Das Buch von den Ursachen, eine im 9. Jhdt. bei Bagdad entstandene, im 12. Jhdt. ins Lateinische ubersetzte und zunachst Aristoteles zugeschriebene neuplatonische Schrift, gehort zu den zentralen philosophischen Texten, die an den Universitaten des 13. Jhdts. gelesen werden. Ihr anonymer Autor entwickelt darin eine an Proklos angelehnte, jedoch zugunsten der Schopfungstheologie der monotheistischen Religionen abgewandelte Ontologie. Der Kommentar bildet eine wichtige Quelle fur Erkenntnisse zu Entstehung und Inhalt des Buches. Auch zeigt er die Arbeitsweise eines der grossten Denker des (...) lateinischen Mittelalters und ist ein wichtiger Baustein fur das Verstandnis des philosophischen und theologischen Werkes Thomas von Aquins, in dem er immer wieder auf das Buch von den Ursachen zuruckgreift. (shrink)

Written by philosophers, cosmologists, and physicists, this collection of essays deals with causality, which is a core issue for both science and philosophy. Readers will learn about different types of causality in complex systems and about new perspectives on this issue based on physical and cosmological considerations. In addition, the book includes essays pertaining to the problem of causality in ancient Greek philosophy, and to the problem of God's relation to the causal structures of nature viewed in the light of (...) contemporary physics and cosmology. [Subject: Philosophy, Cosmology, Physics, Religious Studies]. (shrink)

The effect of the body transfer illusion on the perceived strength of self- and externally-generated “tickle” sensations was investigated. As expected, externally generated movement produced significantly higher ratings of tickliness than those associated with self-generated movements. Surprisingly, the body transfer illusion had no influence on the ratings of tickliness, suggesting that highly surprising, and therefore hard to predict, experiences of body image and first-person perspective do not abolish the attenuation of tickle sensations. In addition, evidence was found that a version (...) of the rubber hand illusion exists within the body transfer illusion. We situate our findings within the larger debate over sensory attenuation: there is an attenuation of prediction errors that depends upon the context in which sensory input is predicted , and sensory attenuation is a necessary consequence of self-generated movement irrespective of context . The results support the notion of active inference. (shrink)

The effect of the body transfer illusion on the perceived strength of self- and externally-generated “tickle” sensations was investigated. As expected, externally generated movement produced significantly higher ratings of tickliness than those associated with self-generated movements. Surprisingly, the body transfer illusion had no influence on the ratings of tickliness, suggesting that highly surprising, and therefore hard to predict, experiences of body image and first-person perspective do not abolish the attenuation of tickle sensations. In addition, evidence was found that a version (...) of the rubber hand illusion exists within the body transfer illusion. We situate our findings within the larger debate over sensory attenuation: there is an attenuation of prediction errors that depends upon the context in which sensory input is predicted, and sensory attenuation is a necessary consequence of self-generated movement irrespective of context. The results support the notion of active inference. (shrink)

Band 10 der Gesammelten Schriften Sulzers enthalt den gesamten Briefwechsel zwischen J. G. Sulzer (1720-1779) und J. J. Bodmer (1698-1783), der hier zum ersten Mal vollstandig nach den Handschriften transkribiert und kommentiert wird. Fur die Edition von Sulzers Schriften ist dieser Briefwechsel geradezu fundamental: Mit seinen 453 Briefen, die in 35 Jahren (1744-1779) entstanden sind, zahlt er zu den umfangreichsten Korrespondenzen Sulzers und liefert zahlreiche neue Informationen zu zentralen Themenfeldern der europaischen Aufklarung, zur Genese von Sulzers und Bodmers Schriften, zu (...) ihrem Netzwerk, insbesondere in Preuaen und in der Schweiz, sowie zu Aspekten ihres Privatlebens. Damit erweist sich dieser Briefwechsel als eine unumgangliche Quelle, will man die Formierung des literarischen und akademischen Feldes in der Aufklarungsepoche untersuchen. (shrink)

© The Author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] edited volume is based on the proceedings of an international workshop held in 2009 on the theme of ‘Material Evidence and Narrative Sources’ during the fourteenth annual gathering of the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, focused on ‘Interdisciplinary Studies of the History of Islamic Societies’. Fifteen articles seek to integrate (...) material and textual evidence for the medieval and modern Middle East, deliberately adhering to a trend of interdisciplinarity that began in the 1970s, exemplified in the approach of specific studies by Michael Cook, Leor Halevi, Peter Brown, Oleg Grabar, and Jacob Lassner, as well as in the recent publications of the editors, D. J. Talmon-Geller’s Islamic Piety in Medieval Syria: Mosques, Cemeteries and Sermons under the Zangids... (shrink)

Tolstoy was a frame of reference in the work of Lukács twice, during 1914–16 and 1935–6 respectively. His first-time encounter with Tolstoy was presented in the chapter of The Theory of the Novel involving both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, but the former was given more credit and reckoned as the prophet of a new world. It was not until the 1930s that Lukács’ taste changed, and his top priority went to Tolstoy instead. Yet, with due respect to the vicissitudes of his (...) life throughout the 1910s until the 1930s, Lukács remained faithful to his philosophy of history in terms of aesthetic judgment. His preference for the grand artworks was not new as his admiration for Homer showed, but his belief in the resurrection of grand art as realism was rooted in a new and false illusion. Still, his essays on Tolstoy of the 1930s are rich in aesthetic analysis, such as the different aspects of temporality. (shrink)

The present collection deals with philosophical thinking at the medieval university from the threefold perspective of Institution and Career, Organizational Forms and Literary Genres, and School Formation and School Conflict.

Agnes Heller died in 2019 at the age of 90, after a long career as a prolific writer broadly in the tradition of critical theory. She was born and educated in Hungary, witnessing and writing about...

Begehren, Sexualität, Intimität und Affektivität sind feinmaschig in die spätkapitalistische Matrix des Sozialen eingewebt. Die Studie untersucht die politische Ökonomie des Begehrens nach 1968. Sie unternimmt einen Streifzug quer durch die Philosophiegeschichte – von Platon über die Psychoanalyse zum Poststrukturalismus. Dabei geht sie von der Annahme aus, dass Ökonomie einen konstitutiven Faktor darstellt, wenn man Begehren begreifen will. Umgekehrt lassen sich sozioökonomische Strukturen nicht ohne die Rolle des Begehrens verstehen. Begehren wirkt sozialmobilisierend, indem es normative Ordnungen sowohl errichten und aufrechterhalten (...) als auch überschreiten kann. Neben paradigmatischen Positionen von Platon, Georg W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche und Sigmund Freud werden begehrensökonomische Thesen von Gilles Deleuze und Félix Guattari und der im Paris von Mai ’68 aufkommenden Philosophie des Begehrens betrachtet. (shrink)

This article argues that popular revolution was closely tied to the establishment of capitalism. Contrary to the revisionist George V. Taylor’s view that the Revolution had nothing to do with the advance of capitalism because financial and productive capital were divided from one another, this article contends that the Revolution played a critical role in tying them together. Prior to the Revolution financiers began to make limited investments in wholesale trade, manufacturing and mining. But during the revolutionary crisis the sans-culottes (...) pushed the Jacobins to create a national money and to curb speculation in order to foster production and exchange and reduce unemployment. With speculative activity blocked by popular resistance and state interference, bankers and other capitalists increasingly turned to productive investments and forged a link between financial and productive capital which proved crucial to further capitalist accumulation. (shrink)

In 'Four-Dimensional Objects' Peter van Inwagen gives two arguments for the claim that proponents of four-dimensionalism have to be counterpart theorists. Recently Jack Copeland, Heather Dyke, and Diane Proudfoot, echoing in part points made by Mark Heller in this journal in 1993, have sought to rebut one of van Inwagen's arguments. In this paper I shall criticize their discussion and by implication certain points made by Heller. In so doing I shall also rebut a possible objection to van (...) Inwagen's second argument. While I shall conclude that Copeland et al . fail to make their case, I nevertheless argue that van Inwagen's argument can be resisted, provided that the four-dimensionalist is willing to adopt a certain conception of transworld identity. Moreover, I shall argue that to the extent that van Inwagen's paper highlights something problematic for four-dimensionalism in this particular conception of transworld identity, the paper highlights something equally problematic for three-dimensionalism. (shrink)

Dient Kunst der Erkenntnis? Vermittelt sie Einsichten oder Wissen? Und wenn ja: auf welche Weise? Sind ästhetische Urteile wahr oder falsch? Beruht unsere Wertschätzung von Kunst auf ihren kognitiven Funktionen? Zu diesen Fragen, die zu den klassischen Themen der Kunstphilosophie gehören, beziehen zehn Philosophen aus dem deutschen Sprachraum in Originalbeiträgen Position. Der Band dokumentiert den gegenwärtigen Stand der Kontroversen zwischen kognitivistischen und nichtkognitivistischen Theorien der Kunst und der Kunstbewertung. Mit Beiträgen von Rüdiger Bittner, Sabine A. Döring, Christoph Jäger, Bernd Kleimann, (...) Dirk Koppelberg, Jens Kulenkampff, Franz von Kutschera, Alexander Piecha, Jakob Steinbrenner und Henning Tegtmeyer. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 143 sensual reason is supposed to develop the powers of observation and reasoning to the highest degree but not the spiritual intuition into the essence of things. Steiner proposed a theory of reincarnation; he also created a special kind of Christology which is based on the assumption that there were two Jesus-boys, one of whom incarnated the spirit of Zarathustra. As for Christ he descended into the (...) second Jesus from extraterrestrial spheres where he pre-existed. This is the "mystery of Golgatha," a decisive event in the history of mankind. Steiner has also a special concept of Karma as world spirit. His beliefs are strongly influenced by the German "Naturphilosophie" of the Romantic epoch and by Fichte whom he admires. The main theme of his life-work is the struggle against "materialism," against the concept of "homo oeconomieus," although Steiner was connected in the beginning with the leaders of the Austrian social democracy, such as his friends, Engelbert Pernerstorfer, and Viktor Adler. There is also the influence of German mystics, such as Jakob Boehme, on his thinking. This collection of lectures shows also that in the crucial period of German nationalism-during World War I--Steiner was not a chauvinist. He criticized, for instance, in these lectures the chauvinistic aberrations of Thomas Mann. He predicts (p. 100), in the course of the mechanization of human thinking, the construction of machines which would replace thinking itself. Instead of thinking, there would be mere "switching" (man schiebt). He predicts furthermore (p. 98) that this radical mechanization of man will come from America. The greater part of mankind will be influenced by America from the West.... It will not take too much time: around the year 2000 there will be issued in America not a formal but still a sort of prohibition of thinking; there will be a law that will have the purpose of repressing all individual thinking. On one side there is already the beginning of this development in purely materialistic medicine where the soul is not permitted to act but man is dealt with on the basis of external experiments as a pure machine. MAx RINSER New York City The Later Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood. By Alan Donagan. (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press~ 1962. Pp. xi + 332. $6.00.) The influence of Collingwood has been evident in many disciplines, and, judging from the number of books, articles, and dissertations being prepared with him and his interests in mind, it is a safe guess that he will remain an ubiquitous influence for some time. Yet because Collingwood 's interests were so wide and his attraction so general, few, if any, of his readers and critics have attempted to "place" him. This is not to say that the critical works prepared by T. M. Knox (the "Editor's Preface" to The Idea of History, 1946) and E. W. F. Tomlin (R. G. Collingwood, 195~) were unconcerned with such an issue. Indeed, their respective studies appear to have it in mind; nevertheless, it was not the impetus for the specific work, and as a result their researches tend to be prolegomena. With the publication of Donagan's book, however, there is presented a study which must be considered a landmark, if not a turning point, in the tradition of Collingwood criticism: for Donagan not only "places" Collingwood, he also attempts to justify his conclusion. And for the critic it is the subtlety of Donagan's arguments, ~lbeit their venturesome quality, which leads one to suggest that this book will make its "contributions " both to the tradition in particular and to the avid interest in general. In the Preface, Donagan acknowledges the fact that in order to "place" Collingwood his readers must be persuaded "to abandon the injurious preconception with which Collingwood's later books are often read" (p. vii). Although he does not designate what these "preconceptions " are, it may be surmised that they have something to do with the traditional tendency among the critics to read too lightly The New Leviathan (1942). Donagan believes that Colling~ wood's "later" masterpieces, "The Idea of History (1936-39?), The Principles of Art (1938), and the first three parts of The... (shrink)

Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) was a biologist, but the impact of his work has been perhaps stronger and more persistent in philosophy and the humanities than in the natural sciences. As one of the contributors to this book observes, Uexküll's conception of biology is “more at home among the disciplines composing the Geisteswissenschaften [humanities] than those included in the Naturwissenschaften [sciences], insofar as Uexküll's biology put Verstehen [understanding] before Erklären [explaining].” Uexküll began his career as an experimentalist of a (...) “proto-behaviorist” kind but came rapidly to be dissatisfied with the reduction of physiology to action-and-reaction chains. He argued that the animal-as-machine, the model that lies behind behaviorism, cannot be the starting point of biology. The relation between cause and effect in a machine is direct: the wings of a windmill, say, transfer their movement to a cog even if no one is there to perceive the transfer. In contrast, in the realm of the living, “a stimulus must be ‘noticed’ by a subject” to have any effect. Thus, Uexküll claims, “the first task of [the biologist] consists in seeking out the animal's perception signs”—in searching for what, in its surroundings, an animal perceives and of what it takes notice.Uexküll defined surroundings (Umgebung) as the whole physical reality in the vicinity of an animal, whereas by the term environment (Umwelt) he meant only that part of an animal's surroundings that it perceives. Given Uexküll's understanding of biology as the study of signs of perception (Merkmale), it is no surprise that his work has been a crucial source of inspiration for semiotics. Only one chapter of this new book is devoted to that topic, since Uexküll's presence in the field of semiotics (and in biosemiotics more particularly) is already well documented and analyzed in many publications, whereas his impact on the field of philosophy has been less studied (Brett Buchanan's Onto-Ethologies is, to date, perhaps the best study of that kind). Martin Heidegger was not the first to import the Umwelt theory into philosophy (Max Scheller, Helmuth Plessner, and Ernst Cassirer did so before him, and to each of them a chapter is devoted), but Heidegger is the most famous. It was by reworking an example of Uexküll's—“the rock on which the lizard lies is not given to the lizard as rock, in such a way that it could inquire into its mineralogical constitution for example”—that Heidegger characterized the divergent ways in which animals and humans approach the world. The former can use the things of the world, but humans are uniquely capable of conceiving things as independent of their use of them. We have no more direct access to our physical surroundings than other animals do, but, Heidegger held, we are at least able to imagine our surroundings and the things that fill them as independent of us (and eventually to examine them in the way that a mineralogist examines stones).Thus, Heidegger used Uexküll to set out an “ontological difference” between humans and animals. Gilles Deleuze, on the other hand, made use of Uexküll to advance a nondualistic ontology in which “the affects [that animals] are capable of” is given as the definition of bodies—a definition, he emphasized, “no less valid for us, for humans, than for animals.” Other philosophers whose understanding and use of Uexküll are examined in detail include Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Georges Canguilhem, Hans Blumenberg, and Giorgio Agamben; in addition to the complementary chapter on Uexküll and semiotics, already mentioned, there is one on his place in hermeneutics and one on the influence of Kant. The final chapter concerns the remaking of Uexküll by artists. In this way, this collection of studies offers a varied, detailed, well-structured, and engaging presentation of one of the most original biologists of the last century. As a whole, this book is an example of philosophy at its best—which is: when it specifies, pluralizes, and intensifies the thoughts and works of others. (shrink)

El artículo analiza el sentido histórico-conceptual que asume la teoría de Jacob von Uexküll sobre el fondo del problema formas/vida que se despliega en la filosofía continental de principios del siglo XX. Para ello, en primer lugar, reconstruye la configuración epistemológica que presenta el pensamiento biológico entre 1890-1920, e introduce las tesis neovitalistas de Hans Driesch. En segundo lugar, analiza la emergencia de las metafísicas vitalistas de Henri Bergson y de Georg Simmel, y plantea el problema de la contradicción (...) entre las formas y la vida. Por último, y sobre la base de dichos desarrollos, defiende la tesis según la cual la obra de Uexküll moviliza un estructuralismo vitalista para el cual “Vida igual a Forma”. (shrink)

Translation of "Von der Armut am Geiste; ein Dialog des jungen Lukács," by Ágnes Heller. This translation originally appeared in The Philosophical Forum, Spring-Summer 1972.

This article is an analysis of a collection of articles published by Gilles Deleuze in 1953 under the direction of Georges Canguilhem. This collection, which has been little read and commented upon, sheds light on the intellectual trajectory of its author by underlining the theoretical hesitations that were his. I show that Deleuze then outlined an ambitious “psycho-sociological” project that he never fully realized. To do this, I reconstitute the psychological and ethological subtext of the book by following his sources; (...) I thus bring to light real theoretical positions often unnoticed in his work (in particular with respect to Henri Bergson, Jakob von Uexküll, and gestaltpsychology). I then argue that the difficulties linked to the theory of perception lead Deleuze to turn away from this project in order to devote himself to more specifically ontological problems. However, I suggest that these difficulties persist throughout Deleuze's works, where notions such as “sign” and “semiotics” both cover and avoid specifically perceptual problems. (shrink)

Jakob von Uexküll’s (1864-1944) account of Umwelt has been proposed as a mediating concept to bridge the gap between ecological psychology’s realism about environmental information and enactivism’s emphasis on the organism’s active role in constructing the meaningful world it inhabits. If successful, this move would constitute a significant step towards establishing a single ecological-enactive framework for cognitive science. However, Uexküll’s thought itself contains different perspectives that are in tension with each other, and the concept of Umwelt is developed in (...) representationalist terms that conflict with the commitments of both enactivism and ecological psychology. One central issue shared by all these approaches is the problem of how a living being experiences its environment. In this paper, we will look at Uexküll’s reception in French philosophy and highlight the different ways in which the concept of Umwelt functions in the work of Georges Canguilhem, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Gilles Deleuze. This analysis helps clarify different aspects of Uexküll’s thought and the deeper philosophical implications of importing his concepts into embodied cognitive science. This paper is part of a recent trend in which enactivism engages with continental philosophy in a way that both deepens and transcends the traditional links to phenomenology, including most recently the thought of Georg W. F. Hegel and Gilbert Simondon. However, no more than a brief outline and introduction to the potentials and challenges of this complex conceptual intersection can be given here. Our hope is that it serves to make more explicit the philosophical issues that are at stake for cognitive science in the question of experienced environments, while charting a useful course for future research. (shrink)

Hegel's phenomenological method is meant to provide a pathway for a "finite consciousness" to the objective viewpoint of philosophical "science".

TRANSLATORS PREFACE THE PRESENT TRANSLATION OF GEORG SIMMEL'S Schopen- hauer und Nietzsche: Ein Vortragszyklus (1907), ...

This brilliant study of the stages in the mind's necessary progress from immediate sense-consciousness to the position of a scientific philosophy includes an introductory essay and a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the text to help the reader understand this most difficult and most influential of Hegel's works.

Most of the major schools of contemporary philosophy, from Marxism to Existentialism, are reactions to Hegelianism and all, if they are to be understood, require some understanding of Hegel's Logic. From its first appearance in 1812, this work has been recognized by both admirers and detractors alike as being the absolute foundation of Hegel's system.

This volume distinguishes between two main traditions in the philosophy of science - the aristotelian, with its stress on explanation in terms of purpose and intentionality, and the galilean, which takes causal explanation as primary. It then traces the complex history of these competing traditions as they are manifested in such movements as positivism, idealism, Marxism and contemporary linguistic analysis. Hempels's theory of scientific explanation, the claims of cybernetics the rise of an analytic philosophy of action and the revival of (...) hermenuetics are all discussed. The volume also deals with causal explanation, intentionality and teleological explanation, and explanation in history and the social sciences. The author concludes that explanation of human actions cannot be reduced to simple causality, and discusses the implications of this conclusion for the disciplines of history and sociology. (shrink)