One of the reasons why empathy is a topic of enduring interest is the role it can play in understanding others. Empathy can help us to predict each other’s future actions and explain past ones; to...

The brutal wars in Iraq, Syria and now Ukraine have caused a massive influx of refugees to Europe. Turkey alone has received more than 4.8 million refugees. An important precondition for their economic and social incorporation is trust: refugees need to trust the citizens as well as the state and the justice system to find their place in the host country. Yet refugees’ propensity to trust may be affected by cultural differences between their home and host countries, their personal conflict (...) exposure and the experiences they had on the run. This study investigates how individual differences in exposure to armed conflict and institutional breakdown shape two types of trust among refugees: Generalized social trust and trust in the institutions of the settlement country. We survey a large and diverse sample of refugees from Syria and Iraq living in Turkish communities and deploy well-established measures of conflict exposure, posttraumatic stress, and posttraumatic growth. We find that higher degrees of conflict exposure are positively related to social trust, and to trust in courts and the police. These positive findings are largely driven by refugees who had very personal and emotionally powerful experiences. The psychological mechanism of posttraumatic growth cannot explain these findings, however, suggesting positive experiences of cooperation in the midst of war and displacement are potentially a better explanation for this finding than positive psychological changes resulting from trauma. At the same time, conflict exposure is negatively related to trust in political institutions. Posttraumatic stress may be the mechanism behind this result. We discuss the implications of these findings for the integration of war refugees—a topic that is tragically of great relevance today. (shrink)

Temporal loops in which two agents are involved in a circle of reactive attitudes create a puzzle concerning who harms whom. I argue that this puzzle, which has been developed by Stephen Kearns in a recent paper in this journal, should be solved by accepting that the situation involves normative indeterminacy. A supervaluationist treatment of this indeterminacy allows us to maintain that the normative supervenes on the non-normative and that the involved agents are in normatively symmetric situations. It further allows (...) to maintain that it is determinately the case that one agent wrongs the other just in case the latter does not wrong the former. I conclude by tentatively arguing that the indeterminacy involved should not be understood as semantic and that the puzzle provides us with a novel case of indeterminacy in reality. (shrink)

The following translation is a reduced and revised version of the paper Schicksal Nietzsche? Zu Nietzsches Selbsteinschätzung als Schicksal der Philosophie und der Menschheit " - originally published in Nietzsche-Studien 37 - which was specially prepared to be presented in lecture organized by the Grupo de Pesquisa Spinoza & Nietzsche, in the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, on September 14, 2009. In the text, the autor employs his own philological-hermeneutical methodology, which is called contextual interpretation, in the purpose to (...) clarify the concepts of the first aphorism from "Why I am a destiny", from Ecce Homo, in its own context, in the context of Ecce Homo and in the context of the entire work from Nietzsche. (shrink)

In the ethical discussion of anti-doping, a number of normative arguments rely on empirical premises. The truth of these premises, however, often remains unverified. This article identifies several...

Este artículo se refiere a la doctrina práctica de Aquino sobre dos dificultades filosóficas que subyacen en gran parte del debate ético contemporáneo. Una es la Is-ought thesis de Hume y la otra es su consecuencia radical la Open-question argument de Moore. Estas paradojas éticas parecen tener sus raíces en un scepticismo epistemológico y en una antropología deficiente. La posible respuesta a ellas se puede encontrar en que: a) Tomás de Aquino defiende la esencial racionalidad y unidad del ser humano; (...) b) La ley natural tomista es una consecuencia natural del ser racional; c) La razón humana es esencialmente teórica y práctica al mismotiempo. El intelecto humano de Aquino naturalmente realiza tres operaciones principales: 1º) Aprehender las nociones inteligidas y universales ens, verum y bonum. 2º) Formular los primeros principios teóricos y prácticos. 3º) Ordenar que se haga el bien inteligido y universal y se evite lo contrario. Por estas razones,la respuesta filosófica de Aquino a ambas dificultades no es exclusivamente ética, sino que abarca armónicamente la ontología, antropología y epistemología. La ética de Tomás de Aquino es fundamentalmente diferente de las éticas que califican las acciones como buenas o por mero consenso social (contractualismo) o simplemente calculando sus consecuencias (consecuencialismo). (shrink)

Both nihilism and universalism are historical products of Western speculative philosophy. The failure of this philosophy to discover universally valid laws resulted in widespread despair, which at times created a suicidal atmosphere. The other worldly promises offered by dualistic world models made an escape into an alternate world attractive. This paper investigates whether Nietzsche’s proposal to rekindle the fire of life by recovering the Dionysian spirit in creative work is a feasible alternative to nihilistic despair. It goes on to investigate (...) whether a new sense of community and collaborative ethics can be distilled from a renewed engagement with nature. Recent scientific discoveries and experiential evidence could lead to a reformulation of virtue ethics based on naturalistic sources. (shrink)

The article examines the extent to which the scope for social design of responsibility regimes is limited by pre-positive boundaries. A distinction is made between purely performative, purely constitutive and normative attributions of responsibility. It is argued that statements about pre-positive responsibilities in a broad area are only possible depending on specific normative-ethical theories. Nevertheless, the article attempts to defend both an outer limit of possible attributions of responsibility and a minimum content of any plausible ethics of responsibility. The outer (...) limit is characterised by the principle 'ultra posse nemo obligatur', the minimum content results from a reflection on the general normative preconditions of each specific attribution of responsibility. This reflection also allows for some tentative considerations regarding the interpretation of processes of transnationalisation. (shrink)

A growing number of small fashion entrepreneurs seek to offer an alternative to the mainstream fashion industry, which, in its obsession with novelty and growth, often ignores the costs to society and the environment. There is a need to develop a deeper understanding of how these fashion entrepreneurs may be agents for change in their industry. Using rich data from an in-depth study of 27 UK-based entrepreneurs, we offer such analysis, drawing on a novel framework that combines MacIntyre’s virtue ethics (...) scheme and Jonas’s responsibility imperative. We identify key virtues—passionate commitment, authenticity, humility, sharing and empowering, and temperance—which shape the entrepreneurs’ practices in line with their accepted and perceived responsibility for sustainability. These virtues shape the entrepreneurial processes that seek an active negotiation and harmonisation of sustainability and the demands of business. In particular, we pay attention to the different ways in which fashion entrepreneurs take responsibility for sustainability which ranges from a ‘growth for impact’ strategy to staying small and seeking impact through influence and replication. Conclusions are drawn on conceptualising the varieties of ‘postgrowth entrepreneurship’ that aligns the virtues of a deep-rooted sense of responsibility with business goals. This shows what can be possible and prefigures an alternative fashion industry. (shrink)

This NATO Advanced Study Institute centered on large-scale molecular systems: Quantum mechanics, although providing a general framework for the description of matter, is not easily applicable to many concrete systems of interest; classical statistical methods, on the other hand, allow only a partial picture of the behaviour of large systems. The aim of the ASI was to present both aspects of the subject matter and to foster interaction between the scientists working in these important areas of theoretical physics and theoretical (...) chemistry. The quantum-mechanical part was mostly based on the operator-algebraic formulation of quantum mechanics and comprised quantum statistics of infinite systems with special em phasis on macroscopic observables, equilibrium conditions, irreversibility on the one hand, symmetry breaking for molecules in the radiation field and macroscopic quantum phenomena in the theory of superconductivity (BCS-theory) on the other hand. In addition, phase-space methods for many-body systems were also presented. Statistical physics was the main topic in the other lectures of the School; much emphasis was put on the statistical features of macros copic ("large") systems, the lectures dealt with mass and energy transport im polymers, in gels and in microemulsions, with aggregation and growth phenomena, with relaxation in complex, correlated systems, with conduction and optical properties of polymers, and with the means of describing disordered systems, above all fractals and related hierarchical models. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzsche-Studien Jahrgang: 44 Heft: 1 Seiten: 5-14.

Die Reihe Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung setzt seit mehreren Jahrzehnten die Agenda in der sich stetig verändernden Nietzsche-Forschung. Die Bände sind interdisziplinär und international ausgerichtet und spiegeln das gesamte Spektrum der Nietzsche-Forschung wider, von der Philosophie über die Literaturwissenschaft bis zur politischen Theorie. Die Reihe veröffentlicht Monographien und Sammelbände, die einem strengen Peer-Review-Verfahren unterliegen. Die Buchreihe wird von einem internationalen Redaktionsteam geleitet.

By now scholars agree that the foundation of the University of Berlin in 1810 and its glorification through the “Humboldtian myth” must be viewed separately. Nevertheless, ever since the 1910 centennial, historiography has rarely gone beyond references to the historical documents edited by Rudolf Köpke and Max Lenz. Analyzing the lectures announced in the university calendar for the fall semester 1810/11, the essay shows that applied science and vocational training played a larger role than assumed. In founding the university, it (...) seems, the authorities looked rather for the advancement of the common public interest than for the realization of a “Bildungsideal”. This essay pleads, therefore, for a comprehensive reassessment of the historical documents from the planning and founding stages of the University of Berlin. (shrink)

Von theologischer wir philosophischer Seite wird bisweilen gefordert, Vergebung müsse unbedingt sein. Darüber hinaus wird bei Psychotherapeuten die therapeutische Wirkung der Vergebung betont, so dass Vergebung im Eigeninteresse der gekränkten oder geschädigten Personen zu liegen scheint. Dabei werden Gesichtspunkte der Gerechtigkeit und der Prävention und der Selbstachtung des Opfers übersehen, wie die im Artikel aufgezeigten Vorbehalte deutlich machen können. Dabei kommt speziell die Perspektive der Geschädigten, der Opfer stärker in den Blick. Außerdem sind die einschlägigen Mahnungen im Neuen Testament, die (...) die Unbedingtheit der Forderung nach Vergebung zu bestätigen scheinen, bei genauer Betrachtung durchaus differenzierter. (shrink)

Este artículo académico trata sobre cómo Aquino entendía: a) la aprehensión de las primeras nociones intelectas universales: ens, verum et bonum simpliciter; b) la fructificación de los primeros preceptos y de los segundos preceptos prácticos en la persona genuinamente humana o racional; c) la ética, ley moral natural, como esencialmente derivada de la ontología. Ens compuesto de naturaleza humana, entendida metafísicamente y acto del ser, ordenado al bonum; d) por tanto, la ley natural solo tiene sentido desde una visión metafísica, (...) no meramente física o material. (shrink)

Cowan defines a chunk as “a collection of concepts that have strong associations to one another and much weaker associations to other chunks currently in use.” This definition does not impose any constraints on the nature and number of elements that can be bound into a chunk. We present an experiment to demonstrate that such limitations exist for visual short-term memory, and that their analysis may lead to important insights into properties of visual memory.