Die Serie "Meisterwerke der Literatur" beinhaltet die Klassiker der deutschen und weltweiten Literatur in einer einzigartigen Sammlung für Ihren eBook Reader. Lesen Sie die besten Werke großer Schriftsteller,Poeten, Autoren und Philosophen auf Ihrem Reader. Dieses Werk bietet zusätzlich * Eine Biografie/Bibliografie des Autors. Vorländer Werk gehört auch heute noch zu den Referenzbüchern. Inhalt: Karl Vorländer – Biografie und Bibliografie Geschichte der Philosophie Vorwort zur 1. Auflage. Aus dem Vorwort zur 2. Auflage. Vorwort zur 3. Auflage. Zur fünften Auflage. Einleitung. (...) 1. Philosophie. Ihr Name und Begriff. 2. Die Geschichte der Philosophie. Ihre Methode, Quellen und Hilfsmittel. Einteilung des Stoffes. 3. Verhältnis der orientalischen Völker zur Philosophie. 4. Selbständigkeit der griechischen Philosophie. Quellen und Hilfsmittel zu ihrer Geschichte. Die Philosophie des Altertums Erste Periode. Vorsokratische Philosophie. Kapitel I. Anfänge der Reflexion über den Kosmos. Kapitel II. Anfänge der Reflexion über das Denken vom Kosmos. Sein und Werden (die Eleaten und Heraklit). Kapitel III. Die jüngeren Naturphilosophen: Empedokles, Anaxagoras u. a. Kapitel IV. Zweite Periode. Sokrates und die Sophisten. Kapitel V. Die sophistische Aufklärung. Kapitel VI. Sokrates. Kapitel VII. Die sokratischen Schulen. Dritte Periode. Die klassische Philosophie der Griechen: Plato und Aristoteles. Kapitel VIII. Plato. Kapitel IX. Aristoteles. Vierte Periode. Die hellenistisch-römische Philosophie. A. Hellenistische Periode. Kapitel X. Die Stoiker. Kapitel XI. Die Epikureer. Kapitel XII. Die Skeptiker. B. Die Philosophie auf dem Boden des römischen Weltreichs. Kapitel XIII. Die Philosophie bei den Römern. Kapitel XIV. Vorläufer des Neuplatonismus. Kapitel XV. Die Neuplatoniker. Die Philosophie des Mittelalters. Erster Abschnitt. Die Philosophie der Kirchenväter (Patristik). Kapitel I. Ältere Patristik. Kapitel II. Jüngere Patristik Zweiter Abschnitt. Die Scholastik. Kapitel III. Die Anfänge der Scholastik. Kapitel IV. Die Glanzzeit der Scholastik. Kapitel V. Ausgang der Scholastik. Zunehmender Zwiespalt zwischen Glauben und Wissen. Blüte der deutschen Mystik. Die Philosophie der Neuzeit Übergangsperiode. Kapitel I. Die Philosophie der Renaissance. Kapitel II. Die Begründung der modernen Naturwissenschaft. Erste Periode. Die Zeit der grossen Systeme. Kapitel I. Descartes (1596-1650). Kapitel II. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Kapitel III. Spinoza (1632-1677). Kapitel IV. Leibniz (1646-1716). Zweite Periode. Die Philosophie der Aufklärung. A. England und Schottland. Kapitel V. Locke (1632-1704). Kapitel VI. Weitere Entwicklung der Aufklärungsphilosophie in England. B. In Frankreich. Kapitel VII. Die französische Aufklärungsphilosophie von Bayle bis Rousseau. C. In Deutschland. Kapitel VIII. Die deutsche Aufklärungsphilosophie. Dritte Periode.Die Neubegründung der Philosophie durch Immanuel Kant Kapitel IX. Einleitung. Kapitel X. Kants Neubegründung der Wissenschaft. Kapitel XI. Die regulativen Prinzipien der Erfahrung oder die Ideen. Kapitel XII. Kants Neubegründung der Ethik. Kapitel XIII. Die Begründung der Ästhetik. Vierte Periode. Die Systeme der nachkantischen Philosophie von Fichte bis Schopenhauer. Kapitel XIV. Einleitung: Von Kant zu Fichte. Kapitel XV. Fichte. Kapitel XVI. Schelling. Kapitel XVII. Hegel. Kapitel XVIII. Kritische Nebenströmungen. Schleiermacher, Herbart, Beneke. Kapitel XIX. Schopenhauer. Fünfte Periode. Die Philosophie der Gegenwart. Kapitel XX. Der Positivismus. Kapitel XXI. Materialismus und Spiritualismus. Kapitel XXII. Die moderne Entwicklungsphilosophie: Darwin, Spencer. Kapitel XXIII. Idealistische Systembildungen auf naturwissenschaftlicher Grundlage. Kapitel XXIV. Die Erneuerung des Kritizismus. Kapitel XXV. Sozialismus und Individualismus. Kapitel XXVI. Sonstige philosophische Erscheinungen der Gegenwart. Zeittafel zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie. Fußnoten. (shrink)

The study seeks to investigate the relationship between Theological Faculty of Debrecen Reformed College and the Protestant Theological Faculty at University of Vienna. The counter-movements against modern, or so-called liberal theology brought Eduard Böhl from Vienna and Ferenc Balogh into a shared theological camp. The former followed the German-Dutch confessionalist Pietist of Reformed faith the letter became the leading figure of New-Orthodoxy movement of Debrecen. Both professors were keen on educating and training students with a view to respect and (...) love the traditional doctrines, faith expressions of the church. Their endeavoured to put their students into significant jobs where influence could be exerted. This paper shows light on how Böhl sought to manage a former student, Sándor Venetianer’s carreer so as to continue the kind of theology that the famous professor of dogmatics also promoted. (shrink)

Karl E. Rothschuh is one of the most important,but, on an international scale, relativelyunknown representatives of German philosophy ofmedicine in the 20th century. This paperpresents and discusses his central conceptssystematically, especially those ofanthropology, theories of health and disease.Rothschuh distinguishes two methodologicalapproaches to anthropology: a causal analysisthat considers human organism as complex causalsystems, and a so-called bionomicalinvestigation that clarifies the meaning orfunction of single processes in respect to thewhole organism. These two perspectivescomplement each other. From a naturalisticpoint of view, Rothschuh (...) conceptualisesdiseases as disorganisatorial or disbionomic processes;nevertheless, he stresses the culturalinterweavement, and, hence, the normativefoundation of diseases. ‘Disease’ is both arelational and a gradual term: It can beexperienced and conceptualised subjectively bypatients (aegritudo), clinically byphysicians (nosos, pathos) and bysociety (insalubritas). Further,Rothschuh differentiates between the verydefinition, a notion and a concept ofdisease. Because of the normative character ofdisease, medicine cannot be a science strivingfor pure theoretical knowledge like physics orchemistry. Medicine is a practical science,oriented towards its goals of healing. Becauseof the societal position of medicine, Rothschuhdescribes it as task (Aufgabe). Withregard to modern developments in philosophy ofmedicine, this paper discusses Rothschuh’stheories critically and offers somestarting points for necessary enhancements. (shrink)

As early as page 2 in Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion, Stedman Jones boldly highlights that “he invention of what came to be called as ‘Marxism’ was initially in large part the creation of Engels in his books and pamphlets, beginning with Anti-Dühring in 1878”. He further adds, as keepers of Marx’s works, the leaders of the German Social Democratic Party, including August Bebel, Karl Kautsky, Eduard Bernstein, and Franz Mehring, were also responsible for further mystifications of (...) Marx by hiding the embarrassing gaps between the image and reality of Marx and his theory. This was ostensibly done in order to protect the party – which had Marx as its founding theorist – from being attacked and discredited by the ruling power which was the imperial government of Wilhelmine Germany. Jones subsequently states, “From the beginning, what came to be called as ‘Marxism’ had been built upon an unambiguously selective view of what was to count as theory, not only in relation to would-be heretics, but also in relation to Marx himself”. Afterwards he reveals a content from Bebel’s letter to Kautsky: “By the way, I want to tell you – but please keep absolutely quiet about it – that some of the letters were not published, above all, because they were too strong for us”. These punchlines are more than enough to shake the general understanding of Marx and “Marxism” to acclaiming Marxists and critical theorists alike. (shrink)

The concepts of “radicalism” and “extremism” have been the focus of increasing scholarly attention in recent years, but, surprisingly, there has not been the same kind of effort to specify their opposites, such as the concept of “moderation.” In this article I argue that because “radicalism” and “extremism” have been defined in generally negative terms, we may deepen and refine our understanding of moderation once we are equipped with a more neutral conception of radicalism. Accordingly, I propose a new approach (...) to the study of radical ideologies by comparing them to literary genres. Just as literary genres use tropes that constrain our reading of a text, radical ideologies use tropes—as, for example, the Marxists’ use of “reactionary” or “bourgeois”—that refer to a much wider background dichotomy, on which they base their arguments to discredit those of their opponents or to reinforce those of their supporters. Using this approach, I show how the Marxist theorist and leading German politician Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932)—one of the founders of modern Social Democracy—made a step-by-step critique of the Social Democratic Party’s orthodox Marxist tropes and core narrative that thoroughly undermined their arguments. Bernstein, I further suggest, was a particularly good example of a political moderate because he did not altogether reject the claims of his radical Marxist opponents but rather accepted those parts of their reasoning that he considered valid. By thus opening the way for constructing an anti-radical Marxist narrative, Bernstein’s example shows how moderates can “steal a page” from the radicals’ playbook to create alternative narratives whose central opponents are the radicals themselves. I conclude by briefly discussing two contemporary thinkers—Norberto Bobbio and Karl Popper—who went further than Bernstein in the development of a fully fleshed anti-radical narrative. (shrink)

Hartman, Duhring und Lange Zur Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie im XIX. Jahrhundert by Hans Vaihinger. This book is a reproduction of the original book published in 1876 and may have some imperfections such as marks or hand-written notes.".

Karl Raimund Poppers (1902-1994) Hauptwerk, die Logik der Forschung (1934), gilt als Grundlagenwerk des kritischen Rationalismus. Der kritische Rationalismus zeigt, warum unser Wissen fehlbar ist und versteht den Erkenntnisfortschritt als Resultat von Hypothesenbildung und -widerlegung. Der Sammelband orientiert sich an der Gliederung der Logik der Forschung. Seine Beiträge kommentieren die jeweiligen Themen nach aktueller Forschungslage.

This is the first major study of Marx and the Young Hegelians in twenty years. The book offers a new interpretation of Marx's early development, the political dimension of Young Hegelianism, and that movement's relationship to political and intellectual currents in early nineteenth-century Germany. Warren Breckman challenges the orthodox distinction drawn between the exclusively religious concerns of Hegelians in the 1830s and the sociopolitical preoccupations of the 1840s. He shows that there are inextricable connections between the theological, political and social (...) discourses of the Hegelians in the 1830s. The book draws together an account of major figures such as Feuerbach and Marx, with discussions of lesser-known but significant figures such as Eduard Gans, August Cieszkowski, Moses Hess, F. W. J. Schelling as well as such movements as French Saint-Simonianism and 'positive philosophy'. Wide-ranging in scope and synthetic in approach, this is an important book for historians of philosophy, theology, political theory and nineteenth-century ideas. (shrink)

De 1815 - avec le Congrès de Vienne qui inaugure une ère de Restauration - à mars 1848, avec les répercussions de la révolution de février en Europe, la période du Vormârz ("avant mars") se caractérise, au sein du monde germanique, par une vie intellectuelle d'une particulière effervescence. Les grandes philosophies qui se sont construites pour dépasser Kant, avec Fichte, Schelling et Hegel, autorisent bon nombre de penseurs allemands à considérer l'Allemagne comme étant philosophiquement en avance sur son temps, ou (...) tout au moins à la pointe de la modernité. Cette avance théorique tranche pourtant avec la réalité politique et sociale de l'époque, façonnée par Metternich. Une solution de cette contradiction dans laquelle se trouve l'Allemagne semble alors résider, aux yeux de certains auteurs, dans l'idée suivant laquelle il ne resterait plus à l'Allemagne qu'à réaliser sa philosophie. Le présent ouvrage entend contribuer à l'analyse de la façon dont le thème de la réalisation de la philosophie est élaboré par, ou à partir des réflexions de plusieurs auteurs de l'époque. Il s'agit des Jeunes Hégéliens, et principalement : Eduard Gans, Heinrich Heine, Arnold Ruge, Ludwig Feuerbach, Max Stirner, David Strauss, les frères Bruno et Edgar Bauer, Moses Hess, Michel Bakounine, August von Cieszkowski, Karl Marx et Friedrich Engels."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In this article, we develop the concept of Transparency by Design that serves as practical guidance in helping promote the beneficial functions of transparency while mitigating its challenges in automated-decision making environments. With the rise of artificial intelligence and the ability of AI systems to make automated and self-learned decisions, a call for transparency of how such systems reach decisions has echoed within academic and policy circles. The term transparency, however, relates to multiple concepts, fulfills many functions, and holds different (...) promises that struggle to be realized in concrete applications. Indeed, the complexity of transparency for ADM shows tension between transparency as a normative ideal and its translation to practical application. To address this tension, we first conduct a review of transparency, analyzing its challenges and limitations concerning automated decision-making practices. We then look at the lessons learned from the development of Privacy by Design, as a basis for developing the Transparency by Design principles. Finally, we propose a set of nine principles to cover relevant contextual, technical, informational, and stakeholder-sensitive considerations. Transparency by Design is a model that helps organizations design transparent AI systems, by integrating these principles in a step-by-step manner and as an ex-ante value, not as an afterthought. (shrink)

“Who are you? Tu quis es?” The interrogator was the German philosopher and pedagogue Eduard Spranger. The subject was Carl Schmitt. The place: Berlin. The time: summer of 1945. The question was “precipitous,” as Schmitt acknowledged in Ex Captivitate Salus, the book he completed following his release from Nuremberg in 1947. “Who are you?” Who, but one of the most highly acclaimed and esteemed jurists and political thinkers of the Weimar Republic, whose writings captured the attention of Georg Lukács, (...) Karl Korsch, Felix Gilbert, Leo Strauss, Ferdinand Toennies, and whose concepts significantly influenced Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Otto Kirchheimer, Franz Neumann, Karl Mannheim and many other intellectuals and writers on the Left and the Right? (shrink)

Karl Pfeifer attempts to present a coherent view of panentheism that eschews Pickwickian senses of “in” and aligns itself with, and builds upon, familiar diagrammed portrayals of panentheism. The account is accordingly spatial-locative and moreover accepts the proposal of R.T. Mullins that absolute space and time be regarded as attributes of God. In addition, however, it argues that a substantive parthood relation between the world and God is required. Pfeifer’s preferred version of panpsychism, viz. panintentionalism, is thrown into the (...) mix as an optional add-on. On this account, God is conceived of as a “spiritual field” whose nature can be made more intelligible by regarding “God” as having a mass-noun sense in some contexts. Pfeifer closes with the suggestion that we look to topology and mereology for further development of the position outlined in his paper. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:New Insights on Young PopperJohn R. WetterstenSeven essays that Popper wrote from 1925 to 1932–33 show Popper's transition from a fresh student of pedagogy into a serious philosopher of science ten years later. His first essay was published in 1925, and in 1934–35 he presented a revolutionary philosophy. These essays led first to Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie (written between 1930 and 1933 but first published in 1979) and (...) culminated in Logik der Forschung.1. Students as IndividualsIn his first published essay Popper argued that each student should be treated as an individual as much as possible.1 It is evident that Popper held this attitude throughout his life, but this essay plays no interesting role in his intellectual development.2. HeimatIn his second essay Popper developed an idea that was important not only for his pedagogy, but also for his psychology and his theory of the open society: because humans tend quite naturally to be dogmatic, they have to learn to overcome dogmatism in order to be rational.2 Following a perspective [End Page 603] heavily indebted to Eduard Burger,3 Karl Bühler,4 and Charlotte Bühler,5 Popper proposed that all aspects of learning begin with the beliefs and attitudes that one learns at "home." Teachers, Popper says, should not ignore the cultural background of their students. This background derives from their home, from their parents or village, and so forth. Teachers should accept the students' dogmatic acceptance of the views and attitudes of home as a necessary, even useful stage in any child's development. The teacher's central task is to help children move away from this dogmatic stage to broader perspectives. How to do this well, he says, poses a, if not the, central pedagogical problem. He discusses the movement from home to aesthetics, to art, to ethics, to law, to the theory of knowledge and science, and to culture. In each case he finds something in the heritage of home that each child possesses, which may be used as a starting point to expand the child's horizons.The problem of how teachers can sympathetically help children move away from the views of their home to broader perspectives is severe, Popper thought, due to the innate need of children to think dogmatically. When children learn the culture of their home they are given certainties that they cling to. As individuals mature, dogmatic thinking has to be overcome: a crucial task for teachers is to help children to set aside their innate dogmatic attitude to engage in critical thinking.At this time Popper was groping for a good philosophical approach. He said that the concept of "Heimat" had to be analyzed because, even though it was at the center of pedagogical concerns, it was a confused concept. This analytical method was quickly abandoned. It is only a historical curiosity that shows how far he had to go in order to develop a new philosophical method. Yet his use of it did bring him to adopt, or he used it to defend, views that he held throughout his life.3. Gewohnheit und Gesetzerlebnis in der ErziehungIn the same year (1927), in Gewohnheit und Gesetzerlebnis in der Erziehung, Popper turned to the task of providing a psychological explanation of the child's need for dogmatism. This third essay was submitted to the Pedagogic Institute, but only became available after Popper's death. Popper was ambivalent about it. When I visited him at his home in Penn in 1973 or 1974, I asked him for a copy. It was then listed in his bibliography, but there were no copies at the University of Vienna. His wife began to say she knew where it was, but he interrupted her before her sentence was completed. But he did not throw it away. The reason for his reluctance to show scholars his essay is [End Page 604] now clear: the essay endorses a philosophy of science—Hans Vaihinger's—with a strong inductivist component, even though its methodology is deductivist. He tried to apply this method in his own psychological investigation of dogmatism in children.Dogmatism was, he thought, a psychological... (shrink)

This article explores the roots of action in behavior. Departing from the standard understanding of action as ‘intentional behavior’, we argue that this view is often based on the underestimation of the intentional structures that are already operative within behavior. Distinguishing between a broader and a narrower meaning of intentionality, we then elaborate on the processes that lead from the diffuse and operative intentionality of behavior to the focused intentionality of action. In order to properly appreciate these processes, we show (...) that a reassessment of the phenomenon of attention – which takes into consideration its double (passive and active) nature as well as its social embedment – is required. Finally, we discuss the interplay between the obtained reframing of the genesis of intentional actions with the phenomenon of social ascription. (shrink)

Contrary to the widespread view that Hegel excluded Africa from what he called world history proper, the specifically African element of Egypt was indispensable to his account of the pivotal dialectical moment that saw spirit's release from its immersion in nature. Hegel's racist caricature of Africans in the early part of the lectures was not gratuitous, something that commentators can leave to one side. It was integral to his dialectical account of world history because it served to generate the contradiction (...) that saw the Persian Empire give way to Greece. This understanding is confirmed by the newly completed four-volume edition of Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of World History in the Gesammelte Werke. These new volumes also enable us to gain critical insight into how the editors of the first two published versions of the lectures, Eduard Gans and Karl Hegel, sought in their different ways to shape the reception of Hegel's lectures. (shrink)

This important new study is an intellectual history exploring the reception of Darwinism by prominent German socialist theoriests: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engles, Friedrich Albert Lange, Ludwig B chner, August Bebel, Karl Katusky, and Eduard Bernstein. It relies not only on published books, articles, and speeches by these men, but also on some unpublished correspondence. In addition, one chapter covers the anti-socialist stance of prominent Darwinian biologists, including Charles Darwin and the foremost champion of Darwinism in Germany, Ernst (...) Haeckel. Darwinism's effect on German socialism's view of eugenics, race and religion are also discussed. (shrink)

This study argues for three main theses: (1) Immanuel Kant’s ethics is a social ethics; (2) the basic premises of his social ethics point to a socialist ethics; and (3) this socialist ethics constitutes a suitable platform for criticizing and improving Karl Marx’s view of morality. -/- Some crucial aspects of Kant’s social ethics are that we must promote the “realm of ends” as a moral society of co-legislators who assist each other in the pursuit of their individual ends, (...) which requires in turn that we seek the realization of the republican state and peace between the nations. Thus, hope for progress, as supported by the enthusiasm engendered among the spectators of the French Revolution, becomes pivotal to Kant’s ethics as well as other moral feelings such as moral indignation and solidarity with the victims of oppression. -/- Kant views the moral society in the final instance as an “inner” unification of good wills. In a decisive elaboration of Kant, the neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen argues that all our social institutions, and notably economic enterprises, must instantiate the “realm of ends,” leading him to support cooperative socialism in Wilhelmine Germany. In his own words, Kant “is the true and real originator of German socialism” (1896). -/- There are important evaluative similarities between Kantian socialist ethics and Marx, such as a condemnation of capitalism as a system of servitude and an understanding of the ideal society as a cooperative society, but only Marx contends that the ideal society does not set a moral task and that there is a dialectic operative in human history that inevitably leads to communist society. This dogmatic Hegelian understanding of history must be replaced by Kantian regulative understanding of progress in support of revolutionary praxis as moral praxis. -/- We need a “Kantianization” of Marx, as Cohen and other neo-Kantian socialists also proclaimed in the three decades leading up to World War I. This study concludes with “A Historical Note on Kantian Ethical Socialism,” addressing, among others, Cohen, Karl Vorländer, Eduard Bernstein, and Kurt Eisner and the Munich Revolution of 1918. Their voices were largely silenced by the rise of fascism, and this study hopes to show that their voices still need to be heard. -/- Awarded the 1985 Johnsonian Prize in Philosophy. (shrink)

Errol Lord’s The Importance of Being Rational is a beautiful presentation of how one might defend a reasons-first approach to rationality. I’m going to focus these comments on some of the larger systematic ambitions of the book. In doing so, my hope is to draw Lord out concerning the larger project of which the book is a part and to raise some more general questions about the project of defining rationality in terms of reasons. In doing so, my focus with (...) be on the relationship between the reasons-first program and a more traditional view, which we might call the reason-first program. (shrink)

Karl Pfeifer revisits Wittgenstein’s parenthetical allusion in the _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ to the Grimms’ fairytale “The Golden Lads”, confirming that it does not work well as an illustration of the notion of “internal identity” that figures in Wittgenstein’s picture theory. He then proposes alternative ways of understanding the relationship of identity apparent in “The Golden Lads”.

Despite our common self-conceptions, we philosophers have our myths, heroes, and guiding narratives. Our work may emphasize conceptual clarity and deductive arguments, but these more sober and discursive elements of our work always occurs within the context of a broader, often implicit, and frequently illusive orientation, within the scope of some particular vision of our vocation, our history, and our place within the contemporary world. These visions are meta-philosophical: they precede and frame philosophical work, and they engender the most intractable (...) philosophical disputes. Thus, for the sake of self-knowledge and rational discussion, we should constantly struggle to articulate and scrutinize these myths and narratives. Which predecessors do we continue to read? Why? What repeated stories and anecdotes generate our common and competing identities? What do past episodes in the history of philosophy mean, and how do they direct our current endeavors? Like every community, we philosophers sustain our collective work through stories, through the celebration of our heroes, and through repeated reference to paradigmatic arguments and texts. We should reflect upon these sustaining elements of our community, even if this requires modes of thought that lie beyond conceptual analysis, deductive argument, and the careful interpretation of canonical texts. -/- In this paper, I excavate and criticize the contours of one narrative that still guides us, the common celebration of Kant’s critical philosophy as a radical, farsighted, disruptive, irresistible, and irrevocable break with the religious and metaphysical dogmatism of its age. In Section 2, I briefly sketch two complementary versions of this narrative, the accounts provided by the Hegelian philosopher Eduard Gans and by the poet Heinrich Heine. Drawing various parallels with the French Revolution, these thinkers significantly overemphasize the skeptical, destructive, anti-metaphysical, anti-religious and historically discontinuous aspects of Kant’s critical philosophy, which they portray as the inauguration of a new and robust philosophical movement, one that rapidly vanquished its intellectually beleaguered and reactionary opponents. In Sections 2–4, I then turn to consider three of the more active and vociferous opponents of the Kantian movement: Basilius von Ramdohr, Friedrich Nicolai, and Ludwig Heinrich von Jakob. Contrary to the standard version of events, these men had little sympathy for metaphysics, religion, rationalism, and dogmatic certitude. In fact, they principally opposed the Kantian movement as the unwelcome resurgence of an outdated form of quasi-religious enthusiasm, as a form of philosophical Schwärmerei that threatened to appropriate the banner of reason and hinder the progress of enlightenment. -/- Drawing upon a wide range of late eighteenth-century German texts on the dangers and varied manifestations of Schwärmerei, I reconstruct Ramdohr’s, Nicolai’s, and Jakob’s vision of the Kantian movement. I argue that the charges of philosophical Schwärmerei highlight three meta-philosophical disputes that pitted these anti-Kantians against many proponents of the Kantian movement. These disputes involved: (a) the social role of the philosopher and her relation to the general public; (b) the place of internal and/or private experience within the open and polyphonic domain of public discourse; and (c) the merits of philosophical systematicity, technical neologisms, and more hermetic versions of semantic holism. -/- A consideration of these meta-philosophical disputes allows us to position Kant’s critical philosophy more accurately within its historical context, to highlight its significant continuities with the intellectual assumptions of the Berlin Enlightenment, those assumptions that largely inform Ramdohr’s, Nicolai’s, and Jakob’s attacks on the so-called Kantian movement. These continuities then reveal the meta-philosophical distance between Kant and “the Kantian movement”, between the texts of the critical philosophy and the projects of Karl Leonhard Reinhold and Johann Gottlieb Fichte. This challenges the traditional account. We often celebrate Kant’s critical philosophy as a radical break with the past, as the inauguration of new and fundamentally modern assumptions, which were then developed and elaborated by the post-Kantian Idealists. By contrast, I argue for a series of complex, ambivalent, and often unintended breaks: while occasionally celebrating his intellectual achievements as an epochal “Copernican Revolution”, Kant largely remains true to the guiding assumptions and philosophical values of his age, only occasionally deflecting them in minor but portentous ways. By contrast, while Reinhold and Fichte at least initially proclaimed their fidelity to the “spirit” – if not the letter – of Kant’s philosophy, they nonetheless managed to release a new and strange philosophical spirit, a potent, quasi-secularized, and post-Enlightenment form of Schwärmerei. (shrink)

SUMMARYTo be Marxist at the turn of the twentieth century was highly contested. During this crisis of Marxism, identity politics were acute, exemplified by the private and public debate between Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky. With Bernstein's celebrated turn away from the Marxist theory of his day, the grounds for being Marxist were at stake. Was it possible to criticise Marx's analysis of industrial capitalism, his account of historical change and his hard-nosed class politics, and yet still be (...) in a position to carry his name forward? Moreover, the springing-up of another identity, Revisionist, suggested that being Marxist was ambiguous. If one accepted Bernstein's and the Revisionists' point that Marxists had become too orthodox, leaving Revisionists as the true heirs of Marx's critical socialist spirit, then the Marxist identity was so open as to be meaningless. In this article, I contend that the name-calling of this period, the Revisionismusstreit, should be seen as creative. In contrast to politico-ideological perceptions of the Streit, which construe the clash of Marxist and Revisionist as representative of foundational Social Democratic party political realities, I highlight the manner in which being Marxist—the veneration of Marx's and Friedrich Engels's word into a Marxology of sorts by Marxists and Revisionists alike—held a certain epistemic value in its own right. (shrink)

In The Lesson of this Century Popper's purpose is to warn us against the increasing violence and egoism of our society. What solutions can we offer to the problems of the environment, demography and corruption? How can we prevent the violence our society engenders? How can we preserve our democratic system while at the same time paving the way for global peace? Popper believes that the philosopher has a duty to intervene in politics and he utters a clear call to (...) all of us to recognise our responsibilities. He reminds us that it is our actions which will create the world of tomorrow. The interviews in this volume were originally given to the Italian journalist Giancarlo Bosetti. The volume also includes the transcript of an interview about the moral dangers of television not previously available in English. (shrink)

The group of Dialectical Theology (also known as Neo-Orthodoxy) included some of the most well-known theologians of the 20th century – Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, Friedrich Gogarten, Eduard Thurneysen, Georg Merz und Emil Brunner. In the summer of 1922 they founded the journal Zwischen den Zeiten, which launched Dialectical Theology as the most influential avant-garde movement in Protestantism during the Weimar Republic. Due to internal strife and theological disagreements, the group began to lose strength in the early 1930s (...) and eventually split up and ceased publishing Zwischen den Zeiten in 1933. The individual members later became fierce critics of each other’s theological works. Gogarten and Barth became arch enemies during the so-called “church struggle” (Kirchenkampf), and Bultmann and Barth became each other’s nemesis in the Federal Republic of Germany.In this article I examine the rise and fall of this movement. I argue that the concept “generation” was central to the early self-understanding and selfjustification of the group. It allowed the group to forge an alliance and oppose an antagonistic group of influential theologians. The claim to speak up for a young generation of theologians and pastors – in opposition to an older, liberal generation – became the rallying cry for Dialectical Theology. Further, I argue that conferences, not only the theological writings, played a central, constitutive role in establishing the group as a theological movement. It was at conferences that the members of Dialectical Theology could challenge the older generation and assert their own theological stance. Instead of merely concentrating on the published theological writings of each of the members, I thus argue that one must additionally focus on the applied concepts and the role of conferences to understand the history of Dialectical Theology. It is only when we include these additional contexts that we understand how Dialectical Theology was able to be launched and sustained as a theological movement despite the irreconcilable differences amongst the members. (shrink)

Karl Pfeifer argues against the view that an aesthetic experience must be a uniquely special kind of experience by means of an analogy with sexual experiences. Nonetheless, he leaves open the possibility that some aesthetic experiences might still be of a special kind.