Approximately one in two hundred persons in the Marshall Islands have active tuberculosis. We examine the historical antecedents of this situation in order to assign ethical responsibility for the present situation. Examining the antecedents in terms of Galtung’s dialectic of personal versus structural violence, we can identify instances in the history of the Marshall Islands when individual subjects made decisions with large-scale ecologic, social, and health consequences. The roles of medical experimenters, military commanders, captains of the weapons industry in particular, (...) and industrial capitalism in general are examined. In that, together with Lewontin, we also identify industrial capitalism as the cause of tuberculosis, we note that the distinction between personal versus structural violence is difficult to maintain. By identifying the cause of the tuberculosis in the Marshall Islands, we also identify what needs be done to treat and prevent it. (shrink)

This article takes up the concept of montage that has defined scholarship on Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz: Die Geschichte von Franz Biberkopf since its publication. Against interpretations that understand the novel’s technique of montage as related to film and the avant-garde, I show that the novel is more strongly tied to paper objects and practices, above all the nineteenth-century serial novel and its medial environment in the newspaper. Approaching the novel from this perspective directs attention – in opposition to the (...) scholarship that has emphasized the experience of disruption produced by montage – to the significance of the plot and its highly gendered violence.ZusammenfassungSeit seiner Erstveröffentlichung wird Alfred Döblins Berlin Alexanderplatz: Die Geschichte von Franz Biberkopf durchweg unter dem Begriff der Montage verhandelt. Entgegen dieser Lektüre, die die Ästhetik des Montageschnitts mit Praktiken des Films und der Avantgarde verbindet, zeige ich, dass der Roman in einer Geschichte von Papierobjekten und Papierpraktiken zu verorten ist, zu der vor allem der Feuilletonroman des 19. Jahrhunderts mitsamt dessen medialem Umfeld gehört. Im Gegensatz zum Forschungskonsens, der die Erfahrung der Diskontinuität hervorhebt, lenkt eine Annäherung an den Roman aus der Perspektive von Papierpraktiken unsere Aufmerksamkeit auf die Bedeutung der Romanhandlung und die genderspezifische Gewalt, die sie kennzeichnet. (shrink)

Die Bildtheorie hat sich jüngst dem Begriff der Form zugewandt. Der interdisziplinäre Band verfolgt das Ziel, den vielfältigen Zusammenhängen von Form und Bild nachzugehen und ihre historischen, theoretischen und methodischen Voraussetzungen zu beleuchten. Das semantische Feld von Formbildung und Formbegriff umreisst einen Gegenstandsbereich, der eine doppelte Herangehensweise nahelegt: eine Untersuchung der theoretischen Implikationen von Formbegriffen der Moderne einerseits und eine historische Analyse spezifischer künstlerischer Positionen andererseits. Hat doch die Bildung konkreter Formen Auswirkungen auf deren begriffliche Reflexion. Der Terminus 'Form' bedeutet (...) ebenso emphatisch Grundform, auf das Wesentliche reduzierte Form, wie er die konkrete anschauliche Form in ihrer Gewordenheit, sinnlichen Fülle und Einbettung in kulturelle und kommunikative Zusammenhänge meint. (shrink)

A significant proportion of conservationists' work is directed towards efforts to save disappearing species. This relies upon the belief that species extinction is undesirable. When justifications are offered for this belief, they very often rest upon the assumption that extinction brought about by humans is different in kind from other forms of extinction. This paper examines this assumption and reveals that there is indeed good reason to suppose current anthropogenic extinctions to be different in kind from extinctions brought about at (...) other times or by other factors. Having considered – and rejected – quantity and rate of extinction as useful distinguishing factors, four alternative arguments are offered, each identifying a way in which anthropogenic extinction is significantly different from other forms of extinction, even mass extinction: (1) Humans are a different kind of natural cause from other causes of extinction; (2) Extinctions brought about by humans are uniquely persistent; (3) Anthropogenic extinctions are effectively random whereas past mass extinctions are rule-bound; (4) The impact of the current anthropogenic extinction event differs from the impact of other extinction events of the past, such that future recovery may not follow past patterns. Together, these four arguments suggest that the present-day extinction event brought about by humans may be unprecedented and that we cannot clearly extrapolate from past to present recovery from extinctions. Although insufficient as justification for the claim that present-day extinctions are undesirable, the arguments provide some ammunition for conservationists' conviction that species extinction – in which humans play an accelerating role – ought to be prevented. (shrink)

In the history of Russian philosophy, V. S. Solovyov is known as one of the prominent spokesmen of theological idealism. Lenin more than once pointed to the need to combat the ideas of this philosopher . He quite properly regarded them as the theoretical foundation of the ideology of "liberal renegacy.".

This volume presents new texts of Cicero's dialogues on political philosophy, De Re Publica and De Legibus, together with corrected versions of the editor's previously published editions of Cato Maior de Senectute and Laelius de Amicitia. The texts are based on a full reconsideration of the manuscript evidence and are presented in a clear and readable form.