This book offers a critical appraisal of Karl Olivecrona's legal philosophy. Based on Olivecrona's critique of the view that law has binding force, the analysis of the concept and function of a legal rule, and the idea that law is a matter of organized force, the book argues that Olivecrona's legal philosophy is a unique contribution to twentieth century legal philosophy. It shows how Olivecrona's philosophy can be used in the assessment of contemporary theories of law, such as those put (...) forward by Hart, Raz, Dworkin, and Alexy. In addition, the book argues that Olivecrona's various discussions of theories defended by key people in the history of legal and political philosophy are highly interesting contributions. They not only increase our understanding of the legal and political philosophy of previous generations, but also enhances our insight into legal-philosophical questions that remain with us today. (shrink)

This important book examines how the growing field of cybernetic psychology - the study of the creative complexity of the mind - can be applied to a range of different realms, tapping into the unconscious potential within us all. Cybernetic psychology integrates theories from various schools of thought, bringing them together in one unified theory. First developed and described by Danish author and psychotherapist Ole Vedfelt. It can be used in therapeutic practice, in relation to learning and pedagogics, and as (...) a tool for better leadership. The 15 chapters within this volume apply the theory to these as well as other areas, including ecology, creativity, mindfulness and scientific enquiry itself. Insightful and wide-ranging, the book will appeal to psychotherapists and those working within mental health, as well as students and researchers across Education, Psychology and beyond. (shrink)

„Kann das Anthropozän gelingen?" Der Begriff „Anthropozän" fungiert in aktuellen Debatten als Chiffre für eine mehrfache Krise. Empirisch wird der Begriff verwendet, um den von Menschen verursachten Bruch mit dem stabilen Zeitalter des Holozäns zu bezeichnen. Normativ wird er gebraucht, um zu Neuanfängen aufzufordern: beim Verständnis und bei der praktischen Ausgestaltung menschlicher Verhältnisse zur Natur. Zugleich gerät der Begriff zunehmend selbst in die Kritik: dass er mit seinem Bezug auf ‚den Menschen‘ die tatsächlichen Verantwortlichkeiten für die aktuellen Natur- und Klima-Katastrophen (...) verdecke. Der Band macht sich das Schillern des Anthropozän-Begriffs zunutze. In interdisziplinärer Perspektive – aus der Philosophie, Theologie, Geographie, sowie den Literatur-, Politik-, Sozial- und Klimawissenschaften – verbindet er kritische und affirmativ-konstruktive Debatten: Welche Menschenbilder, Motive, Macht- und Gewaltstrukturen bestimmen die gesellschaftlich vorherrschenden Naturverhältnisse? Was wären alternative Vorstellungen des menschlichen Lebens mit der Natur als Teil der Natur? Wie sind die Praktiken der Nachhaltigkeit zu beurteilen, die von den Regierungen, auf dem kapitalistischen Markt und in der Zivilgesellschaft gebahnt werden? (shrink)

This article aims to outline a perspective on democratic ideology centred on orientation and justification, which is discussed in relation to the right?left dyad and public reason. Ideology is approached in terms of the orientational structuring of identification processes, which is discussed in relation to the articulation between four pairs of orientational metaphors (up?down, in?out, front?back and right?left), which shape the political terrain and the terms of political justification. The latter is expressed in public reason based on political equality, pluralism (...) and contingency as opposed to hierarchy, monism and objectivism. A modern democratic ideology is based on right/left orientation to underpin the autonomy of the political symbolic order vis?à?vis cultural and religious orders, and on public reason as freestanding in relation to comprehensive reasons, which is a political justification of the priority of right/left in matters of common concerns. (shrink)

Providing an alternative to pyschoanalytically based descriptions, this major study presents a unique, new theoretical account of the way emotions and thought patterns interact in creating aesthetic effects in films. Using diverse examples, Torben Grodal shows how films activate effects in the viewer and how these effects are moulded by genres which determine the way in which characters will react in given situations.

Right-wing populism and authoritarianism are often thought to be closely linked to each other: conceptually, ideologically, historically. This article challenges that assumption by reinterpreting right-wing populism as an essentially anti-authoritarian movement. Right-wing populism diverges from the clearly authoritarian movements of the past, such as classic conservatism and fascism, in at least two important ways: first, it follows a distinctive epistemology with a different idea what constitutes the truth and who has access to it. Second, populism has a peculiar understanding of (...) the ultimate source of political authority and the function of political leadership. My article shows how right-wing populists pursue a project of self-empowerment and appropriate notions of emancipation and autonomy for their own narrative. (shrink)

Emmanuel Lévinas (1906-1995) zählt nicht nur zu den wichtigsten Ethikern im 20. Jahrhundert. Vor allem entwirft er einen anderen Anfang der Ethik, die nicht auf der gesellschaftlichen Ebene oder als grosse Idee und Erzählung entsteht. Ethik entspringt vielmehr in der konkreten Zwischenmenschlichkeit, wenn man vom Anderen in die Verantwortung gerufen wird - und zwar durch die Verletzlichkeit seines nackten Gesichtes wie durch die Anrede. Die ethische Beziehung verdankt sich dabei nicht etwa der Gleichheit, der Nähe oder der Geschwisterlichkeit, sondern der (...) Andersheit des Anderen, seiner Ferne und vor allem seiner Fremdheit, die sich nicht hintergehen lassen. Damit gründet Lévinas die Gesellschaft nicht nur auf die Zwischenmenschlichkeit, sondern auch auf die Pluralität. So wenig wie die Ethik universelle Ansprüche erheben kann, lässt sich Gerechtigkeit als ein allgemeines Prinzip entwerfen. Vielmehr muss sie den Individuen in deren unendlicher Andersheit gerecht werden. In dieser Unendlichkeit blitzt im nackten Gesicht das Antlitz Gottes auf, denkt Lévinas aus der jüdischen Tradition heraus. Das lässt sich auch rein säkular verstehen, dass alle Menschen anders sind. Sie als Gleiche zu behandeln, unterwirft sie totalen politischen Ansprüchen, macht sie zu gehorsamen Untertanen. In Auseinandersetzung mit Sartre entwickelt Lévinas eine individualistische Ethik der Verantwortung, die jeden Menschen betrifft, indem sie aus der Zwischenmenschlichkeit heraus die Mündigkeit konstituiert. So verfolgt der Einzelne nicht primär seine Interessen, sondern übernimmt Verantwortung für den Anderen: Die Wende der Ethik im 20. Jahrhundert - von Sartre, de Beauvoir und Lacan inspiriert, von Derrida und Butler fortgeschrieben, bestehen zudem Parallelen zu Arendt und Foucault. (shrink)

Artikelen over aspecten van het gedachtegoed van de Duitse filosoof en de huidiger betekenis daarvan.

In Le mythe de Sisyphe Camus deals with the problem of suicide because of the absurdity of life. He sees people committing suicide because they think life, being absurd, is no longer worthwhile. But does the absurdity of life imply that life is not worthwhile? He argues this is not the case. The logic of the absurd leads to revolt, freedom and passion for life. These make life worthwhile. So suicide is not the conclusion of the logic of the absurd. (...) However, his argument, though inspiring, fails to recognize the problem of suicide. Why do people who commit suicide because of the absurd believe life is no longer worthwhile? In my article I try to answer this question. In L’homme révolté Camus states that revolt can be contaminated by ressentiment. I think this contamination can explain why people believe life in an absurd world is no longer worthwhile. Based on Scheler’s analysis of ressentiment in Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen I try to describe the process of this contamination. It is argued first that ressentiment is a consequence of the final impotence of revolt to protect what is valuable, second that revolt will not transform in ressentiment only when it is capable of overcoming itself in resignation. (shrink)

Resumen El propósito de este artículo es introducir al concepto de rakiduam del pueblo mapuche como término relevante para la revisión crítica de una filosofía intercultural. Se propone este término como parte de un diálogo de racionalidades con el que se pretende, como segundo objetivo, vincular el conocimiento de este horizonte-otro con el reconocimiento de nuestros propios horizontes y límites de comprensión, desde dentro de la tradición de la filosofía occidental, y además, en diálogo con la antropología.The purpose of this (...) article is to introduce and make a critical revision of the mapuche peoples notion of rakiduam as part of an intercultural philosophy. Ajpart of a dialogue between rationalities we propose to link the recognition of rakiduam as a different horizon to the recognition of our own horizon and limits of understanding from within the western tradition of philosophy, and furthermore, in a dialogue with anthropology. (shrink)

Dr Thrane makes an original contribution to one of the central topics in syntax and semantics: the nature and mechanisms of reference in natural language. He makes a fundamental distinction between syntactic analyses that are internal to the structure of a language and analyses of the referential properties that connect a language with the 'outside world' - and therefore derive in some sense from common human capacities for perceptual discrimination. Dr Thrane argues that the failure to make this distinction and (...) to attend separately to both kinds of analysis has vitiated previous general accounts of linguistic structure. The book focuses particularly on pronouns and on the role of determiners, quantifiers and other components of the noun phrase. Most of the data come from the modern Germanic languages, especially English, but Dr Thrane considers also the structural peculiarities of 'classifier languages' like Vietnamese. The book will be important for students of English language as well as for general linguists. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungIn meinem Kommentar gehe ich von dem Verständnis der menschlichen Geburt in der Moderne aus, das Tatjana Tarkian mit vielen teilt: dem Verständnis, dass die menschliche Geburt in der Moderne ein autonom plan- und durchführbares „Projekt“ bilde. Im ersten Schritt meiner Überlegungen zeige ich, dass diese Vorstellung reduktionistisch ist: sie blendet sowohl die Widerfahrensaspekte als auch die dialogische Anlage der Geburt ab. In den weiteren Schritten meiner Überlegungen skizziere ich, dass Tarkians reduktionistisches Verständnis der menschlichen Geburt auf die Modulation ihrer (...) Forschungsfrage und auf ihr normatives Leitprinzip durchschlägt – und dort eigene Abstraktionen hervorruft. Nur da Tarkian die Geburt als „Projekt“ der eigenen Reproduktion versteht, können sich ihr die Entscheidungen, zu denen pränatalmedizinische Tests befähigen, als „Auswahl“ zwischen „gesunden Kindern“ und „Kindern mit gesundheitlichen Beeinträchtigungen oder Normabweichungen“ darstellen. Und nur da sie die Geburt in Analogie zu anderen „Lebensprojekten“ versteht, kann sie ihr Leitprinzip der Freiheit im Gebären als reproduktive Handlungsfreiheit deuten – um zu diskutieren, ob die reproduktive Handlungsfreiheit beim Gebrauch pränatalmedizinischer Angebote an Grenzen stoße, da sie Anderen schade. (shrink)

This article explores the differences between two strategies of persuasion. The first strategy, called drawing things together, is Actor-Network Theory's classic analysis of how modern science has gained tremendous persuasive powers through systematic inscription and centralized accumulation of information traces. The second strategy, called drawing contrasts together, is derived from the author's empirical analysis of the rhetorics and materialities of a Scandinavian New Economy firm. The persuasive powers of this firm, it is argued, are based on its ability to evoke (...) and articulate a series of pointed contrasts between the attractive working life within the firm and the ordinary and problematic work life elsewhere. The article argues that both persuasive strategies work in a pragmatic sense. But where “drawing things together” enacts a relatively stable and knowable world, the persuasive strategy of “drawing contrasts together” depends on, and enacts, a world of dramatic epochal changes. (shrink)

Drawing on actor-network theory, this paper challenges the traditional analytical separation of the socalled social and the so-called technical. First, observational data of an interactional event between a social worker and a client is introduced. Second, the techno-social heterogeneity of the event is elucidated through an analysis based on the concept of translation. Third, the precarious and temporary natures of the techno-social hybrids are discussed through the concept of performance. Finally, the techno-social is proposed as a new object for social (...) science. (shrink)

The article looks critically at the Schmitt revival among radical leftists, how they try to insulate his work from his political conviction and make a problematic distinction between liberalism and democracy, which undercuts the specificity of modern democracy and plays into reactionary identity politics. I then turn to how Schmitt conceptualizes the political and argue that the structure of his argument is antithetic to modern democracy. Against those who hold that it is possible to use Schmitt against himself, I argue (...) that to adopt Schmitt for the purpose of strengthening liberal democracy runs into serious difficulties, because the whole set-up is geared to combat this regime form. Finally, I show that the political undermines right/left orientation because it is structured in terms of other orientational metaphors, which sustain a restrictive view on membership (in/out), unconditional loyalty to the state (up/down) and a strong sense of belonging and destiny (front/back). (shrink)

The postwar welfare state provides social insurance against economic, health, and related risks in an uncertain world. Because everyone can envision themselves to be among the unfortunate, social insurance fuses self-interest and solidarism in a normative principle Friedman (2020) calls probabilistic justice. But there is a competing principle of status defense, where the aim is to erect boundaries between socioeconomic strata and discourage cross-class mobility. We argue that this principle dominates when inequality is high and uncertainty low. The current moment (...) is one of high inequality and high uncertainty, which results in intense status anxiety, yet does not rule out solidaristic solutions. Our contributions are to diagnose the causes of our current malaise, and to theorize the normative bases for the political choice facing contemporary western democracies. (shrink)

reply to 'Project for a Scientific Film Theory' by Eric Parkinson.

Warren Buckland _The Cognitive Semiotics of Film_ Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000 ISBN: 0-521-78005-5 (hb) xi +174 pp.

Name der Zeitschrift: Internationales Jahrbuch für philosophische Anthropologie Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 1 Seiten: 87-112.

Foucault’s discussions of parrhesia provide fertile ground for raising a number of classical and pertinent issues in political theory related to critique, citizenship, and political authority. Foucault situates parrhesia in his analytical grid of power/knowledge/ethics, which maps political participation and experience, and he looks at how those who pursue or contest political power articulate and integrate these three facets of politics, which might well pull in opposite directions. Power concerns the ability and the audacity to face up to important political (...) tasks and to take action at the right time authoritatively and with resolve. Knowledge is vital for telling the truth from a partisan viewpoint and for making informed and balanced decisions. Ethics concerns the trustworthiness of those who either exercise or criticize political power and touches upon their dedication, sense of judgement, and personal integrity. The personal integrity of the citizen acting politically as well as his or her responsibility to the political community are among the main issues to be raised in relation to these themes. The same goes for the issues related to the nature of the political community, its institutional set-up and its culture, and whether it is authoritarian and marked by hierarchy and obedience or democratic and egalitarian. Thus, parrhesia captures some of the most vital dimensions of political life of how to exercise the political power of authority in a way that is both truthful and trustworthy. Foucault’s discussions of parrhesia shed light on the democratic challenges and possibilities related to political power as governmentality. (shrink)

This article discusses how technological official aids influence sporting competitions in terms of fairness and flow. It addresses the main arguments against technological official aids used to assist refereeing in binary referee situations. First, I argue that the criticism directed at the use of ball tracking devices (‘reconstructed track devices’) is mainly unjustified and that these devices provide the opportunity to make refereeing in certain types of sport fairer. In this regard, I also argue that empirical findings about referees’ decision-making (...) and potential biases must be considered when deciding how technological official aids influence the fairness of sporting competitions. Then I attempt to refute the argument that no situations are more decisive than others in sports with no fixed breaks, such as football. Finally, I scrutinise the argument that human fallibility in refereeing is somehow valuable in itself. Consequently, this article concludes that there are no convincing arguments against the use of technological official aids in binary referee situations. (shrink)

This is the first book-length treatment of hybrid logic and its proof-theory. Hybrid logic is an extension of ordinary modal logic which allows explicit reference to individual points in a model. This is useful for many applications, for example when reasoning about time one often wants to formulate a series of statements about what happens at specific times. There is little consensus about proof-theory for ordinary modal logic. Many modal-logical proof systems lack important properties and the relationships between proof systems (...) for different modal logics are often unclear. In the present book we demonstrate that hybrid-logical proof-theory remedies these deficiencies by giving a spectrum of well-behaved proof systems for a spectrum of different hybrid logics. (shrink)

Hybrid logics are a principled generalization of both modal logics and description logics, a standard formalism for knowledge representation. In this paper we give the first constructive version of hybrid logic, thereby showing that it is possible to hybridize constructive modal logics. Alternative systems are discussed, but we fix on a reasonable and well-motivated version of intuitionistic hybrid logic and prove essential proof-theoretical results for a natural deduction formulation of it. Our natural deduction system is also extended with additional inference (...) rules corresponding to conditions on the accessibility relations expressed by so-called geometric theories. Thus, we give natural deduction systems in a uniform way for a wide class of constructive hybrid logics. This shows that constructive hybrid logics are a viable enterprise and opens up the way for future applications. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a surge in philosophical work on the rationality of grief. Much of this research is premised on the idea that people tend to grieve much less than would be appropriate or, as it is often called, fitting. My goal in this paper is diagnostic, that is, to articulate two never properly distinguished, and indeed often conflated, arguments in favour of the purported discrepancy between experienced and fitting grief: a metaphysical and a psychological argument. According to the (...) former, grief is rationalized entirely by facts about the past. And because the past is unchangeable, grief can be said to remain forever fitting. According to the latter argument, humans’ emotional resilience causes grief to diminish at a faster rate than would be fitting. Which of these problems we end up facing depends on relatively subtle variations in the characterization of the losses that render grief appropriate. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of philosophers and cognitive scientists have advocated for an ‘interactive turn’ in the methodology of social-cognition research: to become more ecologically valid, we must design experiments that are interactive, rather than merely observational. While the practical aim of improving ecological validity in the study of social cognition is laudable, we think that the notion of ‘interaction’ is not suitable for this task: as it is currently deployed in the social cognition literature, this notion leads to (...) serious conceptual and methodological confusion. In this paper, we tackle this confusion on three fronts: 1) we revise the ‘interactionist’ definition of interaction; 2) we demonstrate a number of potential methodological confounds that arise in interactive experimental designs; and 3) we show that ersatz interactivity works just as well as the real thing. We conclude that the notion of ‘interaction’, as it is currently being deployed in this literature, obscures an accurate understanding of human social cognition. (shrink)

Explains the concept of legal competence (or power). This book then discusses the analysis and definition of legal concepts in general; the relation between the concept of competence and (in)validity; what it means to exercise competence; different types of competence; and competence norms.

How and from where can power be criticized and resisted? The advent of new managerial forms of power has brought the question once more to the fore. One of the salient issues is whether the ubiquity and apparent omnipotence of contemporary forms of managerial power renders critique and resistance difficult. This article compares the critical potential of French pragmatic sociology and Foucauldian-inspired genealogy. We argue that both approaches offer viable critiques of contemporary forms of power. Yet, whereas the critique of (...) pragmatic sociology hinges on the position of those who exercise critique and/or resist, genealogical critique depends on the concrete form of power that is being scrutinized. We argue that even though we see critique as modus as more convincing than critique as locus, the two approaches can inspire each other in order to advance effective critique. (shrink)

Braüner, Blackburn and Polyanskaya relate children’s being deceived to their theory of mind skills. Second‐order false‐belief tasks are often used to test children’s second‐order theory of mind development. The article gives a logical analysis of the reasoning needed to solve four types of second‐order false belief tasks, distinguished on whether a story character is deceived, and on whether the story hinges on facts in the world changing. The principle of inertia plays an important role. [74].

This is a companion paper to Braüner where a natural deduction system for propositional hybrid logic is given. In the present paper we generalize the system to the first-order case. Our natural deduction system for first-order hybrid logic can be extended with additional inference rules corresponding to conditions on the accessibility relations and the quantifier domains expressed by so-called geometric theories. We prove soundness and completeness and we prove a normalisation theorem. Moreover, we give an axiom system first-order hybrid logic.

The main aim of the present paper is to use a proof system for hybrid modal logic to formalize what are called false-belief tasks in cognitive psychology, thereby investigating the interplay between cognition and logical reasoning about belief. We consider two different versions of the Smarties task, involving respectively a shift of perspective to another person and to another time. Our formalizations disclose that despite this difference, the two versions of the Smarties task have exactly the same underlying logical structure. (...) We also consider the Sally-Anne task, having a more complicated logical structure, presupposing a “principle of inertia” saying that a belief is preserved over time, unless there is belief to the contrary. (shrink)

In this article, I argue,inter alia, that Kelsen’s mature view—as expressed in, and around the time of, the second edition ofReine Rechtslehre—was that of a metaethical relativist, and that the commitment to metaethical relativism was the reason why Kelsen defended democracy as well as tolerance in the shape of a constitutionally guaranteed freedom of thought. I also consider the possibility that in his post‐1960 phase Kelsen abandoned metaethical relativism for moral fictionalism, but argue that, on the whole, a relativist interpretation (...) of Kelsen’s late legal philosophy is to be preferred to a fictionalist interpretation. (shrink)

In the paper (Braüner, 2001) we gave a minimal condition for the existence of a homophonic theory of truth for a modal or tense logic. In the present paper we generalise this result to arbitrary modal logics and we also show that a modal logic permits the existence of a homophonic theory of truth if and only if it permits the definition of a socalled master modality. Moreover, we explore a connection between the master modality and hybrid logic: We show (...) that if attention is restricted to bidirectional frames, then the expressive power of the master modality is exactly what is needed to translate the bounded fragment of first-order logic into hybrid logic in a truth preserving way. We believe that this throws new light on Arthur Prior's fourth grade tense logic. (shrink)

There is no large number of very small bads that is worse than a small number of very large bads – or so, some maintain, it seems plausible to say. In this article, I criticize and reject two recently proposed vindications of the above intuition put forth by Dale Dorsey and Alex Voorhoeve. Dorsey advocates for a threshold marked by the interference with a person's global life projects: any bad that interferes with the satisfaction of a life project is worse (...) than any number of bads that don't interfere with such a life project. Such thresholds, I argue, are broadly implausible. Voorhoeve gives a contractualist account for the irrelevance of minor bads. His account, I argue, does not, among other things, provide the right kind of reason in defence of the above intuition. (shrink)