Wie soll sich der Mensch jenseits radikaler Vernunftkritik verstehen? Gernot Böhme gibt darauf die Antwort: in der Polarität von Ich und Selbst. Von Nietzsche und Freud bis hin zu Foucault ist das Konzept des autonomen Vernunftmenschen einer radikalen Kritik unterzogen worden. Wie soll sich der Mensch jenseits dieser Kritik selbst verstehen? In der Polarität von Ich und Selbst. Dabei ist das Ich die gesellschaftlich verlangte intellektuell konsistente und moralisch verantwortliche Person. Sie ist dem Einzelnen nicht gegeben, sondern muss ausgebildet (...) werden. Das Selbst ist jenes von Nietzsche genannte Große Selbst, der Leib, das Unbewusste. Es handelt sich allgemeiner um die Bestände, in denen der Einzelne sich in betroffener Selbstgegebenheit findet. Es gilt sich in Lebensformen einzuüben, in denen der Mensch als Person zugleich aus dem Selbst als der Quelle seiner Subjektivität lebt. (shrink)

Philosophischer Essay über Sokrates (ca. 470-399 v. Chr.) und seine Zeit.

More than three decades after Gernot Böhme and Nico Stehr began to explore modern "knowledge societies", the concept has transformed sociological inquiry into the dynamics of contemporary society. But a quick Google search shows that the term is not only limited to academic circles. Moreover, international bodies such as the OECD underline the importance of transformative processes towards knowledge societies for global tertiary education and point to the importance of "inclusive knowledge societies for sustainable development". This book brings together (...) Nico Stehr's key writings on the knowledge society and serves as an authoritative resource for students, scholars, and professionals. Previously published articles and chapters have been carefully selected to take the reader from the formulation and refinement of the concept to scholarly contributions that test the applicability and explanatory power of the concept in empirical case studies. In addition, the volume includes new and original material by Nico Stehr that will help the next generation of scholars find ways to explore novel and pressing issues such as the role of digital technologies and AI in modern knowledge societies and future inequalities in knowledge capitalism. (shrink)

The role of chance in historiography is a major question for the analysis of cultural transformations. Its main subject are the transformations of contingentia itself, which has undergone substantial changes in its mythical forms (as Tyche or Fortuna) as well in its historical expressions in philosophy, theology, politics, sciences, literature and art.

Mysterium pansophicum -- Sex puncta theosophica -- Sex puncta mystica.

Study on Advaita philosophy and mysticism in the works of Niścaladāsa, d. 1863, religious leader of Dadupanthis, Hindu sect.

Study of Siddhāntabindu of Madhusūdana Sarasvatī, commentary on Daśaślokī of Śaṅkarācārya, work on Vedanta philosophy.

There is fast-growing awareness of the role atmospheres play in architecture. Of equal interest to contemporary architectural practice as it is to aesthetic theory, this 'atmospheric turn' owes much to the work of the German philosopher Gernot Böhme. Atmospheric Architectures: The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces brings together Böhme's most seminal writings on the subject, through chapters selected from his classic books and articles, many of which have hitherto only been available in German. This is the only translated version authorised (...) by Böhme himself, and is the first coherent collection deploying a consistent terminology. It is a work which will provide rich references and a theoretical framework for ongoing discussions about atmospheres and their relations to architectural and urban spaces. Combining philosophy with architecture, design, landscape design, scenography, music, art criticism, and visual arts, the essays together provide a key to the concepts that motivate the work of some of the best contemporary architects, artists, and theorists: from Peter Zumthor, Herzog & de Meuron and Juhani Pallasmaa to Olafur Eliasson and James Turrell. With a foreword by Professor Mark Dorrian and an afterword by Professor David Leatherbarrow,, the volume also includes a general introduction to the topic, including coverage of it history, development, areas of application and conceptual apparatus. (shrink)

Interest in sensory atmospheres and architectural and urban ambiances has been growing for over 30 years. A key figure in this field is acclaimed German philosopher Gernot Böhme whose influential conception of what atmospheres are and how they function has been only partially available to the English-speaking public. This translation of key essays along with an original introduction charts the development of Gernot Böhme's philosophy of atmospheres and how it can be applied in various contexts such as scenography, (...) commodity aesthetics, advertising, architecture, design, and art. The phenomenological analysis of atmospheres has proved very fruitful and its most important, and successful, application has been within aesthetics. The material background of this success may be seen in the ubiquitous aestheticization of our lifeworld, or from another perspective, of the staging of everything, every event and performance. The theory of atmospheres becoming an aesthetic theory thus reveals the theatrical, not to say manipulative, character of politics, commerce, of the event-society. But, taken as a positive theory of certain phenomena, it offers new perspectives on architecture, design, and art. It made the spatial and the experience of space and places a central subject and hence rehabilitated the ephemeral in the arts. Taking its numerous impacts in many fields together, it initiated a new humanism: the individual as a living person and his or her perspective are taken seriously, and this fosters the ongoing democratization of culture, in particular the possibility for everybody to participate in art and its works. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTo build a process model of the understanding of conditionals we extract a common core of three semantics of if-then sentences: the conditional event interpretation in the coherencebased probability logic, the discourse processingtheory of Hans Kamp, and the game-theoretical approach of Jaakko Hintikka. The empirical part reports three experiments in which each participant assessed the probability of 52 if-then sentencesin a truth table task. Each experiment included a second task: An n-back task relating the interpretation of conditionals to working memory, (...) a Bayesian bookbag and poker chip task relating the interpretation of conditionals to probability updating, and a probabilistic modus ponens task relating the interpretation of conditionals to a classical inference task. Data analysis shows that the way in which the conditionals are interpreted correlates with each of the supplementary tasks. The results are discussed within the process model proposed in the introduction. (shrink)

À partir d’éléments théoriques situés au fondement de sa conception des atmosphères (espace pensé à partir de la présence charnelle vs conception géométrique de l’espace comme topos ou spatium ; notion de Befindlichkeit ou « disposition affective » ; réflexions sur la perception), le présent texte de Gernot Böhme offre une synthèse tout à fait remarquable de ses réflexions tissées entre architecture et atmosphères. Il s’agit dès lors, pour le philosophe allemand, de chercher tout autant à penser la spécificité (...) esthétique de l’architecture que de permettre de situer celle-ci de manière adéquate face aux enjeux du monde contemporain, ou encore d’inciter les architectes à réfléchir leur pratique dans et par le type de rapport à l’espace, au monde et aux hommes qui se manifeste dans la méditation de la notion d’« atmosphères ». (shrink)

Recently, there has been renewed interest in so-called evidence-based policy making. Enticed by the grand promises of Big Data, public officials seem increasingly inclined to experiment with more data-driven forms of governance. But while the rise of Big Data and related consequences has been a major issue of concern across different disciplines, attempts to develop a better understanding of the phenomenon's historical foundations have been rare. This short commentary addresses this gap by situating the current push for numerical evidence within (...) a broader socio-political context, demonstrating how the epistemological claims of Big Data science intersect with specific forms of trust, truth, and objectivity. We conclude by arguing that regulators' faith in numbers can be attributed to a distinct political culture, a representative democracy undermined by pervasive public distrust and uncertainty. (shrink)

The threat-advantage hypothesis that threatening or negative faces can be discriminated preattentively has often been tested in the visual search paradigm with schematic stimuli. The results have been heterogeneous, suggesting that the choice of particular stimuli have profound effects on search efficiency. Because this conclusion is hampered by differences in experimental procedure, I selected examples from past literature and presented replicas of stimulus pairs (schematic positive and negative faces) in a within-participants design. Although there was a consistent advantage for angry-face (...) targets, search efficiency varied between 8 and 35 ms/item, yielding no clear evidence for the threat-advantage hypothesis. Furthermore, search efficiency for negative- and positive-face targets was highly correlated over stimulus pairs, which implies that whatever complicates the search for the negative face of a pair also complicates the search for the positive face. This results pattern argues against the hypothesised preattentive detector. (shrink)

Gernot Böhme discusses the nature of moral good in the light of what he calls proto-ethics, considering how to be human “well.” Here the predicate “good” takes on an adverbial and not an adjectival form, and Böhme refers to the Aristotelian distinction between praxis and poiesis to show that today's activistic civilisation with its emphasis on achievement as the effect of activity has deprived humans of their ability to focus on activity itself. Böhme rejects ideologies which profess the “enhancement” (...) of humans by medical/pharmacological means, and instead postulates the recrea-tion of praxis skills by physical and spiritual training, especially in human relations with nature and the own body. Backing this postulate are numerous examples of how to be human “well.”. (shrink)

Gernot Böhme defines meditation as achieving specific states of consciousness by concentration and “switching off” the attention usually paid to diverse areas of everyday life. Böhme goes on to discuss what he considers to be the main meditation-generated forms of consciousness, like non-intentional consciousness, empty consciousness, consciousness of presence, the awareness of nonduality, and self-awareness, which extends beyond the normal sense of identity and reveals the hidden, unconscious dimensions of the deeper self. Böhme anchors these reflections in his philosophical (...) critique of today’s reified consumerism and postulates the inclusion of this inquiry path in classical epistemological analysis. (shrink)