erster Teilband. Grundlegung -- zweiter Teilband. Tragweite und Aktualität einer Zukunftsethik.

Selling science has become a common practice in contemporary universities. This commodification of academia pervades many aspects of higher education, including research, teaching, and administration. As such, it raises significant philosophical, political, and moral challenges. This volume offers the first book-length analysis of this disturbing trend from a philosophical perspective and presents views by scholars of philosophy of science, social and political philosophy, and research ethics. The epistemic and moral responsibilities of universities, whether for-profit or nonprofit, are examined from several (...) philosophical standpoints. The contributors discuss the pertinent epistemological and methodological questions, the sociopolitical issues of the organization of science, the tensions between commodified practices and the ideal of “science for the public good,” and the role of governmental regulation and personal ethical behavior. In order to counter coercive and corruptive influences of academic commodification, the contributors consider alternatives to commodified research and offer practical recommendations for establishing appropriate research standards, methodologies and institutional arrangements, and a corresponding normative ethos. (shrink)

This collection of original essays by preeminent interpreters of continental philosophy explores the question of whether Western thought and culture have been dominated by a vision-centered paradigm of knowledge, ethics, and power. It focuses on the character of vision in modern philosophy and on arguments for and against the view that contemporary life and thought are distinctively "ocularcentric." The authors examine these ideas in the context of the history of philosophy and consider the character of visual discourse in the writings (...) of Plato, Descartes, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Benjamin, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Derrida, Foucault, Gadamer, Wittgenstein, and Habermas. With essays on television, the visual arts, and feminism, the book will interest readers in cultural studies, gender studies, and art history as well as philosophers. (shrink)

The book also sheds new light on many important allegories by showing how modern translations often conceal the wit and humor of the Chinese original.

"Social ontology, conventionally defined, is not primarily about us. Rather, it is about the social world (or worlds), about social reality (or realities), or about the domain(s) of social facts. Social ontology aims at providing an inventory of the basic kinds of entities that make up the social world(s) - items such as norms, institutions, social practices, status positions, power structures, and artifacts. It is the study of the basic kinds of properties of these entities, and of how the social (...) world exists, how it is constituted, or constructed"--. (shrink)

Kelsen's 'Pure theory of law' was first presented in his fundamental work Hauptprobleme des Staatsrechtlehre (1911) and continued in both editions of Reine Rechtslehre (1934, 1958). Historically, it has a certain relation to John Austin's 'analytical jurisprudence', although Kelsen became acquainted with Austin's work for the first time in 1940. The 'pure theory of law' is a formal-logical analysis of law, considered as a system of norms, based philosophically on the strict distinction between 'is' and 'ought'. It is a normative (...) and positive doctrine, opposed both to positivism, showing the limitations of the positivistic approach, the whole legal order. His positivism is a formal analysis of the legal norm, of its elements and of the architecture of the legal order. Kelsen's concentration on the form of law recognizes the legitimacy of sociological investigations and the study of values in reference both to the contents and the making of law. Equally, his philosophical relativism of values is entirely compatible with his strong stand for democracy and the ideals of western culture. German text. (shrink)

Tolerance—though seen to be necessary on a world divided by deep differences—often strikes us as grudgingly given and resentfully received. Conceived more widely, however, tolerance can be seen to occupy the difficult, and contested, terrain between merely putting up with and accepting others.

In his influential book, "Changing Order", H.M. Collins puts forward the following three claims concerning experimental replication. (i) Replication is rarely practiced by experimentalists; (ii) replication cannot be used as an objective test of scientific knowledge claims, because of the occurrence of the so-called experimenters' regress; and (iii) stopping this regress at some point depends upon the enculturation in a local community of practitioners, who tacitly learn the relevant skills. In my paper I discuss and assess these claims on the (...) basis of a more comprehensive analysis of experimentation and experimental reproducibility. The main point is that Collins' claims are not, strictly speaking, wrong, but rather too one-sided and therefore inadequate. This point also calls for a reconsideration of the radical (social constructivist) conclusions that Collins has drawn from his studies of scientific experimentation. (shrink)

An anthology of the most important historical sources, classical and modern, on the subjects of presumptions and burdens of proof In the last fifty years, the study of argumentation has become one of the most exciting intellectual crossroads in the modern academy. Two of the most central concepts of argumentation theory are presumptions and burdens of proof. Their functions have been explicitly recognized in legal theory since the middle ages, but their pervasive presence in all forms of argumentation and in (...) inquiries beyond the law--including politics, science, religion, philosophy, and interpersonal communication--have been the object of study since the nineteenth century. However, the documents and essays central to any discussion of presumptions and burdens of proof as devices of argumentation are scattered across a variety of remote sources in rhetoric, law, and philosophy. Presumptions and Burdens of Proof: An Anthology of Argumentation and the Law brings together for the first time key texts relating to the history of the theory of presumptions along with contemporary studies that identify and give insight into the issues facing students and scholars today. The collection's first half contains historical sources and begins with excerpts from Aristotle's Topics and goes on to include the locus classicus chapter from Bishop Whately's crucial Elements of Rhetoric as well as later reactions to Whately's views. The second half of the collection contains contemporary essays by contributors from the fields of law, philosophy, rhetoric, and argumentation and communication theory. These essays explore contemporary understandings of presumptions and burdens of proof and their role in numerous contexts today. This anthology is the definitive resource on the subject of these crucial rhetorical modes and will be a vital resource to all scholars of communication and rhetoric, as well as legal scholars and practicing jurists. (shrink)

Antike Noëtik und moderne Subjektivität / Helmut Kuhn -- Die platonische Idee des Guten und das sokratische Paradox bei Kierkegaard / Wilhelm Anz -- Der Herakliteer in Platons Theätet / Uvo Hölscher -- Antike und moderne Ethik / Ernst Tugendhat.

The article provides a new interpretation of the most widely cited essay on historical consciousness, Friedrich Nietzsche?s?On the use and abuse of history for life? from 1874, reconnecting it to current debates in educational science and the role of the historian and educator in a post-colonial situation. It reminds us how historical consciousness is an always contested and critical space, where our existential commitment to justice is also tested. The interpretation moves beyond the standard understanding of Nietzsche as only favouring (...) a life-affirming use of history. It displays how his argument opens the door toward understanding historical consciousness as a transcultural ethical space of an encounter between the dead and the living. It addresses the contemporary debate in education science concerning the relation and preference between a broader and more limited notion of historical consciousness, questioning the possibility of a conclusive theory of historical consciousness for practical-pedagogical purposes. It exemplifies its conclusions in regard to the legacies of the Holocaust and to Apartheid, as also pedagogical challenges. (shrink)

Das kunstlerische Denken, das auf dem Denken der Sinne beruht, stellt sich seine Zeichen - in der Musik also: seine Klange - nicht vor, sondern lebt unmittelbar in ihnen, badet, watet, schwimmt in ihrer Materie und gestaltet aus ihr neue geistige Lebensformen. Ich nenne das Musikdenken das flussige Denken - so Hans Zender in einer programmatischen Ausserung. Im Hintergrund seines vielschichtigen kompositorischen Werks stehen grundlegende philosophische Fragen: Wie ist das Verhaltnis von Logos und Mythos? Was bedeutet Wahrheit in der (...) Kunst? Wo liegen die Grenzen der Rationalitat? Wie hangen Glaube und Liebe, Leere und Schweigen, Sagbares und Unsagbares zusammen? In neueren Aufsatzen und Aphorismen beruhrt Hans Zender diese und andere grosse Themen des Menschseins. Im Dialog mit Texten der religiosen und philosophischen Weltliteratur - vom I Ging bis zu Nietzsche, von der Bibel bis zum Herz-Sutra - zeigt er, dass es gerade die Paradoxa und Grenzgange des Denkens sind, die Kunstwerk zum Elementarereignis machen. (shrink)