"In einen Toten tritt man ein wie in eine offene Stadt" - so beginnt Thomäs Heidegger-Interpretation, und darin wird zugleich ihr Anspruch deutlich. Wenn Heidegger selbst seine Werke "Wege" nennt, so geht es Thomä darum, dessen philosophische Entwicklung als ein Netz solcher Wege zu erschließen - und zugleich zu fragen, wo Heideggers Irrwege, Abwege oder Auswege einsetzen.

We propose two admissible closures $${\mathbb{A}({\sf PTCA})}$$ and $${\mathbb{A}({\sf PHCA})}$$ of Ferreira’s system PTCA of polynomial time computable arithmetic and of full bounded arithmetic (or polynomial hierarchy computable arithmetic) PHCA. The main results obtained are: (i) $${\mathbb{A}({\sf PTCA})}$$ is conservative over PTCA with respect to $${\forall\exists\Sigma^b_1}$$ sentences, and (ii) $${\mathbb{A}({\sf PHCA})}$$ is conservative over full bounded arithmetic PHCA for $${\forall\exists\Sigma^b_{\infty}}$$ sentences. This yields that (i) the $${\Sigma^b_1}$$ definable functions of $${\mathbb{A}({\sf PTCA})}$$ are the polytime functions, and (ii) the $${\Sigma^b_{\infty}}$$ definable (...) functions of $${\mathbb{A}({\sf PHCA})}$$ are the functions in the polynomial time hierarchy. (shrink)

What kind of relationship do we have with artificial beings (avatars, puppets, robots, etc.)? What does it mean to mirror ourselves in them, to perform them or to play trial identity games with them? Actor & Avatar addresses these questions from artistic and scholarly angles. Contributions on the making of »technical others« and philosophical reflections on artificial alterity are flanked by neuroscientific studies on different ways of perceiving living persons and artificial counterparts. The contributors have achieved a successful artistic-scientific collaboration (...) with extensive visual material. (shrink)

This book critically engages with the idea of transparency whose ubiquitous demand stands in stark contrast to its lack of conceptual clarity. The book carefully examines this notion in its own right, traces its emergence in Early Modernity and analyzes its omnipresence in contemporary rhetoric. Today, transparency has become a catchword outplaying other Enlightenment values like empowerment, sincerity and the notion of a public sphere. In a suspicious manner, transparency is entangled in the discourses on power, surveillance, and self-exposure. Bringing (...) together prominent scholars from the emerging field of Critical Transparency Studies, the book offers a map of the various sites at which transparency has become virulent and connects the dots between past and present. By studying its appearances in today’s hyper-mediated economies of information and by linking it back to its historical roots, the book analyzes transparency and its discontents, and scrutinizes the reasons why it has become the imperative of a supposedly post-ideological age. (shrink)

According to Chen's Linguistic Savings Hypothesis, our native language affects our economic behavior. We present three studies investigating how cross-linguistic differences in the grammaticalization of future-time reference affect intertemporal choices. In a series of decision scenarios about finance and health issues, we let speakers of altogether five languages that represent FTR with increasing strength, that is, Chinese, German, Danish, Spanish, and English, choose between hypothetical sooner-smaller and later-larger reward options. While the LSH predicts a present-bias that increases with FTR-strength, our (...) decision makers preferred later-larger options and this future-bias increased with FTR-strength. In multiple regressions, the FTR-strength effect persisted when controlled for socioeconomic and cultural differences. We discuss why our findings deviate from the LSH and ask in how far the FTR-strength effect represents a habitual constitution of linguistic relativity or an instance of online decision framing. (shrink)

Pictures in historical chapters of textbooks convey information about the values and assumptions of the authors’professions and the larger culture. We scrutinized 15 recent abnormal psychology textbooks for reproductions of art created before 1900. Thirteen works appeared in three or more textbooks. Overall, these pictures support a “Whiggish” account of history that celebrates the present and gives a distorted, incomplete rendering of the past. The 13 pictures tended to depict the mentally ill as an underclass who are released from their (...) literal and metaphorical shackles by men who are “ahead of their time” in their struggles against prevailing ignorance. The pictures also emphasized the difference of the mentally ill by presenting a catalogue of stereotypic visual elements attributed to insanity throughout Western history. We argue for the inclusion in textbooks of “history for the sake of the past” as a way of genuinely engaging different ideologies and thereby stimulating interest in our own implicit values and biases. (shrink)

The Russian Revolution is a historical milestone both politically and theoretically. Its supporters found in it the consummation of all history that preceded it and the springboard towards a new history absolved from all grievances. Its opponents saw in it a violent coup d’ etat leading to the destruction of a state, the beginning of the division of the world in two hostile camps and last but not least one of the paradigmatic examples of an almost unprecedented authoritarianism. This book (...) examines the discursive and practical battleground of the Russian Revolution, describes how it keeps living through the events, struggles, theories, and effects it prompted, and analyzes revolutionary ideas and processes in a more general vein. By taking the Russian Revolution as the prime example of revolutionary processes, the articles of this volume attempt to acknowledge the legacy of the Russian Revolution, come to terms with its failures and sketch the future of revolutionary thinking and practice in its aftermath. (shrink)

This volume aims to commemorate, criticize, scrutinize and assess the undoubted significance of the Russian Revolution both retrospectively and prospectively in three parts. Part I consists of a palimpsest of the different representations that the Russian Revolution underwent through its turbulent history, going back to its actors, agents, theorists and propagandists to consider whether it is at all possible to revisit the Russian Revolution as an event. With this problematic as a backbone, the chapters of this section scrutinize the ambivalences (...) of revolution in four distinctive phenomena that pertain to the revolution’s historicity. Part II concentrates on how the revolution was retold in the aftermath of its accomplishment not only by its sympathizers but also its opponents. These chapters not only bring to light the ways in which the revolution triggered critical theorists to pave new paths of radical thinking that were conceived as methods to overcome the revolution’s failures and impasses, but also how the Revolution was subverted in order to inspire reactionary politics and legitimize conservative theoretical undertakings. Even commemorating the Russian Revolution, then, still poses a threat to every well-established political order. In Part III, this volume interprets how the Russian Revolution can spur a rethinking of the idea of revolution. Acknowledging the suffocating burden that the notion of revolution as such entails, the final chapters of this book ultimately address the content and form of future revolution. It is therein, in such critical political thought and such radical form of action, where the Russian Revolution’s legacy ought to be sought and can still be found. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 66 Heft: 1 Seiten: 98-111.

Der Status des Liberalismus in der Französischen Revolution und ihrer Folgezeit lässt sich nicht näher bestimmen, ohne zunächst von dem Wort zu reden, das seinen Kern ausmacht: Freiheit. Zu diskutieren sind die Unterscheidung zwischen zwei Freiheitsbegriffen, die die französischen Liberalen der ersten Stunde vorschlagen, und die These, dass die politische Freiheit als Instrument für die private oder bürgerliche Freiheit anzusehen sei. Am Ende soll das Verhältnis zwischen Französischer Revolution und Liberalismus anhand eines markanten Votums TocquevillesTocqueville, Alexis de illustriert werden.

Am Leitfaden des Satzes "Jeder ist sich selbst der Fernste" wird die systematische Rage erörtert, wie die Revision personaler Identität bei Emerson und Nietzsche für eine Revision der Moral fruchtbar gemacht werden kann. Dabei geht es inbesondere um die Figur des "abandonment" oder der Selbstüberwindung, mit der die Person, die "werdende Seele" , ihre Vertrautheit mit sich verliert. Diese Erfahrung innerer Fermdheit oder "Ferne" eröffnet ein neues moralisches Verhältnis zu äußerer Fremdheit oder zum Anderen. Selbstbezug und Interaktion greifen ineinander. Neben (...) Emersons und Nietzsches Kritik des Mitleids und der Nächstenliebe tritt damit auch ein positives Verständnis der "Anteilnahme."Taking the phrase "each man is furthest from himself" as a guideline, this paper shows how Emerson's and Nietzsche's revised notion of personal identity eventually led to a revised notion of morality as well. The image of abandoning or overcoming the self is linked to situations in which a person or the "soul" that "becomes" loses one's self-acquaintance. This experience of internal strangeness or distance paves the way to a new moral relation to the external strangeness of the Other. Self-relation and interaction are intertwined. Hence Emerson and Nietzsche's critiques of pity and compassion are complemented by a positive understanding of sympathy. (shrink)

Wilhelm von Humboldt’s concept of Bildung is opposed to mechanical or organic readings of human development, but also to an idealized account of human autonomy . His account of situated individuality also refl ects the relationship between generations, which comes under scrutiny in a «fatherless world» reigned by the «invisible hand» . Humboldt’s and also Schleiermacher’s treatises on the German university are based on their notion of situated individuality. They defend «academic freedom» by instigating individual «energy» and defending institutional «openness». (...) Today’s universities fall short of living up to its founders’ conceptual premises. (shrink)

This article aims to revise the well-established self-conception of the modern man based on the combination between self-preservation and autonomy. On a systematic level, the attempt to revise this self-conception is based on the notions of participation and sympathy; it explores their bearings for social philosophy, the philosophy of language and the idea of a “moral sentimentalism.” In a historical perspective, this article focuses on Johann Gottfried Herder, criticizes the readings put forward by Isaiah Berlin and Charles Taylor, discusses Herder′s (...) opposition to Immanuel Kant, and re-contextualizes his work in relation to Hutcheson, Burke, Rousseau, and others. (shrink)

The article discusses Wittgenstein’s notion of language-game by focusing on his inversion of the relation between foundation and construction. By examining Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language and life, the article attempts to gain general information about the purposes of philosophy.

The critical analysis of habit is regularly complemented by scenarios of how to defy it. Heidegger’s conceptual pairing for taking on this twofold task is “everydayness” and “authenticity.” In this paper, his account is put to test. By choosing an unusual line-up of authors – Heidegger, Hegel, and Diderot –, it identifies three different strategies for overcoming the danger of being ridden by a type. They appeal to authenticity, universality, or individuality. After discussing Hegel’s and Diderot’s accounts, the paper turns (...) to Heidegger’s confrontation between everydayness and authenticity and shows that it remains inconclusive. In order to create a bulwark against habit Heidegger establishes a link between authenticity and the anticipation of death which makes Dasein turn away from the “multiplicity of possibilities” and secures the “simplicity” of resoluteness. This total demolition of particularities and differences paves the way to a totalitarian conception of overcoming customs: The individual is prone to affirm a destiny marked by total homogeneity and equalization. The paper comes to the conclusion that, among the different readings of habit and its discontents, Diderot’s account is the most plausible. (shrink)