Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde is one of Europe's foremost legal scholars and political thinkers. As a scholar of constitutional law and a judge on Germany's Federal Constitutional Court, Böckenförde has been a major contributor to contemporary debates in legal and political theory, to the conceptual framework of the modern state and its presuppositions, and to contested political issues such as the rights of the enemies of the state, the constitutional status of the state of emergency, citizenship rights, and challenges of (...) European integration. His writings have shaped not only academic but also wider public debates from the 1950s to the present, to an extent that few European scholars can match. As a federal constitutional judge and thus holder of one the most important and most trusted public offices, Böckenförde has influenced the way in which academics and citizens think about law and politics. During his tenure as a member of the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court, several path-breaking decisions for the Federal Republic of Germany were handed down, including decisions pertaining to the deployment of missiles, the law on political parties, the regulation of abortion, and the process of European integration. In the first representative edition in English of Böckenförde's writings, this volume brings together his essays on constitutional and political theory. The volume is organized in four sections, focusing respectively on the political theory of the state; constitutional theory; constitutional norms and fundamental rights; and the relation between state, citizenship, and political autonomy. Each of these four cornerstones of Böckenförde's legal and political thinking features introductions to the articles as well as a running editorial commentary to the work. A second volume will follow this collection, focusing on the relation between religion, law, and democracy. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt is often held that the legitimacy of a democratic constitution depends on its production by constituent power. This paper argues that the notion of legitimation by constituent power face...

Our studies of aesthetics and knowledge have long tended to privilege the visual - at the expense, Wolfgang Ernst argues, of the aural. 'Sonic Time Machines' aims to correct that, presenting a striking new approach to theorising sound that investigates its split existence: as a temporal effect in a techno-cultural context and as a source of knowledge and information. Ernst creates a new term for the concept at the heart of the book, "sonicity," a flexible and powerful (...) term that allows him to consider sound with all its many physical, philosophical, and cultural valences."--Page 4 de la couverture. (shrink)

Ernst Cassirer and Ernst Bloch are considered from the standpoint of the philosophy of culture as the object of comparative study. Instead of considering possible mutual correlative influences, their work is considered with regard to a possible systematic comparison. Bloch's Materialism, like Cassirer's Philosophy of symbolic Forms, can be read as a kind of philosophy of media, if we take »medium« to mean the dimension in which meaning is generated. Against this background Cassirer and Bloch make use of (...) different means to thematize the mediality of culture. (shrink)

The article investigates Cassirer's developing interest in the cultural sciences to display how his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms constitutes a philosophy of culture. The core concept in such a philosophy of culture is the symbolic formation that both possesses a structured-structuring dimension and appears as an historical process in which culture shows itself as a temporal creation. The philosophy of culture displays 'life in meaning', that is reality as it exhibits human reality manifested in and through the medium of linguistic, (...) artistic, religious, scientific "and so on" action and behaviour. This reality, therefore, is mediation between culture and nature through human spirit. Cassirer's philosophy of culture connects back to Kant's transcendental idealism by emphasizing that any concept of reality establishes itself through a modalization of reality, e.g. that reality constitutes itself in the mode of interpretation. This makes the basis for Cassirer's characteristic understanding of hermeneutics where cultural development is regarded as drama. (shrink)

An abridged and translated edition of two of Wolfgang Ernst’s major works, representing the ambitious claim of a comprehensive knowledge-oriented analysis of media temporalities.

Die Formel „Ubiquität der Philosophie“ stammt nicht von mir. Sie ist ein Zitat. Ubiquität, ‚Allgegenwart‘, ‚Überalligkeit der Philosophie‘ – von lateinisch ubique: ‚überall‘, ‚wo immer‘ – ist eine bewußte Prägung von Richard Hönigswald. Wir finden sie bei ihm spätestens in seinem Buch Die Grundlagen der Denkpsychologie. Aber auch in seinem Spätwerk ist sie lebendig. Die beiden letzten Bände des 10-bändigen Nachlasses, die als Band IX und X 1976/77 erschienen sind und Texte aus den vierziger Jahren enthalten, operieren nachdrücklich mit dem (...) Ubiquitätstheorem. Sie tragen den von Hönigswald selbst formulierten Titel „Die Systematik der Philosophie. Aus individueller Problemgestaltung entwickelt“. Von „Allgegenwart oder Ubiquität des Geistes im menschlichen Dasein“ oder schlicht von der „Ubiquität des Menschen“ spricht übrigens auch 1938 der Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftler Werner Sombart in seinem Buch Vom Menschen. Versuch einer geisteswissenschaft-lichen Anthropologie. Der Topos ist ihm wichtig genug, um ihn im Sachindex zu notieren. (shrink)

Against a remarkable hardware oblivion in discussions of algorithmic intelligence, this article insists that algorithmic thought, or abstract computation, cannot be separated from its technological implementation. It requires a material medium for an abstract mechanism to become a procedural event. Temporality is both the condition and the limiting (and irritating) factor in the computational function. ‘Radical’ media archaeology is proposed as a method for such an analysis, and the neologism of techno lógos to describe some aspects of algorithmic reason which (...) only unfold in the moment of its techno-processual coming-into-being. Some core operations, such as the time-discrete rhythm of actual computing algorithms, are discussed, where the ‘tempoReal’ flashes up in computing. In a wider sense, the time-discreteness of digital computing is related to an aesthetics of existence which acknowledges the machine element within human reasoning itself, while at the same time re-actualizing previous cultural techniques of non-narrative chronology. Turing the ‘man’ himself, in the sense of the Turing machine, can be addressed ‘itself’, in its archival sense as a sequence of expressions by symbols. (shrink)

Wolfgang Ernst, Professor of Media Theories at the Humboldt University in Berlin, has become known through his work on media archaeology. Hence the inclusion of this translation represents an alternative take on cultural techniques. It places the legacy of cultural studies, or Kulturwissenschaften, in an interesting tension with the different epistemological demands that technical media impose. After Vico and Dilthey, argues Ernst, we need to investigate the specific modes of knowledge that technical media propose to cultural techniques. (...) Ernst’s media archaeology and the slightly different approach to cultural techniques found in some other contributions in this issue can be seen as two of the most intriguing ways in which current German media studies has been developing in relation to Friedrich Kittler’s impact. For Ernst, this has resulted in a more technical focus and also in the development of critiques of temporality that go beyond media history. Ernst argues that media temporality is not to be understood only through the cultural history of media technologies, but also how media technologies produce time. Machines have their own specific temporality, Eigenzeit. It is in this context that the article discusses the different approaches to cultural techniques, taking into consideration the specific time-critical and epistemic implications of technical media. (shrink)

The term ’Lebenswelt’ appears as such only in Husserl’s later work, but is prepared in his early work: it represents a deepening and concretization of the ’Generalthesis der natürlichen Einstellungf (Ideen I) and is meant to contribute to the improvement of the transcendental reduction. The pretheoretical, elementary, and concretely practeced human world experience that is referred to by Lebenswelt, however; evades a stable fixation, as it always points to something seemingly beyond itself In connection with Husserl’s later cultural criticism and (...) in relation to his manifold usage of the term ’Leben’ cultural-therapeutical expectations arise which can be instrumentauzea for politics, but overstrame Husserl’s concept of science. The widespread use of the word Lebenswelt ’ is certainly motivated by Husserl’s work, although the word appeared in single instances independently of him from 1908 until the 1920s. (shrink)

The term ’Lebenswelt’ appears as such only in Husserl’s later work, but is prepared in his early work: it represents a deepening and concretization of the ’Generalthesis der natürlichen Einstellungf (Ideen I) and is meant to contribute to the improvement of the transcendental reduction. The pretheoretical, elementary, and concretely practeced human world experience that is referred to by Lebenswelt, however; evades a stable fixation, as it always points to something seemingly beyond itself In connection with Husserl’s later cultural criticism and (...) in relation to his manifold usage of the term ’Leben’ cultural-therapeutical expectations arise which can be instrumentauzea for politics, but overstrame Husserl’s concept of science. The widespread use of the word Lebenswelt ’ is certainly motivated by Husserl’s work, although the word appeared in single instances independently of him from 1908 until the 1920s. (shrink)