Although depression is characterized as a mood disorder it turns out that, like moods in general, it cannot be explained independently of a theory of emotion. In this paper I outline one promising theory of emotion and show how it deals with the phenomenon of depressive mood. An important aspect of MAT is the role it assigns to peripheral information processing systems in setting up emotional responses. The operations of these systems are automatic and opaque to consciousness, but they represent (...) information about the significance of the environment for the subject, bias cognition and behaviour, and have a characteristic phenomenology. I show how understanding the nature of peripheral appraisal provides a principled way to link neurochemistry and mood via an information processing theory of the circuitry targeted by antidepressant treatment. The discussion is organized around Matthew Ratcliffe's distinction between pre-intentional and intentional feelings and suggests that the MAT might provide a way to link phenomenological and mechanistic accounts of feeling states characteristic of depression. (shrink)

ArgumentKuhnian phases of paradigmatic development correspond to characteristic variations of citation measures. These correlations can in turn be predicted from a simple model of human information processing when applied to the common environments of scientists. By combining a scientometric and a human information processing approach to the history of scientific thought, structures of disciplinary development, and in particular paradigmatic cycles, can be more reliably assessed than before. Consequently, the quantitative historian of science is liberated to some extent from the vagaries (...) of qualitative judgment, as exemplified by traditional narrative type approaches to the history of science. (shrink)

Here I try a new synthesis of personalism and materialism leading to new concepts of sense. Beginnig with the analysis of the correlations between matter, personality, language, understanding, cognition, knowledge, and the problem of truth, followed by a critique of pragmatism, personalism and "new realism" as well as by ontological concretisations in different fields of philosophy, i.e. in logical order from cosmology to anthropology, ethics, history and political philosophy (including globalization, digital revolution amd ecocide), aesthetics, and philosophy of religion, leading (...) to new concepts of sense and value. Of immediate political relevance is my new concept of a democratic eco-socialism, drawing conclusions of the failure of the socialist experiences in the world up to nowadays. Not giving up the Marxian vision of a realm of Freedom, Justice and Solidarity, that of a "free association of free individuals". (shrink)

In diesem Buch erscheint Kants Moralphilosophie in neuem Licht. Kants Bestimmung und Begründung des Moralprinzips wird gegen das Gros der bisherigen Forschung als konsistente Argumentation auf hohem Niveau aufgeschlüsselt. Das gut lesbare Buch klärt die Grundbegriffe von Kants Moralphilosophie und lässt sich als Kommentar zu deren als besonders schwierig empfundenen Teilen benutzen.

Hybrid identities are sentences in a special second order language with identity. The model classes of sets of hybrid identities are called hybrid solid varieties. We give a Birkhoff-type-characterization of hybrid solid varieties and develop a hybrid equational logic.

Hegels These vom Ende der Kunst beinhaltet nicht die Todesanzeige für die Kunst. Im Gegenteil: Es handelt sich für Hegel um den Anfang der Entfaltung freier Kunst in der Moderne.0Hegels These vom Ende der Kunst hat zusammen mit dem Topos vom Ende der Geschichte grosse Entrüstung ausgelöst. In beiden Fällen führte die unzulässige Identifikation vom Ende mit Untergang und Tod zu einem massiven, bis heute wirksamen Missverständnis. Der Mythos von einem Untergang der Kunst in Hegels Ästhetik wird von manchen noch (...) immer und zu Unrecht zu einer Art Grabrede auf die hegelsche Kunstphilosophie stilisiert. Der vorliegende Band versucht, dieses alte Vorurteil über Hegels Ästhetik zu überwinden. (shrink)

In Fichte’s definition of freedom as a character of rationality, Hegel sees the “summit of the Fichtean system,” an ineradicable core idea of modern philosophy. But from the general, pure will of Fichte, the particularity of willing cannot be rigorously derived. In the case of Fichte, the abstract universal resonates with the law and master, and the particular individuals enter into the absolute tyranny of such empty generality. The first system of freedom threatens to accomplish “the destruction of all liberty,” (...) transforming absolute, abstract freedom into the horrors of uniformity and equality, into a ‘galley state’. On the basis of Fichte’s Grundlage des Naturrechts and Der geschlossene Handelsstaat the danger of transforming his defense of freedom into an apology for a preventive and monitoring state is sketched – but who monitors the monitors? Hegel sieht in Fichtes Bestimmung der Freiheit als Charakter der Vernünftigkeit das „Höchste des Fichteschen Systems“, einen unhintergehbaren Kerngedanken moderner Philosophie. Aber aus dem allgemeinen, reinen Willen Fichtescher Prägung kann die Besonderheit des Wollens nicht stringent abgeleitet werden. Das abstrakte Allgemeine schwingt sich bei Fichte zum Gesetz und Gebieter schlechthin auf, die besonderen Einzelnen geraten in die absolute Tyrannei solcherart leerer Allgemeinheit. Das erste System der Freiheit droht in die „Vernichtung aller Freiheit“ umzukippen, die absolute, abstrakte Freiheit in den Schrecken der Gleichmacherei und Gleichschaltung, in einen ‚Galeerenstaat‘. Anhand von Fichtes Schriften Grundlage des Naturrechts und Der geschlossene Handelsstaat wird die Gefahr des Umschlagens in einen Präventionsund Überwachungsstaat skizziert – Wer überwacht aber die Überwacher? (shrink)

Se propone aqui una actualización del pensar hegeliano en la filosofía del derecho internacional, cix tomo al problema del reconocimiento interestatal, a fin de mediar entre un liberalismo vacuo y un multiculturalismo , que en base a la inalienable identidad de cada pueblo haría imposible la defensa de la dignidad de la persona. Se atisba una solución en el concepto de «reconocimiento sustancial y con contenido», que lleva a la paulatina sustitución de las guerras por «contiendas metafóricas», regladas en base (...) al reconocimiento, a la vez, de los derechos humanos y de la contingencia histórica.Hier wini cine Aktualisierung des hegelschen Denkens in Hinsicht aufdie politische Philosophie des tiuBeren Staatsrechts vorgesehíagen, dic den Spuren von Kants Zum ewigen Frieden folgí und zwar mit der Absicht, cine «mittlere Bestimmung» zwischen leerem Liberalismus bzw. abstraktem Universalismus und Multikulturalismus bzw. Relativismus zu finden. Dazu sieht man cine mogliche Lósung in der Idee ciner interstaatlichen «inhaltlichsubstanticllen Anerkennung», dic allmáhlich dic Kricge durch «metaphorische Wettstreite» ersetzen soll. (shrink)

In _The History of the Race Idea: From Ray to Carus,_ Eric Voegelin places the rise of the race idea in the context of the development of modern philosophy. The history of the race idea, according to Voegelin, begins with the postChristian orientation toward a natural system of living forms. In the late seventeenth century, philosophy set about a new task--to oppose the devaluation of man's physical nature. By the middle of the eighteenth century the effort of philosophy was to (...) place man, with his variety of physical manifestations throughout the world, within a systemic order of nature. Voegelin perceives the problem of race as the epitome of the difficulties presented by this new theoretical approach. Part I covers the development of race theories from the English naturalist John Ray to Blumenbach and Kant. Voegelin, anticipating fairly recent genetic insights, explains that human beings must be seen as one speciesdifferent races must not be interpreted as emerging from separate species. In Part II, Voegelin discusses the evolution of the concepts of the body, the organism, and the person. The finite image of the person as a body-mind unit in which body is equal to mind in value provides the basis for Carl Gustav Carus' theory of race, the first significant racial ideology, in Voegelin's estimation. Voegelin's complex analysis levels a scathing critique at Nazi pretensions. He writes: "Compared to its classical form, the current condition of race theory is one of decay.... [T]hese men, with no eyes for the brilliance of the German spirit, want to interfere in human relations and ultimately presume to explicate the German nation to us and to the world--an undertaking with evil consequences.... [The] great thinkers of the past would have been orrified at somebody finding in himself all the traits of the Nordic race with the help of a book on anthropology and then imagining himself to be somebody special who does not have to do anything else. "Let us now take a look at contemporary race theory--we will see an image of destruction.... It is a nightmare to think that we should recognize the people whom we follow and whom we allow to come near us not by their looks, their words, and their gestures, but by their cranial index." Ultimately, Voegelin dismisses any attempt to reduce the human being--his existence, appearance, or actionsto a lower level: "Man as mind-body and historical substance cannot be 1explained' by an element that is less than man himself.". (shrink)

This book brings key authors in anthropology together to debate and transgress anthropological expectations.

Originally presented as the author's habilitation under the title: Endlichkeit und Vernunftanspruch. Zur Deutung eines fundamentalen Spannungsverhèaltnisses im Selbstverstèandnis des Menschen.

Providing access to medicines and health care is one of the most challenging issues facing society today. In this paper the author highlights some of the complexities of the health value chain as well as the problems that the world’s poor have in terms of access to medical care and medicines. He then attempts to delineate the roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders in order to define the specific corporate responsibilities of pharmaceutical companies in the context of the entire responsibility (...) system—the strength of which is determined by its weakest link. Finally, he looks forward to a transformational change being wrought for pro-poor health development by forging new coalitions that cut across both the health and traditional development stakeholders. (shrink)

Aus dem Inhalt: Die transzendentallogische Funktion des Ich. - Du formel au transcendental: remarques sur l'itineraire de Husserl et de Fichte. - Fichte und das Problem des intelligiblen Fatalismus. - Die Philosophie in Freiheit setzen: Freiheitsbegriff und Freiheit des Begriffs bei Schelling.