Husserl's transcendental phenomenology is not a mere egology, but gets its concrete accomplishment only as a phenomenology of 'transcendental intersubjectivity'. However, the subjective centers of any transcendentality and thus of every constitution — even of intersubjectivity itself — have to be such unities as Leibniz' 'monads', that is, individually concrete subjects producing all their representations of one another completely out of themselves, respectively. Thus the problem arises, how the genuine transcendental status of each monadic subject in all its constitutive achievements (...) could be maintained so that they develop their own intentional lives in a universal mutual accordance, without presupposing again a supra-monadic ground for their 'harmony', i.e. a higher-levelled ordering unity. I shall argue that th peculiar Husserlian 'transcendental monadology' is inevitably bound to this intrinsic paradox which can at best be reduced to a mere postulate but never be resolved. (shrink)

Nähere Informationen zu diesem Buch erhalten Sie direkt vom Verlag / For further information about this title please contact Mohr Siebeck.

Felix Kaufmanns Wissenschaftstheorie Hans-Georg Zilian. X KAUFMANN, DIE ÖKONOMEN UND DAS A PRIORI Bei den österreichischen Grenznutzentheoretikern, mit deren Arbeiten sich Kaufmann vor allem auseinandersetzte, ist von ...

Justice, equality, and righteousness—these are some of our greatest moral convictions. Yet in times of social conflict, morals can become rigid, making religious war, ethnic cleansing, and political purges possible. Morality, therefore, can be viewed as pathology-a rhetorical, psychological, and social tool that is used and abused as a weapon. An expert on Eastern philosophies and social systems theory, Hans-Georg Moeller questions the perceived goodness of morality and those who claim morality is inherently positive. Critiquing the ethical "fanaticism" of (...) Western moralists, such as Immanuel Kant, Lawrence Kohlberg, John Rawls, and the utilitarians, Moeller points to the absurd fundamentalisms and impracticable prescriptions arising from definitions of good. Instead he advances a theory of "moral foolishness," or moral asceticism, extracted from the "amoral" philosophers of East Asia and such thinkers as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Niklas Luhmann. The moral fool doesn't understand why ethics are necessarily good, and he isn't convinced that the moral perspective is always positive. In this way he is like most people, and Moeller defends this foolishness against ethical pathologies that support the death penalty, just wars, and even Jerry Springer's crude moral theater. Comparing and contrasting the religious philosophies of Christianity, Daoism, and Zen Buddhism, Moeller presents a persuasive argument in favor of amorality. (shrink)

In this paper, findings from research in neuroscience of morality will be reviewed to consider the purposes of moral education. Particularly, I will focus on two main themes in neuroscience, novel neuroimaging and experimental investigations, and Bayesian learning mechanism. First, I will examine how neuroimaging and experimental studies contributed to our understanding of psychological mechanisms associated with moral functioning while addressing methodological concerns. Second, Bayesian learning mechanism will be introduced to acquire insights about how moral learning occurs in human brains. (...) Based on the reviewed neuroscientific research on morality, I will examine how evidence can support the model of moral education proposed by virtue ethics, Neo-Aristotelian moral philosophy in particular. Particularly, two main aims of virtue ethics-based moral education, the habituation of virtues and the cultivation of phronesis, will be discussed as the important purposes of moral education based on neuroscientific evidence. (shrink)

Introduces contemporary American philosophy of technology through six of its leading figures. The six American philosophers of technology whose work is profiled in this clear and concise introduction to the field—Albert Borgmann, Hubert Dreyfus, Andrew Feenberg, Donna Haraway, Don Ihde, and Langdon Winner—represent a new, empirical direction in the philosophical study of technology that has developed mainly in North America. In place of the grand philosophical schemes of the classical generation of European philosophers of technology, the contemporary American generation addresses (...) concrete technological practices and the co-evolution of technology and society in modern culture. Six Dutch philosophers associated with Twente University survey and critique the full scope and development of their American colleagues’ work, often illustrating shifts from earlier to more recent interests. Individual chapters focus on Borgmann’s engagement with technology and everyday life; Dreyfus’s work on the limits of artificial intelligence; Feenberg’s perspectives on the cultural and social possibilities opened by technologies; Haraway’s conception of the cyborg and its attendant blurring of boundaries; Ihde’s explorations of the place of technology in the lifeworld; and Winner’s fascination with the moral and political implications of modern technologies. American Philosophy of Technology offers an insightful and readable introduction to this new and distinctly American philosophical turn. Contributors are Hans Achterhuis, Philip Brey, René Munnik, Martijntje Smits, Pieter Tijmes, and Peter-Paul Verbeek. (shrink)

In this book Han Thomas Adriaenssen offers the first comparative exploration of the sceptical reception of representationalism in medieval and early modern philosophy. Descartes is traditionally credited with inaugurating a new kind of scepticism by saying that the direct objects of perception are images in the mind, not external objects, but Adriaenssen shows that as early as the thirteenth century, critics had already found similar problems in Aquinas's theory of representation. He charts the attempts of philosophers in both periods to (...) grapple with these problems, and shows how in order to address the challenges of scepticism and representation, modern philosophers in the wake of Descartes often breathed new life into old ideas, remoulding them in ways that we are just beginning to understand. His book will be valuable for historians interested in the medieval background to early modern thought, and to medievalists looking at continuity with the early modern period. -/- . (shrink)

In as far as every philosophy appears at a certain point in time it later inevitably becomes a historical fact. If its content is then to be recognizable, if it is to be reclaimed as philosophy in the present, then we ourselves must have a philosophical conception of history and, furthermore, a conception of philosophy's own historicity. Only since Kant has modern metaphysics expressly and methodically developed such a conception within its systematic claim to truth. Moreover, for the presentday philosophy (...) and its relationship to a completed metaphysics such a conception is indispensable - under the presupposition that the history of philosophy is to be taken seriously as philosophy. (shrink)

The intention of my comments is mainly to draw attention to a necessary distinction between that prereflective cogito of post‐metaphysical subjectivity that is analysed in Westphal's paper and the subject of the cogito that can be identified and verified as the very principle of modern philosophy from Descartes to Hegel, namely, as the subject of reason. This means first of all to step back from the conviction, taken as self‐evident, that the subject of reason — and thereby the truth claims (...) of that entire philosophical epoch — are illusionary, that is, without any right of their own. Instead we should be ready to ask how it is brought about philosophically that the subject is “shattered,” “humiliated,” “declared forfeit,” etc. My thesis is that post‐metaphysical subjectivity with its contaminated opacity can be made understandable in principle out of the endogenous crisis of the fully developed “absolute” subject of reason, if this crisis is carried out and decided as the transformation of the subject from its absolute to its decentered status. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to analyze the basic tension in Kant's philosophy of right, i.e. within the conceptual framework of his Transcendental Idealism. Right as the embodiment of laws of freedom applicable to mortal-rational agents bridges the gap between their noumenal character and empirical-natural existence. How can this gap be bridged? A priori juridical laws are not sufficient to provide a complete classification for the empirical realm, exhausting all possible positive rights. Furthermore, according to Kant, Right must be basically (...) justifiable by reason. Yet this justification is merely a necessary condition for obligation. In order to develop any real obligation, it must be complemented by a non-deducible, empirical-positive aspect . Hence only as a result of actually exercising individual freedom does the mutual necessitation to recognize individual freedom for all arise. The historical-factual formation of civil social orders, though subject to a priori foundation, is thus unavoidably marked by contingency. Nonetheless, because of its a priori character, the idea of a society of free individuals becomes the standard of critique for every empirical instantiation of a civil social order. Recht als Inbegriff der Gesetze der Freiheit endlich-vernünftiger Subjekte leistet eine Vermittlung zwischen dem noumenalen Wesen und der emprisch-naturalen Existenz dieser Subjekte. Wie ist diese Vermittlung möglich? Eine vollständige Einteilung des Empirischen unter Rechtsgesetzen a priori ist unmöglich. Was Recht ist, ist nach Kant zwar nur in der Vernunft begründbar, aber dieser Grund bleibt nur notwendige Bedingung, zu der stets eine nicht deduzierbare, empirisch-positive Seite hinzukommen muß, um tatsächliche Verbindlichkeit zu erhalten : Erst aufgrund einer faktischen Ausübung der Freiheit entsteht die wechselseitige Nötigung, die individuelle Freiheit als Freiheit aller anzuerkennen. Die historisch-faktische Gestaltung von Rechtsgemeinschaften bleibt somit auch unter der Bedingung apriorischer Begründung mit unaufhebbarer Kontingenz behaftet; doch zugleich gewinnt die Idee einer Gemeinschaft freier Individuen kraft ihrer Apriorität eine kritische Funktion gegenüber jeglicher empirischer Instanz. (shrink)

On November 21, 1994, Werner Marx passed away peacefully in the place he loved so well, his apartment in the Schloß in Bollschweil. Professor Marx was born in 1910 in Mulheim, Germany. He studied law and philosophy in Berlin, Freiburg, and Bonn before completing his state examination and doctorate in law in 1933. In the same year, he was removed from civil service and from an apprentice judgeship by the Nazis. After this, he emigrated first to Palestine and then in (...) 1938 to New York, where he took up academic studies again. After receiving an M.A. in economics, he completed the Ph.D. in philosophy, working with Kurt Reizler and Karl Löwith at the German University in Exile, later to become the New School for Social Research, and writing a dissertation on Aristotle’s ontology. During this period, he renewed his interest in Hegel and German Idealism, and also in Heidegger’s critique of the tradition and attempts to make “another beginning” in philosophy. Marx began teaching at the New School in 1949. After the appearance of his classic study, Heidegger and the Tradition, he was named successor to the Husserl-Heidegger chair in philosophy and director of Philosophical Seminar I in Freiburg, which he held from 1964 until his retirement in 1979. He also served as Director of the Husserl-Archives in Freiburg until his death. (shrink)