Lorenz von Stein ( 1815 - 1890 ) - wie Karl Marx in Preussen zeitlebens persona ingrata - sah in der sozialen Revolution keinen Ausweg aus dem strukturellen Burgerkrieg der industriellen Gesellschaft. Im Gegensatz zu Marx und Engels war Stein davon uberzeugt, dass die Ungleichheit der Menschen "nicht bloss das eigentliche Geheimnis, sondern auch die grosste Gewalt im menschlichen Leben (ist)". Damit machte er sich zu einem Apostaten des Junghegelianismus. Das auf diesen Pramissen aufbauende Werk verfolgt historisch (...) und systematisch die Entstehung der rationalen Staatsverwaltung sowie die Emanzipation des Staats aus feudal-hierarchischen Bindungen mit dem Ergebnis, im allgemeinen Stimmrecht und der allgemeinen Steuerpflicht das Fundament einer soliden Staatsfinanzierung und systematischen Finanzwissenschaft wie der individuellen Freiheit zu erkennen. Sein Werk nahm damit in vielerlei Hinsicht die Chancen und Grenzen der heute in Deutschland und Europa bestehenden Sozialstaaten vorweg. (shrink)

The shadow cast by National Socialism over the German academic world, and Koselleck’s close relations with the Nazi lawyer Carl Schmitt, constitute a challenge for a historical inquiry of Koselleck’s historiography. To address this challenge, I propose a ‘close contextual reading’ of an article published in 1965 (‘Geschichtliche Prognose in Lorenz von Steins Schrift zur preussischen Verfassung’) in which Koselleck puts forward one of his major diagnoses of how the conception of history had evolved since 1750. This article praises (...) Lorenz von Stein (1815–1890), a German public administration scholar and lauds him as a model after the French Revolution. 15 years later, Koselleck showed how much he valued this article by including it in his historiographic manifesto: Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (1979). To try to grasp the meaning and the historiographical, academic, and political issues raised by this diagnosis, I will start from the text, from the portrait that Koselleck draws of the historian in it, from its paratext, its references, its editorial history. As a result, this article proposes a specific way of contextualizing, and highlights the extent to which the label ‘theory’ represented a battleground in West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. (shrink)

This article draws on Elias’s observations on the origins of political economy and sociology as well as his theory of involvement and detachment to supplement standard accounts of the history of sociology. It shows how, in the 1840s, sociology bifurcated into two tracks. Track I was the highly ‘involved’ partisan track associated with Marx and Engels and track II was the relatively ‘detached’, non-partisan track pursued by Saint-Simon, Comte, Lorenz von Stein and others. These two tracks continue to (...) shape contemporary sociology as basic orientations. The polarization of class conflict predicted in Marx’s theory is contrasted with the class interdependence model in Lorenz von Stein, in particular. Elias’s work is understood as a synthesis of later developments in track II in which he strongly reaffirmed the historical separation of sociology from philosophy. Elias’s work is presented as a central theory of society and as a promising alternative to the prevailing practice of theoretical eclecticism in sociology. (shrink)

Due to the spread of COVID-19, a key challenge was to reduce potential staff shortages in the healthcare sector. Besides recruiting retired healthcare workers, medical students were considered to support this task. Commitment of medical students in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic was evaluated using an online survey, with particular focus on their burdens and anxieties. This survey was distributed to students within a 2-week period in April and May 2020. Ultimately, 1241 participants were included in the analysis. During the (...) pandemic, 67.9% of the participants reported that they had volunteered. Furthermore, 88.9% stated that they were against compulsory recruitment in this context. Students who volunteered had a significantly lower anxiety index than non-committed students. Additionally, students were more concerned about infecting other patients and relatives than themselves. Higher levels of anxiety were related to lower levels of commitment. A mandatory assignment during the pandemic was rejected by the students and does not seem to be necessary due to the large number of volunteers. (shrink)

Sieben Bucher zur Geschichte des Platonismus by Heinrich von Stein. This book is a reproduction of the original book published in 1862 and may have some imperfections such as marks or hand-written notes.".

La Revolución Francesa (1789) ha despertado desde sus impresionantes acontecimientos, las más diversas reacciones y las más inimaginadas formas de interpretarlos. El "problema social" durante las primeras décadas del siglo XIX, que aflora en parte como consecuencia de esta "aurora del mundo" contemporáneo, determinó una nueva manera de contemplar este acontecimiento histórico universal. Tres personalidades intelectuales de primer rango. Lorenz von Stein, Karl Marx y Alexis de Tocqueville, procedentes de tres mundos político-sociales y académicos diversos, se enfrentan a (...) evaluar el significado de la Revolución Francesa a la luz de los convulsos acontecimientos de su siglo. Sus penetrantes miradas no sólo enfatizan en la actualidad imborrable de los acontecimientos derivados del 89 hasta Napoleón, sino que descubren un horizonte social para la historia de cuño decisivo. La historia deja de ser una historia de acontecimientos, de datos o fechas, en el sentido tradicional de crónica, e incluso la historia deja de contemplarse como un asunto racional en la tradición ilustrada. La Revolución Francesa, gracias a estos tres autores, supera su circunstancialidad épocal y se eleva a una categoría de estructura de sentido inmanente. En otros términos, a diferencia de su contemporáneo Leopold von Ranke, von Stein, Marx y Tocqueville construyen un nuevo sentido de la historia, particularmente de las raíces incuestionables del mundo contemporáneo. (shrink)

Recent experimental work suggests that the concept of contextual fields should be generalized to allow the modulation of local information extraction by both external and internal context. The external context relates to the coherent information of the stimulus; the internal context refers to the parts of this information which are relevant for behavior. This dual interaction, present at every level of the hierarchy, requires a fundamental unit of processing more complex than a single neuron appears today. We argue that the (...) cortical column supplies the required mechanisms for a separate top-down and bottom-up processing and allows for interaction without destructive cross-talk. This flexibility might explain why the same basic architecture of a cortical column is used in the whole isocortex. (shrink)

An historical and intellectual review shows that the plan of realisation of the welfare state principle builds less upon philosophical concepts than upon religious, socialist, liberal-concervative, and socialdemocratic ideas. Lorenz von Stein combined socialist ideas of the public good, enlightment philosophy, and the Utopia of St.-Simon, Fourier and German idealism. Gouvermental achievements are limited to the economic capacity of he society, which is why financial science must,,...also establish the measure of the attainable for these tasks.“ With the transformation (...) of the SPD to a left-reform people's party, governmental concepts of social reform replace social revolutionary ideas. As liberal socialism maintains, the constitution results in a balance between neo-liberal thinking and the Keynesianism adopted by the german,,people's parties“. As a result challenge to the social state a society of dependent classes magnifies the,,social power“ of politics and damages the common good in the debit of present contributors and future pensioners of the pension systems. (shrink)

In standard interpretations of the history of socialism, the cosmological and providential side of nineteenth century socialist thought tends to be ignored. What still today is often considered the core of socialist reasoning was its preoccupation with the claims of producers, its championing of the cause of the working class, its critique of political economy. In the twentieth century, the most characteristic goal of socialist parties - at least until the advent of Tony Blair - has been the socialisation of (...) the means of production. The particular association of socialism with a language of productivism - with work, producers, the character of labour, and a critique of political economy - goes back to the commentaries of the 1830s and 1840s. Adolphe Blanqui, the brother of the famous revolutionary, in his History of Political Economy in Europe published in 1837, described Fourier and Owen as 'utopian economists',1 while Lorenz von Stein in his Der Sozialismus und Kommunismus des heutigen Frankreichs, first published in 1842, defined socialism as a theory which made work the sole basis of.. (shrink)

Information technology (IT) is continuously making astounding progress in technical efficiency. The time, space, material and energy needed to provide a unit of IT service have decreased by three orders of magnitude since the first personal computer (PC) was sold. However, it seems difficult for society to translate IT’s efficiency progress into progress in terms of individual, organizational or socio-economic goals. In particular it seems to be difficult for individuals to work more efficiently, for organizations to be more productive and (...) for the socio-economic system to be more sustainable by using increasingly efficient IT. This article provides empirical evidence and potential explanations for this problem. Many counterproductive effects of IT can be explained economically by rebound effects. Beyond that, we conclude that the technological determinism adopted by decision-makers is the main obstacle in translating IT’s progress into non-technical goals. (shrink)

“Como duas mentes podem conhecer uma única coisa” é um dos textos que Wil-liam James (1842-1910) pretendia reunir sob o nome de Ensaios sobre empirismo radi-cal, embora nunca tenha chegado a ver o projeto concluído. Trata-se da obra tardia do autor, quando este passou a desenvolver algumas das ideias que já se encontravam, em muitos casos de forma embrionária, no monumental Princípios de psicologia. “Como duas mentes podem conhecer uma única coisa” é um dos textos mais importantes desse esforço, uma (...) vez que explica, de forma clara e elegante, um dos pilares do empirismo radical. Como o título já diz, James pretende mostrar como algo pode ser conhecido por duas mentes sem que haja aí uma duplicação, ou um recurso à noção de representação como duplicação de um objeto físico. James postula o conceito de experiência pura e indivisa que se desenvolve em estados de experiências momentâneas sucessivas. A experiência pura acrescenta a consciência à percepção de objetos. Nessa experiência indivisível ocorrem “apropriações” conscientes — que se dão de forma retroativa — das sensações dos objetos pelos sentidos. A consciência conquistada nessa apropriação marca a subjetivação e se dá a partir da inserção do algo sensível, resultante da relação com um objeto físico, na experiência individual. No instante da experiência pura, o objeto é ao mesmo tempo objetivo e subjetivo, não ocorrendo uma duplicação ontológica. Aí reside a resposta à pergunta posta no título: é possível sentir objetos sem duplicá-los. (shrink)

The use of placebos in randomised controlled trials is a subject of considerable ethical debate. In this paper we present a set of considerations to evaluate the ethics of placebo controlled trials that includes: social value of the study; need for a randomised controlled trial and placebo; standards of care; risks of harm due to administration of placebo and the harm benefit balance; clinical equipoise; and double standards. We illustrate the application of these considerations using a case study of a (...) large ongoing multicentre, placebo-controlled, double-blinded, randomised trial to determine primaquine anti-relapse efficacy in vivax malaria. There is an urgent need for primaquine anti-relapse studies in order to rationalise the management of a potentially fatal disease. An ethical justification for the use of the placebo arm is provided on the grounds that the actual current applied standard of care in most endemic places does not include primaquine. It has also been argued that there is clinical equipoise among the primaquine study arms and that the risk of harms of being in the placebo arm is the risk of having relapse, which is no more than not being included in the trial, and that there are no double standards. Based on our set of considerations, we conclude that a placebo arm is not only justified but imperative in this study. We propose that similar considerations should be prospectively applied to other placebo controlled trials and observational control arms where no treatment is offered. (shrink)

"Dialogisches Handeln" ist eine Sammlung von philosophischen BeitrAgen zum dialogischen Konstruktivismus im Sinne von Kuno Lorenz, der Philosophie als eine Kommunikation mit Selbstreflexion versteht. Dabei umfaAt der Dialog in diesem Buch verschiedene Disziplinen der Philosophie - von der Anthropologie A1/4ber die Grundlagen von Logik und Sprachphilosophie bis hin zur Wissenschafts- und Erkenntnistheorie. Die Reflexion auf die kommunikativen Grundlagen wissenschaftlichen Austauschs schlieAt dabei Denkperspektiven verschiedener Wissenschaften - von der Psychologie bis zu Physik und Chemie - ebenso ein wie die philosophischen (...) Disziplinen. (shrink)

Diese Studie untersucht einen zentralen Begriff der antiken Ethik, der als Vorläufer des modernen Pflichtbegriffs Ideengeschichte geschrieben hat: das kathekon (lat. officium). Die Untersuchung zeigt, wie die frühen Stoiker, die diesen Begriff in die ethische Terminologie einführten, das kathekon philosophisch begründeten. Demzufolge ist ein kathekon eine Handlung, die es aus guten Gründen auszuführen gilt. Aber unter welchen Umständen ist eine solche Handlung gut begründet? Die Analyse kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass als Massstab nicht in erster Linie die menschliche Vernunft gilt. (...) Vielmehr ist der primäre Bezugspunkt für die Begründung die Natur, die alle Prozesse im Kosmos zweckmässig organisiert. Ein kathekon ist demnach eine Aktivität, mit der ein Lebewesen - ob Pflanze, Tier oder Mensch - dem teleologisch gedachten Willen der Natur Folge leistet. (shrink)

Diese vierte Sammlung von Arbeiten, die an die bereits vorliegende dreibändige Sammlung von Arbeiten des Verfassers anschließt, ist in drei Teile gegliedert, deren erster die längst vergriffenen Schriften mit den Anfängen des spieltheoretischen Aufbaus der Logik ab 1961 wieder zugänglich macht. Im zweiten Teil sind hauptsächlich Arbeiten versammelt, die zum einen den Zusammenhang der dialogischen Logik mit ihrer Vorgängerin, der operativen Logik meines akademischen Lehrers Paul Lorenzen, reflektieren und zum anderen einige dafür relevante Studien zu Sinn und Funktion des zweistelligen (...) Satzverknüpfers ‘wenn-dann‘ enthalten. Zum dritten Teil schließlich gehören Arbeiten – zwei davon in englischer Sprache –, die den weiteren Anwendungsbereich des dialogischen Verfahrens sowohl als Gegenstand als auch in seiner Durchführung insbesondere in den Bereichen der Sprachphilosophie und der philosophischen Anthropologie betreffen. Sie suchen dabei auch historische Wurzeln auf, die bis in die Antike zurückreichen und geben im letzten Beitrag den Konstruktionen des bisher beschrittenen Weges von der dialogischen Logik über den dialogischen Konstruktivismus bis hin zu einer durchgehend dialogischen Philosophie eine begrifflich präzise Fassung. (shrink)

Es gibt mittlerweile schon zahlreiche, auf gründlichen Recherchen und großenteils auch auf persönlichen Begegnungen beruhende Arbeiten zu den Stadien im Lebensweg Paul Lorenzens.