James Bohman has succeeded in reinvigorating the old debate over explanation and understanding by situating it within contemporary discussions about sociological indeterminacy and complexity. I argue that Bohman's preference for a paradigm based on Habermas's theory of communicative action is justifiable given the explanatory deficiencies of ethnomethodological, rational choice, rule-based, and functionalist methodologies. Yet I do not share his belief that the paradigm is preferable to less formalized models of interpretation.

The essays in this collection provide an unusually intense portrait of a society and an age.

In the Metaphysics of Morals Kant repeats Hamann's remark that “only the descent into the hell of self-cognition can pave the way to godliness”. This article pursues the question what Kant and Hamann meant by a “descent into the hell of self-cognition” and a “way to godliness”. It will be shown that they share an affinity in their assessment that evil is rooted in humanity and that moral improvement is necessary, but that their views nevertheless differ significantly. For this reason (...) Kant later distances himself from Hamann. Whereas Hamann's view is that the recognition of one's own depravity leads to an experience of one's dependence on God, with the consequence that the concept of godliness is understood as salvation through grace, Kant emphasizes the inscrutability of evil within us and calls for moral improvement through our own effort. In this way the divergent moral conceptions of the age of Enlightenment with their theological and philosophical aspects are reflected in the respective views of these two authors. (shrink)

Ziel dieses Aufsatzes ist es, einige Grenzen der Theorie der Gerechtigkeit von John Rawls zu skizzieren. Es wird gezeigt, dass seine Theorie der Gerechtigkeit von zwei Arten von Limitierungen bestimmt wird: Einerseits gibt es intendierte Begrenzungen seines postmetaphysischen und deontologischen Politischen Liberalismus, andererseits nicht gewollte Lücken. Besondere Beachtung wird Rawls' Rekurs auf Kant geschenkt: Rawls verdankt Kant die Konzeption einer Art moralischer Geometrie. In dieser Fundierung eines modernen Paradigmas der Gerechtigkeit fokussiert sich die Attraktivität von Rawls' Versuch, aber auch dessen (...) Grenzen. (shrink)

Die Moderne hat zwei widerstreitende Fundierungen, einerseits den Rationalismus und andererseits den Romantizismus. Indem er eine neoromantische Ordnung von Gütern rehabilitiert und Quellen des Selbst erschließt, versucht Taylor das punktuelle Selbst des Rationalismus zu überwinden. Dieser Versuch ist nicht ohne Vorbild: Schon Hegel versuchte, eine Lösung für dieses epochale Dilemma zu finden. Wir können heute Hegels Vorschlag einer Vermittlung von Rationalismus und Romantizismus nicht zustimmen, aber das Dilemma, das er lösen sollte, besteht weiterhin. Vor dem Hintergrund von Taylors genealogischen Studien (...) und mit einem Blick auf Isaiah Berlin und William James wird verdeutlicht, dass Taylor Hegels Scheitern kopiert, um zu zeigen: Hegels Dilemma ist immer noch unser Dilemma. (shrink)

According to the results of medieval studies, modern rationalism depends on late Medieval Age and medieval nominalism. Reconstructing some of Ockham's innovations it is possible to open a new view of the development of modern subjectivity: Ockham's ontological individualism, his thesis that unnecessary individuals are epistemologically prior to universals and that evident knowledge of individuals is possible, his theological nominalism and his expliction of God's omnipotence and his creation, his logic of supposition and the use of his ,,razor" are essential (...) innovations at the end of the Medieval Age. In this way, it can be substantiated, in contrast to the classical prejudicial view of history of philosophy, that the crystallization of modern subjectivity as a postmedieval rationalism was basically influenced by the innovations of Ockham's nominalism. (shrink)

Political Theory is a broad field, comprising subjects as varied as conceptual analysis, positive political theory, political philosophy, and the history of normative political thought. The present edited volume includes contributions to all of these fields: Contested concepts such as extremism or freedom are discussed, issues such as expertocracy, dirty hands, global poverty and inequality are tackled from a normative perspective; empirical topics such as the conditions of democratic stability or the relationship between rational action and informational inequalities are illuminated (...) from a theoretical point of view, and “Eastern” critiques of “Western” political ideals are presented. (shrink)

Analogy making from examples is a central task in intelligent system behavior. A lot of real world problems involve analogy making and generalization. Research investigates these questions by building computer models of human thinking concepts. These concepts can be divided into high level approaches as used in cognitive science and low level models as used in neural networks. Applications range over the spectrum of recognition, categorization and analogy reasoning. A major part of legal reasoning could be formally interpreted as an (...) analogy making process. Because it is not the same as reasoning in mathematics or the physical sciences, it is necessary to use a method, which incorporates first the ability to specify likelihood and second the opportunity of including known court decisions. We use for modelling the analogy making process in legal reasoning neural networks and fuzzy systems. In the first part of the paper a neural network is described to identify precedents of immaterial damages. The second application presents a fuzzy system for determining the required waiting period after traffic accidents. Both examples demonstrate how to model reasoning in legal applications analogous to recent decisions: first, by learning a system with court decisions, and second, by analyzing, modelling and testing the decision making with a fuzzy system. (shrink)

'History' in the modern sense of the word refers to both the way in which human beings develop in time and the way in which this is interpreted. Thus 'Critique of History' concerns a way of life as well as a mode of reflection.