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Die "europäischen Wilden"
(2023)
Der Kunst wird seit langem nachgesagt, dem Subjekt ein anderes Verhältnis zur Natur zu eröffnen, als dies die gewöhnliche theoretische oder praktische Erkenntnis ermöglicht. Statt die Natur zum distanzierten Objekt unserer Betrachtung zu machen oder zum bloßen Material und Mittel unserer praktischen Konstruktionen, erschließt sich uns in der Kunst eine Intelligibilität der Natur, die weiter reicht als unsere Begriffe, und eine Natürlichkeit unserer selbst, die uns mit dem verbindet, was uns sonst bloß gegenübersteht. Vor diesem Hintergrund scheint es nicht verwunderlich, dass die jüngeren Diskussionen um das problematische Verhältnis zur Natur, die das Anthropozän geprägt haben, immer wieder den Blick auf die Kunst richten und ihr Vermögen hervorheben, den problematischen modernen Gegensatz von Subjekt und Objekt, Geist und Natur zu überwinden, der uns in diese missliche Lage gebracht hat. Wenn die Kunst hier aber weiterführen soll, dann muss sie über die klassischen ästhetischen Paradigmen des Schönen und des Erhabenen hinausführen. Das Schöne träumt von einer Passung von Subjekt und Natur, die im Anthropozän gerade in Frage steht, und das Erhabene verwendet die Übermacht der Natur als Vehikel, um eine Macht im intelligiblen Subjekt zu markieren, die von der natürlichen Übermacht unberührt bleibt. Diese klassischen Figuren ästhetischer Erfahrung verstellen so, wie tiefgreifend wir das Naturverhältnis neu bestimmen müssen, um auf das Anthropozän zu antworten.
Conspiracy theories are currently all the rage in philosophy and broader intellectual culture. One of the most common background assumptions in the discourse on conspiracy theories is that conspiracy theorists exhibit certain epistemic vices in the sense of cognitive misconduct. This epistemic vice is mostly seen as a form of irrationality; the corresponding "remedy", as suggested by some commentators, is a return to the ideals of the Enlightenment. This article argues that this idea is wrongheaded. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that conspiracy theorists are actually motivated by the rational Enlightenment ideal of self-thinking in the first place. In contrast to the standard discourse, the article posits that conspiracism is based on a certain form of social scepticism, according to which conspiracy theorists radically mistrust a certain form of expert testimony, namely "official" statements. This form of social scepticism in turn facilitates a naive appropriation of the Enlightenment ideal of self-thinking. The article closes by drawing connections to the ethical and epistemological debate on trust and offers the pessimistic assessment that there are no easy solutions based on individual epistemic virtues.
Gattungswesen
(2022)
In which sense can human beings be conceived as social animals? To elucidate this question, the present paper (I) distinguishes the logical sociality of all living beings from the material sociality of social animals and the political sociality of self-conscious social animals. (II) The self-conscious political sociality that characterises the human genus-being requires a complex interplay of first and second person through which alone we can participate in our form of life and determine its content. (III) The human form of life thus constituted is characterised by a particularly open, and at the same time precarious, membership which involves specific forms of vulnerability and power. (IV) Against this background, forms of objective spirit are necessary which grant us a generalized recognition and relieve us from the contingency of each particular second-personal recognition, without abandoning the openness of the sociality of the human form of life. This double requirement has led to paradoxical institutions in modern society which strive to protect and ensure the sociality of the human form of life precisely by naturalising and individualising our access to it.
Bezug nehmend auf Rainer E. Zimmermanns Buch "Metaphysik als Grundlegung von Naturdialektik. Zum Sagbaren und Unsagbaren im spekulativen Denken" wird der von Zimmermann entwickelte Ansatz eines transzendentalen Materialismus in der Traditionslinie Schellingscher Dialektik einerseits und dem Spin-Schaum-Ansatz der Quantengravitationstheorie andererseits erörtert. Die Rückführung von Wirklichkeitsstrukturen auf mathematische Strukturen - auf das Prozessieren von Zahlen - wird problematisiert.
Any conception in linguistics and linguistic philosophy that prioritizes the world-disclosing function over the world-representing function of language can be regarded as a kind of linguistic hermeneutics. The paper tries to specify this general thesis by picking up and analysing historical trends in the philosophy of language. It spells out the relationship between the situatedness of locutors in the medium of linguistic practices and the way in which they (through their speech acts) articulate this medium by actualizing possibilities for personal expressivity and interpersonal communication. It is argued that the starting point from the medium that always already transcends the particular speech acts offers an alternative to inferential semantics. From the perspective of linguistic hermeneutics, the world is disclosed and exposed to ongoing articulation in characteristic hermeneutic situations of language use. The concepts of linguistic medium and discursive articulation of the world are treated in terms of hermeneutic trans- subjectivity as enabling all forms of communicative intersubjectivity. If one ignores the fore-structuring role of the former, one would hypostatise the latter. With regard to this claim, the theory of formal pragmatics is critically discussed.
Der geistig-kulturelle Umgang mit der Covid-19-Pandemie und ihrer Wirtschaftskrise als Testfall
(2021)
Why has the global West (North America, Europe) handled the covid-19 pandemic and the corresponding economic crisis so much worse than the global East (East Asia)? The crises demonstrate the degree to which the West is shaped by its forms of competition and the East by its forms of cooperation. In the West, we have become habitualised to American neoliberalism over the last two generations. In the East, varieties of neo-Confucianism and neo-Buddhism have been transformed into national cultures. The way humans understand their position in the world intellectually and react to crises according to corresponding habit makes an effective difference. The present comparison between global East and West makes use of Hannah Arendt's conception of politics and the shared world as well as of Helmuth Plessner's conception of mediated immediacy in forms of modern biopower. The pandemic is a catalyst within the decline of the West and the rise of the East.
Einführung
(2020)
Galileis "Platonismus" als Reaktion auf das prinzipielle Manko der aristotelischen Bewegungslehre
(2020)
The aim of this paper is to discuss the relation between our experience in everyday life and ontological reflection. While many accounts in contemporary ontology still defend the idea that the world consists only of material objects, some new views on everyday metaphysics or social ontology which try to articulate the specific properties of the objects used and found in ordinary life have been established during the last years. In the critical ontology of Nicolai Hartmann, the social and cultural dimension of our life is situated in the sphere of spiritual being [Geistiges Sein]. By investigating the methodical relation of phenomenology and critical ontology as well as specific entities (objective spirit, cultural objects), it is established that Hartmann offers a wide and methodologically reflected view which could be able to satisfy the practical significance of these entities.
Naturalism is the current orthodoxy in analytic philosophy. Naturalism is the conjunction of the (ontological) claim that all that truly exists are the entities countenanced by the natural sciences and the (epistemological) claim that the only true knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge. Drawing on some recent work in Critical Theory, this article argues that naturalism qualifies as an ideology. This is the case because naturalism meets three key aspects shared by paradigmatic cases of ideology: (i) naturalism has practical consequences and implications of a specific kind, (ii) those endorsing naturalism fall prey to a dual deception: having false meta-level beliefs about naturalism as being without alternative, and (iii) naturalism has a tendency towards self-immunisation. The article ends by suggesting we pull naturalism out of our collective cognitive backgrounds onto the main stage of critical discourse, making it a proper topic for philosophical critique again.
Ausgehend von Andreas Arndt Buch "Die Reformation der Revolution. Friedrich Schleiermacher in seiner Zeit" wird die Bedeutung der von Schleiermacher konzipierten Dialektik für dessen praktisches Wirken erörtert. Mit der Dialektik stieß er eine Revolutionierung von Mathematik und Logik durch die Gebrüder Graßmann an. Mit seinem Engagement im Rahmen der Humboldtschen Bildungsreform hatte er einen wesentlichen Anteil an der inhaltlichen Neugestaltung der Elementar- und Volksschulbildung. Schleiermachers philosophischer Impuls griff dergestalt - in wohl historisch einmaliger Weise - von der Elementarschulbildung auf die Wissenschaft, insbesondere Mathematik, über.
Eine Gruppe, gar eine innerlich verbundene Gemeinschaft, können Intellektuelle im Normalfall nur bilden, soweit sie von gleichem Denken und Wollen bewegt werden […]. Wo dagegen die von den Intellektuellen vertretenen Ansichten weit divergieren, da kann es nur unter sehr kritischen Umständen geschehen, daß die verschieden gearteten (sozialen, politischen, rechtlichen, kulturellen, religiösen) Standpunkte und Anliegen – auf Zeit – sich zusammenfinden […]. Das polemische Element, das kritischen Intellektuellen ja wesensmäßig zu eigen ist, bringt am ehesten eine gemeinsame Front zwischen ihnen zustande.
Wird Metaphysik realistisch verstanden, so ist sie mit dem Anspruch verbunden, in objektiver Weise von der grundlegenden Beschaffenheit und Ordnung der Welt (oder Realität, Wirklichkeit etc.) zu handeln. Damit beansprucht sie die Möglichkeit von Objektivität, d. h. die Möglichkeit der Repräsentation der grundlegenden Beschaffenheit und Ordnung einer Welt, die von uns und unserer Repräsentation verschieden ist.
Realistisch verstandene Metaphysik verfährt dogmatisch, wenn sie ihre eigene Möglichkeit einfach voraussetzt. Eine dogmatische Metaphysik ist unkritisch, weil sie ohne eine Untersuchung der Frage betrieben wird, wie eine objektive und adäquate Repräsentation der grundlegenden Beschaffenheit und Ordnung der Welt überhaupt möglich ist. Im Unterschied dazu nennen wir eine realistische Metaphysik in einem vorläufigen Sinne kritisch, sofern sie ihren Ausgang von einer Untersuchung dieser Möglichkeit nimmt und erst auf der Grundlage positiver Ergebnisse dieser Untersuchung einen – vor diesem Hintergrund nunmehr gerechtfertigten – Objektivitätsanspruch erhebt.
Der vorliegende Beitrag erörtert das Verhältnis einer Philo-sophie der Person zur Religionsphilosophie bzw. einer Philosophie religiöser Phänomene. Dabei soll die These vertreten werden, dass der personale Lebenszusammenhang bestimmte Phänomene aufweist, die nur in einem religiösen Kontext adäquat verstanden werden können. Die Interpretation dieser Phänomene kann einen Zugang zu bestimmten Aspekten von Personalität ermöglichen, die von den meisten Persontheorien der Gegenwart kaum beachtet werden.
The aim of this paper is to discuss Nicolai Hartmann’s conception of personhood as developed in his philosophy of spiritual being. Many contemporary accounts of personhood are systematically focused on rational phenomena as self-consciousness or practical reasoning, which are understood as ‘conditions of personhood’. Apart from having some technical problems, those accounts limit our self-under-standing as persons on distinct rational properties and often fail to consider the sociocultural aspects of the personal situation. Nicolai Hartmann — although respecting the role of reason — understands personhood particularly as participation in a shared spiritual sphere called Objektiver Geist (objective spirit), which includes various intersubjective phenomena as languages, religion, moral, arts, and the
sciences. Being part of this sphere seems to be more fundamental than having distinct rational properties, which requests a spiritual frame to be exerted. Further it is shown that Hartmann’s ontology of person also includes a notion of being affected by the existential weight of situations and other person’s actions — an idea often maintained by phenomenological positions. By regarding rational, intersubjective and affective aspects, Hartmann’s philosophy of person succeeds in offering a broad articulation of our self-understanding and may also be seen as providing a background to understand certain phenomena that are part of the personal situation.
Moskauer Passagen
(2019)
Who Can We Laugh At?
(2018)
Make English Sweet Again!
(2018)
Fatale Orthodoxie
(2018)
Our reply to Fabian Freyenhagen’s article “Was ist orthodoxe Kritische Theorie?” (DZPhil 65.3 [2017], 456-469) raises the question whether his proposal that Critical Theory only “be adequately and appropriately critical” without a program of justification spares the search for any general criteria. Answering negatively we conversely want to recall, particularly with regard to Horkheimers’s and Adornos’s Dialectic of Enlightment as well as Habermas‘s concept of an emancipatory interest, that such a criterion as a normative foundation of critique is crucial not only for systematical purposes, but also recognised as necessary in this respect by Adorno, who Freyenhagen wants to play off against programs of justification. Critical Theory needs to be clear in this respect. Against this background we are questioning Freyenhagen‘s recourse to an “interest in abolishing social injustice” as the “only criterion for Critical Theory.” Because Freyenhagen ignores the fact that Critical Theory has been understood by its representatives in a twofold manner – as a theoretical program of justification for one and secondly as a cultural diagnosis – his plea for an orthodox Critical Theory is endangered by decisionism.
Martin Heideggers Hölderlin-Lesungen – im Zeichen von Norbert von Hellingrath and Stefan George
(2017)
Martin Heidegger hat Anfang der 1960er Jahre 10 Gedichte Hölderlins für eine Sprechschallplatte des Günther Neske-Verlags in Pfullingen eingesprochen. Die insgesamt rund 50 Minuten dauernde Langspiel-Schallplatte wurde seit 1964 gewerblich vertrieben. Was hat einen Philosophen dazu bewogen, hinter dem Dichter zurückzutreten, um nur noch dessen Sprachrohr zu sein? Heidegger knüpfte mit seinem Hölderlin-Verständnis an Norbert von Hellingraths Auffassung vom Dichterpropheten und der Dichtung als heiligem Wort an. Seine rhythmischen Rezitationen in monoton psalmodierendem Stil leiten sich vortragsgeschichtlich von Hellingrath und der George-Schule her.
Most of the longer worldly fictional Middle High German first-person narrations are allegorical. The article discusses the reasons for this interdependence between allegory and the first-person narrative form, which is observable not only in Middle High German literature, but also in texts belonging to other European vernacular literatures of the time. In my article I develop two main thesis: The first is that the use of allegoric forms marks on the one hand a highbrow literary level and serves as a stylistic ornament of texts, which tend to present themselves mainly as author-speech. This is also the reason why in these texts the ›I‹ is often not only a narrating ›I‹, but also takes over the role of an author on the narrative level of the histoire. The other reason for this interdependence is that among all kinds of narrators, only the first-person narrator is able to cross the border between the extradiegetic and the diegetic world, in which personifications like Frau Minne, Frau Triuwe, or Frau Âventiure have the knowledge about Minne, Triuwe, and Âventiure and wait for the first-person narrator to approach and to be taught. Only he can experience the encounter with the personifications and their instruction himself and only he can pass this knowledge to the recipients as an experience he made himself.
«Dilettanten des Lebens»
(2017)
Critical Anthropology? To the Relationship between Philosophical Anthropology and Critical Theory
(2016)
This article compares Max Horkheimer’s and Theodor W. Adorno’s foundation of the Frankfurt Critical Theory with Helmuth Plessner’s foundation of Philosophical Anthropology. While Horkheimer’s and Plessner’s paradigms are mutually incompatible, Adorno’s „negative dialectics“ and Plessner’s „negative anthropology“ (G. Gamm) can be seen as complementing one another. Jürgen Habermas at one point sketched a complementary relationship between his own publicly communicative theory of modern society and Plessner’s philosophy of nature and human expressivity, and though he then came to doubt this, he later reaffirmed it. Faced with the „life power“ in „high capitalism“ (Plessner), the ambitions for a public democracy in a pluralistic society have to be broadened from an argumentative focus (Habermas) to include the human condition and the expressive modes of our experience as essentially embodied persons. The article discusses some possible aspects of this complementarity under the title of a „critical anthropology“ (H. Schnädelbach).
In Quest of Subjectivity
(2009)
Lebenswissen nach Cavell
(2009)
Wiederholte Wiederholung
(2009)
„wie man die Gabe aplicirt“
(2008)
In seiner sechsstufigen Epochengliederung der Wissenschaftsgeschichte sieht Alexander von Humboldt nur wenige Lichter, welche die abendländische Dunkelheit der Zeit zwischen der wissenschaftlichen Blüte im arabischen Raum und den Entdeckungsfahrten des Columbus durchbrechen. Als den wichtigsten dieser wenigen Wegbereiter hebt der Freiherr den Franziskanermönch Roger Bacon hervor, der sich in fast allen Disziplinen hervorgetan und für die Einheit der Wissenschaften eingesetzt habe. Nicht nur im Kosmos, sondern auch bereits in den populären Vorträgen in der Singakademie und den Kritischen Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Geographie der Neuen Welt würdigt Humboldt den Engländer durch ausführliche Auseinandersetzungen mit dessen Opus maius.
Alexander von Humboldt has been labelled a “scientific cosmopolitan”. Through his vast correspondence and a network of personal contacts, he upheld a form of scientific exchange that was characteristic of the eighteenth-century “republic of letters”. This article examines how Humboldt adapted this cosmopolitan tradition of communication to a nineteenth century scientific culture that was largely institutionalized and was becoming increasingly nationalized. Humboldt quite successfully fostered scientific exchange between Berlin and Paris after 1830 and, on various occasions between the 1830s and 1850s, readily advocated international large-scale projects. These examples demonstrate that Humboldt observed the development of nationally defined scientific cultures and the opening of the sciences towards the public realm. Moreover, they indicate how he was able to make use of these developments as he promoted the sciences in Prussia. In scientific controversies within the Parisian scientific community, Humboldt was involuntarily assigned the role of a “neutral” foreign arbitrator. Thus, the development of nineteenth century sciences also jeopardized Humboldt’s unique position as an independent “homme des lettres”.