German description: Johann Hinrich Claussen beschaftigt sich mit der uralten und dennoch aktuellen Frage nach dem Gluck: Was konnte das Gluck sein, und inwiefern stellt die Jagd nach dem Gluck ein sinnvolles Lebensziel dar?

Social anxiety disorders are among the most prevalent mental disorders, with high impact on the life of an affected social system and its individual social system members. We developed a manualized disorder-specific integrative systemic and family therapy for SAD, and evaluated its feasibility in a pilot randomized controlled trial. The ISFT is inspired by Helm Stierlin’s concept of related individuation developed during the early 1980s, which has since continued to be refined. It integrates solution-focused language, social network diagnostics, and genogram (...) work, as well as resource- and problem orientation for both case conceptualization and therapy planning. Post-Milan symptom prescription to fluidize the presented symptoms is one of the core interventions in the ISFT. Theoretically, the IFST is grounded in radical constructivism and “Cybern-Ethics,” multi-directional partiality, and a both/and attitude toward a disorder-specific vs. non-disorder-specific therapy approach. SAD is understood from the viewpoint of social systems theory, especially in adaptation to a socio-psycho-biological explanatory model of social anxiety. In a prospective multicenter, assessor-blind pilot RCT, we included 38 clients with SAD : 18 patients participated in the ISFT, and 20 patients in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Within-group, simple-effect intention-to-treat analyses showed significant reduction in social anxiety, while intention-to-treat mixed-design ANOVA demonstrated the advantage of ISFT. Per-protocol analyses supported these results. The remission rate based on blind diagnosticians’ ratings was good to satisfactory ; this has yet to be verified in a subsequent confirmatory RCT. The article will present the ISFT rationale and manual, including a special focus on multi-person settings, and the central findings from our pilot RCT. (shrink)

Instead of an overture : no heirs -- The house in Schöne Aussicht : a Frankfurt childhood around 1910 -- From Teddie Wiesengrund to Dr. Wiesengrund-Adorno -- Adorno as "non-identical" man -- Transitions -- Bertolt Brecht : "to those who come after us" -- Theodor W. Adorno : "out of the firing-line" -- Hanns Eisler, the non-identical brother -- Fritz Lang, the American friend -- Frankfurt transfer -- Adorno as "identical" man -- The palimpsest of life.

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 92 Heft: 2 Seiten: 530-533.

Looks at the life and career of the the German philosopher who is credited as the developer of critical theory.

Noam Chomsky and Frances Egan argue that David Marr’s computational theory of vision is not intentional, claiming that the formal scientific theory does not include description of visual content. They also argue that the theory is internalist in the sense of not describing things physically external to the perceiver. They argue that these claims hold for computational theories of vision in general. Beyond theories of vision, they argue that representational content does not figure as a topic within formal computational theories (...) in cognitive science. I demonstrate that Chomsky’s and Egan’s claims about Marr’s theory are false. Marr’s computational theory contains a mathematical theory of visual content, based on empirical psychophysical evidence. It also contains mathematical descriptions of distal physical surfaces and objects, and of their optic projection to the perceiver. Much computational research on vision contains these types of intentional and externalist components within the formal, mathematical, theories. Chomsky’s and Egan’s claims demonstrate inadequate study and understanding of Marr’s work and other research in this area. Computational theories of vision, by containing empirically based mathematical theories of visual content, to this extent present naturalizations of semantics. (shrink)

ExcerptMisunderstandings are the medium for communicating the incommunicable. Theodor W. Adorno, “A Portrait of Walter Benjamin”You can hear the terror in the words. If you can't hear it, you cannot understand the words. The history of the critical response to Adorno can be read as a history of misunderstandings. “The whole is the false.”1 Who can understand this if he doesn't know Hegel's philosophy? Adorno formulated this aphorism in Minima Moralia in German even though he had been living in America (...) for some years. But he did not write this sentence for an American or…. (shrink)

RABBI SIMḤAH ZISSEL ZIV OF KELME, LITHUANIA, WAS ONE OF THE EARLY leaders of the Musar movement, a pietistic religious movement in nineteenth century Europe that attempted to place concerns with moral character at the center of Jewish life. This essay introduces Simḥah Zissel's virtue-centered approach to the Torah's central commandment that one "love one's fellow as one-self." For Simḥah Zissel, love is a disposition of the soul, with emotional and intellectual aspects culminating in action. Love demands a sense of (...) partnership with others and a sense of care that should extend to all of God's creatures; love requires that we not privilege ourselves over other people; and the highest level of love is "sharing the burden of one's fellow," compassionate love characterized by empathy and responsiveness, which can only be cultivated through great effort. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices: Body ed. by Elliot N. Dorff and Louis E. NewmanGeoffrey ClaussenJewish Choices, Jewish Voices: Body Edited by Elliot N. Dorff and Louis E. Newman Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2008. 134 pp. $16.00This volume, focused on Jewish attitudes toward the human body, is the first volume of the Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices series published by the Jewish Publication Society. Subsequent volumes focus on money, power, (...) sex and intimacy, war and national security, and social justice. Each volume in the series presents hypothetical case studies involving modern moral questions, a collection of classical and contemporary sources relevant to the case studies, and a collection of short essays by a range of contemporary American Jews reflecting on these materials or on other related issues. Elliot Dorff and Louis Newman, the preeminent scholars of Jewish ethics who edited this first volume in the series, explain in their introduction that they sought to gather together “a variety of authors with many different Jewish beliefs and approaches” (xvi). They do not claim to present “what Judaism says,” but, rather, to anthologize a variety of Jewish perspectives. In doing so, they seek to follow the approach of the Bible and the Talmud, both of which contain “many, many voices articulating often diverse points of view” (xvi).On the other hand, Dorff and Newman reject the idea that “anything goes” when it comes to Jewish views about the body. They indicate that modern American Jews may be tempted to endorse such a perspective, accustomed as they are to the American notion that “I own my body.” But, Dorff and Newman suggest, American Jews would do well to consider the contrary notions that animate much of classical Jewish thought on the body: that God is the true owner of every human body, and that God makes demands about how one should use one’s body. The case studies that follow challenge readers to keep these ideas in mind as they consider duties to limit one’s body weight, refrain from tattooing one’s body, and avoid high-risk behaviors.The essays that make up the heart of this book do by and large embrace Dorff and Newman’s challenge. A few do so quite confidently, such as the one Orthodox contributor to the volume, who declares God’s ownership of human bodies to be “the attitude of Torah Judaism.” But a similar view is also upheld by less traditionally inclined authors such as Adam Goodkind, a college student who expresses his doubts about conventional Jewish observance and theology but who sees the idea of not owning one’s body as reflecting the “common sense” of the Jewish tradition. [End Page 213]Many of the essays are also linked by their view of Judaism as a tradition that does not disparage bodily pleasures. Such pleasures should be greatly valued, a number of authors stress, at least within certain limits. Goodkind takes a stronger stance, opining that “part of being a good Jew is getting a maximum amount of enjoyment out of life” (43). Such talk is not surprising—it fits well with the this-worldly ethos of contemporary American Judaism. But it is worth noting that the more ascetic and otherworldly voices found in the tradition are largely absent from this volume.The volume may not showcase the full breadth of traditional Jewish perspectives, but it does demonstrate how thoughtful and generally liberally minded American Jews do think about key ethical questions when they are asked to consider them through a Jewish lens. And while the essays in the volume are somewhat uneven in quality, they tend to be marked by moral sensitivity and by the creative application of traditional Jewish ideas. This first book in the Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices series offers stimulating reflections about the human body, and it also offers a fine introduction to the patterns of moral reasoning found among many contemporary American Jews.Geoffrey ClaussenElon UniversityCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)