Dieser interdisziplinär angelegte Sammelband erkundet die Relevanz wissenschaftlicher Erhellungen der Lebenswelt für Systematische und Praktische Theologie. Dazu begibt er sich in ein Gespräch mit philosophischer Phänomenologie, Religionsphilosophie und Sozialwissenschaft. Die einzelnen Beiträge markieren aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven das Interesse von Theologie an "Gelebter Religion". Abgeleitet wird daraus die Bedeutung der Phänomenologie für die Konstitution der Praktischen Theologie.

My strategy is to examine a recent trend in philosophical discussions of responsibility, a trend that tries, but I think ultimately fails, to give an acceptable analysis of the conditions of responsibility. It fails due to what at first appear to be deep and irresolvable metaphysical problems. It is here that I suggest that the condition of sanity comes to the rescue. What at first appears to be an impossible requirement for responsibility---the requirement that the responsible agent have created her- (...) or himself---turns out to be the vastly more mundane and non controversial requirement that the responsible agent must, in a fairly standard sense, be sane. (shrink)

How can we solve the paradox of false-belief understanding: if infants pass the implicit false belief task by nonverbal behavioural responses why do they nonetheless typically fail the explicit FBT till they are 4 years old? Starting with the divide between situational and cognitive accounts of the development of false-belief understanding, we argue that we need to consider both situational and internal cognitive factors together and describe their interaction to adequately explain the development of children’s Theory of Mind ability. We (...) then argue that a further challenge is raised for existing accounts by helping behaviour versions of the FBT. We argue that the common two-stage accounts are inadequate: we need to allow for three central stages in a continuous development. Furthermore, drawing on Perner et al.’s and Perner and Leahy’s : 491–508, 2016) recent mental files account, we provide a new account of the development of these three stages of ToM ability by describing the changes of the structure and organisation of mental files including the systematic triggering role of types of situations. Thereby we aim to establish a situational mental file account as a new and adequate solution to the paradox of false-belief understanding. (shrink)

Intellectual history still quite commonly distinguishes between the episode we know as the Scientific Revolution, and its successor era, the Enlightenment, in terms of the calculatory and quantifying zeal of the former—the age of mechanics—and the rather scientifically lackadaisical mood of the latter, more concerned with freedom, public space and aesthetics. It is possible to challenge this distinction in a variety of ways, but the approach I examine here, in which the focus on an emerging scientific field or cluster of (...) disciplines—the ‘life sciences’, particularly natural history, medicine, and physiology —is, not Romantically anti-scientific, but resolutely anti-mathematical. Diderot bluntly states, in his Thoughts on the interpretation of nature, that “We are on the verge of a great revolution in the sciences. Given the taste people seem to have for morals, belles-lettres, the history of nature and experimental physics, I dare say that before a hundred years, there will not be more than three great geometricians remaining in Europe. The science will stop short where the Bernoullis, the Eulers, the Maupertuis, the Clairauts, the Fontaines and the D’Alemberts will have left it.... We will not go beyond.” Similarly, Buffon in the first discourse of his Histoire naturelle speaks of the “over-reliance on mathematical sciences,” given that mathematical truths are merely “definitional” and “demonstrative,” and thereby “abstract, intellectual and arbitrary.” Earlier in the Thoughts, Diderot judges “the thing of the mathematician” to have “as little existence in nature as that of the gambler.” Significantly, this attitude—taken by great scientists who also translated Newton or wrote careful papers on probability theory, as well as by others such as Mandeville—participates in the effort to conceptualize what we might call a new ontology for the emerging life sciences, very different from both the ‘iatromechanism’ and the ‘animism’ of earlier generations, which either failed to account for specifically living, goal-directed features of organisms, or accounted for them in supernaturalistic terms by appealing to an ‘anima’ as explanatory principle. Anti-mathematicism here is then a key component of a naturalistic, open-ended project to give a successful reductionist model of explanation in ‘natural history’, a model which is no more vitalist than it is materialist—but which is fairly far removed from early modern mechanism. (shrink)

In this first book-length examination of the Cartesian theory of visual perception, Celia Wolf-Devine explores the many philosophical implications of Descartes’ theory, concluding that he ultimately failed to provide a completely mechanistic theory of visual perception. Wolf-Devine traces the development of Descartes’ thought about visual perception against the backdrop of the transition from Aristotelianism to the new mechanistic science—the major scientific paradigm shift taking place in the seventeenth century. She considers the philosopher’s work in terms of its background (...) in Aristotelian and later scholastic thought rather than looking at it "backwards" through the later work of the British empiricists and Kant. Wolf-Devine begins with Descartes’ ideas about perception in the _Rules _and continues through the later scientific writings in which he develops his own mechanistic theory of light, color, and visual spatial perception. Throughout her discussion, she demonstrates both Descartes’ continuity with and break from the Aristotelian tradition. Wolf-Devine critically examines Cartesian theory by focusing on the problems that arise from his use of three different models to explain the behavior of light as well as on the ways in which modern science has not confirmed some of Descartes’ central hypotheses about vision. She shows that the changes Descartes made in the Aristotelian framework created a new set of problems in the philosophy of perception. While such successors to Descartes as Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume accepted the core of his theory of vision, they struggled to clarify the ontological status of colors, to separate what is strictly speaking "given" to the sense of sight from what is the result of judgments by the mind, and to confront a "veil of perception" skepticism that would have been unthinkable within the Aristotelian framework. Wolf-Devine concludes that Descartes was not ultimately successful in providing a completely mechanistic theory of visual perception, and because of this, she suggests both that changes in the conceptual framework of Descartes are in order and that a partial return to some features of the Aristotelian tradition may be necessary. (shrink)

Intellectual history still quite commonly distinguishes between the episode we know as the Scientific Revolution, and its successor era, the Enlightenment, in terms of the calculatory and quantifying zeal of the former—the age of mechanics—and the rather scientifically lackadaisical mood of the latter, more concerned with freedom, public space and aesthetics. It is possible to challenge this distinction in a variety of ways, but the approach I examine here, in which the focus on an emerging scientific field or cluster of (...) disciplines—the ‘life sciences’, particularly natural history, medicine, and physiology —is, not Romantically anti-scientific, but resolutely anti-mathematical. Diderot bluntly states, in his Thoughts on the interpretation of nature, that “We are on the verge of a great revolution in the sciences. Given the taste people seem to have for morals, belles-lettres, the history of nature and experimental physics, I dare say that before a hundred years, there will not be more than three great geometricians remaining in Europe. The science will stop short where the Bernoullis, the Eulers, the Maupertuis, the Clairauts, the Fontaines and the D’Alemberts will have left it.... We will not go beyond.” Similarly, Buffon in the first discourse of his Histoire naturelle speaks of the “over-reliance on mathematical sciences,” given that mathematical truths are merely “definitional” and “demonstrative,” and thereby “abstract, intellectual and arbitrary.” Earlier in the Thoughts, Diderot judges “the thing of the mathematician” to have “as little existence in nature as that of the gambler.” Significantly, this attitude—taken by great scientists who also translated Newton or wrote careful papers on probability theory, as well as by others such as Mandeville—participates in the effort to conceptualize what we might call a new ontology for the emerging life sciences, very different from both the ‘iatromechanism’ and the ‘animism’ of earlier generations, which either failed to account for specifically living, goal-directed features of organisms, or accounted for them in supernaturalistic terms by appealing to an ‘anima’ as explanatory principle. Anti-mathematicism here is then a key component of a naturalistic, open-ended project to give a successful reductionist model of explanation in ‘natural history’, a model which is no more vitalist than it is materialist—but which is fairly far removed from early modern mechanism. (shrink)

The WTO’s nine day sprint in July 2008 was an attempt to break the logjam on “modalities” for agriculture and NAMA in the marathon Doha Round negotiations. All that observers can know for certain is that the parties did not agree, but understanding the failure is an essential prelude to any attempt to relaunch the Round. This paper is a counterfactual analysis of the various explanations that have been offered for the failure. I consider factors exogenous to the negotiation process, (...) such as the macroeconomic context; and factors endogenous to the process such as the timing and level of participation in the meeting, and the nature of the issues under discussion. I conclude that sprinting during a marathon is unwise. The London G-20 Summit commitment to a balanced outcome is achievable, but assembling a package with so many issues involving 153 members takes time and patience. (shrink)

Many contextualist accounts in epistemology appeal to ordinary language and everyday practice as grounds for positing a low-standards knowledge (knowledgeL) that contrasts with high-standards prevalent in epistemology (knowledgeH). We compare these arguments to arguments from the height of “ordinary language” philosophy in the mid 20th century and find that all such arguments face great difficulties. We find a powerful argument for the legitimacy and necessity of knowledgeL (but not of knowledgeH). These appeals to practice leave us with reasons to accept (...) knowledgeL in the face of radical doubts raised by skeptics. We conclude by arguing that by relegating knowledgeH to isolated contexts, the contextualist fails to deal with the skeptical challenge head-on. KnowledgeH and knowledgeL represent competing, incompatible intuitions about knowledge, and we must choose between them. A fallibilist conception of knowledge, formed with proper attention to radical doubts, can address the skeptical challenge without illicit appeal to everyday usage. (shrink)

The figure of the materialist philosopher as the « laughing philosopher », who mocks the rest of humanity, its fears, superstitions and even values, is a classic one. It has been associated variously with Democritus, Epicurus, Spinoza, Rabelais, La Mettrie and others. Apart from the interest one might have in this figure of the philosopher as someone who is rather far removed from school benches, the present essay seeks to describe or define this conceptual character in order to argue that (...) laughter is the materialist philosopher’s « mode of access » to the human world, the so-called world of « values ». This implies that the equally classic reproach towards materialism – its coldness, its inability to grasp the dynamics of human action, what Flaubert would have called an « anatomist’s cruelty » – fails ; or only successfully targets materialism when it laughs. (shrink)

The appealing principle that you can't get an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’, sometimes called Hume's Guillotine , faces a well-known challenge: it must give a clear account of the distinction between normative and descriptive sentences while dodging counter-examples. I argue in this paper that recent efforts to answer this challenge fail because the distinction between normative and descriptive sentences cannot be described well enough to be of any help. As a result, no version of the principle is both true and (...) adequate. Yet a different principle—that no normative terms are synonymous with any descriptive terms—can satisfy much of the motivation we had for defending Hume's Guillotine in the first place. I show briefly how this second principle can explain why is-ought arguments are invalid, block some attempted deductive justifications of beliefs with normative terms, and create an explanatory advantage for moral non-cognitivism. Just so, giving up Hume's Guillotine is the prudent thi.. (shrink)

Regulatory agencies aim to protect the public by moderating risks associated with innovation, but a good regulatory regime should also promote justified public trust. After introducing the USDA 2020 SECURE Rule for regulation of biotech innovation as a case study, this essay develops a theory of justified public trust in regulation. On the theory advanced here, to be trustworthy, a regulatory regime must (1) fairly and effectively manage risk, must be (2) “science based” in the relevant sense, and must in (...) addition be (3) truthful, (4) transparent, and (5) responsive to public input. Evaluated with these norms, the USDA SECURE Rule is shown to be deeply flawed, since it fails appropriately to manage risk, and similarly fails to satisfy other normative requirements for justified trust. The argument identifies ways in which the SECURE Rule itself might be improved, but more broadly provides a normative framework for the evaluation of trustworthy regulatory policy-making. (shrink)

In Le mythe de Sisyphe Camus deals with the problem of suicide because of the absurdity of life. He sees people committing suicide because they think life, being absurd, is no longer worthwhile. But does the absurdity of life imply that life is not worthwhile? He argues this is not the case. The logic of the absurd leads to revolt, freedom and passion for life. These make life worthwhile. So suicide is not the conclusion of the logic of the absurd. (...) However, his argument, though inspiring, fails to recognize the problem of suicide. Why do people who commit suicide because of the absurd believe life is no longer worthwhile? In my article I try to answer this question. In L’homme révolté Camus states that revolt can be contaminated by ressentiment. I think this contamination can explain why people believe life in an absurd world is no longer worthwhile. Based on Scheler’s analysis of ressentiment in Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen I try to describe the process of this contamination. It is argued first that ressentiment is a consequence of the final impotence of revolt to protect what is valuable, second that revolt will not transform in ressentiment only when it is capable of overcoming itself in resignation. (shrink)

How should sport deal with prematurely ended seasons? This question is especially relevant to the current COVID-19 inter- ruption that threatens to leave many leagues without cham- pions. We argue that although there can be no winners, in certain situations there should be champions. Relevant to the current situation, we argue that Liverpool FC—currently with a 22+ point lead—should be crowned champions of the English Premier League. However, things are not as simple as simply handing the championship to whoever was (...) in the lead when a season is prematurely ended. Through analogy with a fictional decathlon competition—and with the understanding that sporting seasons are themselves a type of game—we identify three reasons why leading at the moment of cessation is insufficient to be crowned a victor (of an individual event) or a champion (of a season-long competition): doing so fails to respect some valuable skills, fails to allow for luck to play out in an interesting way that affects competitions, and fails to respect competitive strategies. This discussion can then inform determining what, if any, end-of-season accolades are relevant, such as championships, relegation, or promotion. No team can win in a league that has failed to be completed, but there can still be a champion. (shrink)

Steven Macedo's Diversity and Distrust is an effort to apply an unapologetically "transformative" version of liberalism to questions of public education (eschewing any supposedly liberal "neutrality). His candor is refreshing, but this review argues that his effort to defend his transformative liberal views (and the general thrust of American judicial efforts to deal with public education, for the most part) ultimately fails.

There can be little doubt that without Spinoza, German Idealism would have been just as impossible as it would have been without Kant. Yet the precise nature of Spinoza's influence on the German Idealists has hardly been studied in detail. This volume of essays by leading scholars sheds light on how the appropriation of Spinoza by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel grew out of the reception of his philosophy by, among others, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Jacobi, Herder, Goethe, Schleiermacher, Maimon and, of course, (...) Kant. The volume thus not only illuminates the history of Spinoza's thought, but also initiates a genuine philosophical dialogue between the ideas of Spinoza and those of the German Idealists. The issues at stake - the value of humanity; the possibility and importance of self-negation; the nature and value of reason and imagination; human freedom; teleology; intuitive knowledge; the nature of God - remain of the highest philosophical importance today. (shrink)

Bringing these two emergent areas of thought into direct conversation in Before the Law, Cary Wolfe fosters a new discussion about the status of nonhuman animals and the shared plight of humans and animals under biopolitics.

Die Geschichte der internationalen Beziehungen gehort derzeit zu den dynamischsten und innovativsten Feldern der deutschen Geschichtswissenschaft. Eine historische Teildisziplin, die lange Zeit als eher traditionell und konservativ galt, erweitert und erneuert sich. Diesen Prozess dokumentieren die Beitrage des vorliegenden Bandes. Sie leisten eine Bestandsaufnahme, entwickeln Perspektiven und reflektieren so die ganze Bandbreite einer modernen Geschichte der internationalen Beziehungen. Gepragt ist der Band durch den Dialog von Historikern, die sich mit unterschiedlicher Ausrichtung - politik-, wirtschafts-, sozial- oder kulturgeschichtlich - fur internationale (...) Geschichte interessieren. Das Spektrum der Beitrage reicht von der Erforschung von Globalisierungsprozessen uber Fragen des Kulturtransfers bis hin zu einer internationalen Politikgeschichte. (shrink)

Die Frage nach dem Subjekt politischen Handelnsist eines der aktuellen Themen politischer Theoriebildung. Das Neue Testament zeigt im Zuge seiner vielfältigen Interpretationen der Geschichte Jesu Christi aufschlussreiche Aspekte der Subjektwerdung. Dabei werden lohnende Perspektiven auf gegenwärtige Theorien des politischen Subjekts sichtbar, deren interdisziplinäre Reflexion einen Beitrag zum gegenwärtigen Diskurs des Politischen bildet.

At the very beginning of L’Homme-Machine, La Mettrie claims that Leibnizians with their monads have “rather spiritualized matter than materialized the soul”; a few years later Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, President of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and natural philosopher with a strong interest in the modes of transmission of ‘genetic’ information, conceived of living minima which he termed molecules, “endowed with desire, memory and intelligence,” in his Système de la nature ou Essai sur les corps organisés. This text first (...) appeared in Latin in 1751 under the title Dissertatio inauguralis metaphysica de universali naturae systemate, with the pseudonym Dr Baumann; it was translated by Maupertuis in 1754 as Essai sur la formation des corps organisés and was later included in his 1756 Œuvres under the title Système de la nature. Now, it is clear that Maupertuis was a kind of Leibnizian; and that his molecule possessed higher-level, ‘mental’ properties. In that sense he falls under the first category described by La Mettrie. But he was also involved in a debate on this issue with Diderot, who put forth a sustained critique of Maupertuis’ theory of the molecule in the additions to his 1753 Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature. Where Maupertuis attributes higher-level properties to his living minima, Diderot argues that these properties are ‘organizational’, i.e., they can only be properties of the whole. At issue here is the degree of commitment to a form of materialism. (shrink)

This is the first book in English devoted entirely to Kant's Opus postumum and its place in the Kantian oeuvre.

Demetrius of Phalerum (c. 355-280BCE) of Phalerum was a philosopher-statesman. He studied in the Peripatos under Theophrastus and subsequently used his political influence to help his teacher acquire property for the Peripatetic school. As overseer of Athens, his governance was characterized by a decade of domestic peace. Exiled to Alexandria in Egypt, he became the adviser of Ptolemy. He is said to have been in charge of legislation, and it is likely that he influenced the founding of the Museum and (...) the Library. This edition of the fragments of Demetrius of Phalerum reflects the growing interest in the Hellenistic period and the philosophical schools of that age. As a philosopher-statesman, Demetrius appears to have combined theory and practice. For example, in the work On Behalf of the Politeia, he almost certainly explained his own legislation and governance by appealing to the Aristotelian notion of politeia, that is, a constitution in which democratic and oligarchic elements are combined. In On Peace, he may have defended his subservience to Macedon by appealing to Aristotle, who repeatedly recognized the importance of peace over war; and in On Fortune, he will have followed Theophrastus, emphasizing the way fortune can determine the success or failure of sound policy. Whatever the case concerning any one title, we can well understand why Cicero regarded Demetrius as a unique individual: the educated statesman who was able to bring learning out of the shadows of erudition into the light of political conflict, and that despite an oratorical style more suited to the shadows of the Peripatos then to political combat. The new edition of secondary reports by Stork, van Ophuijsen, and Dorandi brings together the evidence for these and other judgments. The facing translation which accompanies the Greek and Latin texts opens up the material to readers who lack the ancient languages, and the accompanying essays introduce us to important issues. The volume will be of interest to those interested in Greek literature, Hellenistic philosophy, Hellenistic history, and generally to persons captivated by the notion of philosopher-statesman. (shrink)

Bioethics has paid surprisingly little attention to the special problems faced by women and to feminist analyses of current health care issues other than ...

Kant declared that philosophy began in 1781 with his Critique of Pure Reason. In 1806 Hegel announced that it had been completed. Förster assesses the steps that led from Kant’s “beginning” to Hegel’s “end” and concludes that both Kant and Hegel were indeed right. His study reveals Goethe’s significant contribution to post-Kantian thinking.

A family reconstitution study of the Krummhörn population (Ostfriesland, Germany, 1720–1874) reveals that infant mortality and children’s probabilities of marrying or emigrating unmarried are affected by the number of living same-sexed sibs in farmers’ families but not in the families of landless laborers. We interpret these results in terms of a “local resource competition” model in which resource-holding families are obliged to manipulate the reproductive future of their offspring. In contrast, families that lack resources have no need to manipulate their (...) offspring and are more likely to benefit from allowing their offspring to capitalize on whatever opportunities to reproduce present themselves. (shrink)

In his Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty (1717), the English deist Anthony Collins proposed a complete determinist account of the human mind and action, partly inspired by his mentor Locke, but also by elements from Bayle, Leibniz and other Continental sources. It is a determinism which does not neglect the question of the specific status of the mind but rather seeks to provide a causal account of mental activity and volition in particular; it is a ‘volitional determinism’. Some decades later, (...) Diderot articulates a very similar determinism, which seeks to recognize the existence of “causes proper to man” (as he says in the Réfutation d’Helvétius). The difference with Collins is that now biological factors are being taken into account. Obviously both the ‘volitional’ and the ‘biological’ forms of determinism are noteworthy inasmuch as they change our picture of the nature of determinism itself, but my interest here is to compare these two determinist arguments, both of which are broadly Spinozist in nature – and as such belong to what Jonathan Israel called in his recent book “the radical Enlightenment,” i.e. a kind of underground Enlightenment constituted by Spinozism – and to see how Collins’ specifically psychological vision and Diderot’s specifically biological vision correspond to their two separate national contexts: determinism in France in the mid-1750s was a much more medico-biological affair than English determinism, which appears to be on a ‘path’ leading to Mill and associationist psychology. (shrink)