According to standard late medieval Christian thought, humans in heaven are unable to sin, having been “confirmed” in their goodness; and, nevertheless, are more free than humans are in the present life. The rise of voluntarist conceptions of the will in the late thirteenth century made it increasingly difficult to hold onto both claims. Peter Olivi suggested that the impeccability of the blessed was dependent upon a special activity of God upon their wills and argued that this external constraint upon (...) their wills did not eliminate their freedom. Later voluntarists largely agreed with Olivi in attributing the confirmation of the blessed to be dependent upon God’s activity in some way, but disputed the means by which and the extent to which the wills of those in heaven could be said to retain their freedom. This paper will examine various attempts made to either harmonize these two claims or else to soften the blow of rejecting one of them; among the authors surveyed will be Peter John Olivi, John Duns Scotus, Henry of Harclay, William of Ockham, Walter Chatton, and Margurite Porete. (shrink)

Sacrifice is a key issue of historical, sociological, political, and religious research debates. It also has a variety of interconnections with the philosophical tradition of phenomenology. For this issue of the journal Metodo. International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy authors were invited to explore the manifold dimensions of sacrifice.

This chapter establishes the concept of a “symbolic system of representation“ to make clear how it is possible that humans use not only the language-based system of representation for cognitive contents but also a many layered non-linguistic system, a system which we probably share with other species. A symbolic system of representation denotes a general concept of a performance of which our language is only one single case, but which nevertheless is most easily explained through the case of language. A (...) system of representation should enable us to form and manipulate an idea of a state of affairs or of an event without having the appropriate intuition of it. We usually think that we do this only using linguistic expressions, but this is not the whole truth. Language is one system of representation, but we can in principle conceive of other systems of representation with the same performance. Husserl’s theory of meaning already reveals this possibility. A phenomenological analysis reveals that a non-linguistic system of representation is in fact still functioning in our own consciousness. We simultaneously use different means of representation, the most prominent of which are language, gestures, feelings and scenic images. It is especially fruitful to investigate the scenic mode of daydreaming as a central form of non-linguistic thinking. Through a close comparison of alternative systems of representation, the systematic difference of usual semantics in normal language systems based on convention and the more natural similarity semantics of some non-linguistic systems of representation is revealed. (shrink)

There is a consensus that satire cannot be defined, but is best characterized by a cluster account. However, I argue that a cluster account does not acknowledge the artistically and politically significant distinction between real satire and some forms of frivolous topical comedy which are casually labeled ‘satire’ in international media contexts. To uphold this distinction, I introduce a weak proposal that satire is a genre which necessarily sets out to critique and entertain (with the qualification that these purposes necessarily (...) interact, although neither is wholly instrumental to the other). I further argue that this proposal also provides necessary and sufficient conditions for a definition of satire. (shrink)

The following pages contain a partial edition of Husserl’s manuscript A I 35, pages 1a-28b. The first few pages are dated on May 1927 and are included mostly for completeness’ sake. The bulk of the manuscript convolute, however, is from 1912. Four pages of the convolute, 31a-34b, have been published as Beilage XII (210, 2–216, 2) in Hua XXXII. The manuscript was excluded from the text selection of Husserliana XXI3 based on its much later date of composition. A I 35/24a (...) is mentioned in Husserliana XXII (p. xxi, n. 4) as confirmation for Zermelo’s 1902 “oral report” to Husserl of his own independent discovery of the paradox. The text presented here for the first time has already been the target of at least three extensive commentaries, while still unpublished, by Claire Ortiz Hill and Guillermo Rosado Haddock. These present a good survey in english of the central issues on the text and contain many translated quotations. (shrink)

In der 1970 gegründeten Reihe erscheinen Arbeiten, die philosophiehistorische Studien mit einem systematischen Ansatz oder systematische Studien mit philosophiehistorischen Rekonstruktionen verbinden. Neben deutschsprachigen werden auch englischsprachige Monographien veröffentlicht. Gründungsherausgeber sind: Erhard Scheibe (Herausgeber bis 1991), Günther Patzig (bis 1999) und Wolfgang Wieland (bis 2003). Von 1990 bis 2007 wurde die Reihe von Jürgen Mittelstraß mitherausgegeben.

First I argue that the prohibition of linguistic self-reference as a solution to the antinomy problem contains a pragmatic contradiction and is thus not only too restrictive, but just inconsistent (chap.1). Furthermore, the possibilities of non-restrictive strategies for antinomy avoidance are discussed, whereby the explicit inclusion of the – pragmatically presuposed – consistency requirement proves to be the optimal strategy (chap.2). The central question here is that about the actual reason for antinomic structures. It turns out to be a form (...) of negative self-conditioning (chap.3). This makes it necessary to clarify the status of negative concepts (chap.4). The generalization of these considerations (chap.5) leads to the actual analysis of the antinomic basic structure (chap.6): Decisively for the pragmatics of the concept is that it positively owns a meaning, so that positivity is always constituted by the concept qua concept. Thus a negative concept is characterized by a fundamental ambivalence: From a semantic point of view it has negative character, in its pragmatic status as a concept, however, it has positive character. If the meaning is especially that of a negative self-reference, the ambivalence leads to the antinomic constellation of a negative self-condition – that is the crux of the matter here! The concept thus possesses the property defined by it exactly when it does not possess it and vice versa. A closer analysis shows that the function of reflective structures for the occurrence of antinomies has to be judged much more differentiated than previous opinions suggest. Not only are four forms of reflectivity to be distinguished in this context – ontic, semantic, pragmatic reflectivity, and especially the form of negative self-condition; but it is also apparent that these are intertwined with each other in a way that is difficult to be understood. The astonishing variety of relationships associated with this makes the irritation that has always emanated from the antinomy problem appear more comprehensible. In the developed pragmatic perspective furtheron parallels to the structure of self-consciousness become visible (chap.7). I conclude with considerations about the significance of the antinomic structure for the problem of dialectics, especially for the synthesis formation of mutually exclusive terms (chap.8). ---------- Zunächst wird gezeigt, dass das Verbot sprachlicher Selbstreferenz als Lösung des Antinomienproblems einen pragmatischen Widerspruch enthält und damit nicht nur zu restriktiv, sondern geradezu inkonsistent ist (Kap.1). Ferner werden Möglichkeiten nicht-restriktiver Strategien zur Antinomienvermeidung diskutiert, wobei sich die explizite Einbindung der – pragmatisch präsupponierten – Konsistenzforderung als optimale Strategie erweist (Kap.2). Zentral ist hier die Frage nach dem eigentlichen Grund antinomischer Strukturen. Er erweist sich als eine Form von negativer Selbst-Bedingung (Kap.3). Dies nötigt zu einer Klärung des Status negativer Begriffe (Kap.4). Die Verallgemeinerung dieser Überlegungen (Kap.5) leitet über zur eigentlichen Analyse der antinomischen Grundstruktur (Kap.6): Entscheidend zur Pragmatik des Begriffs gehört, dass ihm eine Bedeutung positiv zukommt, sodass durch den Begriff qua Begriff stets auch Positivität konstituiert ist. Dadurch ist ein negativer Begriff durch eine prinzipielle Ambivalenz gekennzeichnet: In semantischer Hinsicht hat er negativen Charakter, in seinem pragmatischen Status als Begriff hingegen positiven Charakter. Ist die Bedeutung insbesondere die eines negativen Selbstbezugs, führt die Ambivalenz zur antinomischen Konstellation einer negativen Selbst-Bedingung – das ist hier der springende Punkt! Der Begriff besitzt so die durch ihn definierte Eigenschaft genau dann, wenn er sie nicht besitzt und umgekehrt. Die nähere Analyse zeigt, dass hierbei die Funktion reflexiver Strukturen für das Auftreten von Antinomien weitaus differenzierter zu beurteilen ist, als bisherige Auffassungen nahelegen. Nicht nur dass in diesem Kontext vier Formen von Reflexivität – ontische, semantische, pragmatische Reflexivität und insbesondere auch die Form negativer Selbstbedingung – unterschieden werden müssen; es zeigt sich auch, dass diese in schwer durchschaubarer Weise ineinander verschränkt sind. Die damit verbundene erstaunliche Beziehungsvielfalt läßt die Irritation, die seit je vom Antinomienproblem ausging, begreiflicher erscheinen. In der entwickelten pragmatischen Perspektive werden ferner Parallelen zur Struktur von Selbstbewußtsein sichtbar (Kap.7). Ich schließe mit Überlegungen zur Bedeutung der antinomischen Struktur für das Problem der Dialektik, insbesondere zur Synthesebildung einander ausschließender Bestimmungen (Kap.8). (shrink)

[[[ (Here only the chapters 3 – 8, see *** ) First I argue that the prohibition of linguistic self-reference as a solution to the antinomy problem contains a pragmatic contradiction and is thus not only too restrictive, but just inconsistent (chap.1). Furthermore, the possibilities of non-restrictive strategies for antinomy avoidance are discussed, whereby the explicit inclusion of the – pragmatically presuposed – consistency requirement proves to be the optimal strategy (chap.2). ]]] The central question here is that about the (...) actual reason for antinomic structures. It turns out to be a form of negative self-conditioning (chap.3). This makes it necessary to clarify the status of negative concepts (chap.4). The generalization of these considerations (chap.5) leads to the actual analysis of the antinomic basic structure (chap.6): Decisively for the pragmatics of the concept is that it positively owns a meaning, so that positivity is always constituted by the concept qua concept. Thus a negative concept is characterized by a fundamental ambivalence: From a semantic point of view it has negative character, in its pragmatic status as a concept, however, it has positive character. If the meaning is especially that of a negative self-reference, the ambivalence leads to the antinomic constellation of a negative self-condition – that is the crux of the matter here! The concept thus possesses the property defined by it exactly when it does not possess it and vice versa. A closer analysis shows that the function of reflective structures for the occurrence of antinomies has to be judged much more differentiated than previous opinions suggest. Not only are four forms of reflectivity to be distinguished in this context – ontic, semantic, pragmatic reflectivity, and especially the form of negative self-condition; but it is also apparent that these are intertwined with each other in a way that is difficult to be understood. The astonishing variety of relationships associated with this makes the irritation that has always emanated from the antinomy problem appear more comprehensible. In the developed pragmatic perspective furtheron parallels to the structure of self-consciousness become visible (chap.7). I conclude with considerations about the significance of the antinomic structure for the problem of dialectics, especially for the synthesis formation of mutually exclusive terms (chap.8). (shrink)

Irony has a suspicious moral reputation, especially in popular media and internet culture. Jonathan Lear (2011) introduces a proposal which challenges this suspicion and identifies irony as a means to achieve human excellence. For Lear, irony is a disruptive uncanniness which arises from a gap between aspiration and actualisation in our practical identity. According to Lear, such a disruptive experience of ironic uncanniness reorients us toward excellence, because it passionately propels us to really live up to that practical identity. However, (...) Lear’s understanding of irony is idiosyncratic and his proposal overlooks that disruption often results from value incompatibility between different practical identities. The disruption which follows from value incompatibility does not inherently reorient us toward excellence. The point is exactly that achieving excellence in one practical identity is sometimes incompatible with excellence in the other. Pace Lear, I do not identify this disruptive experience as a central example of irony. Instead, I consider irony a virtuous coping strategy for such disruption, because it introduces the necessary distance from our moral imperfection to sustain practical deliberation and maintain good mental health. Such virtuous irony negotiates a golden mean between too little disruption (complete insensitivity toward one’s imperfection) and too much disruption (a complete breakdown of practical deliberation and mental health). I argue that ironic media in popular culture provide a rich source of such virtuous irony, which I demonstrate through analysis of satirical examples. (shrink)

As engineering applications require management of ever larger volumes of data, ontologies offer the potential to capture, manage, and augment data with the capability for automated reasoning and semantic querying. Unfortunately, considerable barriers hinder wider deployment of ontologies in engineering. Key among these is lack of a shared top-level ontology to unify and organise disparate aspects of the field and coordinate co-development of orthogonal ontologies. As a result, many engineering ontologies are limited to their scope, and functionally difficult to extend (...) or interoperate with other engineering ontologies. This paper demonstrates how the use of a top-level ontology, specifically the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), greatly facilitates interoperability of multiple engineering-related ontologies. We constructed a system of formal linked ontologies by re-engineering legacy ontologies to be conformant with BFO and developing new BFO-conformant ontologies to capture knowledge in the engineering design, enterprise, human factors, manufacturing, and application domain of additive manufacturing. The resulting Integrated Framework for Additively Manufactured Products (IFAMP), including the body knowledge instantiated on its basis, serve as the basis for a proposed Design with Additive Manufacturing Method (DWAM), which we believe can support the design of innovative products with semantically enhanced ideation tools and enhanced access to application domain knowledge. The method and its facilitation through the ontological framework are demonstrated using a case study in medicine. (shrink)

Den an den gewaltigen Umwälzungen unserer Zeit Interessierten bewegen heute in erster Linie die Probleme des sozialen Wandels - oder besser des dringend not wendigen Umbaus unserer Welt. Erst dahinter tritt seit einiger Zeit die Forderung nach dem Umbau des Menschen auf 1. Sie ist von der öffentlichkeit noch relativ wenig beachtet und offenbar als unangenehm fast tabuiert. Von den die Frage initiierenden Biologen ist diese Forderung aber durchaus ernst gemeint. Ihre Ten denz ist radikal. Außerhalb dieser Tendenz laufen aber (...) bereits unentwegt Prozesse, die zuerst Eingriff in die Physis und Psyche des Menschen, dann eben doch schon Veränderung bedeuten oder bedeuten können. Der Massenausstoß von Chemikalien bis ins Trinkwasser und in die Zahnpasta hinein und die permanente massenhafte Massenbeeinflussung teilgeplanter Art, zum Beispiel durch Werbung, deren Wirkung (besonders insgesamt!) völlig unbekannt ist, ist damit gemeint. Hier setzt unser Interesse ein. Die Idee einer Veränderung des Menschen ist einmal überhaupt bewegend. Zum anderen gilt ihr deshalb unser Fachinteresse, weil eine an der Kulturanthropologie und der sogenannten Philosophischen Anthropologie orientierte Soziologie durch die Behauptung und Verbreitung des Konzeptes von der »Offenheit« und »Plasti zität«, der unbegrenzten Beeinflußbarkeit und Lernfähigkeit des Menschen, zu sammen mit einer untheoretischen Evolutionstheorie erst den Hintergrund für die Idee der Möglichkeit eines »Umbaus« des Menschen geliefert hat. Ist der Mensch total offen, nicht festgelegt, dann kann er auch beliebig angepaßt werden. (shrink)

How we use our own victimhood and that of others has been changing in recent years. Today it may be used to decry an injustice of violence, to garner attention to our causes, to command a unique moral and ecclesial authority, or even to gain advantage over other groups. The many possible uses of victimhood lead us to study phenomenologically its influence upon our human condition, considering especially its cultural manifestations, and religious underpinnings. The contributions investigate the topic through four (...) sections: 1) Blame, Liability, Ressentiment, 2) Christianity, Atonement, Scapegoating, 3) Trauma, Survivor Guilt, Exile, and 4) Culture, Globalization Media. (shrink)

This volume offer a manifold approach to a less evident and until now much neglected undercurrent in the work of Hannah Arendt., namely her ambiguous relation to the Judeo-Christian relligious heritage. Arendt's dissertation was dedicated to the concept of love in the works of Augustine, where she set her tone and developmed her frame for approaching theological matters. Her understanding of secularity might provide a model for the reconciliation of secularization and the persistence of religious belief in the contemporary world. (...) Thought Hannah Arendt wad certainly and outspokenly a secular thinker, her work also harbors ways of understanding secularization as the possibility of a new, maybe even messianic, attitude towards finite life and earthly reality. She famously depicts this attitude as "faith in and hope for the world". --Book cover. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno’s writings are often categorized as either political, aesthetic or critical. While all of these characteristics are legitimate, it is problematic to view Adorno from only one of these angles. In fact, many literary critics consider his thoughts about literature to be simple cultural criticism, i.e., something that leaves the realm of pure scholarship by defiling the argumentation with philosophy or politics. Political theorists and philosophers, on the other hand, often view his literary concerns as superfluous. It is (...) my thesis that Adorno’s way of thinking can only be adequately understood when these categories are not seen as mutually exclusive. In order to demonstrate this point, I will concentrate on his use of the term realism which can be seen as paradigmatic for this question. (shrink)

Constitutionalism: Past, Present, and Future will offer a definitive collection of Professor Dieter Grimm's most important scholarly writings on constitutional thought and interpretation. The essays included in this volume explore the conditions under which the modern constitution could emerge; they treat the characteristics that must be given if the constitution may be called an achievement, the appropriate way to understand and interpret constitutional law under current conditions, the function of judicial review, the remaining role of national constitutions in a (...) changing world, as well as the possibility of supra-national constitutionalism.Many of these essays have influenced the German and European discussion on constitutionalism and for the first time, much of the work of one of German's leading scholars of public law will be available in the English language. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz wird zunächst der Begriff ›Fragment‹ im Kontext einer Theorie des ›Werks‹, also des abgeschlossenen Artefakts, geklärt. Es wird gezeigt, dass Fragmente im Gegensatz zu Werken in mindestens einer Hinsicht defiziente Artefakte sind. Im folgenden Schritt wird herausgearbeitet, wo das Fragment an seine Grenzen kommt. Gemeint ist dabei einerseits die materielle Abgrenzung des Fragments von seiner Umgebung durch Schnitte, Brüche und Konturen, andererseits die begriffliche Abgrenzung des Fragments von benachbarten literarischen Formen der Prosa und der Lyrik wie Aphorismus, (...) Skizze, Entwurf, Montage und Monostichon. Ferner wird ein Blick auf ›totale Fragmente‹ (George Steiner), also Extremformen der Fragmentierung, geworfen, vor allem auf solche Fälle, in denen Artefakte ganz oder nahezu ganz gescheitert, verloren oder zerstört sind, also ein Maximum an Defizienz aufweisen. Der Schwerpunkt der Überlegungen liegt im Bereich der Literatur; andere Künste und Medien werden jedoch durchgehend vergleichend herangezogen. (shrink)

In Spescha and Strahm [15], a system of explicit mathematics in the style of Feferman [6] and [7] is introduced, and in Spescha and Strahm [16] the addition of the join principle to is studied. Changing to intuitionistic logic, it could be shown that the provably terminating operations of are the polytime functions on binary words. However, although strongly conjectured, it remained open whether the same holds true for the corresponding theory with classical logic. This note supplements a proof of (...) this conjecture. (shrink)

Review text: "... ist diese Einführung als solche uneingeschränkt zu empfehlen, da sie ihrem "analytischen? Charakter im besten Sinne des Wortes gerecht wird."Werner Wolbert in: Salzburger Theologische Zeitschrift 2/2008.

The readymades conceived and selected by Marcel Duchamp be- tween the years 1914–1917 have, with very few exceptions, not survived until the present day as ‘original.’ A variety of forms, in- cluding documentary photos, objects chosen and approved later by Duchamp as well as remakes of the historical objects comprise the readymades’ legacy. Duchamp’s remakes of his readymades as a limited edition of multiples from 1964, commemorating the 50-year anniversary of his selection of the Bottle Dryer in 1914, mark the (...) beginning of the second half of the “Readymade Century.” In contrast to their widespread visibility, the paradoxical ‘construct- edness’ of these objects is rarely discussed. The representational impact and the conceptual specificity of these multiples goes far beyond the oeuvre of Marcel Duchamp, and can be seen as a pre- monition of artistical appropriation strategies from the 1980s to the present day. (shrink)

William Ockham held that, in addition to written and spoken language, there exists a mental language, a structured representational system common to all thinking beings. Here I present and evaluate an argument found in several places across Ockham's corpus, wherein he argues that positing a mental language is necessary for the nominalist to meet certain ontological constraints imposed by Aristotle’s account of scientific demonstration.

The paper outlines the debate on European state socialism as a social and political order. There are different attempts to obtain a better understanding of the core principles of this type of society and a continuing public debate on it. Following the end of the decade of the transition from “socialism to capitalism” we can observe a renewal in the debates on the “Ancient regime” and its heritage. There are different reasons for this phenomenon; these include new insights from the (...) archives and the recent politics on history in post-socialist societies. The new “zeitgeist” following the world financial crisis of 2008 might be an additional reason. The issues that developed are discussions on the nature of state socialism, some hypotheses on the role of reformers within the changes to late socialism from the perspective of political science, and some assumptions on the methods adopted by former reform socialists after 1989. (shrink)