In der Literatur der deutschen Romantik wird die jüdische Mystik auch von christlichen Autoren wie Novalis, F. Schlegel, Brentano, Arnim und E.T.A. Hoffmann entdeckt. Während die Kabbala bei Theologen und Philosophen der Romantik als religiöse Urlehre der Menschheit und als Brücke zwischen rabbinischer Tradition und Christentum galt, fasziniert sie die Literaten als esoterische jüdische Zauber- und Geheimlehre sowie als Trope einer die Rationalität und die Autorenintentionen übersteigenden, magischen Eigenmächtigkeit von Sprache und Schrift.

Anlasslich des 100. Todestages von Hermann Cohen und 100 Jahre nach Erscheinen seines Spatwerkes "Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums" behandelt dieser Band im Spannungsfeld von Philosophie und Religion die Frage des Nationalen, die im gegenwartigen Prozess der Radikalisierung und Politisierung der religiosen und philosophischen Grundfragen von Vernunft und Ethik zunehmend an Bedeutung gewinnt. Eine Bedingung fur das Verstandnis von Cohens Kantkritik ist in diesem Zusammenhang ein systematisches Zusammenlesen seiner erkenntnistheoretischen Werke mit seinen "Judischen Schriften". Um dem Judentum, (...) sowohl im Deutsch-Nationalen als auch in der "christlichen Kultur", einen Ort einzuraumen, bricht Cohen die Begriffe des Nationalismus und der Kultur als solche auf und idealisiert sie humanistisch-universal. Den ethischen Idealismus sah Cohen gleichermassen begrundet in der Religion der Propheten, der sich die doppelsinnige Einheit von Monotheismus und Messianismus, d.h. das Ziel der einen Menschheit am Ende der Tage, verdankt. Der ursachliche Zusammenhang zwischen Monotheismus, Wahrheit, Ethik und Jurisprudenz im Judentum fuhrt Cohen in seinem Spatwerk zu einer neuen Definition von Religion und Kultur. (shrink)

In retrospect of a century, the philosophical and theological concepts of Franz Rosenzweig’s New Thinking, as developed in the Star of Redemption, are in many aspects a milestone in modernity, reflecting the crisis of the modern Jew and Judaism both historically and politically. The notion of redemption serves here in fact as a paradigm for modernity itself, where the individual attempts to position himself in the tension between religion and secularism, tradition and modernity. This contribution analyses Rosenzweig’s “Jewish journey of (...) redemption”, not only from the perspective of Jewish Messianism, but in the context of modern Jewish thought as a cultural critique (Kulturkritik) in Western tradition, in its philosophical, theological, historical and political aspects. (shrink)

die 13 Kapitel der Schrift "Die Lichter der Tora", die hier in deutscher Erstübersetzung vorgelegt werden, enthalten religiöse Reflexionen und Meditationen über Sinn und Bedeutung der Tora für ein lebendiges Judentum im Lande Israel und im Exil. Die kurzen, prägnanten Texte wurden im ersten Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts geschrieben und machten wegen ihrer Verbindung von orthodoxer rabbinischer Tradition und mystischer Kontemplation "Orot HaTora" zu einem modernen Klassiker der religiösen jüdischen Literatur. Der Autor, Rav Abraham Isaak Kook (1865-1935), war vor der (...) Gründung des Staates Israel der erste aschkenasische Oberrabiner in Palästina und gilt als einer der bedeutendsten jüdischen Mystiker des letzten Jahrhunderts. (shrink)

In my paper I discuss belonging to a community as a lived experience aiming at interrogating with Hannah Arendt the dynamics of constituting or reshaping communities through action. The ungraspable »we« of communities allows for both constraining narratives and initiating new forms of belonging as a response to the need to belong. Acting together creates communities which can overturn the often painful experience of belonging to unbearable social units.

This essay proposes a review of the conceptual basis of the Complex Paradigm o Complex Thought. It reviews its core assumptions and give examples in the social sciences.

This book maintains that our conception of consciousness and cognition begins with and depends upon a few fundamental errors. Thau elucidates these errors by discussing three important philosophical puzzles - Spectrum Inversion, Frege's Puzzle, and Black-and-White Mary - each of which concerns some aspect of either consciousness or cognition. He argues that it has gone unnoticed that each of these puzzles presents the very same problem and, in bringing this commonality to light, the errors in our natural conception of (...) consciousness and cognition are also reviewed. (shrink)

The Tattvasaṃgraha, or Encyclopedia of Metaphysics, is the most influential and most frequently studied philosophical text from the late period of Indian Buddhism. This edition includes verses by Śāntarakṣita (c. 725-788 CE), which are clarified and expounded in the commentary of his student Kamalaśīla (c. 740-795 CE); both of these authors played crucial roles in founding the Buddhist tradition of Tibet. In the Tattvasaṃgraha, they explain, discuss and critique a vast range of views and arguments from across the whole South (...) Asian philosophical and religious spectrum. The work deals at length with ideas drawn from Buddhism, Jainism, and a variety of traditions now incorporated within Hinduism, including Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya-vaiśeṣika, and Sāṃkhya; it also includes the earliest discussion of Advaita Vedānta in any Buddhist text. The chapters selected for translation from Sanskrit and Tibetan deal with such fundamental philosophical issues as the existence or nonexistence of God and the soul; the nature of matter and of causal relationships; the connection between words and their referents; the rules of logic; the sources of our knowledge; and the compatibility of beliefs about karma with Buddhism's fundamental claim that there is no self. Introductory chapters discuss translation choices and explain the forms of argument and methods of reasoning employed by Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla. (shrink)

Fundamental Buddhist teachings -- Main features of some western ethical theories -- Teravāda ethics as rule-consequentialism -- Mahāyāna ethics before Śāntideva and after -- Transcending ethics -- Buddhist ethics and the demands of consequentialism -- Buddhism on moral responsibility -- Punishment -- Objections and replies -- A Buddhist response to Kant.

ABSTRACT The Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century fuelled heated debates about the nature and perception of spirits appearing to people. According to Protestant theology, apparitions of spirits were not souls of the dead but either diabolical illusions, natural phenomena, or ‘mere fantasies’ of a deluded mind. Swiss church minister Louis Lavater (1527–1586) emphasized that particularly melancholic people were prone to devilish deceits and thus inclined to imagine ghosts and other spirits. This paper traces the close connection between early modern (...) concepts of melancholy, imagination, and discourses on ghosts in then-normative perspectives before contrasting theological ideals and legal arguments raised in a 1681 Basel trial featuring an allegedly melancholic woman implicated in necromancy. This paper argues that scholarly discussions about imagination and melancholy regarding ghosts in Post-Reformation Switzerland were less concerned with ontological questions about the reality of ghostly phenomena than with possible sinful interactions with ghost, which in turn mirrored ideas about diabolical temptation. (shrink)

Certain realists about properties and relations identify them with universals. Furthermore, some hold that for a wide range of meaningful predicates, the semantic contribution to the propositions expressed by the sentences in which those predicates figure is the universal expressed by the predicate. I here address ontological issues raised by predicates first introduced to us via works of fiction and whether the universal realist should accept that any such predicates express universals. After assessing arguments by Braun, D. and Sawyer, S. (...) for fictional universal anti-realism, I propose a novel, Kripke-inspired argument for the same conclusion. I ultimately defend the claim that while this argument presents the strongest case for fictional universal anti-realism, it is nonetheless unsound. I conclude that nothing stands in the way of accepting that some fictional predicates express fictional universals. (shrink)

On the traditional relationalist conception of singular thought, a thought has singular content when it is based on an ‘information relation’ to its object. Recent work rejects relationalism and suggests singular thoughts are distinguished from descriptive thoughts by their inferential role: only thoughts with singular content can be employed in ‘direct’ inferences, or inferences that ‘trade on identity’. Firstly this view is insufficiently clear, because it conflates two distinct ideas—one about a kind of inference, the other a kind of process (...) that grounds inferences—under the title, ‘trading on identity’. Secondly, this leaves us without a notion that can be used as an alternative to relationalism about singular thought. The first notion is no more applicable to singular than to descriptive thought. The second may help us better understand singular thought, but does so, not by replacing the view that singular thoughts are information-based, but by helping us understand the nature of information-based thought. (shrink)

In this essay, some approaches towards the interpretation of language in the early thought of Heidegger are discussed, especially in Being and Time. Heidegger’s language can be understood by pointing out that he saw life as the main interest of philosophy, and questioned philosophy with regard to how it can determine itself. In contrast to Heidegger’s later writings, language is not the primary issue of discussion in the earlier period of his thinking. Therefore, different approaches to language need to be (...) taken. Language can be understood by following the existential analysis of Dasein , namely the interpretation of Rede . Further, the interpretations of Heidegger on Aristotle need to be discussed. As the Greeks had no word for language, the misleading interpretations of logos, dominating the history of philosophy, had an influence on the theory of language. Finally, taking account of prudence as a way to discover beings, another view on language can be found. In this approach to an understanding of language in the early thought of Heidegger, the manner of thinking about language is different to later approaches through poetry. There are traces of thinking about language in Being and Time and Heidegger’s earlier lectures. However, first of all, they have to be found. (shrink)

This article describes a case study on the Machiguenga, a remote Indigenous tribe affected by the Camisea Gas Project in the Peru. We introduce the anthropological concept of ‘glocalization’ and integrate this with organizational knowledge of ‘identity work’. Our findings demonstrate that identity work is a multi-faceted and boundary spanning process that significantly affects stakeholder relations and contributes to conflict between local communities and oil and gas companies. Indigenous identity can be both threatened and strengthened in response to natural gas (...) development and is related to how individuals, communities and the Machiguenga engage in identity work. We also discuss broader implications for management ethics, including a discussion of how Indigenous self-identify processes create a challenge for stakeholder theory. (shrink)

argument fails, and the purpose of this note is to bring out that failure. The view in question which Heck calls the Hybrid Vie~istinguishes between the meanings of names and the contents of beliefs which are expressible using names. According to the Hybrid View the meaning of a name is its referent: names do not have senses. Thus (a) "George Orwell wrote 1984" means the same as (b) "Eric Blair wrote 1984". However, the Hybrid View tells a different story about (...) the beliefs one expresses when one utters (a) or (b). The content of a belief expressed using a sentence that contains a name has more to it than just the referent of the name and whatever properties the sentence ascribes to the name's referent. There is.. (shrink)

RESUMO A crítica de Hume ao contrato social admite um alcance para além do debate com o contratualismo de Locke: nosso autor tem em vista, sobretudo, desconstruir os princípios filosóficos que são a base da prática política dos Whigs. Uma vez que o contrato original organiza esses princípios, Hume se dedicará a analisá-lo em termos filosóficos e históricos, na tentativa de modernizar o pensamento político de sua época. ABSTRACT Hume's criticism of the social contract allows a range beyond the debate (...) with Locke's theory: our author aims mainly to deconstruct the philosophical principles that are the basis of the political practice of the Whigs. Since the original contract organizes these principles, Hume will be devoted to evaluating it in philosophical and historical terms, in an attempt to modernize the political thought of his time. (shrink)