Bislang wurde Walter Benjamins Werk nicht auf Staatlichkeit hin gelesen, weist es doch weder eine Staatstheorie noch deren explizite Kritik auf. Der Staat als genuin politische Kategorie wird zwar kaum direkt, dafur aber uber andere Begriffe adressiert, wie Souveranitat und Gewalt, Produktionsverhaltnisse und Warenform oder soziale Kollektive wie Klasse und 'Volk'. Mit Problemen moderner Staatlichkeit beschaftigte sich Benjamin zeitlebens uber die kulturelle Sphare, und sein politisches Denken motivierte sich wesentlich aus Beobachtungen an Alltagsdingen und Konsumgutern sowie der Auseinandersetzung mit neuen (...) kunstlerischen Verfahren und Technologien. Der Band stellt diesen mittelbaren Zugriff heraus und versucht aufzuzeigen, welche Problemfelder von Benjamins politischem Denken je schon auf die Phanomene Staat und Staatlichkeit verweisen, ohne dass diese direkt angesprochen und ausgefuhrt wurden. Mit Beitragen von: Nils Baratella, Christine Blattler, Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Wolfram Ette, Jeanne Marie Gagnebin, Sebastian Jahn, Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner, Esther Leslie, Daniel Loick, Gerard Raulet, Sven Rucker, Gerhard Scheit, Falko Schmieder, Uwe Steiner, Martin Vialon, Christian Voller, Jannis Wagner. (shrink)

Hidden Mortgages. Taking the case of Oswald Spengler as an example, this article discusses the politics and practices of canonization and exclusion within the history of science since the 1990s and advocates a critical revision of the discipline's own history, its founding figures and main influences.

No one in philosophy has paid much attention to the virtue of honesty in recent years. Here is a trait for which it is easy to find consensus that it is a virtue, and furthermore, a very important virtue. It also has obvious relevance to what we see going on in contemporary politics, for instance, or in sports, the entertainment world, and education. Yet as far as I can tell, only one article in a philosophy journal has appeared in several (...) decades which discusses this virtue at any length. -/- In this chapter I have two central aims: (i) to sketch some of the conceptual parameters of the virtue of honesty in general, as well as its subordinate virtues, and then (ii) to draw on leading work in psychology to determine, at least in a preliminary way, whether we should think that most people instantiate this virtue or not. (shrink)

When can or should citizenship be granted to prospective members of states? When can or should states withdraw citizenship from their existing members? In recent decades, political philosophers have paid considerable attention to the first question, but have generally neglected the second. There are of course good practical reasons for prioritizing the question of when citizenship should be granted—many individuals have a strong interest in acquiring citizenship in particular political communities, while many fewer are at risk of denationalization. Still, loss (...) of membership in a political community is a practice with a long history that continues to take place today. -/- Concerns about national security have recently led several liberal democratic states to pass, strengthen or consider legislation that would empower their governments to denationalize certain persons.] At the international level, formal norms governing denationalization are vague and generally toothless, and there are no international legal norms that restrict denationalization to citizens who hold another citizenship or wish to take up citizenship elsewhere (Worster, 2009). So it is important to determine whether there are conditions under which denationalization can be morally justified and, if so, what those conditions are. We shall argue that while denationalization is ordinarily impermissible, there is a class of crime committed by citizens that may render it not only permissible, but a fitting response on the part of the state. (shrink)

This essay considers and evaluates recent results and arguments from classical chaotic systems theory and non-relativistic quantum mechanics that pertain to the question of whether our world is deterministic or indeterministic. While the classical results are inconclusive, quantum mechanics is often assumed to establish indeterminism insofar as the measurement process involves an ineliminable stochastic element, even though the dynamics between two measurements is considered fully deterministic. While this latter claim concerning the Schrödinger evolution must be qualified, the former fully depends (...) on a resolution of the measurement problem. Two alleged proofs that nature is indeterministic, relying, in turn, on Gleason's theorem and Conway and Kochen's recent 'free will theorem', are shown to be wanting qua proofs of indeterminism. We are thus left with the conclusion that the determinism question remains open. (shrink)

In the climate ethics debate, scholars largely agree that individuals should promote institutions that ensure the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. This paper aims to establish that there are individual duties beyond compliance with and promotion of institutions. Duties of individuals to reduce their emissions are often objected to by arguing that an individual’s emissions do not make a morally relevant difference. We challenge this argument from inconsequentialism in two ways. We first show why the argument also seems to undermine (...) the case for duties to promote institutions that the arguments’ proponents endorse. Second, we argue that individuals ought to cut emissions if they exceed their fair share of emissions entitlements and, by emitting, contribute to climate-related harm. In response to inconsequentialism, we specify the notion of ‘contribution’ via the so-called NESS theory, according to which an act is causally relevant for and contributes to an outcome if it is a Necessary Element of a Set of conditions that is Sufficient for the outcome. After refuting two objections to our approach, we conclude by discussing how to deal with possible conflicts between duties to promote institutions and to reduce one’s emissions. (shrink)

Information theory presupposes the notion of an epistemic agent, such as a scientist or an idealized human. Despite that, information theory is increasingly invoked by physicists concerned with fundamental physics, physics at very high energies, or generally with the physics of situations in which even idealized epistemic agents cannot exist. In this paper, I shall try to determine the extent to which the application of information theory in those contexts is legitimate. I will illustrate my considerations using the case of (...) black hole thermodynamics and Bekenstein's celebrated argument for his formula for the entropy of black holes. This example is particularly pertinent to the theme of the present collection because it is widely accepted as `empirical data' in notoriously empirically deprived quantum gravity, even though the laws of black hole thermodynamics have so far evaded direct empirical confirmation. (shrink)

The paper argues that the history of technology proves some common assumptions of the theological treatment of technology to be wrang. Therefore both the relation of technology to the Christian culture and the place of technology within Christian doctrine have to be reconsidered. As technology does not merely Substitute but supplements the existing the idea of the concursus divinus is a more adequate expression for a theological understanding of technology than the doctrine of creation. In terms of method (...) the ethics of technology deals with the different perceptions of a given technique, which is tobe evaluated with respect to its many places in contemporary culture. (shrink)

O presente artigo pretende refletir, a partir de contribuições de Theodor W. Adorno, sobre aspectos da formação objetiva do sujeito. Isso é feito por meio da apropriação de conceitos como autoconservação, autocrítica e crítica imanente. Tomamos como exemplo parte do projeto de à la recherche du temps perdu de Marcel Proust, nomeadamente, Un amour de Swann . A análise do processo de formação de Swann permite observar nexos e tensões que o sujeito elabora com o mundo objetivo. A ação do (...) Swann incorpora na sua relação co m o mundo objetivo os processos próprios da Obra de Arte autêntica para empreender a crítica necessária ao contexto social em que está inserido. Crítica esta, também, voltada a si próprio. (shrink)

A argumentação exposta a seguir abordará como o tema da moral foi desenvolvido nos livros que Locke produziu entre os anos de 1660 e 1688. Este recorte temporal justifica-se porque a aparente controvérsia entre a Ciência e a Religião se faz presente. Para o êxito da pesquisa, utilizou-se o seguinte referencial teórico: a fonte primária foi extraída dos textos de Locke, nas secundárias, há outros manuscritos dos comentadores julgados como relevantes. Por fim, a leitura, a análise e a interpretação dos (...) textos selecionados compuseram o procedimento metodológico empregado. (shrink)

Belgium's foreign policy is largely embedded in the external action of the European Community. Besides, the unity of action of the nine memberstates in maior issues of international polities corresponds to a deliberate option of the Belgian government. In the debates of the North-South Dialogue and in the Belgrade conference, Belgium has endeavoured to promote a common stand by the nine member-states. During the term of its EC presidency, Belgium has forwarded the proceedings concerning the extension of the community, the (...) relations with the Comecon, and - on the level of political cooperation - the defi,nition of the Nine's position on Southern Africa. The events in Shaba have led Belgium to reaffirm the particular place Africa holds in its cooperation policy. (shrink)

No presente artigo serão discutidas algumas abordagens e explicações comparativas dedicadas à moderna teoria da linguagem, que podem ser encontradas tanto no filósofo neokantiano do símbolo Ernst Cassirer como nos linguistas estruturalistas Nikolaj Trubetzkoj e Roman Jakobson, que frequentemente se referem a Ferdinand de Saussure. Com esta finalidade, recorreremos a conceitualizações inovadoras usadas em comum no pensamento filosófico da primeira metade do século XX, tais como forma, estrutura, sistema, sinal, sentido ou significação e expressão, que determinam as respectivas teorias da (...) linguagem. Entre outras coisas, as evidências provam que certos novos princípios de pensamento e terminologias são avanços em diferentes disciplinas científicas e meios culturais, sem que seus descobridores ou representantes se refiram uns aos outros, ou mesmo que conheçam uns aos outros. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzscheforschung Jahrgang: 24 Heft: 1 Seiten: 411-417.

One challenge of societies in the 21st century is the conflict of norms between different cultures. In Ancient Greece, too, such conflicts arose, and great thinkers offered great solutions. In this contribution we will argue for the following: - Ancient ethical theories were not only individual ethical theories but also social ethical theories (II). - The ancient methods of scientific examinations are useful not only in classical sciences but also in ethics (III). - Accepting the result of (III) yields highly (...) interesting theoretical results about conflicts of norms between different cultures (IV). (shrink)

Could computers ever be conscious? Will they ever have ideas that one could attribute to them and not to the programmer? Will robots be able to 'feel pain', instead of processing bits from sensors informing about danger? Will they have true emotions? These questions may never be answered, but it makes sense to ask whether humans will ever attribute mind to artifacts. This paper suggests introducing a third level of claims regarding artificial intelligence (AI), which is in between 'weak AI' (...) and 'strong AI', the so-called 'attributed AI'. This level requires more than weak AI ('behave as if', which could be said of any desktop calculator), but is less presumptuous than strong AI ('computers that think', a claim that is hard to prove). Attributed AI can be measured. This paper discusses behavioral paradigms for measurements of attributed AI and presents first experimental data. (shrink)

The paper is based on the author’s dissertation project, which maps the intellectual proximity of Hans Blumenberg and philosophers of the Ritter School – Odo Marquard, Hermann Lübbe, Robert Spaemann and Martin Kriele. The author presents a general characterization of the Ritter School and the „sceptical generation“ (H. Schelsky), seeks arguments to shed light on the reasons for the emphasis on the intellectual proximity of Blumenberg and the Ritter School, and highlights its philosophical convergences in practical philosophy. The analysis is (...) based on several indisputable affinities between Marquard’s and Blumenberg’s intellectual world: their continuity with Gehlen’s conception of man as a deficient (and compensating) being, their appreciation of polytheism, their common difficulties with philosophy of history, which lead to the critique of discursive ethics (in the spirit of the New Left). Further, the study presents and justifies the claim that Ritter’s students became closer to each other as well as to Blumenberg mostly after they were forced to respond to the student movement of the late 1960s, which cast doubt on the democratic structures of West Germany as well as Neo-Marxism, which formed the foundation of the student movement. The second part of the study consists of an analysis of the liberal conservative critique of discursive ethics, the core of which is Marquard’s unique interpretation of Descartes: the Descartes of temporary and tentative morality is confronted with the Descartes of indubitability and methodological security. (shrink)

This paper presents two approaches to creativity needed to solve problems.: the Brainstorming from Osborn and the Synectics from Gordon. By a comparison between these two disconnection processes, we try to appreciate the contributions and limits of creativity methods to practical problem solving.

Deciding where to look is a very complicated process, but deciding when to look is probably much simpler. Once the brain is certain of where it wants to look, the saccade-generating pathway may simply start autonomously. Higher cognitive areas of the brain can only override this automatic start by preventing all saccades. Hence, the brain has no ability to say when to go; it can only say “go there” or “stay here.”.

Ausgehend von Max Stirners Kritik an Sokrates' moralischer Entscheidung, aus dem Kerker nicht zu entfliehen, zeichne ich seine Theorie des Menschen nach. Dazu wird zunächst – in Anlehnung an Bernd A. Laska – Stirners Analyse des Zustandekommens der kritisierten Moral genauer betrachtet, um dann, vor allem anhand des Aufsatzes _Das unwahre Prinzip unserer Erziehung_, die Voraussetzung dieser Kritik herauszuarbeiten. Als Resultat ergibt sich, dass Stirners These, der Einzelne sei nicht nur Teil des Ganzen, sondern das Ganze selbst, wohl von Hegel (...) inspiriert ist und dennoch in einem entscheidenden Punkt über Hegel hinausgeht. Abschließend gehe ich auf das Problem von Recht und Gewalt in _Der Einzige und sein Eigentum_ ein. (shrink)

According to recent studies in developmental psychology and neuroscience, symbolic language is essentially intersubjective. Empathetically relating to others renders possible the acquisition of linguistic constructs. Intersubjectivity develops in early ontogenetic life when interactions between mother and infant mutually shape their relatedness. Empirical fndings suggest that the shared attention and intention involved in those interactions is sustained as it becomes internalized and embodied. Symbolic language is derivative and emerges from shared intentionality. In this paper, we present a formalization of shared intentionality (...) based upon a quantum approach. From a phenomenological viewpoint, we investigate the nonseparable, dynamic and sustainable nature of social cognition and evaluate the appropriateness of quantum interaction for modelling intersubjectivity. (shrink)