This is a collection of four essays on aesthetic, ethical, and political issues by the pre-eminent Kant scholar in Germany today, perhaps best known for rekindling interest in the great classical German tradition from Kant to Fichte.

In everyday morality, "naturalness" is a positively charged term. It plays a significant role wherever technical progress opens up natural processes to human control. This book enquires into the motives for the privileged position of the natural over the artificial and seeks out its roots in the history of ideas.

This article makes a contribution to interface criticism through the notion of chrono-design: the deliberate shaping of experiences of temporality and time through contemporary software techniques and digital technologies. This notion is articulated through discussions of network optimisation, user experience design, behavioural tracking, Hansen’s work on 21st-century media and Hayles’ framework of cognitive assemblages. In particular, the argument considers how contemporary user interfaces complicate conventional notions of the rational, self-reflexive subject by operating beyond consciousness at vast environmental dimensions and accelerated (...) micro-temporal speeds. These conditions, we argue, provide opportunities for new forms of behavioural suspense and captivation best exemplified through the figure of the trap. The politics and aesthetics of captivation, accordingly, should be considered as central to any expanded ecology of cognition. The article then concludes with a short demonstration of experimental uses of chrono-design methods applied critically to political economies of user tracking and data capture as a prompt for further interdisciplinary applied research in this domain. (shrink)

„Negative Kausalität“ bezeichnet ein hochkontroverses metaphysisches Problem. Können negative Entitäten wie Abwesenheiten oder das Nicht-Eintreten bestimmter Ereignisse Ursachen oder Ursachenfaktoren sein? Diese Frage steht im Schnittpunkt einer Reihe disziplinübergreifender Grundfragen: der Frage nach dem Wesen von Kausalität, der Frage nach der Natur von Handlungen und Ereignissen und der Frage nach der Beziehung zwischen Kausalität und normativer - moralischer und rechtlicher - Verantwortlichkeit. Die vorliegende Studie entwickelt im ersten Schritt eine Konzeption von negativer Kausalität ausgehend vom Sonderfall der handlungsförmigen negativen Kausalität, (...) der Kausalität durch Unterlassen. In einem zweiten Schritt erkundet sie anhand des Ariadnefadens der Kausalität von Unterlassungen die terra incognita der Kausalität andersartiger „negativer Ereignisse“ wie Abwesenheiten und Nicht-Ereignissen. In einem dritten Schritt zieht sie Konsequenzen für hartnäckige Probleme wie die Aufteilung der Kausalität beim Zusammentreffen mehrer negativer Ursachen. _English_ The term “negative causality” denotes a highly controversial problem in metaphysics: Can negative entities such as the absence or the non-occurrence of certain events be causes or causal factors? This question is situated at the intersection of a series of fundamental questions that transcend disciplinary boundaries, questions concerning not only the nature of causality, actions, and events, but also the relationship between causality and moral and legal responsibility. This book is intended for philosophers, legal theorists, and theorists of science. (shrink)

Schmerzen, körperliche Erschöpfung, Erosionen oder Spuren zeitlichen Verfalls und ähnliches verweisen auf Erfahrungen, die sich diskursiver Einholung nicht ohne weiteres fügen. Mit dem Formlosen, der bloßen Materialität oder dem Chaos assoziiert, widersetzen sie sich den generellen Begriffen des Textes und des Verstehens. Zudem verweigern sie sich ihrer Entschlüsselung als Konstruktion - im Sinne ihrer begrifflichen Bezeichnung und Unterscheidung - wie auch ihrer Inszenierung als einer ästhetischen Praxis, weil sie in allen ihren Hervorbringungen als eine nicht aufgehende Heterogenität immer schon mitschwingen. (...) Denn es gibt keine Arbeit ohne den Rest, keinen Diskurs ohne das Nichteinholbare oder Undarstellbare, keine Technik ohne Versagen, kein Denken ohne die Widerständigkeit der Dinge, worin sie ebenso sehr verwickelt sind, wie sie diese verleugnen. Posthermeneutik ist der Versuch, diese 'andere', 'negative' Seite neu zu denken - und damit das mit einzubeziehen, was nicht Verstehen ist, aber ins Verstehen eingeht, was nicht Zeichen ist, aber notwendige Voraussetzung aller Zeichenprozesse bleibt, was nicht Sinn ist, aber die Bedeutungen stört, was nicht Medium ist, aber alle Medialität mitprägt. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga s Warranted Christian Belief has very quickly become one of the most influential books in philosophy of religion. In this collection of essays, German philosophers, theologians and a mathematician deal critically with several aspects of Plantinga s seminal work. In a long essay, Plantinga answers these critics.".

Krause’s philosophy deserves to be memorized as the first link in a chain of thinking on animal rights that is still on the way today. Though Krause was not the first to talk of animal rights in the history of animal ethics, his theory of animal rights is pathbreaking in embedding a conception of animal rights in an all-encompassing metaphysical system. The essay situates Krause’s theory of animal rights in the framework of his general theory of rights and points to (...) the challenges Krause’s theory faces by the inevitability of trade-offs between animal and human rights. (shrink)

There are many treatises concerning the soul. Plato was not the first to write on the subject. From Greek philosophy and religion the soul wandered over to Christianity. According to this religion, the soul accompanies the body, which it inhabits for a short while in order to then return to its primary homeland embodied in areas of primary existence and truth. There are many treatises concerning the soul. Plato was not the first to write on the subject. Wisława Szymborska, in (...) her collection of poems published in 2002 and titled A Moment, poses the most essential questions: Why does man exist? Why isn’t there nothingness? She also asks: What is the soul? Does man really possess a soul? What is the relationship between man and soul – to whom does the soul really belong? This is a treatise in the form of a poem which appears to be plain and modest, yet the questions it asks are fundamental. This interpretation aims to develop and translate from the language of poetry the religious and philosophical questions embraced by Szymborska’s poem. (shrink)

In media philosophy since Benjamin, the concept of medium is conceived in terms of »translation« or »transport«. In a similar vein, Christoph Tholen has brought the literal sense of »metaphor« as »meta-pherein« into focus. In my paper I argue that Tholen’s approach misses the »meta« of »metaphor«, corresponding to the Latin »trans«. This is contrasted with the greek »dia« that allows the development of a performative notion of medium, which orients itself at material practices of transition.

The following pages contain a partial edition of Husserl’s manuscript A I 35, pages 1a-28b. The first few pages are dated on May 1927 and are included mostly for completeness’ sake. The bulk of the manuscript convolute, however, is from 1912. Four pages of the convolute, 31a-34b, have been published as Beilage XII (210, 2–216, 2) in Hua XXXII. The manuscript was excluded from the text selection of Husserliana XXI3 based on its much later date of composition. A I 35/24a (...) is mentioned in Husserliana XXII (p. xxi, n. 4) as confirmation for Zermelo’s 1902 “oral report” to Husserl of his own independent discovery of the paradox. The text presented here for the first time has already been the target of at least three extensive commentaries, while still unpublished, by Claire Ortiz Hill and Guillermo Rosado Haddock. These present a good survey in english of the central issues on the text and contain many translated quotations. (shrink)

The status of being a subject, a self and being self-aware of it, is to be interpreted here through the process of the child‘s role play with the doll: By speaking to the doll, this inanimate being is seen as animate and becoming the alter ego of the child. Communicating with it thus means that the child speaks to it- self. It has thus established a — so to speak 'tautological‘ — self-relationship, a behavior in which it encounters only figures (...) of itself. This effect of reflexive tautologization, as I would like to say briefly, is decisive: The individual does not gain a self be- cause he puts himself in the other´s place — think of G.H. Mead — but because he rather eliminates the moment of otherness by means of reflexive tautologization and thus, in tautological self-execution, constitutes himself as self and ultimately as self- consciousness: role-playing as the self-fulfilling design of self- hood. Implicated thereby is, according to my argument, that the self-interpretation of the subject as free or as determined is essentially to be conceived as a self-fulfilling design — free is he who (with all conditionalities) 'designs' himself as free. And in turn, the demand for mutual recognition of the subjects results from this as well. ************************************************************************************************* Der Status, ein Subjekt, ein Selbst und dessen sich selbst bewusst zu sein, soll hier am Vorgang des kindlichen Rollenspiels mit der Puppe gedeutet werden: lndem das Kind zur Puppe spricht, kann dieses an sich Leblose begeistet und zum Alter Ego werden. Mit ihm kommunizieren bedeutet somit, dass das Kind vielmehr zu sich selbst spricht. Es hat damit ein — gleich- sam 'tautoIogisches‘ — Selbstverhältnis hergestellt, ein Verhal- ten, in dem ihm nur Gestalten seiner selbst begegnen. Dieser Effekt reflexiver Tautologisierung, wie ich kurz sagen möchte, ist entscheidend: Das lndividuum gewinnt nicht deshalb ein Selbst, weil es sich in den Andern versetzt — man denke an G.H. Mead —, sondern weil es vermittels reflexiver Tautologi- sierung das Moment der Andersheit vielmehr eliminiert und sich so, im tautologischen Selbstvollzug, als Selbst und letztlich als Selbst-Bewusstsein konstituiert: Rollenspiel als sich selbst er- füllender Entwurf von Selbstsein. lmpliziert ist damit, so mein Argument, dass die Selbstdeutung des Subjekts als frei oder als determiniert, essentiell als selbsterfüllender Entwurf zu be- greifen ist — frei ist, wer sich (bei allen Bedingtheiten) als frei 'entwirft'. Und im Gegenzug ergibt sich die Forderung wechsel- seitiger Anerkennung der Subjekte ebenso daraus. (shrink)

A particular notion of reason has pervaded studies of practical action throughout the whole tradition of western philosophy up to Wittgenstein and Heidegger. This notion has been centrally located in contexts other than the specific study of practical action itself.This essay examines the relation of reason and practical action by reviewing Habermas' and Husserl's theories of the relation between discourse and action (I), and then proposing Garfinkel's ethnomethodological studies of practical action as an alternative to Husserl's and Habermas' preoccupation with (...) the primacy of theoretical discourse (II). In a final section I shall interpret Garfinkel's studies, following his own suggestions as studies in practical ethics, and make reference to similar themes in philosophical ethics (Ill). (shrink)

Tropical forest conservation in developing countries has repeatedly been highlighted as a new element in international climate policy. However, no clear ideas yet exist as to what shape such a conservation strategy might take. In the present paper, we would like to make some observations to this end. It is shown how projects in order to reduce CO 2 -emissions resulting from deforestation and degradation (REDD) can be integrated into a system of tradable emission rights in an industrialised country and (...) which requirements ought to be fulfilled. Instruments are emission credits and emission allowances. Driving actors interested in emission rights through forest projects may be private investors or the rainforest state itself. The efficiency of the system depends on a great extent on a binding reference path for the tolerable emissions from deforestation, which has been agreed upon and adhered to by the rainforest country by means of a forest law aimed at limiting deforestation. Our considerations lead us to conclude that the national baseline approach with an appropriate contribution by the rainforest country coupled with a decentralised system with private investors seems the most viable option. Since additional burdens are imposed on the rainforest country to some extent, a compromise could consist of agreeing on a moderate deforestation path, which is harmonised with the benefits from the forest projects. Combining both programmes (offset credits and emission allowances) is particularly attractive because all participants, and especially the industrialised country, benefit from it. The industrialised country can expand its climate conservation programme without any additional costs to a certain degree. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno's famous aesthetic theory was not merely a theory of the aesthetic; it also made a wider claim about the aesthetic implications of all theory. At the same time we have to deal with aesthetic objects and events in which an aesthetic theory is inherent, which show themselves as art. From both sides--theory and aesthetics--a link can be made to the etymological meaning of theōria, which understands the theoretical as a seeing or perspective. Featuring lucid essays by major thinkers, (...) the book examines this link, focusing equally on the aesthetic implications of theory and the theoretical implications of aesthetic events. (shrink)

Exploratory analysis is an area of increasing interest in the computational linguistics arena. Pragmatically speaking, exploratory analysis may be paraphrased as natural language processing by means of analyzing large corpora of text. Concerning the analysis, appropriate means are statistics, on the one hand, and artificial neural networks, on the other hand. As a challenging application area for exploratory analysis of text corpora we may certainly identify text databases, be it information retrieval or information filtering systems. With this paper we present (...) recent findings of exploratory analysis based on both statistical and neural models applied to legal text corpora. Concerning the artificial neural networks, we rely on a model adhering to the unsupervised learning paradigm. This choice appears naturally when taking into account the specific properties of large text corpora where one is faced with the fact that input-output-mappings as required by supervised learning models cannot be provided beforehand to a satisfying extent. This is due to the fact of the highly changing contents of text archives. In a nutshell, artificial neural networks count for their highly robust behavior regarding the parameters for model optimization. In particular, we found statistical classification techniques much more susceptible to minor parameter variations than unsupervised artificial neural networks. In this paper we describe two different lines of research in exploratory analysis. First, we use the classification methods for concept analysis. The general goal is to uncover different meanings of one and the same natural language concept. A task that, obviously, is of specific importance during the creation of thesauri. As a convenient environment to present the results we selected the legal term of neutrality, which is a perfect representative of a concept having a number of highly divergent meanings. Second, we describe the classification methods in the setting of document classification. The ultimate goal in such an application is to uncover semantic similarities of various text documents in order to increase the efficiency of an information retrieval system. In this sense, document classification has its fixed position in information retrieval research from the very beginning. Nowadays renewed massive interest in document classification may be witnessed due to the appearance of large-scale digital libraries. (shrink)