In view of the scope and scale of the latest scandals, e.g. Enron's maximum breaking bankruptcy, the re-discovery of ethics in business has received an impressive boost. By now even car salesmen have written ethics, a Code of Conduct, e.g. in the USA or Poland. But there is no clear aim of the role ethics obtains in organizational settings as we may show in some small cases of practical approaches to deal with ethics in organizations. We discuss how ethics is (...) the prerequisite to conduct any business and what advantages may be realized if a clear set of ethics is followed. We will discuss three practical examples. In cases of ethics-based values-added management of Siemens (Germany), Boeing (U.S.) and SAP (Germany) we explain the mechanisms of ethics in management to strengthen organizational success. We emphasize the importance of clear ethics-related communication processes in organizations. We explain the use of communication theories inside organizational processes to clarify communication about such an abstract topic as ethics. Finally, we point out how a management of ethical ideas and cultural values should be designed in business enterprises. (shrink)

"Ethical Leadership" in modern multicultural corporations is first the consideration of different personal and cultural value systems in decision-making processes. Second, it is the assignment of responsibility either to individual or organisational causalities. The task of this study is to set the stage for a distinction between rational entities and the arbitrary preferences of individuals in economic decision making processes.Defining rational aspects of behaviour in economics will lead to the formal structures of organisational systems, which are independent of concrete but (...) varying values. Luhmann''s Theory of systems of communication describes the internal dynamic forces of economic communication processes in terms of formal structures. On the other hand Habermas'' Theory of discourse integrates the previous relationship between individual subjectivity and rational behaviour. Habermas gives an indication of how to separate subjective values and meaning from rational arguments in rational communication processes. The translation of these theoretical structures into practical applications for decision making processes and decision taking acts links the ethical, or value-oriented, context precisely to both individual and organisational areas of responsibility. (shrink)

How can anagreement between ethnic diversity and political integration be reached? When is the decision of a group justified? In order to analyse these questions, we will compare the situation of minorities in a clearly defined territory with that of immigrant minorities. Moreover, the necessity for recognition can be justified and as a result the need to live in accordance with cultural and linguistic peculiarities. Central for the desire for recognition is that a determinated self claims the right to determinate (...) her own political, economic and/or cultural matters for herself. This gives equal chances and thus equal treatment to all people. Self-determination can develop to the aspiration of secession, which is accompanied by conflicts. An open theory of selfdetermination shows new perspectives for conflict regulation. (shrink)

Darwin proposed that evolutionary novelties are environmentally induced in organisms “constitutionally” sensitive to environmental change, with selection effective owing to the inheritance of constitutional responses. A molecular theory of inheritance, pangenesis , explained the cross‐generational transmission of environmentally induced traits, as required for evolution by natural selection. The twentieth‐century evolutionary synthesis featured mutation as the source of novelty, neglecting the role of environmental induction. But current knowledge of environmentally sensitive gene expression, combined with the idea of genetic accommodation of mutationally (...) and environmentally induced change, supports a revival of Darwin's original theory that is consistent with modern molecular and population genetics. †To contact the author, please write to: Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, c/o Escuela de Biología, Universidad de Costa Rica, Costa Rica; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

The challenges associated with the issue of migration have led to growing conflicts over the distribution of resources and have put the existing legal order in peril. This has also created dilemmas when it comes to matters of religion. These circumstances have called into question the theory of contemporary liberalism in Germany. In order to show this, I will analyze a few representatives of contemporary liberal theory. Among them are the philosophers John Rawls, with his „Theory of Justice“; Ronald Dworkin (...) and his proposal to further develop Rawls’ theory through the creation of an equal starting position; Michael Walzer and his counter to Rawls’ theory found in the book „Spheres of Justice“ in which he presents the idea of a complex equality; as well as Charles Taylor and his theoretical analysis. Based on this analysis, I will present a new concept-proposal of a liberal theory. (shrink)

Ethische Fragen der Psychiatrie -- Angst als psychiatrisches Problem.

In 1675, Leibniz elaborated his longest mathematical treatise he everwrote, the treatise ``On the arithmetical quadrature of the circle, theellipse, and the hyperbola. A corollary is a trigonometry withouttables''. It was unpublished until 1993, and represents a comprehensive discussion of infinitesimalgeometry. In this treatise, Leibniz laid the rigorous foundation of thetheory of infinitely small and infinite quantities or, in other words,of the theory of quantified indivisibles. In modern terms Leibnizintroduced `Riemannian sums' in order to demonstrate the integrabilityof continuous functions. The (...) article deals with this demonstration,with Leibniz's handling of infinitely small and infinite quantities,and with a general theorem regarding hyperboloids. (shrink)

In the 1920s, Leo Lowenthal mustered the courage and the nonchalance to point literary studies in a direction which, had die discipline in Germany at diat time taken heed, would have spared it a great deal of repetition forty years later. In looking at his career, we must consider how diese early efforts were subject to a consolidation and historical elaboration dirough Lowendial's involvement with the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt and dien in New York. We ought to consider (...) mat mere is today a need for a social historian who understands diat literature contains the history of bourgeois society — including all of its sufferings, shortcomings and hopes — better than the traditional sources of political history. (shrink)

A trusted guide into the inner realm where our spirits find strength to master life and live for God. It is hard to exaggerate the significance of Innerland, either for Eberhard Arnold or his readers. It absorbed his energies off and on for most of his adult life--from World War I, when he published the first chapter under the title War: A Call to Inwardness, to 1935, the last year of his life. Packed in metal boxes and buried at (...) night for safekeeping from the Nazis, who raided the author_s study a year before his death (and again a year after it), Innerland was not openly critical of Hitler_s regime. Nevertheless, it attacked the spirits that animated German society: its murderous strains of racism and bigotry, its heady nationalistic fervor, its mindless mass hysteria, and its vulgar materialism. In this sense Innerland stands as starkly opposed to the zeitgeist of our own day as to that of the author_s. At a glance, the focus of Innerland seems to be the cultivation of the spiritual life as an end in itself. Nothing could be more misleading. In fact, to Eberhard Arnold the very thought of encouraging the sort of selfish solitude whereby people seek their own private peace by shutting out the noise and rush of public life around them is anathema. He writes in The Inner Life:_These are times of distress. We cannot retreat, willfully blind to the overwhelming urgency of the tasks pressing on society. We cannot look for inner detachment in an inner and outer isolation...The only justification for withdrawing into the inner self to escape today's confusing, hectic whirl would be that fruitfulness is enriched by it. It is a question of gaining within, through unity with eternal powers, a strength of character ready to be tested in the stream of the world._ Innerland, then, calls us not to passivity, but to action. It invites us to discover the abundance of a life lived for God. It opens our eyes to the possibilities of that _inner land of the invisible where our spirit can find the roots of its strength and thus enable us to press on to the mastery of life we are called to by God._ Only there, says Eberhard Arnold, can our life be placed under the illuminating light of the eternal and seen for what it is. Only there will we find the clarity of vision we need to win the daily battle that is life, and the inner anchor without which we will lose our moorings. (shrink)

In dieser Untersuchung wird die Instandhaltung technischer Artefakte, neben deren Schaffung und Nutzung die dritte grundlegende Form technischen Handelns, als Teilthema der Technikphilosophie systematisch und umfassend analysiert. Nur durch Instandhaltung können die unermeßlichen und vielfältigen mittels technischer Verfahren erzeugten Werte vor vorzeitigem Verfall und Untergang bewahrt werden. Die Studie erschließt Instandhaltung in phänomenologischer (Grundlagen) und normativer Hinsicht (Instandhaltung und Gesellschaft). Die auf Unumkehrbarkeit des Handelns und ganz allgemein des Geschehens gegründete Endlichkeit seiner Dauer bindet das individuelle technische Artefakt als wesentliches (...) Element in den Verlauf der Allgemein-, Technik-, Kultur-, Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte ein. (shrink)

The article describes the difficult establishment of two of the eight series of the so-called Academy Edition of Leibniz’s Complete Writings and Letters. In 1976, Series VII, Mathematical writings, was realized by means of a collaboration between Knobloch in Berlin and Contro in Hannover. Juridical, staff, and technical problems had to be solved before the editorial work could begin. Series VIII, Scientific, Medical, and Technical writings, was realized in 2001, this time as an official project of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of (...) Sciences and Humanities. The international collaboration of co-workers from Berlin, Russia, and France was carried out through electronic means, especially through a digitalization of everything concerning the Leibnizian manuscripts. (shrink)

Copyright law is a crucial part of the normative framework of the artistic and art-related practices in the modern world. It facilitates the production and public accessibility of certain works of art and literature, music, moving images, etc. At the same time, it prevents the production and public accessibility of others whichmight have been just as interesting as those we got to know. Intellectual property norms imprint our ideas of authorship as well as the ontological constitution of artworks. Yet the (...) interdependencies and interferences between copyright law, aesthetic theories and artistic practices deserve a more thorough analysis. This paper presents a new approach to an institutional theory of art, analyzing the relevance of intellectual property regimes for the opening and exclusion of certain possibilities in the production, distribution and use of works of art as well as for our understanding of some fundamental aesthetic concepts. (shrink)