This is the first scholarly study of Atlas Shrugged, covering in detail the historical, literary, and philosophical aspects of Ayn Rand's magnum opus. Topics explored in depth include the history behind the novel's creation, publication, and reception; its nature as a romantic novel; and its presentation of a radical new philosophy.

Ayn Rand's first novel, We the Living, offers an early form of the author's nascent philosophy—the philosophy Rand later called Objectivism. Robert Mayhew's collection of entirely new essays brings together pre-eminent scholars of Rand's writing. In part a history of We the Living, from its earliest drafts to the Italian film later based upon it, Mayhew's collection goes on to explore the enduring significance of Rand's first novel as a work both of philosophy and of literature.

The essays in this collection treat historical, literary, and philosophical topics related to Ayn Rand's Anthem, an anti-utopia fantasy set in the future. The first book-length study on Anthem, this collection covers subjects such as free will, political freedom, and the connection between freedom and individual thought and privacy.

Isaiah Berlin: A Celebration gathers tributes, reflections, and commentaries on the great thinker and his philosophy, politics, and life-including contributions from Michael Ignatieff, Leon Wieseltier, Ronald Dworkin, Stephen Spender, and many others. "Some [essays], like Joseph Brodsky's tribute, are touchingly personal. Others, like G. A. Cohen's 'Isaiah's Marx, and Mine,' mingle personal reminiscences with a more theoretical look at Berlin's ideas. . . . The volume is a fitting tribute to a thinker famed for his erudition, eclecticism, (...) and clarity of style."--Merle Rubin, The Christian Science Monitor "One of the many merits of this rich and rewarding collection is the sense-very imperfectly conveyed here-it transmits of the tone of Berlin's writings and conversation, of the multiplicity of his interests and the variety of his achievements. . . . The essays testify to the character of Berlin's mind as a luminous prism, in which the cultural traditions of Russia, England and Judaism are marvelously refracted."--John Gray, Times Literary Supplement "[T]he collection testifies to the learning and profundity of Berlin's thought and, by way both of reminiscence and influence, to the charm and gaity of its expression."--Anthony Quinton, The Times of London. (shrink)

This study explores child health care nurses’ pedagogical knowledge when supporting parents in their parenthood using various teaching practices, that is how to organise and process the content during parent education groups in primary health care. The aim is to identify teaching practices used by child health care nurses and to analyse such practices with regard to Aristotle's three forms of knowledge to comprehensively examine child health care nurses’ use of knowledge in practice. A qualitative methodological design alongside the analysis (...) of video‐recordings was used. The results showed that child health care nurses used four teaching practices: lecturing, demonstration, conversation and supervision. Their use of episteme was prominent, but they also seemed to master techne in combination with episteme during the first three teaching practices. During the conversation teaching practice, the child health nurses rarely succeeded. Consequently, they missed opportunities to identify mothers’ expressed concerns and to act in the best interests of both the mothers and their infants by the use of phronesis. In health care, however, theoretical episteme is superordinate to productive knowledge or phronesis, which also became evident in this study. Nevertheless, more interactive pedagogical practices are needed if more use of phronesis is to become a reality in parent education groups. (shrink)

Steve Paulson, executive producer and host of To the Best of Our Knowledge, moderated a discussion with philosopher Christian Miller, neuroscientist Heather Berlin, and historian of science Michael Shermer to examine our moral ecology and its influence on our underlying assumptions about human nature.

A biography of the Soviet-born British philosopher describes how he was shaped by politics and culture of his time, and his contributions to contemporary liberal philosophy.

"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This ancient Greek aphorism, preserved in a fragment from the poet Archilochus, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Leo Tolstoy and the philosophy of history, the subject of the epilogue to War and Peace. Although there have been many interpretations of the adage, Berlin uses it to mark a fundamental distinction between human beings who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things (...) and those who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system. Applied to Tolstoy, the saying illuminates a paradox that helps explain his philosophy of history: Tolstoy was a fox, but believed in being a hedgehog. One of Berlin's most celebrated works, this extraordinary essay offers profound insights about Tolstoy, historical understanding, and human psychology. This new edition features a revised text that supplants all previous versions, English translations of the many passages in foreign languages, a new foreword in which Berlin biographer Michael Ignatieff explains the enduring appeal of Berlin's essay, and a new appendix that provides rich context, including excerpts from reviews and Berlin's letters, as well as a startling new interpretation of Archilochus's epigram. (shrink)

Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach can be considered as the most influential protagonists-in-exile of the scientific philosophy that arose in the twenties and early thirties under the headings Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung and Wissenschaftliche Philosophie. Both were born in 1891 — as was a generally forgotten member of the Vienna Circle: Edgar Zilsel.

Key sections of Walter Benjamin's montage-text Berlin Childhood around 1900 figure the relationship between human experience and modern media, with the sections that frame the text, ‘Loggias’ and ‘The Moon’, structured around metaphors of photography. Drawing on the work of Siegfried Kracauer, and especially his seminal essay ‘Photography’, Benjamin develops, in the course of his book, a theory of photography's relationship to experience that runs counter to the better-known theories developed in such essays as ‘Little History of Photography’ and (...) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility’, theories that are part of the broad currents of technological utopianism and, as such, emphasize photography's transformative potentials. In the Berlin Childhood, Benjamin instead emphasizes photography's role in the mortification and annihilation of meaningful human experience. Photography emerges here as the mausoleum of youth and hope. (shrink)

Adolf Menzel was one of the most important German artists of the 19th century, yet he is scarcely known outside his native land. In this study a leading art historian argues that Menzel deserves to be recognized not only as one of the greatest painters and draftsmen of his century but also as a master realist whose work engages profoundly with an extraordinary range of issues - artistic, scientific, philosophical and socio-political. Michael Fried explores Menzel's large and fascinating oeuvre, (...) and in so doing seeks to make the artist's achievement accessible to a wide audience. (shrink)

Aus ganz unterschiedlichen Blickwinkeln, sei es aus musikhistorischer oder ethnomusikologischer Sicht, umkreisen zehn Beitrage das Thema aMusik - Zu Begriff und Konzepteno. Unter dieses Thema ein internationales Symposion in Berlin zu stellen, das zum Gedenken an Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht (1919-1999) veranstaltet wurde, erschien umso naheliegender, zumal Eggebrecht die Frage aWas ist Musik'o existenziell beruhrte, sie grundierte und sein Forscherleben als Musikwissenschaftler von den fruhen Veroffentlichungen nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg bis zu den letzten Arbeiten durchzog. Inhalt Bruno Nettl: Was ist (...) Musik? Ethnomusikologische Perspektive Sabine Ehrmann-Herfort: Die Kantate. Musik zwischen asthetischer Autonomie und Ideologie Christian Berger: aMusiko nach Kant Erich Reimer: aMusikanto und aMusiko. Zur Geschichte einer wechselvollen Beziehung Christian Kaden: Musik bei denen, die keine aMusiko haben Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen: Hugo Riemann und der Musikbegriff der Musikwissenschaft Klaus-Jurgen Sachs: Musik - erfahren und erortert durch Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) Wolf Frobenius: Gestische Musik. Zur Fruhgeschichte des Begriffs Albrecht von Massow: Tonkorper - ein eigenstandiger Parameter der Wesensbestimmung und der Analyse von Musik Christian Thorau: Symphony in White - Musik als modus der Referenz. (shrink)

rnst Mayr was born in Kempten, Germany, on July 5, 1904, making him, at age 95, the grand old man of evolutionary biology, one of the primary architects of the modem synthesis of genetic and evolutionary theory, and arguably one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century. His career interests have spanned a remarkable five different fields, including: (1) ornithology, (2) systematics, (3) zoogeography, (4) evolutionary theory, and (5) philosophy and history of science. Such broad research interests grew (...) from his education at a German Gymnasium (the equivalent of American high school, but at that time considerably more demanding), followed by a Candidacy in Medicine at the University of Greifswald in 1925 and a Ph.D. in zoology at the University of Berlin in 1926. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill wird häufig als prototypischer Vertreter eines „negativen Freiheitsbegriffs“ dargestellt. Eine solche Charakterisierung ist anachronistisch. Die Unterscheidung zwischen positiver und negativer Freiheit ist erst lange nach Mills Tod von Isaiah BerlinBerlin, Isaiah eingeführt worden. Durch Berlin ausgelöste Fragen begrifflicher Abgrenzung, die in der Politischen Philosophie der letzten fünfzig Jahre große Aufmerksamkeit erhalten haben (nicht zuletzt aufgrund der Unklarheiten in Berlins Distinktion), tauchen bei Mill nicht auf und – wichtiger noch – lassen sich auch nicht ohne weiteres auf (...) ihn anwenden. Mill selbst bezieht sich in seinen politikphilosophischen Arbeiten auf Freiheit mittels gesellschaftstheoretischer Attribute. Er handelt von ‚bürgerlicher‘ (‚sozialer‘) und von ‚politischer‘ Freiheit. Wer frei leben möchte, braucht ihm zufolge beide Freiheiten. (shrink)

In der vorliegenden Festschrift "Schlusslogische Letztbegründung" stehen zwei von Zeidlers zentralen wissenschaftlichen Forschungsbereichen im Fokus. Zum einen hat Zeidler sich in seiner Beschäftigung mit der transzendentalen und spekulativen Logik durch Herausarbeitung der begründenden Funktion des Schlusses hervorgetan. Zum Anderen führte er intensive Studien zur Thematik der Letztbegründung durch, die letztere als dynamische Form der Selbstbegründung auswiesen. Diese zentralen Thesen, dass der Schluss die logische Form der Begründung sei und Letztbegründung nur als Selbstbegründung möglich ist, führten ihn zu seiner Vollendung der (...) kantischen Transzendentalphilosophie, seinem absoluten Idealismus der Schlusslogischen Letztbegründung. Die Aufsätze lassen sich bezüglich Zeidlers Œuvre in drei Gruppen einteilen: Erstens, die Beiträge die Zeidlers Schriften kontextualisieren und analysieren (Mathisen, Rendl, Schmied-Kowarzik, Meer, Bunte, König, Hoffmann, Breil, Tydeckes). Zweitens, die Beiträge, die sich primär als Kritik an Zeidler verstehen (Flach, Knoppe, Krijnen). Drittens, die Beiträge, die sich der Ergänzung und Weiterentwicklung des zeidlerischen Ansatzes oder bestimmter von ihm aufgeworfenen Fragestellungen annehmen (Blau, Gloy, Hiltscher, Wiedenbach, Gottschlich, Müller, Klein, Dober). Da Zeidler die Transzendentalphilosophie primär als transzendentale Logik versteht, kann der Diskurs um diese als Leitfaden der Rekonstruktion der Beiträge gelten. Selbstverständlich kann in dieser Rezension nicht jeder Beitrag in Gänze gewürdigt werden. Jedoch soll sowohl versucht werden, einen Überblick über die verschiedenen Linien der Rezeption von Zeidler anhand der Beitragsgruppen zu geben, als auch diese Beiträge in ihren Theoriekontext einzubetten. Darüber hinaus sollen Zeidlers Repliken, die in der Festschrift unter dem Titel "Anmerkungen zur Schlusslogischen Letztbegründung" aufgeführt sind, an entsprechender Stelle thematisch zusammengefasst und der Analyse der Beiträge zur Seite gestellt werden. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 109 Heft: 3 Seiten: 473-475.

The editing of the correspondence of major figures in intellectual history is an essential scholarly activity. Yet in this country in recent years it has neither been the priority it should be, nor has it received the support that it deserves. Of course there have been exceptions to this, perhaps notably – for the early modern period – the epic one-man effort of Esmond de Beer in his later years in producing The Correspondence of John Locke (though this regrettably, and (...) frustratingly, lacks a composite index). A further exception, the edition of The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg by A. R. and M. B. Hall, was unfortunately flawed by the need to change publishers midway in the series, which has led to a marked disparity in the availability of the latter part of the set compared with its early volumes. In any case, like the Locke edition, this was conceived in the heady days of the 1960s and early 1970s, and few have ventured such enterprises since. Virtually the only exception is Noel Malcolm's edition of the manageable-sized Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes (two volumes, 1994). Moreover, it is revealing of the acute need to justify the publication of such material felt by editors and publishers alike that the promotional leaflet for this edition went so far as to claim that it was ‘one of the most important scholarly publications of the twentieth century’ – a claim that is the more ironic in view of the quite significant shortcomings in its method of presenting the material that it contains. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen was one of the most gifted, influential, and progressive voices in contemporary political philosophy. At the time of his death in 2009, he had plans to bring together a number of his most significant papers. This is the first of three volumes to realize those plans. Drawing on three decades of work, it contains previously uncollected articles that have shaped many of the central debates in political philosophy, as well as papers published here for the first time. (...) In these pieces, Cohen asks what egalitarians have most reason to equalize, he considers the relationship between freedom and property, and he reflects upon ideal theory and political practice.Included here are classic essays such as "Equality of What?" and "Capitalism, Freedom, and the Proletariat," along with more recent contributions such as "Fairness and Legitimacy in Justice," "Freedom and Money," and the previously unpublished "How to Do Political Philosophy." On ample display throughout are the clarity, rigor, conviction, and wit for which Cohen was renowned. Together, these essays demonstrate how his work provides a powerful account of liberty and equality to the left of Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, Amartya Sen, and Isaiah Berlin. (shrink)

Ce texte a déjà paru dans S. Efimova und M. Gamper, Prosa Prose : Geschichte, Poetik, Theorie, Berlin/Boston, De Gruyter, 2021. Nous remercions Michael Gamper ainsi que les éditions De Gruyter de nous avoir donné l'autorisation de le reproduire sur RHUTHMOS. Am 13. Juli 1876 schreibt Theodor Storm an Wolfgang Petersen und reagiert in seinem Brief auf dessen Kritik an seiner Erzählung Aquis Submersus : „Ich bin sonst immer ziemlich besorgt, nicht in Versr[h]ythmus zu verfallen, und sehe - (...) Poétique et Études littéraires – GALERIE – Nouvel article. (shrink)

The political sphere Arendt strove throughout her career to defend and restore depended upon the performative abilities of its participant speakers. But Arendt's theatricality is that of the speech act, not of the stage in a literal sense, where original utterances and originary deeds are not primarily at stake. Arendt versus Zweig replays the cultural enmity of Berlin versus Vienna, giving voice and person to a Central European cultural fissure that travels far and wide into the émigré experience and (...) remains too regularly overlooked in all of its venues by scholars of Central Europe. The distinction is especially elusive to American scholars, who often remain insufficiently sensitive both to the cultural differences between northern and southern Central Europe, and to the survival of religiously marked cultural differences. Hannah Arendt was an émigré from the northern German world and from the German language. In cultural as well as geographical terms, she was an émigré from Prussia. Born in Hanover, reared in Koenigsberg, educated in Heidelberg, she identified with Berlin and its claim to cosmopolitanism. She therefore became a cosmopolitan thinker from Berlin, a metropolis whose generosity and arrogance has resided at least since the 1870s in its self perception as the center of the world. But Arendt also did battle with her fellow Berliners, especially when they seemed to abandon their Berlin-trained worldliness. (shrink)

Twenty scholars from around the world assembled at the Werner Reimer Stiftung in Bad Homburg from June 29 to July 1, 1995, to discuss the life and work of Eduard Gans. There has been a surge of interest in Gans in the past few years, and the authors of all recent work on Gans attended. Books circulated at the conference included Gans’ Chroniques françaises: Un hégélien juif à Paris, trans. by Myriam Bienenstock, ed. by Norbert Waszek ; Eduard Gans : (...) Hegelianer, Jude, Europäer: Text und Dokumente, ed. by Norbert Waszek ; Gans’ Rückblicke auf Personen und Zuständ: Berlin 1836, ed. by Norbert Waszek, and my own Eduard Gans and the Hegelian Philosophy of Law. An important recent article is Reinhard Blänkner, “‘Der Absolutismus war ein Glück der doch nicht zu den Absolutisten gehört’: Eduard Gans und die hegelianischen Ursprünge der Absolutismusforschung in Deutschland,” Historische Zeitschrift, 256 : 31–66. (shrink)

Ce texte a déjà paru dans la revue October, N° 131, Winter 2010, p. 23–50. Nous remercions Michael Cowan de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. In September of 1925, readers leafing through Der Kinematograph or Lichtbildbühne or another such film journal might have encountered a strangely familiar sight : in an advertisement for a major exhibition of the German film and photography industries entitled “Kipho” (“Kino und Photo”), which was to be held in Berlin from September (...) 25th to (...) - Cinéma, animation et vidéo – GALERIE – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. ;A study of three concepts of liberty, the thesis argues that Isaiah Berlin's text 'Two Concepts of Liberty', seeks to expand the limits of the contemporary Anglo-American debate on the idea of liberty by linguistically shifting the terrain of the debate such that its participants are prompted to view the nineteenth century French Post-Revolutionary debate on the idea of liberty. The first section, dealing with Berlin's text and the contemporary (...) Anglo-American debate on the idea of liberty, contends that the misunderstanding of Berlin's text is due to an empiricist epistemology that sees liberties as causally grounded rather than grounded through social norms. In this respect, the intention of Berlin's text is lost. The second section, dealing with the French nineteenth century Post-Revolutionary debate on the idea of liberty, analyses the importance of language in the formation of a new socio-political order and in the conceptualisation of new forms of liberty that are constitutive of that order. The third section deals with Tocqueville's sociological analysis of the profound historical tendency of equality that marks the new socio-political order of Democracy and how that tendency can be linked to the concrete realisation of the forms of liberty conceptualised within the Post-Revolutionary debate. A brief conclusion argues that the very nature of democracy is such that the concrete realisation of the forms of liberty viewed within the French nineteenth century Post-Revolutionary debate and by Tocqueville, will furnish humanity with a greater understanding of itself. (shrink)

Was Joseph de Maistre a conservative thinker?; an actor who might at any time switch roles with his alleged British counterpart Edmund Burke in a show called “Reactions to the French Revolution”? Or was de Maistre (as Sir Isaiah Berlin saw him) a milestone on mankind’s rush to the “Age of Unreason” in general, and to the Nazi folly in particular? To answer this controversy, Professor Michael Shafir called on the witness’ stand an unexpected expert in conservatism and (...) the folly of revolutions: Romanian playwright Ion Luca Caragiale. Using as evidence before the court Caragiale’s famous farce “Master Leonida Facing Reaction”, this exercise in literary counterfactualism demonstrates, according to Shafir, the fig of reason and faith is too small to cover the wastelands of unreason and Social-Darwinist-like psychopathology. (shrink)

Auch der Philosoph Michael Pauen, Professor an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin und Sprecher der Berlin School of Mind and Brain betont die menschliche Verantwortung für virtuelles Handeln. Sein Credo: Statt uns Angst vor Algorithmen einjagen zu lassen, sollten wir erkennen, dass hinter den Computern letztlich immer Menschen stehen. Wenn die Digitalisierung unsere Autonomie einschränkt, statt neue Freiheitsspielräume zu eröffnen, dann liegt dies also lediglich an unserem Umgang mit Computern. Pauen entlarvt allerdings auch die sozialen Dynamiken, die Autonomie (...) erschweren. (shrink)

Auch der Philosoph Michael Pauen, Professor an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin und Sprecher der Berlin School of Mind and Brain betont die menschliche Verantwortung für virtuelles Handeln. Sein Credo: Statt uns Angst vor Algorithmen einjagen zu lassen, sollten wir erkennen, dass hinter den Computern letztlich immer Menschen stehen. Wenn die Digitalisierung unsere Autonomie einschränkt, statt neue Freiheitsspielräume zu eröffnen, dann liegt dies also lediglich an unserem Umgang mit Computern. Pauen entlarvt allerdings auch die sozialen Dynamiken, die Autonomie (...) erschweren. (shrink)