Ludwig Alsdorf, Kleine Schriften. Ed. Albrecht Wezler., Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2001. xxiii, 750 pp. €86.00. ISBN 3-515-07737-5. Ernst Windisch: Kleine Schriften. Ed. Karin Steiner, Jörg Gengnagel., Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2001. xxvii, 717 pp. €116.00. ISBN 3-515-07120-2.

Julius Jolly: Kleine Schriften. Edited by Heidrun Brückner and Ingo Strauch following preparatory work by Albrecht Wezler. Veröffentlichungen der Helmuth von Glasenapp-Stiftung, vols. 38.1 and 2. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012. Pp. xlviii + 1378.

Bei den von Ingenieuren verwendeten Dezisionsmechanismen wird aufgrund der Fortentwicklung der Technik die methodologische Sicherung der Objektivität der Bewertungsverfahren immer dringlicher. Der Stand der Debatte zu diesem Problem wird knapp wiedergegeben. Besonders wird auf die Entwicklung in der DDR hingewiesen . Nach der Kritik der Hauptpositionen der Debatte wird der Charakter von Werturteilen anhand eines dreiteiligen Klassifikationsschemas näher analysiert. Als Bewertungshilfe wird auf dem Wege einer Analogiekonstruktion der Webersche Idealtypus für die methodologische Diskussion der Technik vorgeschlagen und seine potentielle Funktion (...) erörtert. (shrink)

Historians of science find it difficult to pinpoint to an exact period in which symbolic algebra came into existence. This can be explained partly because the historical process leading to this breakthrough in mathematics has been a complex and diffuse one. On the other hand, it might also be the case that in the early twentieth century, historians of mathematics over emphasized the achievements in algebraic procedures and underestimated the conceptual changes leading to symbolic algebra. This paper attempts to provide (...) a more precise setting for the historical context in which this decisive step to symbolic reasoning took place. For that purpose we will consider algebraic problem solving as model-based reasoning and symbolic representation as a model. This allows us to characterize the emergence of symbolic algebra as a shift from a geometrical to a symbolic mode of representation. The use of the symbolic as a model will be situated in the context of mercantilism where merchant activity of exchange has led to reciprocal relations between money and wealth. (shrink)

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.

This paper argues that the concept of truth cannot be explained with the help of the idea of justification under ideal conditions. Truth is not a regulative idea. The attempt to replace a metaphysical correspondence theory of truth with one that is conceptually epistemic does not provide an exit from metaphysics. Truth and its justification do not coincide with reference to the ascription of judgements and beliefs. To save the normative power of truth no Archemedean point is needed.

Explores the theories of democratic individualism articulated in the works of the American transcendentalist writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, pragmatic philosophers William James and John Dewey, and African-American novelist and essayist Ralph Ellison.

No one has succeeded better than Theodor W. Adorno in analyzing modern culture with all its ambiguities — ambiguities which herald the possibility of an unleashing of aesthetic and communicative potentials as well as the possibility of a withering away of culture. Since Schopenhauer and Nietzsche — with whose aesthetics and epistemology Adorno's thought secretly communicates — no other philosophy of art, at least in Germany, has had such a sustained influence on artists, critics, and intellectuals. The traces of his (...) influence on the consciousness of those who, be it in a productive, critical, or purely receptive capacity, are involved with modern art cannot be overlooked. (shrink)

This paper argues that Adorno's metaphysics can be rescued from the constellation of his messianic materialism. The recovery of metaphysics in this context also means that it is rescued as the basis of possible critique. Rescue here entails that the ideas of truth, freedom, justice and democracy should be seen as transcending whatever is empirically given, while remaining immanently operative within society. These ideas can still be drawn on for a critique of the present, thus renewing the original project of (...) critical theory. (shrink)