In Diltheys Philosophie heißt ‘Kultur’ jedes geistige Leben, das durch eine Struktur gestaltet ist und auf gemeinsame Zwecke abzielt. Jede Kultur beruht auf biologischen und anthropologischen Tatsachen und bringt Stetigkeit in das menschliche Leben. Der historische Fortschritt bringt verschiedene Formen der Kultur als Zusammenfassung der geistigen Tatsachen hervor. Solche Kulturen, an denen die Individuen Anteil haben, sind Wissenschaft, Kunst, Philosophie, Religion, Recht und jeder konstante Lebens- und Kommunikationsstil. „Kulturelle Systeme“ sind die äußeren Verbindungen und Institutionen der Kultur, z.B. ist die (...) Kirche das System der Religion, der Staat das System des Rechts und der Gesellschaft. Natürlich lebt das Individuum in je verschiedenen kulturellen Systemen, die voneinander unabhängig sind. (shrink)

„Empirie, nicht Empirismus“ ist eines von den fundamentalen Prinzipien in Diltheys Denken. Es ist entgegengesetzt der Metaphysik (bes. Hegels und jeder Form von Idealismus) auf der einen und dem Positivismus auf der anderen Seite. Der Positivismus, die vorherrschende Richtung der Philosophie in der 2. Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, wird zwar von A. Comte zu einem System der rein empirischen Philosophie ausgestaltet, aber schon von ihm und dann von einigen seiner Nachfolger in der Wende zu einer ‚positiven Religion‘ aufgelöst. Dilthey wendet (...) sich gegen Comtes Geschichtsphilosophie und gegen die Ausweitung der Grundsätze, die aus den Naturwissenschaften stammen, in die Geisteswissenschaften, etwa die Übertragung empiristischer Grundsätze auf die Geschichte (H. Th. Buckle). Außerdem, so Dilthey, ist der Positivismus nicht in der Lage, eine praktische Philosophie zu entwickeln, die der Vielzahl der Weltanschauungen im 19. Jahrhundert gerecht wird. (shrink)

Until today the question of »theodicy« is very much contested among philosophers and theologians. Some hold the problem to be principally unsolvable, while others take the question for unavoidable. Since Leibniz the notion is generally used to explain the origin and function of evil or its allowing by God. This article deals with some occurences of »theodicy« in the 18th and 19th century, overlooked until now. Besides, the widely known essais on theodicy are interpreted as being permanent transformations of the (...) original question. E. g. Kant designes a concept of »authentic theodicy« in which man is called up to fight against the evil by his own means. During the French Revolution G. Forster hopes for a kind theodicy as political improvement of mankind. For Schelling and Hegel the course of world history is the real theodicy. Finally, for Nietzsche art is the only sufficient theodicy, the aesthetic justification of the world. Later on Nietzsche attacks all kinds of theodicy as they ask for the meaning of existence instead of believing in the innocence of all development. (shrink)

Das 19. Jahrhundert ist zu Recht das lange Jahrhundert genannt worden. Wie es mit einem Epochenumbruch, dem der Revolution, beginnt, so endet es: mit dem Ersten Weltkrieg und dem Eintritt der beiden späteren Weltmächte, den USA und Sowjetrussland, in die Weltgeschichte. Dazwischen bestimmen andere Revolutionen und Restaurationen, Kriege und Friedenszeiten das politische Geschehen. Die Geistes- und Philosophiegeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts kennt weder eine dominierende Strömung noch eine kontinuierliche Entwicklung. Karl Löwith spricht vom revolutionären Bruch im Denken des 19. Jahrhunderts, der (...) vor allem von Marx und Kierkegaard markiert werde. Beider Opposition zu Hegel und zum Idealismus wird begleitet vom gleichzeitigen Aufschwung des Positivismus, dann vom Neukantianismus, Materialismus, Darwinismus, Pragmatismus und vielerlei weiteren Ismen, für die das Zeitalter kennzeichnend ist und für die es den neutralen Oberbegriff Weltanschauung bereithält. Mehr als vorangegangene Epochen wird das 19. Jahrhundert von Begriffen geprägt, die die öffentlichen Debatten bestimmen, von solchen der Wissenschaften wie denen der Politik. Viele Termini werden über den engeren fachlichen Rahmen hinaus populär: Wer spricht nicht um 1900 in vielfältiger Bedeutung von >EnergieEntwicklungMechanisierungUnbewusstem. (shrink)

Morality and economic rationality: integrative economic ethics as the rational ethics of economic activity; Part II. Reflections on the Foundations of Economic ...

Ulrich Beck's best selling Risk Society established risk on the sociological agenda. It brought together a wide range of issues centering on environmental, health and personal risk, provided a rallying ground for researchers and activists in a variety of social movements and acted as a reference point for state and local policies in risk management. The Risk Society and Beyond charts the progress of Beck's ideas and traces their evolution. It demonstrates why the issues raised by Beck reverberate widely (...) throughout social theory and covers the new risks that Beck did not foresee, associated with the emergence of new technologies, genetic and cybernetic. The book is unique because it offers both an introduction to the main arguments in Risk Society and develops a range of critical discussions of aspects of this and other works of Beck. (shrink)

In this new book, Ulrich Beck develops his now widely used concepts of second modernity, risk society and reflexive sociology into a radical new sociological ...

By assembling authors with a wide range of different disciplinary backgrounds, from philosophy, literature, political science, sociology to medical anthropology ...

At the beginning of the 21st century the conditio humana cannot be understood nationally or locally but only globally. This constitutes a revolution in the social sciences. The `sociological imagination' so far has basically been a nation state imagination. The main problem is how to redefine the sociological frame of reference in the horizon of a cosmopolitan imagination. For the purpose of empirical research I distinguish between three concepts: interconnectedness, liquid modernity and cosmopolitization from within. The latter is a kind (...) of class analysis after class analysis, which takes on board globalization internalized. For the purposes of social analysis, therefore, it is necessary to distinguish systematically between the national manifestation on the one hand and cosmopolitan reality of `global flows', currents of information, symbols, money, risks, people, social inequalities, on the other. This internal involuntary and often unseen cosmopolitanization from below of the national sphere of experience is occurring, however, with the power of economic globalization. So what does inner `cosmopolitanization' mean? The key concepts and questions of a way of life, such as nourishment, production, identity, fear, memory, pleasure, fate, power and politics, can no longer be located and understood nationally, but only globally whether in the shape of globally shared collective futures, capital flows, impending ecological or economic catastrophes, global foodstuff chains, transnational power games, or the `Esperanto' of pop music. In this article I look at transformation in the understanding of space-time, of identity, of the production paradigms, as well as at the resulting consequences for key sociological concepts like class and power and, within this frame, point to certain dilemmas of cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

An original analysis of the parallels between the arrested moment in photography and in the traumatized psyche.

How can one distinguish the concept of second modernity from the concept of postmodernity? Postmodernists are interested in deconstruction without reconstruction, second modernity is about deconstruction and reconstruction. Social sciences need to construct new concepts to understand the world dynamics at the beginning of the 21st century. Modernity has not vanished, we are not post it. Radical social change has always been part of modernity. What is new is that modernity has begun to modernize its own foundations. This is what (...) it means to say modernity has become reflexive. It has become directed at itself. This causes huge new problems both in reality and in theory. There has been a pluralization of the boundaries within and between societies, between society and nature, between Us and Other, between life and death. This pluralization also changes the inherent nature of boundaries. They become not so much boundaries as a variety of attempts to draw of boundaries. Border conflicts become transformed into conflicts over the drawing of boundaries. Where postmodernism simply celebrates this multiplication of boundaries, the theory of second modernity starts with the problem this new reality poses for individual and collective decisions, and with the problem that the continued existence of such decisions poses for theory. Institutions that are capable of such conscious boundary drawing are enabled in a way that those of the first modernity were not. But this process also generates qualitatively new kinds of trouble and crises. To investigate those troubles is to unveil the emergence of the second modernity. (shrink)

This article opens with general and historical remarks on philosophy of science's problems with the concept of discovery. Then, drawing upon simple examples of Watson's and Crick's non-philosophical usage, I characterize phrases of the type "x discovers y" semantically. It will subsequently be shown how widespread philosophical discussion on discovery violates the semantic constraints of phrases of the type "x discovers y." Then I provide a philosophical reconstruction of "x discovers y" that is in keeping with the "folk" notion of (...) discovery. The philosophical ingredients of this approach are taken from a certain aspect of action theory and from epistemological reliabilism. The approach draws upon the concept of superior action and connects this concept to progressive research. In contrast to normal actions, superior actions are primarily explained by competencies. This perspective includes reminders of what some nineteenth-century philosopher-scientists had advocated as a competence-oriented view on scientific research. Finally, this approach is applied to the case of Watson's and Crick's discovery. (shrink)

Berger, U., Total sets and objects in domain theory, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 60 91-117. Total sets and objects generalizing total functions are introduced into the theory of effective domains of Scott and Ersov. Using these notions Kreisel's Density Theorem and the Theorem of Kreisel-Lacombe-Shoenfield are generalized. As an immediate consequence we obtain the well-known continuity of computable functions on the constructive reals as well as a domain-theoretic characterization of the Heriditarily Effective Operations.

At the beginning of the 21st century the conditio humana cannot be understood nationally or locally but only globally. This constitutes a revolution in the social sciences. The `sociological imagination' so far has basically been a nation state imagination. The main problem is how to redefine the sociological frame of reference in the horizon of a cosmopolitan imagination. For the purpose of empirical research I distinguish between three concepts: interconnectedness , liquid modernity and cosmopolitization from within. The latter is a (...) kind of class analysis after class analysis, which takes on board globalization internalized. For the purposes of social analysis, therefore, it is necessary to distinguish systematically between the national manifestation on the one hand and cosmopolitan reality of `global flows', currents of information, symbols, money, risks, people, social inequalities, on the other. This internal involuntary and often unseen cosmopolitanization from below of the national sphere of experience is occurring, however, with the power of economic globalization. So what does inner `cosmopolitanization' mean? The key concepts and questions of a way of life, such as nourishment, production, identity, fear, memory, pleasure, fate, power and politics, can no longer be located and understood nationally, but only globally whether in the shape of globally shared collective futures, capital flows, impending ecological or economic catastrophes, global foodstuff chains, transnational power games, or the `Esperanto' of pop music. In this article I look at transformation in the understanding of space-time, of identity, of the production paradigms, as well as at the resulting consequences for key sociological concepts like class and power and, within this frame, point to certain dilemmas of cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

The discourse on climate politics so far is an expert and elitist discourse in which peoples, societies, citizens, workers, voters and their interests, views and voices are very much neglected. So, in order to turn climate change politics from its head onto its feet you have to take sociology into account. There is an important background assumption which shares in the general ignorance concerning environmental issues and, paradoxically, this is in corporated in the specialism of environmental sociology itself — this (...) is the category of ‘the environment’. If ‘the environment’ only includes everything which is not human, not social, then the concept is sociologically empty. If the concept includes human action and society, then it is scientifically mistaken and politically suicidal. (shrink)

Das Buch weist die Fruchtbarkeit einer strukturgenetisch fundierten Rekonstruktionsperspektive für die Analyse der historisch und kulturell differenten Weltbilder nach. Anhand der für die Geschichte der Denksysteme zentralen Vorstellungen über die Natur-Kultur-Differenz und die physikalische Kausalität werden Reichweite und Grenzen der These einer universalen Entwicklungslogik kritische geprüft. Die historischen Studien bieten dabei einen neuartigen Blick auf die Aristotelische Physik und ihre mittelalterlichen Fortentwicklungen. Schließlich werden die materialen Ergebnisse in Richtung einer differenztheoretisch orientierten Theorie der Entstehung des Neuen in der Entwicklung ausgedeutet.

Ulrich Meyer defends a novel theory about the nature of time, and argues against the consensus view that time and space are fundamentally alike. He presents the first comprehensive defense of a 'modal' account, which emphasizes the similarities between times and possible worlds in modal logic, and is easily reconciled with the theory of relativity.

In What 'Snowflakes' Get Right About Free Speech, Ulrich Baer draws on jurisprudence, philosophical texts, and his long experience as a senior university administrator to show that debates surrounding free speech on university campuses are not about the feelings of offended students but about our democracy's commitment to equality and the university's critical role as an arbiter of truth in society.

This article differentiates between three different axes of conflict in world risk society. The first axis is that of ecological conflicts, which are by their very essence global. The second is global financial crises, which, in a first stage, can be individualized and nationalized. And the third, which suddenly broke upon us on September 11th, is the threat of transnational terror networks, which empowers governments and states. Two sets of implications are drawn: first, there are the political dynamics of world (...) risk society. In an age where trust and faith in God, class and progress have largely disappeared, humanity's common fear has proved the last - ambivalent - resource for making new bonds. Second, the methodological nationalism that preoccupies the sociological imagination has to be overcome and a `methodological cosmopolitism' has to be created. (shrink)

1474 wird in Basel ein stolzer Jiingling, angeklagt. Die Meinung der Experten ist eindeu­ tig. Es liege ein lusus naturae der iibelsten Sorte vor, ein wahrhaftes crimen, veriibt durch Hexerkraft. Die feierliche Hinrichtung findet wie iiblich vor einer begeisterten Menge auf dem Rathausplatz statt. Bei dem Angeklagten handelt es sich urn einen kleinen Hahn, be­ schuldigt und iiberfiihrt, ein Ei gelegt zu haben. l Die Zeiten iindem sich und die Expertenmeinungen mit ihnen. Die meisten Menschen aufgeklarterer Epochen wiirden wohl einiges (...) darauf wetten, daB der Hahn unschuldig sein und ein SpaBvogel ihm das Ei unterlegt haben miisse. Bemerkenswerterweise ist diese Ansicht nicht begriindeter als die der Baseler Richter. Die Hiihnerkunde des 20. Jahrhun­ derts hat diverse Exemplare von Gallus L. nachgewiesen, die aussahen wie Hiihne und sich als Hennen heraustellten; weitere Dberraschungen sind nicht auzuschlieBen. Der Baseler Fall gehOrt nicht zu den Themen besonderer Dignitiit, birgt aber im klei­ nen alles, was Wissenschaftsphilosophie zu beunruhigen wie auch zu inspirieren verrnag: wechselnde Auffassungen, vermeintliche Evidenzen, strittige Schliisse und unklare Ver­ hiiltnisse zwischen Wissenschaft und Gemeinwesen. Das Ergebnis solcher geschichtlicher Irritationen flillt entsprechend aus. Es gibt keine Philosophic der Wissenschaftsgeschichte in der Gestalt einer Disziplin, gegeben ist ein Themenfeld, dessen wichtigste Ordnungs­ strukturen derzeit durch Kontroversstellungen gebildet werden. (shrink)