Seven decades after his death, German Jewish writer, philosopher, and literary critic Walter Benjamin continues to fascinate and influence. Here Uwe Steiner offers a comprehensive and sophisticated introduction to the oeuvre of this intriguing theorist. Acknowledged only by a small circle of intellectuals during his lifetime, Benjamin is now a major figure whose work is essential to an understanding of modernity. Steiner traces the development of Benjamin’s thought chronologically through his writings on philosophy, literature, history, politics, the media, art, photography, (...) cinema, technology, and theology. _Walter Benjamin_ reveals the essential coherence of its subject’s thinking while also analyzing the controversial or puzzling facets of Benjamin’s work. That coherence, Steiner contends, can best be appreciated by placing Benjamin in his proper context as a member of the German philosophical tradition and a participant in contemporary intellectual debates. As Benjamin’s writing attracts more and more readers in the English-speaking world, _Walter Benjamin_ will be a valuable guide to this fascinating body of work. (shrink)

Seven decades after his death, German Jewish writer, philosopher, and literary critic Walter Benjamin continues to fascinate and influence. Here Uwe Steiner offers a comprehensive and sophisticated introduction to the oeuvre of this intriguing theorist. Acknowledged only by a small circle of intellectuals during his lifetime, Benjamin is now a major figure whose work is essential to an understanding of modernity. Steiner traces the development of Benjamin’s thought chronologically through his writings on philosophy, literature, history, politics, the media, art, photography, (...) cinema, technology, and theology. _Walter Benjamin_ reveals the essential coherence of its subject’s thinking while also analyzing the controversial or puzzling facets of Benjamin’s work. That coherence, Steiner contends, can best be appreciated by placing Benjamin in his proper context as a member of the German philosophical tradition and a participant in contemporary intellectual debates. As Benjamin’s writing attracts more and more readers in the English-speaking world, _Walter Benjamin_ will be a valuable guide to this fascinating body of work. (shrink)

This volume addresses whether, how, and where laws (variously defined) teach values and shape moral character in late modern liberal societies. Each author recognizes the essential value of state law in fostering peace, security, health, education, charity, trade, democracy, constitutionalism, justice, and human rights, among many other moral goods. Each author also recognizes, however, the grave betrayals of law in supporting fascism, slavery, apartheid, genocide, persecution, violence, racism, and other forms of immorality and injustice. They thus call for state laws (...) that set a basic civil morality of duty for society and for robust freedoms that protect private individuals and private groups to cultivate a higher morality of aspiration"--Back cover. (shrink)

This article sets out to provide a conceptual contribution to theoretical and empirical work on the level of media repertoires. We will first discuss theoretical approaches which allow for an explanation of media repertoires and relate them to the most prominent approaches to selective audience behavior. Secondly, in order to empirically analyze media repertoires we propose a combination of secondary analyses of existing surveys on media use and qualitative studies on the internal ‘architecture’ of these repertoires and their practical meaning (...) in the user's everyday life. These proposals for secondary analyses are illustrated by two examples based on different data sets and referring to different levels of analysis. (shrink)

This concluding chapter proposes an alternative interpretation of Theodor W. Adorno's unfinished Aesthetic Theory in which he reconsiders some of the philosopher's central aesthetic concepts, such as aesthetic autonomy, from the perspective of those moments when Adorno's writing appears to destabilize the work of art and, by extension, the philosophical claims that his theories generally are held to make on behalf of the aesthetic. Adorno's Aesthetic Theory, initially shunned or attacked when it was posthumously published in 1970, has become increasingly (...) his most widely and carefully read work. While the interpreters are still in disagreement about the appropriate reading of the text, there is largely consensus about its significance as the culmination of Adorno's œuvre and its importance for the contemporary debate on aesthetics. (shrink)

One area of genetics particularly dominated by German-speaking geneticists (Brücher, Correns, Lehmann, Michaelis, Oehlkers, Renner, von Wettstein) during the interwar period was research in the field of cytoplasmic inheritance (Plasmon-Theory). The controversy between the botanists Lehmann (Tübingen) and Brücher (Jena, Tübingen) about the function of “supressor genes” in Epilobium cell division was central to debates about cytoplasmic inheritance. The failure of Brücher, Michaelis and Oehlkers to replicate Lehmann's Epilobium experiments ultimately forced Lehmann to admit his error.

The article explores Adorno's theoretical efforts to think through the relationship of art and society, treating it as a significant part of his aesthetic theory. The emphasis of the article is placed on those writings that explicitly theorize the link between art and society. The essay therefore traces Adorno's theoretical statements and arguments from his 1932 essay on the situation of modern music to his late Aesthetic Theory, focusing on his methodological and aesthetic concerns: methodologically his persistent critique of empiricism (...) and quantitative research, aesthetically his preoccupation with the concept of aesthetic autonomy as the precondition of modern art. As it turns out, with in terms of its basic concepts such as commodity and reification, even his late work ( Aesthetic Theory ) remains committed to the Marxist tradition that defined his early writings. (shrink)

Can AI developers be held epistemically responsible for the processing of their AI systems when these systems are epistemically opaque? And can explainable AI (XAI) provide public justificatory reasons for opaque AI systems’ outputs? Koskinen (2024) gives negative answers to both questions. Here, I respond to her and argue for affirmative answers. More generally, I suggest that when considering people’s uncertainty about the factors causally determining an opaque AI’s output, it might be worth keeping in mind that a degree of (...) uncertainty about conclusions is inevitable even in entirely human-based empirical science because in induction there’s always a risk of getting it wrong. Keeping this in mind may help appreciate that requiring full transparency from AI systems before epistemically trusting their outputs might be unusually (and potentially overly) demanding. (shrink)

Chapter Introduction. Syntactic focus theory and the phenomenon of secondary predication The primary goal of this monograph is to examine the interaction of ...

ABSTRACT This paper begins with a review of major difficulties with both extreme conservative and extreme liberal views on foetal moral status and the morality of abortion. There follows an outline and defence of a moderate position on abortion which is centred in an account of emergent foetal victimisability in being killed. Lastly, various perplexities about this view are explored, particularly the question whether, once victimisable at all, the victimisability of a foetus should reasonably be thought to increase proportionately with (...) further biological development. (shrink)

Die sechzehn Beitrage stellen in vielen Schwerpunkten die rasante Entwicklung dar, die die Eurolinguistik seit der ersten Tagung 1997 genommen hat. Den Hintergrund bilden der Europa-Begriff und die Vorgeschichte der Eurolinguistik im 20.

abstract Can torture be morally justified? I shall criticise arguments that have been adduced against torture and demonstrate that torture can be justified more easily than most philosophers dealing with the question are prepared to admit. It can be justified not only in ticking nuclear bomb cases but also in less spectacular ticking bomb cases and even in the so‐called Dirty Harry cases. There is no morally relevant difference between self‐defensive killing of a culpable aggressor and torturing someone who is (...) culpable of a deadly threat that can be averted only by torturing him. Nevertheless, I shall argue that torture should not be institutionalised, for example by torture warrants. (shrink)

George Berkeley is one of the greatest and most influential modern philosophers. In defending the immaterialism for which he is most famous, he redirected modern thinking about the nature of objectivity and the mind's capacity to come to terms with it. Along the way, he made striking and influential proposals concerning the psychology of the senses, the workings of language, the aims of science, and the scope of mathematics. In this Companion volume a team of distinguished authors not only examines (...) Berkeley's achievements but also his neglected contributions to moral and political philosophy, his writings on economics and development, and his defense of religious commitment and religious life. The volume places Berkeley's achievements in the context of the many social and intellectual traditions - philosophical, scientific, ethical, and religious - to which he fashioned a distinctive response. (shrink)

Scholars are divided over the question of whether managerial aspirational talk that contradicts current business practices can contribute to corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this conceptual article, we explore the rhetorical dynamics of aspirational talk that either impede or foster CSR. We argue that self-persuasive CSR rhetoric, as one enactment of aspirational talk, can attract attention and scrutiny from organizational members. Continued adherence to this rhetoric, however, creates and perpetuates tensions that lead to a vicious circle of disengagement. A virtuous (...) circle, by contrast, requires a shift toward an agonistic rhetoric that transcends tensions by rearticulating aspirations in concurrence with situated understandings of responsible corporate practice. Our arguments contribute to a better understanding of how communication becomes constitutive of CSR and address the debate on decoupling between talk and action. (shrink)

Der protestantische Theologe Karl Girgensohn (1875–1925) ist 1903 mit seinem frühen Werk über das Wesen der Religion an die Öffentlichkeit getreten, welches einen starken religionsphilosophischen Standpunkt zum Ausdruck bringt. Kernüberlegung ist hierbei eine kognitive Theorie des Religiösen, in der die Gottesidee zentral ist. Unter Berücksichtigung der Biographie Girgensohns geht der vorliegende Beitrag auf diese frühe Studie zum Wesen der Religion ein und skizziert den Übergang des Autors von einem philosophischen zu einem experimentell-introspektiven Ansatz der Religiositätsforschung, welcher dann zum Fundament für (...) die Dorpater religionspsychologische Schule wurde. Basierend auf Girgensohns frühem Werk werden abschließend Implikationen für die heutige empirische Theologie vorgeschlagen.The Protestant theologian Karl Girgensohn (1875–1925) came to the public in 1903 with his early work on the nature of religion, which expresses a strong religious-philosophical standpoint. The core consideration here is a cognitive theory of the religious, in which the idea of God is central. Taking into account Girgensohn’s biography, the present contribution addresses this early study on the nature of religion and outlines the author’s transition from a philosophical to an experimental-introspective approach to religious research, which then became the foundation for the Dorpat School of the psychology of religion. Based on Girgensohn’s early work, implications for contemporary empirical theology are finally proposed. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that generics (i.e., unquantified generalizations) are pervasive in communication and that when they are about social groups, this may offend and polarize people because generics gloss over variations between individuals. Generics about social groups might be particularly common on Twitter (X). This remains unexplored, however. Using machine learning (ML) techniques, we therefore developed an automatic classifier for social generics, applied it to 1.1 million tweets about people, and analyzed the tweets. While it is often suggested that generics (...) are ubiquitous in everyday communication, we found that most tweets (78%) about people contained no generics. However, tweets with generics received more “likes” and retweets. Furthermore, while recent psychological research may lead to the prediction that tweets with generics about political groups are more common than tweets with generics about ethnic groups, we found the opposite. However, consistent with recent claims that political animosity is less constrained by social norms than animosity against gender and ethnic groups, negative tweets with generics about political groups were significantly more prevalent and retweeted than negative tweets about ethnic groups. Our study provides the first ML-based insights into the use and impact of social generics on Twitter. (shrink)

I argue that the often-heard claim that all serious present-day political philosophers subscribe to the principle of equal respect and concern or to the doctrine of equal moral status or are in some other fundamental sense egalitarians is wrong. Also wrong is the further claim that the usual methods currently used in political philosophy presuppose basic equality. I further argue that liberal egalitarianism itself is wrong. There is no universal duty “of equal respect and concern” towards every person, for one (...) does not owe one’s nice sister and a serial rapist equal respect and concern. There is also no duty of the state to respect all citizens equally, for a state need not be equally concerned about murderous criminals on the one hand and their innocent victims on the other. The potential maneuver of saving liberal egalitarianism by claiming that people have equal rights is unsuccessful. Human beings clearly do not have equal rights, nor are they born with equal rights; and merely having an equality of some rights, for example of “basic” or human ones, would not suffice for egalitarianism. Appeals to “recognition respect” and related concepts are also to no avail. Trying to go back still a step further and to claim that certain rights inequalities or justified discriminatory rules are themselves “grounded” in equal respect and concern at some deeper, norm-generating level (like, for example, the original position or a discourse-ethical principle of justification) is also futile. Finally, I argue that the “This is not what we mean”-strategy of escaping the above arguments reduces egalitarianism to triviality and empty rhetoric. Liberal egalitarianism should be abandoned. (shrink)

Confirmation bias is one of the most widely discussed epistemically problematic cognitions, challenging reliable belief formation and the correction of inaccurate views. Given its problematic nature, it remains unclear why the bias evolved and is still with us today. To offer an explanation, several philosophers and scientists have argued that the bias is in fact adaptive. I critically discuss three recent proposals of this kind before developing a novel alternative, what I call the ‘reality-matching account’. According to the account, confirmation (...) bias evolved because it helps us influence people and social structures so that they come to match our beliefs about them. This can result in significant developmental and epistemic benefits for us and other people, ensuring that over time we don’t become epistemically disconnected from social reality but can navigate it more easily. While that might not be the only evolved function of confirmation bias, it is an important one that has so far been neglected in the theorizing on the bias. (shrink)

When scientists or science reporters communicate research results to the public, this often involves ethical and epistemic risks. One such risk arises when scientific claims cause cognitive or behavioural changes in the audience that contribute to the self-fulfilment of these claims. I argue that the ethical and epistemic problems that such self-fulfilment effects may pose are much broader and more common than hitherto appreciated. Moreover, these problems are often due to a specific psychological phenomenon that has been neglected in the (...) research on science communication: many people tend to conform to ‘descriptive norms’, that is, norms capturing (perceptions of) what others commonly do, think, or feel. Because of this tendency, science communication may frequently produce significant social harm. I contend that scientists have a responsibility to assess the risk of this potential harm and consider adopting strategies to mitigate it. I introduce one such strategy and argue that its implementation is independently well motivated by the fact that it helps improve scientific accuracy. (shrink)

In present-day political and moral philosophy the idea that all persons are in some way moral equals is an almost universal premise, with its defenders often claiming that philosophical positions that reject the principle of equal respect and concern do not deserve to be taken seriously. This has led to relatively few attempts to clarify, or indeed justify, 'basic equality' and the principle of equal respect and concern. Such clarification and justification, however, would be direly needed. After all, the ideas, (...) for instance, that Adolf Hitler and Nelson Mandela have equal moral worth, or that a rape victim owes equal respect and concern to both her rapist and to her own caring brother, seem to be utterly implausible. Thus, if someone insists on the truth of such ideas, he or she owes his or her audience an explanation. The authors in this volume - which breaks new ground by engaging egalitarians and anti-egalitarians in a genuine dialogue - attempt to shed light into the dark. They try to clarify the concepts of "basic equality", "equal moral worth","equal respect and concern", "dignity," etc; and they try to justify-or to refute-the resulting clarified doctrines. The volume thus demonstrates that the claim that all persons have equal moral worth, are owed equal concern and respect, or have the same rights is anything but obvious. This finding has not only significant philosophical but also political implications. (shrink)

On the first page of this very timely paper the author quotes Linda Gordon: This statement provides a theme for response to Jing-Bao Nie's arguments. In reading this paper, I found myself reminded of two of George Orwell's insights: (1) When governments use euphemisms they are usually up to no good: [e.g., the use of for abortion]. (2) Sexuality and the sexual act (I would add here reproduction—having children) can be a powerful tool of subversion and rebellion. One's sexuality (and (...) reproductive ability) can be the last line of defense against repression or authority. (shrink)