Die Existenz einer zentralisierten, funktional differenzierten, professionalisierten und hierarchisch gegliederten Bürokratie gilt seit jeher als ein charakteristisches Merkmal spätrömischer Staatlichkeit. Tatsächlich stellte dieser Apparat in seinen Dimensionen und in seiner Komplexität alles in den Schatten, was das griechisch-römische Altertum vorher aufzuweisen hatte, auch wenn seine Ausbildung bereits in der frühen Kaiserzeit begann und sich im Laufe des 3. Jahrhunderts rapide beschleunigte, wie jüngst Peter EICH (Zur Metamorphose des politischen Systems in der römischen Kaiserzeit. Die Entstehung einer „personalen Bürokratie“ im langen (...) dritten Jahrhundert. Berlin 2005) mit guten Argumenten wahrscheinlich gemacht hat. Auch ist unbestreitbar, daß diese Bürokratie als Instrument der Zentralisierung staatlicher Funktionen diente und daher den Handlungsspielraum lokaler Autoritäten, der in der frühen Kaiserzeit nach modernen Kriterien sehr groß gewesen war, zunehmend einengte. Der in Cambridge lehrende Althistoriker Christopher KELLY geht der Frage nach, wie diese auf ein monarchisches Zentrum ausgerichtete Bürokratie funktionierte und welche Auswirkungen ihre Existenz für Regierende und Regierte hatte. (shrink)

The existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers is the father of a discourse on the spiritual consequences of the Holocaust. First addressed as the Schuldfrage (the question of guilt) by Jaspers immediately after the Second World War in his famous Heidelberg lecture, it has reappeared in various forms in German life and letters. Post-unification Germany has witnessed the valorization of the German experience of the Second World War. This ongoing re-evaluation has its antecedents in the generational literature of the 1970s and 1980s. (...) Whereas the Vaterliteratur of the 1970s (by authors such as Christoph Meckel, Uwe Timm, and Peter Henisch) was often embedded in a left-wing critique of the establishment, recent contributions to this growing genre (by Marcel Beyer, Stephan Wackwitz, Wibke Bruhns, and Ulla Hahn among others) speak to the issue of collective identity and transgenerational family trauma outside distinct left- and right-wing interpretations of National Socialism. The current writings on the life during the Third Reich (filtered through the experiences of discrete generations) are a confluence of historical writing, memorial literature, biography, and fiction. They are closely related to the discussions that W. G. Sebald initiated in his 1997 lecture series on the silence of German postwar literature with respect to German suffering. The subsequent debate on how to bring closure to this ?German suffering? was intensified by Günter Grass's widening of the concept of German victimization beyond the air war controversy in his book Crabwalk (2002). As Grass distinguishes clearly between the various post-World War II generations (and their different perspectives on historical events), the question becomes whether these recent writings will bring about a final so-called ?zero hour? in German postwar history. (shrink)

For Aristotle, a just political community has to find similarity in difference and foster habits of reciprocity. Conventionally, speech and law have been seen to fulfill this role. This article reconstructs Aristotle’s conception of currency ( nomisma) as a political institution of reciprocal justice. By placing Aristotle’s treatment of reciprocity in the context of the ancient politics of money, currency emerges not merely as a medium of economic exchange but also potentially as a bond of civic reciprocity, a measure of (...) justice, and an institution of ethical deliberation. Reconstructing this account of currency ( nomisma) in analogy to law ( nomos) recovers the hopes Aristotle placed in currency as a necessary institution particular to the polis as a self-governing political community striving for justice. If currency was a foundational institution, it was also always insufficient, likely imperfect, and possibly tragic. Turned into a tool for the accumulation of wealth for its own sake, currency becomes unjust and a serious threat to any political community. Aristotelian currency can fail precisely because it contains an important moment of ethical deliberation. This political significance of currency challenges accounts of the ancient world as bifurcated between oikos and polis and encourages contemporary political theorists to think of money as a constitutional project that can play an important role in improving reciprocity across society. (shrink)

In diesem Band werden bioethische Debatten behandelt, die sich unter den islamischen Rechtsgelehrten seit den 1980er Jahren entwickelt haben. Der Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf Fragen des Lebensanfangs, die sich anhand der Diskussion um den rechten Umgang mit Embryonen vor dem Hintergrund neuer Moglichkeiten der modernen Reproduktionsmedizin entwickelten. Dabei wird der Frage nachgegangen, wie sich moderne islamische Rechtsdiskussionen konkret entwickeln und welche Konzepte oder Faktoren diese Entwicklung beeinflussen.So wird nachgezeichnet, wie Mitte der 1980er Jahre Definitionen uber den Beginn menschlichen Lebens und (...) der damit verbundenen Schutzrechte des Ungeborenen vorgenommen wurden, bis dato in dieser Form von islamischen Rechtsgelehrten kaum oder gar nicht vertreten worden waren. Darauf aufbauend wird gezeigt, wie sich die Diskussion des Status von extra-korporalen Embryonen - einer Kernfrage bei der Bewertung gentechnologischen Fortschritts - zu Beginn der 1990er Jahre unter den fuqaha entwickelte. Dabei zeigt sich, dass sich wegen methodischen Problemen bislang unter Rechtsgelehrten keinerlei Konsens uber grundlegende Fragen zum Beginn menschlichen Lebens etabliert hat, der einer kritischen Analyse standhalten wurde. Im Anschluss daran werden islamische Rechtsmeinungen zu den vier Themenbereichen "Praimplantationsdiagnostik", "Abtreibung nach Pranataldiagnostik", "Klonen beim Menschen" und "Vaterschaftstests" vorgestellt.In diesem Band wird der Bezug zwischen theoretischen Diskussionen und ihren praktischen Auswirkungen in den Landern mit mehrheitlich muslimischer Bevolkerung aufgezeigt. Uber das engere Fachgebiet hinaus besteht die Bedeutung des Buches darin, dass es die modernen islamischen Rechtsmeinungen auf die ihr zu Grunde liegenden Konzepte hin durchleuchtet und somit hilft, diese Meinungen in bioethischen Debatten etwa in Deutschland besser einordnen und gegebenenfalls einbeziehen oder zuruckweisen zu konnen. (shrink)

Written in debate format, this book covers developing fields such as social cognition, as well as classic areas such as memory, learning, perception and categorization. The links between emotion and memory, learning, perception, categorization, social judgements, and behavior are addressed.

Money in the history of political thought, from ancient Greece to the Great Inflation of the 1970s In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, critical attention has shifted from the economy to the most fundamental feature of all market economies—money. Yet despite the centrality of political struggles over money, it remains difficult to articulate its democratic possibilities and limits. The Currency of Politics takes readers from ancient Greece to today to provide an intellectual history of money, drawing on the (...) insights of key political philosophers to show how money is not just a medium of exchange but also a central institution of political rule. Money appears to be beyond the reach of democratic politics, but this appearance—like so much about money—is deceptive. Even when the politics of money is impossible to ignore, its proper democratic role can be difficult to discern. Stefan Eich examines six crucial episodes of monetary crisis, recovering the neglected political theories of money in the thought of such figures as Aristotle, John Locke, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes. He shows how these layers of crisis have come to define the way we look at money, and argues that informed public debate about money requires a better appreciation of the diverse political struggles over its meaning. Recovering foundational ideas at the intersection of monetary rule and democratic politics, The Currency of Politics explains why only through greater awareness of the historical limits of monetary politics can we begin to articulate more democratic conceptions of money. (shrink)

This paper uses social network analysis to examine the interaction between corporate blogs devoted to sustainability issues and the blogosphere, a clustered online network of collaborative actors. By analyzing the structural embeddedness of a prototypical blog in a virtual community, we show the potential of online platforms to document corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and to engage with an increasingly socially and ecologically aware stakeholder base. The results of this study show that stakeholder involvement via sustainability blogs is a valuable (...) new practice for CSR communications and stakeholder engagement. It also opens new horizons for communicating CSR issues to key constituencies online. (shrink)

Muslim Medical Ethics draws on the work of historians, health-care professionals, theologians, and social scientists to produce an interdisciplinary view of ...

Die westeuropäischen Staaten und die westeuropäischen sozialen Felder der Neuzeit sind in ihrer Formationsphase von einer höfischen Kultur und höfischen politischen Konfigurationen geprägt worden. Prägestock der griechisch-römischen Zivilisation war jedoch durchgängig eine urbane Kultur. Der Niedergang der typischen antiken Stadt ist ein Aspekt der Zäsur zwischen der alten Welt und dem europäischen Mittelalter. Der letzten Phase primär städtisch dominierten mediterranen Lebens in der östlichen Mittelmeerwelt, bevor im siebten Jahrhundert eine Desurbanisierung Platz greift oder an Dynamik gewinnt, ist die Studie von (...) A. Laniado, „Recherches sur les notables municipaux dans l'Empire protobyzantin“, gewidmet, die darauf abzielt, „à étudier d'une manière globale l'aristocratie municipale dans la vaste territoire de l'Empire protobyzantin, sans pour autant méconnaître l'existence de particularités régionales (XIII)“, da, wie L. mit Recht vermerkt, eine komprehensive Analyse der städtischen Eliten für diesen Zeitraum seit langem ein Forschungsdesiderat darstellt (1). (shrink)

The following paper suggests a connection between recent developments in the justification of the capitalist system and contemporary European Liberal Arts programs. By looking at Luc Boltanski’s and Eve Chiapello’s study on The New Spirit Of Capitalism and Gilles Deleuze’s term of societies of control we highlight a pivot within Western societies towards flexibility, creativity and self-fulfillment as essential requirements on the job market. We then link this observation to European Liberal Arts programs and ask to what extent the Liberal (...) Arts’ self-understanding, as it appears at European universities, conforms to this new capitalist imperative. Furthermore, we examine how we experienced these claims during our time as Liberal Arts students. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

The paper argues that an account of understanding should take the form of a Carnapian explication and acknowledge that understanding comes in degrees. An explication of objectual understanding is defended, which helps to make sense of the cognitive achievements and goals of science. The explication combines a necessary condition with three evaluative dimensions: an epistemic agent understands a subject matter by means of a theory only if the agent commits herself sufficiently to the theory of the subject matter, and to (...) the degree that the agent grasps the theory (i.e., is able to make use of it), the theory answers to the facts and the agent’s commitment to the theory is justified. The threshold for outright attributions of understanding is determined contextually. The explication has descriptive as well as normative facets and allows for the possibility of understanding by means of non-explanatory (e.g., purely classificatory) theories. (shrink)

This handbook article gives a critical overview of recent discussions of epistemic authority. It favors an account that brings into balance the dictates of rational deference with the ideals of intellectual self-governance. A plausible starting point is the conjecture that neither should rational deference to authorities collapse into total epistemic submission, nor the ideal of mature intellectual self-governance be conflated with (illusions of) epistemic autarky.

Assertion is the central vehicle for the sharing of knowledge. Whether knowledge is shared successfully often depends on the quality of assertions: good assertions lead to successful knowledge sharing, while bad ones don't. In Sharing Knowledge, Christoph Kelp and Mona Simion investigate the relation between knowledge sharing and assertion, and develop an account of what it is to assert well. More specifically, they argue that the function of assertion is to share knowledge with others. It is this function that (...) supports a central norm of assertion according to which a good assertion is one that has the disposition to generate knowledge in others. The book uses this functionalist approach to motivate further norms of assertion on both the speaker and the hearer side and investigates ramifications of this view for other questions about assertion. (shrink)

This paper connects two important debates in epistemology—to wit, on the goal of inquiry and on the nature of understanding—and offers a unified knowledge-based account of both.

This paper aims to develop a novel account of the normativity of assertion. Its core thesis is that assertion has an etiological epistemic function, viz. to generate knowledge in hearers. In conjunction with a general account of etiological functions and their normative import, it is argued that an assertion is epistemically good if and only if it has the disposition to generate knowledge in hearers. In addition, reason is provided to believe that it makes sense to regulate the practice of (...) assertion by a speaker rule—and, more specifically, by a knowledge rule—as so regulating assertion contributes to ensuring that assertion fulfils its etiological function reliably. (shrink)

One of the key tenets of Linda Zagzebski’s book " Epistemic Authority" is the Preemption Thesis. It says that, when an agent learns that an epistemic authority believes that p, the rational response for her is to adopt that belief and to replace all of her previous reasons relevant to whether p by the reason that the authority believes that p. I argue that such a “Hobbesian approach” to epistemic authority yields problematic results. This becomes especially virulent when we apply (...) Preemption to cases in which the agent and the authority share their belief, maybe even for the same reasons, or in which both have either a positive or a negative graded doxastic attitude toward a given proposition. As an alternative I propose a “Socratic account”, according to which the authority will not only motivate us to adopt her belief, but also provide us with higher-order reasons for re-assigning our own considerations their proper place in the web of reasons for and against the view in question. (shrink)

Suppose you ask yourself whether your father's record collection includes a certain recording of The Trout and venture to find out. At that time, you embark on an inquiry into whether your father owns the relevant recording. Your inquiry is a project with a specific goal: finding out whether your father owns the recording. This fact about your inquiry generalizes: inquiry is a goal-directed enterprise. A specific inquiry can be individuated by the question it aims to answer and by who (...) aims to answer the question. Your inquiry into whether your father owns the recording differs from your inquiry into how many records your father owns because different questions are being asked. Your inquiry into whether your father owns the recording differs from my inquiry into whether he does because different people are inquiring. The goal of inquiry into a given question by an agent, α, can be characterized, neutrally, as α's having the answer to that question. I will here focus only on inquiries into whether questions and characterize the goal of inquiry into whether φ by α as α's having the answer to the question whether φ. (shrink)

In this paper, we develop a general normative framework for criticisability, blamelessness and blameworthiness in action. We then turn to the debate on norms of assertion. We show that an application of this framework enables champions of the so-called knowledge rule of assertion to offer a theoretically motivated response to a number of putative counterexamples in terms of blamelessness. Finally, we argue that, on closer inspection, the putative counterexamples serve to confirm the knowledge rule and disconfirm rival views.

In temporal binding, the temporal interval between one event and another, occurring some time later, is subjectively compressed. We discuss two ways in which temporal binding has been conceptualized. In studies showing temporal binding between a voluntary action and its causal consequences, such binding is typically interpreted as providing a measure of an implicit or pre-reflective “sense of agency”. However, temporal binding has also been observed in contexts not involving voluntary action, but only the passive observation of a cause-effect sequence. (...) In those contexts, it has been interpreted as a top-down effect on perception reflecting a belief in causality. These two views need not be in conflict with one another, if one thinks of them as concerning two separate mechanisms through which temporal binding can occur. In this paper, we explore an alternative possibility: that there is a unitary way of explaining temporal binding both within and outside the context of voluntary action as a top-down effect on perception reflecting a belief in causality. Any such explanation needs to account for ways in which agency, and factors connected with agency, have been shown to affect the strength of temporal binding. We show that principles of causal inference and causal selection already familiar from the literature on causal learning have the potential to explain why the strength of people’s causal beliefs can be affected by the extent to which they are themselves actively involved in bringing about events, thus in turn affecting binding. (shrink)