Vor dem Hintergrund der Allegoriediskussion, die von Augustinus’ Christenlehre zu Paul de Mans Allegorien des Lesens führt, wird an Texten unterschiedlicher Gattungszugehörigkeit — an Gryphius’ Trauerspiel Cardenio und Celinde, Grimmeishausens Springinsfeld und Greiffenbergs poetologisch lesbaren Sonetten (Uber das unaussprechliche Heilige Geistes=Eingeben! und O Wort!) — nachgewiesen, in welchem Maße die Literatur des 17. Jahrhunderts von der Problematik betroffen ist, die aus der Polyvalenz des allegorischen Zeichens und deren Kehrseite, der Erfahrung von Sinnentzug und Bedeutungsleere, resultiert. Wie sich zeigen läßt, reagieren (...) die in Frage stehenden Texte auf diese Problemlage in jeweils eigentümlicher Weise: Während sich Gryphius’ Trauerspiel die aufgebrochenen Widersprüche noch einmal zu kaschieren bemüht und die Gauckeltaschen-Episode des Springinsfeld zu einer Selbstkritik findet, durch die sich die Allegorie von ihrem eigenen Sinnbegehren distanziert, erweisen sich die Greiffenbergschen Sonette als Formen einer Sinnimplosion, die umso schockhafter erscheint, je kompromißloser die Texte ihren Ordnungsvorgaben zu entsprechen versuchen. (shrink)

Available for the first time in 20 years, here are two important works from the 1920s by the best-known representative of the Vienna Circle.

Moving beyond the dialogical approaches found in much of contemporary hermeneutics, this book focuses instead on the diagnostic use of reflective judgment, not only to discern the differentiating features of the phenomena to be understood, but also to the various meaning contexts that can frame their interpretation. It assesses what such thinkers as Kant, Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Habermas and others can contribute to the problems of multicultural understanding, and reconceives hermeneutics as a critical inquiry into the appropriate contextual conditions (...) of understanding and interpretation. (shrink)

These essays bring Neo-Kantianism back into contemporary philosophical discourse.

Philosophical epistemology bases its understanding of cognition on the heuristic short-circuit of the content with the object of cognition. This short-circuit corresponds to the idea of truth in the sense of some kind of correspondence between the content and the object of knowledge. The problem that arises from this is the question of the verifiability of this correspondence, which would presuppose a transcendent standpoint that, for lack of existence, becomes a mere vanishing point of reflection. The standpoint of reflection corresponds (...) to the adoption of a transcendent standpoint that is nevertheless anchored in the cognizing subject. The question of correspondence thus becomes a question of certainty. This leads to a second, this time theoretical short-circuit, namely the conflation of the actual question of a theory of the phenomenon of cognition, the question of the genesis (or generation) of the content of cognition, with the question of the certainty of this content. This conflation ultimately leads to the question of which (by definition subjective) elements of the cognitive process can guarantee certainty, and thus to a further, third, namely methodological short-circuit through the definition of the (in truth holistic) cognitive situation in terms of a subject-object opposition and the associated exclusion of the knowledge of the empirical natural sciences from cognitive reflection. The aim of this short paper (which is the introduction to a recent publication entitled 'Rehabilitation of Pure Reason') is to find an adequate understanding of the phenomenon of cognition by reversing these short-circuits in reverse order, i.e. by starting from the affirmative acknowledgement of the holism of the real cognitive situation, which excludes subjective certainty as a reasonable goal of cognition from the outset. (shrink)

Husserl's phenomenology of the body constantly faces issues of demarcation: between phenomenology and ontology, soul and spirit, consciousness and brain, conditionality and causality. It also shows that Husserl was eager to cross the borders of transcendental phenomenology when the phenomena under investigation made it necessary. Considering the details of his description of bodily sensations and bodily behaviour from a Merleau-Pontian perspective allows one also to realise how Husserl (unlike Heidegger) fruitfully explores a phenomenological field located between a science of pure (...) consciousness and the natural sciences. A phenomenological discussion of naturalism thus cannot limit itself to the task of discrimination, it must attempt to integrate what an eidetic analysis has separated: inside and outside, here and there, first-person and third-person perspective, motivation and causality. Husserl's phenomenology of the body thus shows that dualism is at best a methodological but never an ontological option for the mind-body problem. (shrink)

This article begins by presenting the two most important transformations that establish a genuine Husserlian approach to the imagination: the first lies in the grasping of imagination, despite its essential differences with perception and hallucination, as an intuitive, or sensuous consciousness ; the second lies in the insight that imagination, or better – phantasy –, requires no images, mental or otherwise. Further, the distinction between pure and perceptual phantasies and their respective fictional objects is drawn out. A comparison between pure (...) phantasy and memory, then leads to a closer look at the role of inner consciousness in pure phantasy and to a clarification of the ‘splitting of the subject’. The exploration of this split allows us to trace the role of the real-ego and the phantasy-ego in pure phantasy, which opens the exploration of phantasy as a consciousness of possibilities. This helps us gain clarity about the nature of both real and ideal possibilities and the respective modes of phantasy. Objects of phantasy also most easily lend themselves to an eidetic variation and to an insight into essences. Phenomenological essences concern the ideal possibility of real and ideal objects and of their experience. It is through their contribution to insight into the real and ideal conditions of possibility of different forms of intentional acts that acts of phantasy best show their potential for Husserl’s project of philosophy as a rigorous science. Imagination or fiction becomes, in his own words, the ‘vital element of phenomenology.’. (shrink)

In a familiar interpretation, the Non-Identity Problem claims that persons whose existence depends on a seemingly harmful action cannot in fact be harmed through such an action. It is often objected that the persons in question can nevertheless be wronged through a violation of their rights. However, this objection seems to fail because these persons would readily waive any violated right in order to come into existence. The present article will analyze this Waiver Counter Argument in detail and show why (...) it does not succeed. First, it is necessary to distinguish between a prospective and a retrospective waiver scenario. In the prospective scenario an imagined person must consider whether she wants to waive a right in order to come into existence. In the retrospective scenario a person is asked whether she would prefer a wronged existence to never having been born. In both scenarios the conditions of a legitimate waiver of rights are not met, but for different reasons. On this basis, an argument against NIP can be developed. (shrink)

In Matter and Memory, Bergson examines the relationship between perception and memory, the status of consciousness in its relation to the brain, and more generally, a possible conjunction of matter and mind. Our reading focuses in particular on his understanding of the evanescent presence of the present and of its debt vis-à-vis the "unconscious" consciousness of a "virtual" past. We wish to show that the Bergsonian version of a critique of "the metaphysics of presence" is, for all that, an offshoot (...) of a Platonic type of metaphysics. It is true that Bergson departs from traditional standpoints on the side of a self-sufficient and original present and a form of presence to which the transparency of consciousness would confer the character of immediate evidence. All the same, it can hardly be claimed that his rehabilitation of the past and the unconscious opens up new perspectives on how forgetting and death are bound up with the work of memory. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Relying on Husserl as well as on the reflections by Merleau-Ponty on Cézanne, Henry on Kandinsky and Deleuze on Bacon, this essay sketches some basic problems that arise in a phenomenological account of non-figurative painting. An investigation of the distinction between phenomenological and pictorial perception, of the transposition of the painter’s mode of perception into a painted image, and of the expressive force of paintings inevitably confronts one with the enigma of the appearing of something invisible. The essay proceeds in (...) three steps. The first step describes pictorial perception in terms of a ‘seeing according to’. Such a mode of perception pays attention to visual ambiguities, to the ‘gaze of things’ and to the conditions of visibility that are ordinarily overlooked. The second step moves on to the issue of the transposition of a pictorial perception in a painted image. Deleuze’s account of “manipulated chance” proves to be very helpful here. In the final step, Henry’s and Deleuze’s emphasis on the painting’s expression of totally invisible ‘forces’ is discussed. (shrink)

The concept of event provides the essential bridge from the realm of virtuality of the quantum state to real phenomena in space and time. We ask how much we can gather from existing theory about the localization of an event and point out that decoherence and coarse graining—though important—do not suffice for a consistent interpretation without the additional principle of random realization.

From the Christian perspective, creation exists through the Word of God. The Word of God does not create God again but brings forth the absolute “otherness” of God: creation. The nature of God is to exist. God is existence as unity in the diversity of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The gift of created existence reflects the triune nature of the Word of God. It is synthesis of diversity into unity that creates. Nature brings forth new (...) existence by unifying what it already brought forth previously. Therefore, the creative process of nature is self‐similar and nonlinear: self‐similar because at all levels it is synthesis that brings forth novelty; nonlinear because the properties of the new unities are not present in their (isolated) elements. The new properties of the wholes, however, do not destroy the properties of the parts. Rather, the elements integrated into new wholes become creatively transformed. This is because the parts become carriers of the whole, which transforms the parts through its presence. The parts become and express the qualities of the whole, qualities that the parts do not possess in isolation. Synthesis, therefore, transforms the parts creatively, because synthesis is creative. The qualities of the parts become “elevated” because the whole becomes present in and through the parts. The understanding of creation as the result of sequential, creative transformations offers a glance into the mystery of the Word of God present in the Eucharist. Here, too, the elements of bread and wine are not destroyed but elevated, creatively transformed into the Word of God. The elements (bread and wine) become the carrier of a transcendent “quality,” the Word of God. From this perspective, creation and the sacrament of the Eucharist illuminate each other. This is because the Word of God that creates the otherness of creation and the Word of God present in the Eucharist is the same. (shrink)