Marx’s polemic against Proudhon represents a crucial stage in the development of his dialectical method and his conception of history and progress. The critique of Proudhon demonstrates Marx’s hostility towards the very teleological account of social change of which he has himself been accused. In order to redress this imbalance, the break with Proudhon is presented here as a result of Marx’s rejection of the speculative Hegelian dialectic. This rejection is an exercise in self-criticism that is highly relevant to our (...) understanding of Marxian theory in general. (shrink)

Wenn die Rede auf den Fortschritt kommt, geht es um die Verbesserung der menschlichen Lebensverhältnisse. Doch die Erfahrungen modernen Gesellschaften mit Tyrannei, Kriegen, Wirtschaftskrisen und Umweltzerstörung haben das Vertrauen in die Überwindung natürlicher Abhängigkeiten und sozialer Über erschüttert. Viele sehen heute im Fortschritt eine bloße Illusion oder einen Mythos. Es scheint mir angesichts der allgegenwärtigen scharfen Kritik an der Fortschrittsidee im zeitgenössischen Denken angebracht, von einer Psychologie des Fortschritts zu sprechen. Damit meine ich nicht das Fühlen und Verhalten, das Fortschritt (...) bedingt oder umgekehrt durch ihn hervorgerufen wird; ich meine die Psychologisierung des Fortschritts: die Annahme, er sei eine reine Kopfsache, etwas Ausgedachtes oder Erhofftes, das sich durch seine Projektion auf historische oder soziale Prozesse zu einer gefahrvollen Erzählung verfestigt. "Psychologisierung des Fortschritts" ist also meine Chiffre für die projektivistische Fortschrittskritik, die ich hier ihrerseits kritisiere und der ich ein kulturalistisches Menschenbild entgegensetze. (shrink)

The modern idea of progress assumes that time will bring a steady improvement in all things human. This idea was always a contested one. However, since the mid-20th century at the latest philosophical thought about progress has been almost exclusively critical. The present paper introduces the standard arguments of progress’s detractors, particularly the notion that progress should be understood dialectically as the transformation of good intentions into their opposite. It attempts to sketch a more timely conception of progress in opposition (...) to this line of thought. (shrink)

The sequencing of the human genome has opened the way for using bioinformatics to identify sets of genes controlled by specific regulatory signals. Here, we review the unexpected diversity of DNA response elements mediating transcriptional regulation by estrogen receptors (ERs), which control the broad physiological effects of estrogens. Consensus palindromic estrogen response elements are found in only a few known estrogen target genes, whereas most responsive genes contain only low‐affinity half palindromes, which may also control regulation by other nuclear receptors. (...) ERs can also regulate gene expression in the absence of direct interaction with DNA, via protein–protein interactions with other transcription factors or by modulating the activity of upstream signaling components, thereby significantly expanding the repertoire of estrogen‐responsive genes. These diverse mechanisms of action must be taken into account in screening for potential estrogen‐responsive sequences in the genome or in regulatory regions of target genes identified by expression profiling. BioEssays 24:244–254, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.; DOI 10.1002/bies.10066. (shrink)

Im 20. Jahrhundert galt es sowohl im Marxismus als auch unter seinen Gegnern als ausgemachte Sache, dass das Werk von Karl Marx eine anspruchsvolle Theorie der Geschichte enthält, die von einer starken optimistischen Grundstimmung getragen wird. Oft hielt man sie für einen als Wissenschaft verkleideten Entwurf einer idealen Zukunftsgesellschaft, für eine Heilslehre. Umso erstaunlicher ist es daher, dass eine gründliche Erforschung des Marxschen Fortschrittsdenkens bislang noch aussteht. Denis Mäders Studie analysiert das moderne Fortschrittsdenken und die zeitgenössische Diskussion desselben. Vor (...) diesem Hintergrund rekonstruiert sie die Entstehung eines originären Fortschrittsbegriffs, den Marx in kritischer Auseinandersetzung mit seinem philosophischen Milieu (vor allem mit Hegel, den Hegelianern und Proudhon) gewinnt. Fortschritt ist die historische Bewegung des Guten. Zugleich aber gibt es für den Dialektiker Marx ohne Gegensatz keinen historischen Fortschritt. Fortschritt bildet für ihn die Möglichkeit positiver Entwicklung, ohne andersartige oder gegenläufige Entwicklungsformen darin aufzuheben. (shrink)

1. Parmenides bis Hegel -- 2. Das 19. und 20. Jahrhundert.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Between Deleuze and DerridaMary Beth MaderPaul Patton and John Protevi, editors. Between Deleuze and Derrida. New York: Continuum, 2003. Pp. ix + 207. Cloth, $105.00. Paper, $29.95.One of the many provisions of Gilles Deleuze's prodigious philosophical invention, Difference and Repetition, is an ontological account of how invention is actual. That book itself is an instance of that of which it offers an account. An element of this account (...) is the notion of an intensive system. The intensive system is proposed as a way in which novelty and movement come about. It requires as its basic constituents two heterogeneous organized series which are put into communication through their differences, producing a resonance internal to the system which then yields a novel forced movement. Several of the essays in Between Deleuze and Derrida so put the work of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida into communication as to themselves amount to intensive systems: movement and novelty emerge in our grasp of the separate oeuvres of the two philosophers.Essays by Daniel W. Smith and Leonard Lawlor tackle in detail the task of comparative explication. Since Deleuze and Derrida treat many of the same philosophical topics, often employing identical terms, these clear cases for their divergences and similarities are especially useful. Smith's historical situation of Deleuze and Derrida relative to the thought of Duns Scotus, Spinoza, Kant and Nietzsche is exemplary. Dense with connections, Lawlor's decisive expositions pursue the implications of his interpretative distinctions rigorously to their ends, tracing the divergent constructions of the two thinkers to a common source in the notion of a simulacrum. Smith and Lawlor themselves part company, however, over the issue of whether Derrida and Deleuze are best characterized as philosophers of immanence or transcendence. Paul Patton crafts a sophisticated cross-reading of their shared vision of philosophy as a "utopian vocation," without homogenizing the differing voices they hear in this call or its unshared ontology.Branka Arsiæ's imaginative contribution on the topic of passive events and Melville's Bartleby is enlightening even without mention of Deleuze's notion of static ordinal genesis. The essays of John Protevi and Tamsin Lorraine are also rich in philosophical imagination. Protevi's extension of Derrida's aporias of the gift and friendship to an "aporia of love" illuminates Derrida's own evolution while refusing a version of undecidability that remains in static indecision. His discussion of Deleuze and Guattari's notion of the girl, with its isotropic implications for sexuality per se, is one of the best in print. Lorraine displays the novelty of Deleuze and Derrida's post-Heideggerian thought on the temporality of sense and the limits of representation in readings of Alice in Wonderland and Hamlet that clarify by example some of the more forbiddingly elaborate proposals in the philosophy of time that these thinkers offer.Arkady Plotnitsky's chapter addresses the crucial questions of Deleuze's and Derrida's relations to various sub-fields of mathematics and happily considers Derrida, with his deployment of a notion of undecidability, as a legatee of Gödel. It is confusing, however, that this stimulating essay treats Deleuze's and Derrida's invocations of algebra, geometry and topology by means of the "tropes" of "algebra, geometry and topology." This is especially puzzling in the case of Deleuze, whose use of mathematics in Difference and Repetition is avowedly not metaphorical. Further, although algebra is said to be the prime instrument of Plotnitsky's analysis, it turns out that "the general quasi-algebraic inscriptive structure or operation" (111; my italics) is most fundamental to that analysis. For this reason, it would be preferable to locate in both Deleuze and Derrida a post-structuralist concern with structure itself, making "algebra" another in the Derridean syntagmatic chain of names for a descendent of "structure."The book does contain some disappointing stretches. Eric Alliez's chapter does not read well despite its reliable translation. Alphonso Lingis's ruminations of a blithely bewildered Western roamer ("you" and then "me") on his "detour into exoticism" thanks to the "willing" concupiscence of an Asian female bed-mate ("she" and never "you" or "me") make one regret the era of easy... (shrink)

Die hier versammelten Beiträge analysieren Typen und Funktionen der Ambiguität an Beispielen aus der mittelalterlichen bis zur zeitgenössischen Kunst.

Over the past fifteen years there has been a considerable amount of debate concerning what theoretical population dynamic models tell us about the nature of natural selection and drift. On the causal interpretation, these models describe the causes of population change. On the statistical interpretation, the models of population dynamics models specify statistical parameters that explain, predict, and quantify changes in population structure, without identifying the causes of those changes. Selection and drift are part of a statistical description of population (...) change; they are not discrete, apportionable causes. Our objective here is to provide a definitive statement of the statistical position, so as to allay some confusions in the current literature. We outline four commitments that are central to statisticalism. They are: 1. Natural Selection is a higher order effect; 2. Trait fitness is primitive; 3. Modern Synthesis (MS)-models are substrate neutral; 4. MS-selection and drift are model-relative. (shrink)

Abstract: In this study, I propose to examine Marty’s reconstruction of the general framework in which Brentano develops his theory of consciousness. My starting point is the formulation, at the very beginning of the second chapter of the second book of Brentano’s Psychology, of two theses on mental phenomena, which constitute the basis of Brentano’s theory of primary and secondary objects. In the second part, I examine the objection of infinite regress raised against Brentano’s theory of primary and secondary objects (...) and Marty’s interpretation of Brentano’s theory of the unity of consciousness. The third part bears on the important distinction between implicit and explicit consciousness, which Brentano introduces in his lectures on descriptive psychology. Here, I analyse Marty’s principle of individuation in light of the modifications which Brentano made to his theory of consciousness after the publication of his Psychology in 1874. The last section is an examination of Marty’s conception of consciousness as self-consciousness with respect to his principle of individuation. (shrink)

In evolutionary biology changes in population structure are explained by citing trait fitness distribution. I distinguish three interpretations of fitness explanations—the Two‐Factor Model, the Single‐Factor Model, and the Statistical Interpretation—and argue for the last of these. These interpretations differ in their degrees of causal commitment. The first two hold that trait fitness distribution causes population change. Trait fitness explanations, according to these interpretations, are causal explanations. The last maintains that trait fitness distribution correlates with population change but does not cause (...) it. My defense of the Statistical Interpretation relies on a distinctive feature of causation. Causes conform to the Sure Thing Principle. Trait fitness distributions, I argue, do not. *Received July 2009; revised October 2009. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy/Institute for the History, Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, Victoria College, 91 Charles Street West, Toronto, ON M5S 1K7, Canada; e‐mail: denis[email protected]. (shrink)

The physical sciences include highly developed fields that investigate intensities in the form of intensive quantities like speeds, temperatures, pressures and altitudes. Some contemporary readers of Deleuze interested in the physical sciences at times attribute to Deleuze a common, contemporary scientific concept of intensive magnitude. These readings identify Deleuze's philosophical conception of intensity with an existing scientific conception of intensity. The essay argues that Deleuze does not in fact lift a conception of intensity from the physical sciences to embed it (...) as the fundamental term in his differential ontology. (shrink)

Demonstrates the dramatic interplay of elements that comprise the concepts of norm, bisexuality, and development.

When Carl Friedrich Gethmann announced Poiesis & Praxis in 2001—“A new journal is launched”— this notification came along with high expectations of the addressees with respect to meaning and quality of the content of the newborn journal. The initiative for an “International Journal of Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment” followed the supposed demand for a periodic forum for the rational reflection of the consequences of scientific and technological advance for the individual and social life of the human and its (...) environment—also beyond national perspectives. In the meantime, this broad spectrum was indeed covered with mostly professional articles, which reflected upon the quite different methods of technology assessment and scientific policy advice.Eleven years, nine volumes, and 36 issues later, the world has changed and with it the journal as well: It came up with new topics and challenges of the scientific-technological civilization but also with new perception modes and read. (shrink)

Nietzsche and Foucault have given us the idea of conducting a philosophical genealogy of a practice that varies across history. Foucault's work also implies that we can view some abstraction as a practice. These points jointly imply that we can conduct a genealogy of “abstractive practices.” Indeed, a good deal of Foucault's work can be understood as exactly this sort of investigation. But a genealogy of abstractive practice raises a difficult methodological problem. This is the problem of how to determine (...) which definitions of abstraction to use, from amongst the various theoretical accounts of abstraction that we find in the history of thought, to craft our genealogy of abstractive practices. In other words, what will count as an abstractive practice for the purpose of conducting such a genealogy will depend on what we identify as abstraction. This article seeks to expose this problem to demonstrate the methodological difficulties that must be confronted in order to steer a path between ignoring the historical-epistemological limits to the kinds of abstraction we can employ at any given present, on the one hand, and having our sensitivity to these limits halt our historical-philosophical reflections on abstraction as a historical practice, on the other. (shrink)

According to a prominent view of evolutionary theory, natural selection and the processes of development compete for explanatory relevance. Natural selection theory explains the evolution of biological form insofar as it is adaptive. Development is relevant to the explanation of form only insofar as it constrains the adaptation-promoting effects of selection. I argue that this view of evolutionary theory is erroneous. I outline an alternative, according to which natural selection explains adaptive evolution by appeal to the statistical structure of populations, (...) and development explains the causes of adaptive evolution at the level of individuals. Only together can a statistical theory of selection and a mechanical theory of development explain why populations of organisms comprise individuals that are adapted to their conditions of existence. (shrink)

Psychological individualism is motivated by two taxonomic principles: (i) that psychological states are individuated by their causal powers, and (ii) that causal powers supervene upon intrinsic physiological state. I distinguish two interpretations of individualism--the 'orthodox' and the 'alternative'--each of which is consistent with these motivating principles. I argue that the alternative interpretation is legitimately individualistic on the grounds that it accurately reflects the actual taxonomic practices of bona fide individualistic sciences. The classification of homeobox genes in developmental genetics provides an (...) illustration. When applied to the taxonomy of psychological kinds, alternative individualism has some surprising consequences. In particular, externalist taxonomies of thought are consistent with the alternative interpretation, and hence consistent with individualism. I conclude, on this basis, that the individualism/externalism dispute which has long preoccupied philosophy of psychology is an empty one. (shrink)

What is phenomenology's contribution to contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind? I am here concerned with this question, and in particular with phenomenology's contribution to what has come to be called the problem of consciousness. The problem of consciousness has constituted the focal point of classical phenomenology as well as the main problem, and indeed perhaps the stumbling block, of the philosophy of mind in the last two decades. Many philosophers of mind, for instance, Thomas Nagel, Ned Block, Owen (...) Flanagan, Colin McGinn and David Chalmers, have acknowledged the properly phenomenological character of this problem; Nagel is even willing to entrust the study of phenomenal consciousness to what he calls an “objective phenomenology.” Yet, the phenomenology to which these philosophers resort has little to do with the conceptual framework that was developed within the phenomenological tradition. They put forward an entity they term “phenomenal consciousness,” but only in the hope that it may be explained by means of the theories that currently prevail in the philosophy of mind or in cognitive sciences. (shrink)

Human beings experience themselves through various kinds of collectively experienced time. Medicine that relies upon precarious forms of ancestral or evolutionary explanation generates such collectively experienced forms of time, which are thus essentially politico-medically instituted versions of kin relations. Kin relations structure our ethical relations to each other rather thoroughly, even in Western modernity, especially through legally sanctioned relations. Hence, an ancestral or evolutionary explanation in medicine should be examined for its ethical import via its structuring of etiologically linked kin (...) relations, even if those relations extend beyond the family, people, population or group context back into cosmic and evolutionary origins. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Simone de Beauvoir Luce Irigaray Colette Guillaumin Hélène Cixous Julia Kristeva Monique Wittig Sarah Kofman Michèle Le Doeuff Christine Delphy Conclusion.

The paper treats several ontological questions about certain nineteenth-century and contemporary medical and scientific conceptualizations of hereditary relation. In particular, it considers the account of mid-nineteenth century psychiatric thought given by Foucault in Psychiatric Power: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1973–1974 and Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1974–1975 . There, Foucault argues that a fantastical conceptual prop, the ‘metabody,’ as he terms it, was implicitly supposed by that period’s psychiatric medicine as a putative ground for psychiatric pathology. (...) After presenting the heart of Foucault’s thought on the ‘metabody,’ the paper investigates the possibility that a contemporary version of a ‘metabody’ may operate today as a conceptual analog of the nineteenth-century psychiatric theory and practice that Foucault began to expose in the texts examined here. It speculates that we might identify a contemporary genetic version of a ‘metabody’ in a particular current conception of the gene as replicator, an item marked by an ambiguous temporal ontology. (shrink)

A distinctive feature ofAeneid8 is the constant interplay and fluctuation of registers, with high epic and thegenus grandealternating with the lighter strains or learned allusions associated with thegenus tenue. As one commentator has remarked, ‘Man darf das Buch allein schon wegen seines Reichtums an Aitien als das ‘kallimacheischste’ derAeneisbezeichnen.’ Beyond the emphasis on aetiology—the Cacus myth in particular is presented asaitionfor the consecration of the Ara Maxima—the Callimachean complexion comes out also in several smaller not-so-serious or learned touches, typically at (...) unlikely moments to infuse an element of humour in an otherwise intensely dramatic narrative. The Hercules–Cacus episode conflates high drama and low comedy as the cattle rustler's slightly ridiculous stratagem becomes a gigantic clash resonating with the primal gigantomachy. Among the rudimentary weapons of mass destruction unleashed by Hercules upon Cacus, the hapaxmolaris echoes its Homeric equivalent μύλαξ, itself a hapax, with the recherché term then reappearing at Ovid,Metamorphoses3.59: missiles and diction are equally outlandish. When Hercules in a reprise of the celebrated Empedoclean leap plungesper ignemin pursuit of Cacus, an evocation of the Sicilian philosopher's fiery exit adds a touch of comedy at the heated moment. And from this inferno Virgil moves to Olympus, lowering the tone but raising the temperature as Venus in a domestic comedy seduces the uxorious Vulcan into preparing new armour for Aeneas: now she kindles flames of a different sort in the fire-god in a scene marked by witty double entendre that provides a playful contrast with the unfolding drama at Pallanteum. At moments like these, a lighter strain is audible through the epic thunder,Vergilius ludensis hard at work. (shrink)

Research shows that trained mentors achieve better results than untrained ones. Their training should particularly address their expectations for their future mentoring. Our study involved 190 preservice teachers, potential mentors of ongoing school mentoring for primary and secondary school students of all grades. They were randomly assigned to one of four conditions in a 2-x-2 between-subjects design of mentoring type (traditional mentoring versus e-mentoring) and mentoring context (non-pandemic versus COVID-19 pandemic). Participants assessed mentoring conducted under these four conditions in terms (...) of its appropriateness for achieving four mentoring program targets: learning, key skills, social targets, and problem coping. Participants were also asked to assess the resources available to achieve each program target. Overall, the potential mentors considered the various conditions to be suitable for achieving the four program targets. They were particularly favorable in their assessment of the possibility for the realization of learning targets. Likewise, they assumed that sufficient resources were available to achieve the targets. However, a repeated-measures MANOVA showed that the potential mentors considered more ambitious targets to be possible in traditional mentoring than in e-mentoring and normal (i.e., pre-pandemic) contextual conditions than during the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, they estimated the resources available to achieve the targets to be about the same in the four conditions. This indicates a decoupling of mentoring targets from the consideration of the resources needed to achieve them. This assumption was confirmed in correlation analyses and has implications for mentor training. (shrink)