The article critically assesses Ulrich Beck’s body of work and its importance for contemporary sociology. It demonstrates that Beck’s elaboration of his original theory of the ‘risk society’ into a theory of the ‘world risk society’, ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘metamorphosis’ involved several key theoretical innovations. Firstly, Beck adjusted his notion of risk to include the threat of international terrorism in his diagnosis of the risk society. Secondly, he introduced a distinction between ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘cosmopolitization’ in order to capture the specificity of (...) contemporary social change. Thirdly and most recently, Beck outlined a theory of ‘the metamorphosis of the world’ which marks an important shift of emphasis from ‘the negative side effects of goods’ to ‘the positive side effects of bads’. In conclusion, the article identifies a number of theoretical ambiguities and unresolved questions in Beck’s theory. (shrink)

This paper calls attention to some basic problems and inner contradictions in the German sociologist Ulrich Beck’s theory of the ‘(world) risk society’ or reflexive (second) modernity. A main thread in the critique is that of addressing the theoretical ambiguities that seem to characterize Beck’s at the same time ‘social constructivist’ and ‘realist’ notion of risk – ambiguities that seem to be repeated on the one hand in Beck’s view on the relation between knowledge and unawareness in reflexive modernity and (...) on the other hand in his view on the role of the mass media in the ‘(world) risk society’. Moreover, Beck’s notions of second modernity, reflexivity, rationality and critique are critically examined. With the alternative positions discussed in the paper – represented by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Niklas Luhmann and Mitchell Dean – some indications are given as to how one might fruitfully elaborate on the problem of risk. Thus, rather than a mainly technology-driven new type of social reality, the ‘(world) risk society’ could perhaps better be seen as indicating a changing cultural self-understanding of late modern society, a new ‘semantics of crisis', or the emergence of new forms of governmentality in the contemporary welfare state. In conclusion, some indications are given as to how an analysis of more specific ‘risk logics' or ‘rationalities' could be elaborated on, and a terminology that reflects this more differentiated approach to risk in late modern society is suggested. (shrink)

In recent years society has come to expect more from the “socially-responsible” company and the global HIV/AIDS pandemic in particular has resulted in some critics saying that the “Big Pharma” companies have not been living up to their social responsibilities. Corporate social responsibility can be understood as the socio-economic product of the organizational division of labor in complex modern society. Global poverty and poor health conditions are in the main the responsibilities of the world’s national governments and international governmental organizations, (...) which possess society’s mandate and appropriate organizational capabilities. Private enterprises have neither the societal mandate nor the organizational capabilities to feed the poor or provide health care to the sick intheir home countries or in the developing world. Nevertheless, private enterprises do have responsibilities to society that can be categorized as what they must do, what they ought do, and what they can do. (shrink)

In recent years society has come to expect more from the “socially-responsible” company and the global HIV/AIDS pandemic in particular has resulted in some critics saying that the “Big Pharma” companies have not been living up to their social responsibilities. Corporate social responsibility can be understood as the socio-economic product of the organizational division of labor in complex modern society. Global poverty and poor health conditions are in the main the responsibilities of the world’s national governments and international governmental organizations, (...) which possess society’s mandate and appropriate organizational capabilities. Private enterprises have neither the societal mandate nor the organizational capabilities to feed the poor or provide health care to the sick intheir home countries or in the developing world. Nevertheless, private enterprises do have responsibilities to society that can be categorized as what they must do, what they ought do, and what they can do. (shrink)

Today there is a growing wave of demands being placed upon the pharmaceutical industry to contribute to improved access to medicines for poor patients in the developing countries. 1 This article aims to contribute to the development of a systematic approach and broad consensus about shared benchmarks for good corporate practices in this area. A consensus corridor on what constitutes an appropriate portfolio of corporate responsibilities for access to medicines -especially under conditions of 'failing states' and 'market failure' 2 – (...) is not only in the interest of the world's poor, but also of corporations that want to contribute to the solution of one of the most significant social problems of our time. (shrink)

Evolution and learning are two analytically distinct concepts. People learn yet evolution (`change') does not necessarily take place. To clarify this problem the concept of learning is explicated. The first problem addressed is the question of who is learning. Here a shift from the single actor perspective to an interaction perspective is proposed (using Habermas and Luhmann as theoretical arguments for such a shift). Both, however, idealize the preconditions that interactants share while learning collectively. Against rationalist assumptions it is argued (...) that in order to learn people need a narratively based shared world. What do they learn? They acquire knowledge and they learn how to learn. This still does not solve the problem why they learn. Learning, it is argued, does not guarantee evolution but provides the mutations for evolutionary processes to take place. (shrink)

Attention is automatically allocated to stimuli that are opposite in valence to the current motivational focus (Rothermund, 2003; Rothermund, Voss, & Wentura, 2008). We tested whether this incongruency effect is due to affective–motivational counter-regulation or to an increased salience of stimuli that mismatch with cognitively activated information. Affective processing biases were assessed with a search task in which participants had to detect the spatial position at which a positive or negative stimulus was presented. In the motivational condition, positive or negative (...) affective–motivational states were induced by performance feedback after each trial. In the cognitive activation condition, participants memorised the word “good” or “bad” during the search task. The affective incongruency effect was replicated in the motivational condition, whereas an affective congruency effect obtained in the cognitive activation condition. These findings support an explanation of affective incongruency effects in terms of automatic counter-regulation that is motivational in nature. (shrink)

Recent findings suggest impaired motor skill development during infancy in children later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, it remains unclear whether infants at high familial risk for ASD would benefit from early interventions targeting the motor domain. The current study investigated this issue by providing 3-month-old infants at high familial risk for ASD with training experiences aimed at facilitating independent reaching. A group of 17 high-risk (HR) infants received 2 weeks of scaffolded reaching experiences using “sticky mittens,” and (...) was compared to 72 low-risk (LR) infants experiencing the same or alternative training procedures. Results indicate that HR infants – just like LR infants – show an increase in grasping activity following “sticky mittens” training. In contrast to LR infants, evidence that motor training encouraged a preference for faces in HR infants was inconclusive. (shrink)

Today’s social, economic, ecological and political state-of-affairs, the lack of confidence in business and political leaders and the associated rise of populist parties pose new and structurally different challenges to mankind. They are likely to be deepened in the course of the implementation of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. While all societal actors are called upon to reflect on their contribution to necessary reforms, business has a particularly important role to play. Competing with integrity today means much more than (...) compliance with law and regulation. The article discusses the necessity of top manager’s reflection on values and coherent practical action and uses the World Ethos body of thought as a compass. It also draws attention to the complexity of such a values management and stresses the importance of ethical leadership. (shrink)

A pragmatic (communication-discursive) cognitive sociology beyond observationism (Luhmann, Turner, Conein) and individualistic reductionism (Esser, Boudon) as a way to do sociology as a critical theory and as a positive science is proposed, drawing on the Habermasian theory of communicative action and its radical continuation in Luhmann's concept of the (cognitive) autopoiesis of social systems.

En la Filosofía del Derecho, Hegel dedica especial atención a uno de los problemas más preocupantes de las sociedades y los estados modernos: la inequitativa distribución de la riqueza y la consiguiente secuela de inequidades e injusticias sociales. En su análisis, Hegel enfatiza la idea de que la conformación de una sociedad civil justa y de un estado racional o de derecho, depende enteramente del reconocimiento, por parte de esas esferas, de los derechos de todos los individuos a gozar de (...) una vida material digna, que les permita no sólo el aseguramiento de las condiciones elementales de existencia, sino también la participación y el disfrute de los bienes materiales y espirituales que sustentan y dinamizan la vida en común. De acuerdo con el diagnóstico de Hegel, tal reconocimiento tiene, ciertamente, su punto de partida en la esferas del derecho abstracto y se prolonga en la esfera de la moralidad, en las que el individuo es reconocido como persona o sujeto moral, pero es sólo en la esfera superior de la eticidad donde el reconocimiento de todos los derechos que garantizan una vida digna, alcanza validez y necesidad universales, dado que es en dicha esfera, concretamente en la esfera del estado, donde dicho reconocimiento logra asegurarse en las diferentes instancias legales y jurídicas que lo componen. Tal es la vía por la cual la filosofía política de Hegel intenta ofrecer una salida a un problema que, como el señalado, sigue siendo una amenaza a las sociedades del presente y un cuestionamiento a las estructuras mismas del poder. Independientemente de la viabilidad de la solución ofrecida, la filosofía política de Hegel recaba aquí una vigencia pertinente e incuestionable. (shrink)

Health is higher on the international agenda than ever before, and improving the health of poor people is a central issue in development. Poor people suffer from far higher levels of ill health, mortality, and malnutrition than do those better off, and their inadequate health is one of the factors keeping them poor or for their being poor in the first place. Health is a crucially important economic asset, particularly for poor people. Their livelihoods depend on it. When poor people (...) become ill or injured, their entire household can become trapped in a downward spiral of lost income and high healthcare costs—a vicious circle of poverty and ill health. (shrink)

In their scholarly target article, Gilead et al. explain how abstract mental representations and the predictive brain enable prospection and time-traveling. However, their exclusive focus on intrapsychic capacities misses an important point, namely, the degree to which mind and brain are tuned by the environment. This neglected aspect of adaptive cognition is discussed and illustrated from a cognitive-ecological perspective.

In recent years we have seen the rise of a new framework within the study of the mind, namely Predictive Processing. This framework essentially holds that the brain is a prediction machine constantly postulating perceptual models which are tested against incoming information. At the same time, the notion of the minimal or core self has become very influential as a way of explaining, or explaining away, pre-reflective self-awareness. The four most widely discussed alternatives for thinking through the metaphysical implications the (...) pre-reflective sense of self are the standard phenomenological view, the substance view, the no-self view and by now the relational view. In this paper, it is our objective to rethink the notion of the sense of self in the context of PP. Now, PP is often held to be a unifying framework that offers a new integrated account of perception, cognition, imagination, and indeed the pre-reflective sense of self. We will show, however, that PP has been taken to endorse rather too many different metaphysical accounts of self: that is, views about how we should regard the ultimate nature of self. What we need to do, if possible, is to use PP to constrain the theories on offer. Here we focus upon two central constraints that we think PP implies. These are, the mutability constraint and the multi-layereredness constraint. We argue that self-views laid out in terms of the PP framework are usually – to some degree – located within the four standard metaphysical accounts of self. However, we think that realist versions of self-accounts seem to have more trouble in respecting the PP constraints or requirements. The reason, or so we believe, is PP’s mutability constraint. This does not have to be the case and we, therefore, propose an alternative realist view – namely the pre-reflective situational self view – which is more adequate to fit the PP framework. (shrink)

This article argues that the social construction of the borders of Europe is the combined effect of a historical trajectory in which the construction of its outer and its inner boundaries interact. These boundaries make sense to the people because they have a narrative plausibility. On such narrative resonance, real hard borders are grounded. The idea of narrative boundary construction is embedded in a minimalist theory of identity that claims that anything can serve as a boundary within a historically specific (...) situation. The only restriction regarding boundary construction is that a new boundary continues the narrative – either in a continuous or a discontinuous way, either as conservative caring for a tradition or as a revolutionary break with a tradition. This radical break with substantialist notions of Europe's borders and identity implies that such trajectories do not imply any necessity. Whether the European integration process is continuing an old narrative or whether it points towards a specific discontinuity in the further telling of Europe's story, is historically contingent. Europe has just to continue to tell a story about itself that makes narrative sense. (shrink)

A favorite assumption of anglo-American scholarship is that locke's influence "pervaded the eighteenth century with an almost scriptural authority." examining the philosophy of the german enlightenment, This essay disputes the exaggerated importance ascribed to locke in the eighteenth century. Locke's influence was always limited by native traditions inimical to his thought. His empiricism could not compete with the leibniz-Wolff system in which all german philosophers, Including the lockean sympathizers, Were educated. It is true that around mid-Century and beyond locke attracted (...) a certain following, But those who accepted his theories were minor figures (popular philosophers) and exercised very little influence on the future course of german philosophy (kant). (shrink)

To find more information on Rowman & Littlefield titles, please visit us at www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

This book provides insight into the work of Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), one of the most prophetic minds of the 20th century, whose dire historical predictions - world wars, ecological disasters, gigantic cities with unrestrained urban sprawl, increasing race conflicts, failure of nerve among the ruling elites, and rapid decline of cultural norms - have more than passed the test of time. Besides focusing on Spengler the prophet and the controversies which surrounded his name in the 1920s, this book also emphasizes (...) Spengler's pioneering role in the development of a comparative study of cultures based on biological principles. (shrink)

Proceedings of a conference held Sept. 2010 in Jena, Germany.

Debido al interés de Hegel por la función histórica del arte como factor de cultura, su filosofía del arte es inseparable de su filosofía de la historia. Las formas universales del arte (simbólica, clásica y romántica), corresponden al proceso de formación y realización de la subjetividad humana y su libertad en el mundo oriental, el antiguo o griego, y el moderno. El articulo se concentra en la forma clásica, o sea el mundo de la cultura griega. Su clasicismo es un (...) "punto medio", porque se ubica en el reino de la belleza, entre la naturaleza y la libertad. A pesar de su belleza, el arte de la forma clásica para nosotros modernos es un arte del pasado, es un arte para la libertad de un ciudadano de la polis pero no lo es para la libertad individualizada y universal de un ciudadano cosmopolita. (shrink)

Se propone aqui una actualización del pensar hegeliano en la filosofía del derecho internacional, cix tomo al problema del reconocimiento interestatal, a fin de mediar entre un liberalismo vacuo y un multiculturalismo , que en base a la inalienable identidad de cada pueblo haría imposible la defensa de la dignidad de la persona. Se atisba una solución en el concepto de «reconocimiento sustancial y con contenido», que lleva a la paulatina sustitución de las guerras por «contiendas metafóricas», regladas en base (...) al reconocimiento, a la vez, de los derechos humanos y de la contingencia histórica.Hier wini cine Aktualisierung des hegelschen Denkens in Hinsicht aufdie politische Philosophie des tiuBeren Staatsrechts vorgesehíagen, dic den Spuren von Kants Zum ewigen Frieden folgí und zwar mit der Absicht, cine «mittlere Bestimmung» zwischen leerem Liberalismus bzw. abstraktem Universalismus und Multikulturalismus bzw. Relativismus zu finden. Dazu sieht man cine mogliche Lósung in der Idee ciner interstaatlichen «inhaltlichsubstanticllen Anerkennung», dic allmáhlich dic Kricge durch «metaphorische Wettstreite» ersetzen soll. (shrink)

Una comprensión adecuada de la confrontación de Hegel con el concepto de ironía romántica de Friedrich Schlegel sólo puede lograrse mediante una explicación de la relación estructural de negatividad, skepsis e ironía. La relación entre una filosofía de la ironía y una filosofía del absoluto puede ser puesta bajo una nueva luz si se compara la cercanía y la oposición de las estrategias de una skepsis implícita o interna desarrolladas por Schlegel y Hegel. Hegel ve en la ironía de Schlegel (...) una forma de la "negatividad infinita, absoluta”, una figura de una skepsis estética, pero no —como Schlegel— la “skepsis suprema y más pura". En la permanente oscilación de "autocreación y autodestrucción ", en la corriente eternamente alterna de discurso y contradiscurso de pensamiento y contrapensamiento, no se logra en modo a alguno, según Hegel, la integración del escepticismo. El proyecto de una "poesía trascendental'' como intento de una nueva unificación de poesía y filosofía tiene el mismo talón de Aquiies del pirronismo antiguo, el cual oscila entre narración y discurso y —como el asno de Buridán— "muere de hambre " entre los dos. Los ironistas perseveran en la pura negatividad, su incesante y nostálgica actividad semeja una conversación sin resultados. Creatividad crítica, vital y escéptica, y tedio bostezador constituyen para Hegel las dos posiciones extremas del proyecto romántico temprano. (shrink)

›Streben‹ und das entsprechende abstrakte Hauptwort ›Strebung‹ bilden den Oberbegriff für alle konativen Zustände, d. h. für alle Zustände des Versuchens, Wollens und Angetriebenseins. Aristoteles verwendet den Begriff als Erster in terminologischer Weise : ›Streben‹ ist allgemeiner Begriff für zwei einander entgegengesetzte Modi des Strebens, nämlich Verfolgen und Meiden. Sie decken das Spektrum solcher motorischen Prozesse, bei denen Lebewesen sich intentional auf Bewegungsziele richten, vollständig ab.

Im vorliegenden Buch stellt Klaus Oehler die Lehre vom noetischen und dianoetischen Denken bei Platon und Aristoteles dar und begründet damit erstmals die These, dass das für die neuzeitliche Philosophie zentrale Problem der Reflexion und des Selbstbewusstseins schon, wenn auch nicht in gleicher Weise, in der antiken Philosophie eine Rolle gespielt hat.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Experience or Interpretation:"What You See Is Not What You Read"Klaus OttmannMuseums of modern and contemporary art are growing at an unprecedented rate. New museums are being founded and existing ones are expanding exhibition spaces and acquiring more and more works of art. Concurrently, cultural institutions compete with a growing number of art fairs, biennials, galleries, and public collection spaces.Since the 1980s the focus of museums increasingly has been (...) on education and interpretation, which among other things has created a boom for audio guides and scholarly exhibition catalogs at the expense of the unmediated experience of works of art. Perhaps what is needed are exhibitions that present art again primarily as "experience," with minimal curatorial and didactic intervention. [End Page 13]I have borrowed the title of my essay from a lecture that was given by Nicolas Serota, the director of the Tate galleries in London, in 1996. His lecture was subtitled "The Dilemma of Museums of Modern Art."But the question of the presentation of art, and specifically, that of experience vs. interpretation, by no means originated in the last decades. It is at least as old a question as modern art itself, going as far back as the nineteenth-century French intellectual dispute on the museum between the poet Paul Valéry and the novelist Marcel Proust, as recounted with a sympathetic voice by the German philosopher and cultural critic Theodor Adorno in a short essay with the minimalist title "Valéry Proust Museum."There is much to be learned from reading this small text. Paul Valéry criticized the museum of his time (the Louvre) for creating confusion in the mind of the spectator by reducing the experience to the level of information only. No one would want to listen to ten orchestras at once, he argued, yet we are forced to apprehend, at the same moment, a seascape, a portrait, and a still-life, or worse, painting styles completely incompatible with each other. He warned that excess of information would lead to impoverishment of the senses, as art was becoming a matter of education. Valéry's view could be regarded as the conservative position.Marcel Proust's view was more modernist: he regarded the museum as the best place to view art. Devoid of décor and other commonplace distractions, its galleries symbolized for him the inner spaces into which the artist withdraws to create works of art.Both Valéry and Proust emphasized that art should be enjoyed. But while for Valéry art lost its vitality in the museum and effectively "died," Proust saw an afterlife of art in the museum and in the subjective stream of consciousness of the viewer.For Adorno, both views were too one-sided and extreme. Valéry's absolute unwavering contemplation of pure art takes the risk of neutralization, unless the work can point beyond itself toward a social context. Thus, a work of art is neither an embodiment of a Platonic idea, as Valéry believed, nor is it exclusively a reflection of the soul, as Proust understood it. Rather, in Adorno's view, art is a "force field" between the art and the viewer, both passive and active.In his 1931 lectures on "Art as Experience," the American philosopher John Dewey said:The trouble with existing theories [of art] is that they start from ready-made compartmentalization, or from a conception of art that "spiritualizes" it out of connection with the objects of concrete experience. The alternative, however, to such spiritualization is not a degrading... materialization of works of fine art, but a conception that discloses the way in which these works idealize qualities found in common experience.1 [End Page 14]In my book The Genius Decision: The Extraordinary and the Postmodern Condition, I describe the creative act as an active-passive leap that the artist is impelled to make and the viewer is challenged to repeat.Wittgenstein often spoke about the inexpressible, that which is beyond the limits of language. He called it "running against the boundaries of language." It is something any poet, musician, or painter is familiar with; they all run against boundaries of language, sound, or color... (shrink)

Hybrid identities are sentences in a special second order language with identity. The model classes of sets of hybrid identities are called hybrid solid varieties. We give a Birkhoff-type-characterization of hybrid solid varieties and develop a hybrid equational logic.