Die Fragen "woher kommen wir? Wohin gehen wir?" gehören zu den Fragen, die sich Menschen immer schon gestellt haben. Die Idee des Fortschritts und die feste Überzeugung der Möglichkeit einer besseren Zukunft gehören allen historischen Katastrophen zum Trotz zu den Grundpfeilern eines Denkens, das sich stets auch über seine Herkunft definiert hat: der Geschichtsphilosophie. Das neue Studienbuch erschließt das Thema mit innovativem Blick: Aus der Geschichte lernen? Und wenn ja - was?; die Geschichte des Nachdenkens über Geschichte von der Antike (...) bis zur Gegenwart: Augustinus, Joachim, Machiavelli, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche; das Problem der Säkularisierung, die Herkunft und Wandlung von Ideen und Werten verstehen und beurteilen;affirmative oder kritische Genealogie, zyklische und teleologische Modelle der Geschichte; erkenntnistheoretische Grundlegung der Geschichtsschreibung, über die Unmöglichkeit, ohne philosophische Implikationen Geschichte zu denken und zu schreiben. (shrink)

The notion of the highest good used to occupy a primary role in ethical theorising, but has largely disappeared from the contemporary landscape. The notion was central to both Aristotle's and Kant's ethical theories, however--a surprising observation given that their approaches to ethics are commonly conceived as being diametrically opposed. The essays in this collection provide a comprehensive treatment of the highest good in Aristotle and Kant and show that, even though there are important differences in terms of content, there (...) are also important similarities in terms of the structural features of Aristotle's and Kant's value theories. By carefully analysing Aristotle's and Kant's theories of the highest good, a team of experts in the field shed light on their respective ethical theories and highlight the richness, complexity, and fruitfulness of the notion of the highest good. (shrink)

Two crucial questions, if unanswered, impede our understanding of Aristotle’s account of pleasure inenx.4-5: (1) What are the activities that pleasure is said to complete? (2) In virtue of what does pleasurealwaysaccompany these activities? The answers fall in place if we read Aristotle as responding to the Delian challenge that the finest, best and most pleasant are not united in one and the same thing (eni.8). I propose an ‘ethical’ reading ofenx.4 according to which the best activities in question are (...) those integral to the exercise of virtue. (shrink)

Aus ganz unterschiedlichen Blickwinkeln, sei es aus musikhistorischer oder ethnomusikologischer Sicht, umkreisen zehn Beitrage das Thema aMusik - Zu Begriff und Konzepteno. Unter dieses Thema ein internationales Symposion in Berlin zu stellen, das zum Gedenken an Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht (1919-1999) veranstaltet wurde, erschien umso naheliegender, zumal Eggebrecht die Frage aWas ist Musik'o existenziell beruhrte, sie grundierte und sein Forscherleben als Musikwissenschaftler von den fruhen Veroffentlichungen nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg bis zu den letzten Arbeiten durchzog. Inhalt Bruno Nettl: Was ist Musik? (...) Ethnomusikologische Perspektive Sabine Ehrmann-Herfort: Die Kantate. Musik zwischen asthetischer Autonomie und Ideologie Christian Berger: aMusiko nach Kant Erich Reimer: aMusikanto und aMusiko. Zur Geschichte einer wechselvollen Beziehung Christian Kaden: Musik bei denen, die keine aMusiko haben Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen: Hugo Riemann und der Musikbegriff der Musikwissenschaft Klaus-Jurgen Sachs: Musik - erfahren und erortert durch Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) Wolf Frobenius: Gestische Musik. Zur Fruhgeschichte des Begriffs Albrecht von Massow: Tonkorper - ein eigenstandiger Parameter der Wesensbestimmung und der Analyse von Musik Christian Thorau: Symphony in White - Musik als modus der Referenz. (shrink)

In 1783 John Michell published a note entitled ‘On the Means of Discovering the Distance, Magnitude etc. of the Fixed Stars, in Consequence of the Diminution of the Velocity of their Light’, but it was Christian Doppler who in 1842 for the first time formulated the principle : If a source of sound or light is in motion relative to an observer, or an observer in motion relative to a source, the period of the waves received by the observer will (...) be different from the period of the waves emitted by the source. The acoustical Doppler principle was verified in 1845 by Buys-Ballot's experiments and by Ernst Mach ). H. Fizeau proposed to verify the optical Doppler principle by measuring the shift of lines in the spectra of stars . This was carried out by William Huggins , and H. C. Vogel and led to exact results in 1892. The Doppler effect with canal rays was shown by Johannes Stark in 1905. (shrink)

Resuming the so-called ‘great campaign’ for resilience of Jaap van Praag, the founding father of contemporary Dutch humanism, this paper proposes (elements of) a hermeneutical theory that unveils, from a humanistic point of view, the possibility of a relational autonomous ‘will’ in the relationship with exemplary inspirational figures. It will be demonstrated that relational autonomy can be realized from a resilient position toward the heteronomous contagion of our daily life ‘will’ through mimesis, as it is understood in mimetic theory.

Open peer commentary on the article “Communication Emerging? On Simulating Structural Coupling in Multiple Contingency” by Manfred Füllsack. Upshot: Our criticism aims at the premises of Füllsack’s simulation model, i.e., we claim that his interpretation of the Luhmannian concept of double contingency contradicts the systems theoretical approach in fundamental ways. Neither the view of communication as an emergent system, nor the theory of double contingency is addressed in an adequate manner. Thus Füllsack in fact does not simulate a systems theoretical (...) approach to double contingency but simulates a mere reduction of the social to the individual psyches. (shrink)

Plato's Philebus contains an intricate difficulty. Plato seems to hold both (a) that all pleasures are processes of becoming, a crucial premise in the argument that no pleasure is good (53c?55c) and (b) that some pleasures contribute in their own right to the goodness of the best life (64c?67b). Since it seems also plausible that only things which are good can contribute to the goodness of the best life in their own right, Plato's view seems to be inconsistent. Interpreters usually (...) reject either (a) or (b). As Plato seems firmly committed to both (a) and (b), I propose a third way of dealing with the inconsistency. The apparent inconsistency highlights a vital contrast between what is independently good (good per se), what is dependently good (good through participating in what is independently good), and what is derivatively good (good through standing in a certain relation to dependent goods). I argue that while pleasure's being a process of becoming marks it out as derivatively good, some kinds of pleasure are also dependent goods in virtue of their objects ? irrespective of their being processes of becoming. (shrink)

The article resumes the discussion on the relation of absolute music and language. Firstly, a critical look is taken at the two current theses: that music bears no meaning, or rather, that music is meaningful analogue to language. The second step describes the concept that processes conferring meaning upon music do not differ from corresponding processes regarding language. In a further step, however, the case is made that the structure of sound concatenations follows different principles concerning music on the one (...) hand and language on the other, so that ›meaning‹ should be considered as a separate category with regard to music and language. Finally, the article tries to shed a new light on the particular affinity of the language of poetry to music. (shrink)

A critical examination of Susan Blackmore’s psi experiment database was undertaken to assess the claims of consistent “no ESP†across these studies. Many inconsistencies in the experimental reports were found, and their serious consequences are discussed. Discrepancies were found between the unpublished experimental reports and their published counterparts. “Flaws†were invoked to dismiss significant results while other flaws were ignored when studies produced nonsignificant results. Experiments that were admittedly flawed in the unpublished reports were mixed with supposedly unflawed studies and (...) published without segregation, creating the impression of methodological soundness. Two instances in which study chronology was reordered were found. Overall, it is concluded that Blackmore’s claims that her database shows no evidence of psi are unfounded, because the vast majority of her studies were carelessly designed, executed, and reported, and, in Blackmore’s own assessment, individually flawed. As such, no conclusions should be drawn from this database. (shrink)

In verse nine of the Vigrahavyavartani, Nagarjuna gives a defense of his skepticism by insisting that he makes no proposition concerning the nature of reality. B. K. Matilal has argued that this position is not an untenable one for a skeptic to hold, using as an explanatory model Searle’s distinction between a propositional and an illocutionary negation. The argument runs that Nagarjuna does not refute rival philosophical positions by simply refuting whatever positive claims those positions might make, but rather he (...) refuses the very act of making an assertion. From this kind of illocutionary negation, however, a certain paradoxicality arises: for in the negating the act of assertion, the skeptic is barred from asserting his or her own position, for under this condition, if he or she asserts that position, it is falsified! I want to argue that there are certain senses in which it seems that Nagarjuna’s resorting to the illocution we find in the Vigrahavyavartani may not have been necessary for the maintenance of his skeptical position, for he has recourse to prasanga counter-arguments which can always offset the metaphysical and epistemological claims of the Hindu and Buddhist philosophers whom he confronts. There are also places in the Karika itself, where certain pramanas seem to be employed, that give one the impression that this kind of skepticism and the pramanas are only inimical to one another insofar as the latter may lead to the metaphysical, essentialist extremes criticized by the Buddhists. Nagarjuna’s illocution in this light seems an attempt to radicalize his difference from a developing Nyaya extensionalist theory of the pramanas, a theory in which the Buddhists and the Naiyayikas are closer than anywhere else. (shrink)

Neil Young and Philosophy examines the music, career, and life of Neil Young from a variety of philosophical perspectives in ethics, socio-political thought, and aesthetics. It will be of great interest both to Neil Young fans and to scholars and teachers of philosophy and culture.

The scholarly career of Professor Chad Hansen has been devoted in large measure to an elucidation of the relationship between the classical Chinese language and the structure and aims of pre-Qin philosophical thought. His “mass-noun” hypothesis of classical Chinese thought, his notion of dao 道 as “guiding discourse,” and his clarifications of the significance of Mohism are marked achievements from which all of us have benefited immensely. In the opening chapters of A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought, Hansen prefaces his (...) interpretation of how the Chinese language lends uniqueness to its philosophical tradition with a sharp contrast to Indo-European language and thought. Hansen attempts to show how the Indo-European .. (shrink)

While results from statistical modelling too often receive blind acceptance, we question whether there is any real alternative to use of modelling. This does not diminish the main point of Professor Freedman, which is that healthy scepticism towards models is needed. While agreeing with many of Professor Freedman's points concerning the objectivist debate, we argue that there is a Bayesian school of objectivists that possesses considerable advantages over the classical objectivist school. At the least, the debate needs to be enlarged (...) to include this school. (shrink)

WALTER BURLEIGH, Von der Reinheit der Kunst der Logik. Erster Traktat: Von den Eigenschaften der Termini. Übersetzt und mit Einfuhrung und Anmerkungen herausgegeben von Peter Kunze. Lateinisch-deut...