructed. None may resolve the questions that Pickering raises, but recognizing that our terms are not always precise or used consistently is part of formulating the problem more clearly. For the most part clinical psychiatry (and the rest of medicine) has no difficulty in properly identifying most of our patients as disordered or ill. The fact that there are some borderline instances, difficult to classify either way, does not invalidate the classification.Consideration of whether or not the features of a disorder can in themselves determine whether or not a person is disordered is timely for two reasons. As stigma about (some) psychiatric disorder lessens, and opportunities for complaint and compensation expand, an era of self-definition as mentally disordered has arrived. How are mental health practitioners to respond to someone whose mental distress appears not to be clinically significant, but who demands access to the sick role? Also of current concern for clinical psychiatry is widespread pressure to define as disordered those persons whose antisocial behavior brings them into conflict with society. Professional recognition that definitions of mental disorder are inadequate, or rather incomplete, [End Page 265] may be valid. Worryingly, there are others who are willing to define it for us.Both major international systems of classification of mental disorder offer definitions of mental disorder that turn on what is to be meant by clinical significance or clinically recognizable. In the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, mental disorder implies "clinically significant impairment or distress," and criteria for specific disorders mostly including a comment about "clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning" (APA 2000, 8). In the International Classification of Disease, disorder is used to imply "existence of a clinically recognizable set of symptoms or behavior associated in most cases with distress and with interference with personal function" (WHO 1992, 5). It seems that no definition of mental disorder is adequate for all purposes. Seeking to improve existing definitions by further defining the terms used quickly becomes an exercise in pedantry, far removed from practical utility.Pickering mentions as an example the "symptom" of delusions. Available definitions are widely recognized as incomplete or otherwise unsatisfactory (David 1999). This leads to debate about what the individual elements within the definition precisely mean. However in practice delusions are identified with remarkably high reliability (WHO 1973... (shrink)

The question of the relationship of the making of value judgments in a typically ethical sense to the methods and procedures of science has been discussed in the literature at least to that point which e. e. cummings somewhere refers to as “The Mystical Moment of Dullness.” Nevertheless, albeit with some trepidation, I feel that something more may fruitfully be said on the subject.

_What does it mean when a radical understanding of National Socialism is inextricably embedded in the work of the twentieth century’s most important philosopher?_ Martin Heidegger’s sympathies for the conservative revolution and National Socialism have long been well known. As the rector of the University of Freiburg in the early 1930s, he worked hard to reshape the university in accordance with National Socialist policies. He also engaged in an all-out struggle to become the movement’s philosophical preceptor, “to lead the leader.” (...) Yet for years, Heidegger’s defenders have tried to separate his political beliefs from his philosophical doctrines. They argued, in effect, that he was good at philosophy but bad at politics. But with the 2014 publication of Heidegger’s _Black Notebooks_, it has become clear that he embraced a far more radical vision of the conservative revolution than previously suspected. His dissatisfaction with National Socialism, it turns out, was mainly that it did not go far enough. The notebooks show that far from being separated from Nazism, Heidegger’s philosophy was suffused with it. In this book Richard Wolin explores what the notebooks mean for our understanding of arguably the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, and of his ideas—and why his legacy remains radically compromised. (shrink)

This anthology is a significant contribution to the debate over the relevance of Martin Heidegger's Nazi ties to the interpretation and evaluation of his philosophical work. Included are a selection of basic documents by Heidegger, essays and letters by Heidegger's colleagues that offer contemporary context and testimony, and interpretive evaluations by Heidegger's heirs and critics in France and Germany.In his new introduction, "Note on a Missing Text," Richard Wolin uses the absence from this edition of an interview with Jacques (...) Derrida as a springboard for examining questions about the nature of authorship and personal responsibility that are at the heart of the book.Richard Wolin is Professor of Modern European Intellectual History and Humanities at Rice University. He is the author of Walter Benjamin, The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger, and The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The Frankfurt School, Existentialism and Poststructuralism. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 13, Issue 1, Page 63-78, January 2021.

This book argues that a plausible account of emergence requires replacing the traditional assumption that what primarily exists are particular entities with generic processes. Traversing contemporary physics and issues of identity over time, it then proceeds to develop a metaphysical taxonomy of emergent entities and of the character of human life.

Richard Sorabji here takes time as his central theme, exploring fundamental questions about its nature: Is it real or an aspect of consciousness? Did it begin along with the universe? Can anything escape from it? Does it come in atomic chunks? In addressing these and myriad other issues, Sorabji engages in an illuminating discussion of early thought about time, ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Islamic, Christian, and Jewish medieval thinkers. Sorabji argues that the thought of these often negelected (...) philosophers about the subject is, in many cases, more complete than that of their more recent counterparts. “Splendid. . . . The canvas is vast, the picture animated, the painter nonpareil. . . . Sorabji’s work will encourage more adventurers to follow him to this fascinating new-found land.”—Jonathan Barnes, Times Literary Supplement “One of the most important works in the history of metaphysics to appear in English for a considerable time. No one concerned with the problems with which it deals either as a historian of ideas or as a philosopher can afford to neglect it.”—Donald MacKinnon, Scottish Journal of Theology “Unusually readable for such scholarly content, the book provides in rich and cogent terms a lively and well-balanced discussion of matters of concern to a wide academic audience.”— Choice. (shrink)

This paper compares and contrasts relational quantum mechanics with a pragmatist view of quantum theory. I first explain important points of agreement. Then I point to two problems faced by RQM and sketch DP?s solutions to analogous problems. Since both RQM and DP have taken the Born rule to require relative facts I next say what these might be. My main objection to RQM as originally conceived is that its ontology of relative facts is incompatible with scientific objectivity and undercuts (...) the evidential base of quantum theory. In contrast DP?s relative facts have all the objectivity we need to accept quantum theory as scientific knowledge. But a very recent modification to RQM has successfully addressed my main objection,bringing the two views into even closer alignment. (shrink)

This article seeks to place the theodicy of the Anglican theologian Austin Farrer, as expressed in Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited , within the context of philosophical and theological approaches to the so‐called “problem of evil”. Farrer's work is initially contrasted with the theodicies of John Hick and Richard Swinburne. This comparison reveals some of the rationalist and foundationalist moral assumptions of modern philosophical theodicy of which Hick and Swinburne are representatives. By contrast, it is argued that Farrer's approach (...) is thoroughly theological and begins not with a pre‐conceived ethics, but with God's self‐revelation in Jesus Christ. Farrer is thus deemed to have much in common with pre‐Enlightenment thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas.Although Farrer's theodicy is seen to be theological , it is argued that he resists trends in recent theological approaches to theodicy that claim that God is passible . This article defends divine impassibility and argues that, although Farrer's later “metaphysical personalism” implies that God may be personal to the point that he could be said to suffer, his Augustinian notion of the nature of evil as privatio boni strongly implies impassibility. This Farrer is seen to avoid two anthropomorphic approaches to theodicy: one that judges God by the standards of a foundational secular morality, and the other that ascribes certain “personal” emotions to the divine.This article defends Farrer's theological approach to theodicy and his emphasis on ecclesiology and soteriology. However, the lack of a convincing and thorough dogmatic theology is seen to render his theodicy uncompelling. Despite this weakness, it is argued that Farrer's work points theodicy towards a theological encounter with particular narratives of evil and suffering and away from the consideration of a single “problem of evil” by means of “rational”, philosophical enquiry. (shrink)

"Just as philosophy begins with doubt, so also a life that may be called human begins with irony" so wrote Kierkegaard. While we commonly think of irony as a figure of speech where someone says one thing and means the opposite, the concept of irony has long played a more fundamental role in the tradition of philosophy, a role that goes back to Socrates Ð the originator and exemplar of the urbane ironic life. But what precisely is Socratic irony and (...) what relevance, if any, does it have for us today? Bernstein begins his inquiry with a critical examination of the work of two contemporary philosophers for whom irony is vital: Jonathan Lear and Richard Rorty. Despite their sharp differences, Bernstein argues that they complement one other, each exploring different aspects of ironic life. In the background of Lear’s and Rorty’s accounts stand the two great ironists: Socrates and Kierkegaard. Focusing on the competing interpretations of Socratic irony by Gregory Vlastos and Alexander Nehamas, Bernstein shows how they further develop our understanding of irony as a form of life and as an art of living. Bernstein also develops a distinctive interpretation of Kierkegaard’s famous claim that a life that may be called human begins with irony. Bernstein weaves together the insights of these thinkers to show how each contributes to a richer understanding of ironic life. He also argues that the emphasis on irony helps to restore the balance between two different philosophical traditions philosophy as a theoretical discipline concerned with getting things right and philosophy as a practical discipline that shapes how we ought to live our lives. (shrink)

Isaac Newton was indisputably one of the greatest scientists in history. His achievements in mathematics and physics marked the culmination of the movement that brought modern science into being. Richard Westfall's biography captures in engaging detail both his private life and scientific career, presenting a complex picture of Newton the man, and as scientist, philosopher, theologian, alchemist, public figure, President of the Royal Society, and Warden of the Royal Mint. An abridged version of his magisterial study Never at Rest, (...) this concise biography makes Westfall's highly acclaimed portrait of Newton newly accessible to general readers. (shrink)

Richard H. Bell analyzes the social and political thought of Simone Weil, paying particular attention to Weil's concept of justice as compassion. Bell describes the ways in which Weil's concept of justice stands in contrast with liberal 'rights-based' views of justice, and focuses upon central aspects of her thought, including 'attention,' human suffering and 'affliction,' and the importance of 'a spiritual way of life' in reshaping the individual's role in civic life.

This chapter offers a review of standard views about the requirements for natural selection to shape evolution and for the sorts of ‘units’ on which selection might operate. It then summarizes traditional arguments for genic selectionism, i.e., the view that selection operates primarily on genes (e.g., those of G. C. Williams, Richard Dawkins, and David Hull) and traditional counterarguments (e.g., those of William Wimsatt, Richard Lewontin, and Elliott Sober, and a diffuse group based on life history strategies). It (...) then offers a series of responses to the arguments, based on more contemporary considerations from molecular genetics, offered by Carmen Sapienza. A key issue raised by Sapienza concerns the degree to which a small number of genes might be able to control much of the variation relevant to selection operating on such selectively critical organs as hearts. The response to these arguments suggests that selection acts on many levels at once and that sporadic selection, acting with strong effects, can act successively on different key traits (and genes) while maintaining a balance among many potentially conflicting demands faced by organisms within an evolving lineage. (shrink)

In the absence of empirical confirmation, scientists may judge a theory's chances of being viable based on a wide range of arguments. The paper argues that such arguments can differ substantially with regard to their structural similarly to empirical confirmation. Arguments that resemble empirical confirmation in a number of crucial respects provide a better basis for reliable judgement and can, in a Bayesian sense, amount to significant \textit{non-empirical} confirmation. It is shown that three kinds of non-empirical confirmation that have been (...) specified in earlier work do satisfy those conditions. (shrink)

This important new study is an intellectual history exploring the reception of Darwinism by prominent German socialist theoriests: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engles, Friedrich Albert Lange, Ludwig B chner, August Bebel, Karl Katusky, and Eduard Bernstein. It relies not only on published books, articles, and speeches by these men, but also on some unpublished correspondence. In addition, one chapter covers the anti-socialist stance of prominent Darwinian biologists, including Charles Darwin and the foremost champion of Darwinism in Germany, Ernst Haeckel. Darwinism's effect (...) on German socialism's view of eugenics, race and religion are also discussed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article looks at several sections of Minima Moralia where Adorno talks explicitly about the need for genuine thinking and what that might consist in. First, I argue that Hegel and Nietzsche are the two guiding thinkers behind this work, and I show how they express two opposing tendencies of thinking—aphoristic and dialectical—that can inspire and enhance each other. Then, in the main part of the article, I identify four significant claims in Adorno’s critical reflections on thinking: (1) that (...) thinking is the enemy of common sense; (2) that thinking is not the same thing as problem-solving; (3) that thinking is not inherently linear in nature; and (4) that thinking involves lingering with the particular or allowing the other to be. I conclude that Adorno’s reflection on the difficulty of thinking in modern life is a key to his account of philosophy in the contemporary world. (shrink)

Richard Appignanesi goes on a personal quest of Existentialism in its original state. He begins with Camus' question of suicide: 'Must life have a meaning to be lived?' Is absurdity at the heart of Existentialism? Or is Sartre right: is Existentialism 'the least scandalous, most technically austere' of all teachings? This brilliant Graphic Guide explores Existentialism in a unique comic book-style.

Richard Taruskin’s sweeping collection of essays distills a half century of professional experience, demonstrating an unparalleled insider awareness of relevant debates in all areas of music studies, including historiography and criticism, representation and aesthetics, musical and professional politics, and the sociology of taste. _Cursed Questions, _invoking a famous catchphrase from Russian intellectual history, grapples with questions that are never finally answered but never go away. The writings gathered here form an intellectual biography that showcases the characteristic wit, provocation, and (...) erudition that readers have come to expect from Taruskin, making it an essential volume for anyone interested in music, politics, and the arts. (shrink)

Taking an innovative look at the origins of economics, this forward-thinking book relocates economics from a materialistic general theory of rational action into an idealistic theory of social organization and individual action. Adding new insightful analytical methods such as complexity theory, graph theory and computational modelling to the original insights of the Scottish Enlightenment, Richard Wagner explores economics in an ever-changing society, looking at the key civilizing processes and the important social questions. Rethinking Economics as Social Theory moves away (...) from the traditional review of analytical exercises and associated data and illustrates an enlightening scheme of thought where human societies are heterogeneous and not homogeneous and where change is continually in motion. Furthermore, Wagner theorises that economizing is a universal form of human action that plays out in numerous substantive directions and shows cooperation and conflict to have a yin-and-yang relationship. This illuminating book will prove an excellent resource for economists interested in working outside of comparative statics as well as social scientists looking for a broader vision of economics. Philosophers and those working in the field of biological sciences will also find this an informative read. (shrink)

Preview: In various guises and cultures, the theme of elevating, ennobling love is a recurrent topos in the premodern erotic theory my book traces. Freed from Plato’s problematic dualistic denigration of the body as prison of the soul and from the modern aesthetic prejudice of disinterestedness, Ars Erotica recaptures the valuable core of ennobling desire by showing how a new somaesthetic approach to sex could channel the power of eros to cultivate qualities of courtesy, grace, skill, self-mastery, and sensitivity to (...) the feelings of others, thus evoking a richer, more positive vision of sex education than we have today. (shrink)

This article explores the ways in which Janelle Monáe’s audiovisual performances leverage black female flesh to trouble historically constituted imaginings of ‘the human’. Tracking Monáe’s audiovisual aesthetics across ‘Many moons’ and Dirty Computer, I interrogate acoustic and imagistic resonances that recall the repeating horrors of bondage, and which also constitute performative ‘fabulations’ whereby freedoms that are engendered specifically by and within black female flesh might be imagined. Monáe ‘enfleshes’ the cyborg to critique cyberfeminist and posthumanist theories that advocate for material (...) dissolution as a framework for liberation, as well as to trouble black women’s historical relationships to the category ‘human’. Rather than understand Dirty Computer as a (re)turn to the human Monáe, I contend that the project extends the artist’s longstanding critical engagement with the black female cyborg and black sonic cyberfeminist liberatory potentialities. (shrink)

Despite major changes in the governance of universities overtly intended to transform them into authoritatively integrated collectivities, the extent of their organisational actorhood remains quite limited and varied between OECD countries. This is because of inherent limitations to the managerial direction and control of research and teaching activities in public science systems as well as considerable variations in how governance changes are being implemented in different kinds of states. Four ideal types of university can be distinguished in terms of their (...) strategic and operational autonomy and capability: Hollow, State-contracted, State-chartered and Private-portfolio. These become established under different proximate and background conditions such that relatively high levels of organisational actorhood are unlikely to be achieved in many OECD countries without major shifts in state structures and policies. (shrink)

Since economies are dynamic processes driven by creativity, social norms, and emotions as well as rational calculation, why do economists largely study them using static equilibrium models and narrow rationalistic assumptions? Economic activity is as much a function of imagination and social sentiments as of the rational optimisation of given preferences and goods. Richard Bronk argues that economists can best model and explain these creative and social aspects of markets by using new structuring assumptions and metaphors derived from the (...) poetry and philosophy of the Romantics. By bridging the divide between literature and science, and between Romanticism and narrow forms of Rationalism, economists can access grounding assumptions, models, and research methods suitable for comprehending the creativity and social dimensions of economic activity. This is a guide to how economists and other social scientists can broaden their analytical repertoire to encompass the vital role of sentiments, language, and imagination. (shrink)

Law’s processes are likely always to be needed when particularly intractable conflicts arise in relation to the care of a critically ill child like Charlie Gard. Recourse to law has its merits, but it also imposes costs, and the courts’ decisions about the best interests of such children appear to suffer from uncertainty, unpredictability and insufficiency. The insufficiency arises from the courts’ apparent reluctance to enter into the ethical dimensions of such cases. Presuming that such reflection is warranted, this article (...) explores alternatives to the courts, and in particular the merits of specialist ethics support services, which appear to be on the rise in the UK. Such specialist services show promise, as they are less formal and adversarial than the courts and they appear capable of offering expert ethical advice. However, further research is needed into such services – and into generalist ethics support services – in order to gauge whether this is indeed a promising development. (shrink)

Paul Grice’s account of the nature of intentional communication has often been supposed to be cognitively too complex to work as an account of the communicative interactions of pre-verbal children. This chapter is a (fairly uncritical) review of a number of responses to this challenge that others have developed. I discuss work on Relevance Theory (by Sperber and Wilson), Pedagogy Theory (by Gergely and Csibra), and Expressive Communication (by Green and Bar-On). I also discuss my own response to the challenge (...) of Gricean communication. (shrink)

When reading the Hebrew Bible, it is clear that the goddess Asherah is given a negative image. There are some fascinating probable misreadings, including one showing that she once might have had a more exalted role: in Deuteronomy 33:2 at the Lord’s right hand there was a ‘fiery law’, or was it ‘Asherah’? However, it appears that the Greek Septuagint preserves some additional references to Asherah which are surprisingly positive. In some of the places examined Asherah can confidently be assumed (...) to be underneath the Greek word for ‘grove’. Additionally, there are places where Asherah does not occur but the Greek translation gives us evidence that the word Asherah was there originally. Finally, two ‘goddess passages’ are shown to have significantly different emphases regarding Asherah when read in the Greek or other ancient translations.1. (shrink)

Volume 35 of Heidegger’s Complete Works comprises a lecture course given at the University of Freiburg in 1932, five years after the publication of Being and Time. During this period, Heidegger was at the height of his creative powers, which are on full display in this clear and imaginative text. In it, Heidegger leads his students in a close reading of two of the earliest philosophical source documents, fragments by Greek thinkers Anaximander and Parmenides. Heidegger develops their common theme of (...) Being and non-being and shows that the question of Being is indeed the origin of Western philosophy. His engagement with these Greek texts is as much of a return to beginnings as it is a potential reawakening of philosophical wonder and inquiry in the present. (shrink)

This book tells the story of critical theory's introduction into the study of international relations.

The ordinary human concerns with the past and the future can be seen both as forms of suffering and as illusory because they involve the failure to appreciate the primary reality of the present. In this lecture I argue that while there are certainly ways of being occupied with past or future times that we have reason to criticize, such criticism cannot base itself on any metaphysical claim to the singular or exclusive reality of the present. The task of developing (...) useful forms of describing and assessing the different ways we can go wrong in temporalizing our lives is hindered rather than helped by the suggestion that our concerns with the past and with the future are as such forms of attachment to the Unreal. (shrink)

Richard J. Bernstein is a leading exponent of American pragmatism and one of the foremost philosophers of the twentieth century. In this collection he takes a pragmatic approach to specific problems and issues to demonstrate the ongoing importance of this philosophical tradition. Topics under discussion include multiculturalism, political public life, evil and religion. Individual philosophers studied are Kant, Arendt, Rorty, Habermas, Dewey and Trotsky. Each of the sixteen essays, many of which are published here for the first time, offers (...) a way of bridging contemporary philosophical differences. This book will be of interest to scholars of philosophy and those researching social and political theory. (shrink)

The principle of informed consent is so firmly established in bioethics and biomedicine that the term was soon bowdlerized in common practice, such that engaging in the informed decision-making process with patients or research subjects is now often called “consenting” them. This evolution, from the original concept to the rather questionable coinage that makes consent a verb, reveals not only a loss of rhetorical precision but also a fundamental shift in the potential meaning, value, and implementation of the informed consent (...) process. Too often, the sharing of information has been replaced by the mere acquisition of agreement with the authority ostensibly offering a choice.Scholars of informed consent agree that its salience and its legitimacy derive from a fiduciary duty to inform, in order to respect, protect, and promote autonomous decision making by those to whom the duty is owed. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 56, Issue 2, Page 251-264, April 2022.

We discuss the development of cognitive neuroscience in terms of the tension between the greater sophistication in cognitive concepts and methods of the cognitive sciences and the increasing power of more standard biological approaches to understanding brain structure and function. There have been major technological developments in brain imaging and advances in simulation, but there have also been shifts in emphasis, with topics such as thinking, consciousness, and social cognition becoming fashionable within the brain sciences. The discipline has great promise (...) in terms of applications to mental health and education, provided it does not abandon the cognitive perspective and succumb to reductionism. (shrink)