Christian Wolff (1679 - 1754) gilt als der bedeutendste und wirkungsmachtigste Philosoph der Fruh- und Hochaufklarung. Unter der Leitung der Philosophie und der sog. mathematischen Methode suchte er ein enzyklopadisches System der Wissenschaften auf dem Stand der Bildung seiner Zeit zu begrunden. In der Mitte seines Jahrhunderts war Wolff zu einer europaweit geruhmten Autoritat geworden. Noch von Kant als "Erfinder des Geistes der Grundlichkeit" in Deutschland geruhmt, verblasste sein Ruhm indessen bald. Erst die von Jean Ecole und anderen besorgte grosse (...) Ausgabe der Werke Wolffs hat zu einer Wiederentdeckung Wolffs und zur Neubelebung der internationalen Wolff-Forschung gefuhrt. (shrink)

Beginning with Jacob Taubes and Günther Anders on eschatology, apocalypse and political theology, including Saint Paul and Frankfurt School critical theory along with bombs and power plants (energy/climate), this essay parallels a re-reading of Tracy B. Strong’s political reading of Nietzsche on Jesus (and love) with Taubes, Anders and Carl Schmitt on politics (and technology). Highlighted throughout is the politically charged (and inherently esoteric) context of Gnosticism for philosophy and theory for Taubes but also for Anders.

Der Autor untersucht, inwieweit es gemeinsame Argumente bei Carl Schmitt und dem «Feindstrafrecht» (Günther Jakobs) gibt. Zugleich arbeitet er die diametrale Position Hans Kelsens heraus und nutzt sie als Basis für eine Kritik. Dabei wird die Rolle des Bundesverfassungsgerichts ebenso betrachtet wie die Strafgesetzgebung und Rechtsprechung.

In a recent issue of The Lancet, the historian Roger Cooter predicted that the field of bioethics will soon die of self-inflicted wounds. “Conspiring against it,” he wrote, “is exposure of the funding of some of its US centres by pharmaceutical companies; exclusion of alternative perspectives from the social sciences; retention of narrow analytical notions of ethics in the face of popular expression and academic respect for the place of emotions; divisions within the discipline ; and collusion with, and appropriation (...) by, clinical medicine.” Cooter's prognosis? “Hardly wet behind the ears, bioethics seems destined for a short lifespan.”. (shrink)

This article investigates what notions of “just health care” are found at three Swedish hospitals among health care personnel and whether these notions are relevant to what priorities are actually made. Fieldwork at all three hospitals and 114 in-depth interviews were conducted. Data have been subject to conceptual and ethical analysis and categorisation. According to our findings, justice is an important idea to health care personnel at the studied hospitals. Two main notions of just health care were found. The main (...) idea was the notion of “equal treatment according to need”, the basic idea being that differences in treatment should be justified by differences in needs. The competing idea that merit should affect the treatment received is occasionally encountered, the idea here being that patients, by acting irresponsibly, may no longer deserve to be treated strictly according to needs. In practice, priorities are made on grounds that only partly comply with the basic idea of justice in health care, as it is understood by staff at the studied hospitals. Exceptions are made due to regional differences, considerations of cost-effectiveness, economic incentives, tradition, the daily patient flow, research, private alternatives, patient influence and favouritism of health care personnel. (shrink)

We study the degrees of unsolvability of sets which are cohesive . We answer a question raised by the first author in 1972 by showing that there is a cohesive set A whose degree a satisfies a' = 0″ and hence is not high. We characterize the jumps of the degrees of r-cohesive sets, and we show that the degrees of r-cohesive sets coincide with those of the cohesive sets. We obtain analogous results for strongly hyperimmune and strongly hyperhyperimmune sets (...) in place of r-cohesive and cohesive sets, respectively. We show that every strongly hyperimmune set whose degree contains either a Boolean combination of ∑2 sets or a 1-generic set is of high degree. We also study primitive recursive analogues of these notions and in this case we characterize the corresponding degrees exactly. MSC: 03D30, 03D55. (shrink)

Der Psychiater und Philosoph Karl Jaspers hinterließ eine große fachliche und persönliche Korrespondenz, die historisch vom Untergang des Kaiserreichs bis zur Etablierung der Bundesrepublik reicht. Diese kritische und kommentierte Edition vermittelt ein umfassendes Bild dieses Denkers. Briefpartner dieses Bandes:Gustav Bally, Kurt Beringer, Ludwig Binswanger, Eugen Bleuler, Max Born, Albert Fraenkel, Viktor E. Frankl, Robert Gaupp, Wolfgang Gentner, Hans Walter Gruhle, Willy Hellpach, Jakob Klaesi, Ludwig Klages, Kurt Kolle, Ernst Kretschmer, Arthur Kronfeld, Willhelm Mayer-Gross, Alexander Mitscherlich, Rudolf Nissen, Franz Nissl, Curt (...) Oehme, Wolfgang Pauli, Oskar Pfister, Hans Prinzhorn, Werner Scheid, Gerhard Schmidt, Kurt Schneider, Johannes Heinrich Schultz, Albert Schweitzer, Hugo Spatz, Georg Stertz, Hans Jörg Weitbrecht, Carl Friedrich v. Weizsäcker, Viktor v. Weizsäcker, Albrecht Wetzel, Karl Wilmanns, Richard Woltereck, Jürg Zutt. (shrink)

We address Turkheimer’s argument that genome-wide association studies of behaviors and psychiatric traits will fail to produce coherent explanations. We distinguish two major sources of potential i...

Intentionality and the Problem of Transcendental Friction -- The Epistemic Given and the Semantic Given in C. I. Lewis -- Discursive Intentionality and 'Nonconceptual Content' in Sellars -- The Retreat from Nonconceptualism: Discourse and Experience in Brandom and McDowell -- Somatic Intentionality and Habitual Normativity in Merleau-Ponty's Account of Lived Embodiment -- The Possibilities and Problems of Bifurcated Intentionality.

The clash between religious freedom and equality for lesbians and gay men has become a controversial legal issue in the United Kingdom. Increasingly, claims are made that compliance with anti-discrimination norms impacts upon conscientious, faith-based objectors to same-sex sexual acts. This article explores this issue and draws insights from North American case law, where this question has been considered in the context of competing constitutional rights. It raises far-reaching issues concerning the distinction between belief and practice, as well as the (...) role of identity in the public sphere. The author advocates that courts and tribunals should adopt a fact-specific approach which is sensitive to the rights in a particular context, and which focuses upon the values of accommodation, tolerance and mutual respect. (shrink)

Environmental governance has emerged as a recent perspective to explain the link between corporate governance mechanisms and environmental performance such as pollution reduction. We extend current models by incorporating the crucial role of the underlying institutional logics in terms of an a priori focus on either shareholder rights or stakeholder inclusion, which, in turn, can be traced back to the legal origin of a specific country. Using data on a sample of common and civil law countries, we find support for (...) our predictions that a shareholder-focused common law legal origin is associated with significantly higher emissions of CO2, and also that international environmental agreements like the Kyoto protocol seem to have a more pronounced effect in shareholder-centric economies than thus far assumed. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the multilevel selection -1 to MLS-2 model of a major transition is incomplete because it overlooks a crucial component of fitness. It addresses that the evolution of individuality literature has failed to account for expansive fitness and that expansive fitness differences play an important role in the transition to regimes sensitive to the fitness of the corporate agent. It discusses multilevel evolution during the three phases of transitions in individuality: the aggregate phase, the group phase, and (...) the individual phase. This chapter shows that the path a lineage takes through the phases of transitions is not fixed, but determined by ecology. (shrink)

Law provides a rich language for thinking about bioethical issues and is a tool for action as well as talk. But the language of the law, often inapt, regularly fails to achieve its desired effect.

Carl Andresen (1909-1985) widmete sich seit seiner bahnbrechenden Studie Logos und Nomos (1955) dem Verhältnis von Antike und Christentum. Die gesammelten Studien leuchten dieses Feld der Begegnung in vielfältigen Facetten aus, von der Zuordnung von Theologie und Philosophie in den Debatten über die Trinität über Fragen der Ethik und Seelsorge bis zur Verteidigung des Wahrheitsanspruchs der Bibel gegenüber der philosophischen, besonders der platonischen Tradition. Die Apologeten der frühen Kirche sowie Augustin als integrale Gestalt der Spätantike stehen dabei im Mittelpunkt. (...) Andresen zeigt, dass und wie die Wahrheit der christlichen Botschaft sich im Horizont antiker Geistigkeit bewährte. Möglich war dies nur durch Anknüpfung und Kritik zugleich. Jenseits der Frage nach einer einlinigen Hellenisierung des Christentums macht Andresen deutlich, wie die Rezeption der Antike nicht nur Kirche und Theologie, sondern auch die Antike selbst neu gestaltete. (shrink)