According to Leibniz, there is no death in the sense that the human being or animal is destroyed completely. This is due to his metaphysical pluralism which would suffer if the number of substances decreased. While animals transform into other animals after “death”, human beings are rewarded or punished of their behavior in this life. This paper presents a comprehensive account of how Leibniz thought the “death” to take place and discusses his often unclear views on the life after death. (...) I will also present a new, naturalistic reading of Leibniz’s views on afterlife. (shrink)
Two criteria are proposed for characterizing the diverse and not yet perspicous relations between nanotechnology und nature. They assume a concept or nature as that which is not made by human action. One of the criteria endorses a distinction between natural and artificial objects in nanotechnology: the other allows for a discussion of the potential nanotechnological modification of nature. Insofar as current trends may be taken as indicative of future development, nanotechnology might increasingly use the model of nature as a (...) point of orientation, while many of its products will continue to be clearly distinguished from nature. (shrink)
The claim of this paper is to show that the “Discourse on the Arts and Sciences” does not propose a general critique of progress as such, but a critique of the idea of progress as promoted by the 18th century “philosophers”. It is argued that Rousseau is no proponent of a Counter-Enlightenment, on the contrary he aims to go further than other thinkers of his time by scrutinizing even progress itself, Enlightenment’s pet notion. In defining arts and sciences as the (...) very driving forces of progress, the “philosophers” according to Rousseau are fostering inequality, because only an elite will be able to succeed in them. By contrast, talking about progress in Rousseau’s view only makes sense if “progress” is defined in moral and political terms, as enabling all men to participate in the promotion of everybody’s well-being. The paper intends to show that Rousseau’s answer to the shortcomings of civilization is not a “return to nature”, but the advancement of artificial institutions: namely, the egalitarian republic. (shrink)
Aristotle’s De Interpretatione opens with some norms designed to guide philosophical discour- se. One of these norms–of greatest importance for the discourse about being–is the distinction between the affirmation and the content of a proposition. No verb, not even the verb to be, will by itself state the existence of its content. – The oppositon to the traditional interpretation of the text in this article is primarily founded on observations of ordinary Greek speech. ”A verb uttered just by itself“ doesn’t (...) mean ”the verb without a subject noun“ as normaly assumed, but it means ”the verb without the intention to affirm what it means.“ – Some glances at Platon and Kant conclude the article. (shrink)
1. Einleitung 2. Herausforderungen für das Nichtgraduierbarkeits- und das Bivalenzprinzip 3. Freges Einwand gegen graduale Wahrheit 4. Warum semantische Vagheit keine Wahrheitsgrade erfordert 5. Grenzen ziehen, wo noch keine gezogen sind.
Limits of a (historico-)philosophical discourse vis-a-vis the rutpure in the fabric of civilization marked by the shoah. Examines the textual place of those aspects of history which elude rational analysis.
Es werden zwei von Wittgenstein entworfene Modelle der Semantik eines Wortes dargelegt und miteinander verglichen: das sog. Muster von ,Gegenstand und Bezeichnung' und das Gebrauchsmodell. Im Gegensatz zu der formalistischen Position wird gezeigt, daß das Modell von ,Gegenstand und Bezeichnung' für die Semantik unentbehrlich ist. Selbst das Gebrauchsmodell, so unumstritten dieses auch sein mag, vermag das Modell von ,Gegenstand und Bezeichunung' nicht abzulösen. Das dargestellte metaphysische Bild wird veranschaulicht, indem einige Bemerkungen Wittgensteins zur Semantik der Empfindungswörter widerlegt werden.
