Subject collection: Philosophy (254 titles, 1969–2015)

Mit dem vorliegenden Buch setzen wir unsere Studie zur Genese der heutigen Epochen-Systematik fort. Aufgrund der ebenso vielfältigen wie profunden Transformationen, die während des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts stattfanden, konzentriert es sich, die Analyse der jüngeren Entwicklungen für den dritten Band reservierend, ganz auf diesen Zeitraum.

Unter Fokussierung auf die führenden europäischen Volkssprachen (Englisch, Französisch, Deutsch, Italienisch, Spanisch, Portugiesisch) thematisieren wir jeweils zum einen die für die Anfänge bzw. Ausgestaltungen des konzeptionellen Wandels relevanten Literaten, zum anderen seine durch die ungemein reichhaltige Lexikographie dokumentierte Verbreitung. Detailliert berücksichtigt wird hierbei auch die signifikante, schon recht früh einsetzende Globalisierungstendenz, die sich in der kräftigen Resonanz des ursprünglich rein europäischen Konzepts in der autochthonen literarischen wie lexikographischen Produktion des anglo-, hispano- und lusophonen Amerika manifestierte.

Der Adressatenkreis des Buches umfaßt Lehrende und Studierende der Geschichtswissenschaft im allgemeinen, der Historie zahlreicher weiterer Disziplinen wie etwa Geschichte der Philosophie, der Künste, des Rechts oder der Geologie, ferner der klassischen Philologie und ihrer modernen Pendants wie Anglistik, Romanistik oder Germanistik sowie, nicht zuletzt, der Lexikographie.

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The volume at hand is a continuation of our studies on the genesis of today’s system of epochs. Owing to the equally profound and multifarious transformations taking place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it focuses exclusively on this period, with an analysis of the most recent developments to follow in a third volume.

In concentrating on the preeminent European vernaculars (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese), we will lay special emphasis, for one, on the authors who were most influential concerning the beginnings and specific contents of conceptual changes. On the other hand, we will focus on the exceptional abundance of lexicographical sources to show how and when these transformations spread. Furthermore, the significant tendency to globalization, which can already be seen fairly early on, is given ample recognition in this context. Indeed, the autochthonous literary and lexicographical productions of Anglophone, Hispanophone and Lusophone America are manifestations of the vivid reverberations of a concept that was originally purely European.

This publication addresses teachers and students of historical scholarship in general as well as of the subject-specific history of various disciplines such as history of philosophy, law or geology, art history, classical philology and their modern counterparts such as English, Romance or German Studies, and, last but not least, the history of lexicography.

Realism and Individualism. Charles S. Peirce and the Threat of Modern Nominalism discusses the main problems, tenets, assumptions, and arguments involved in Charles S. Peirce's early and late realist stances and subjects to critical scrutiny the still dominant view that Pragmatic Realism merely extends or refines new arguments in support of Scholastic Realism without questioning its basic assumptions. The book presents a critical overview of Peirce’s views on modern nominalism and offers a novel approach to the social-anthropological underpinnings of his realism, especially Pragmatic Realism vis à vis the individualist tendencies in modern thought.

The book is of interest to scholars and students of philosophy, especially students of American pragmatism, anthropology, linguistic pragmatics, as well as to anyone interested in Charles S. Peirce, Duns Scotus, Ockham, and generally to semioticians, social scientists, and sociologists.

True Emotions discusses several key problems in emotion research. The question about the true nature of emotions focuses on the role of cognition in human emotions at different levels of analysis: functional role, types of processes and representations, and neural implementation. Truth to the self, or authenticity, has two meanings, psychological and normative, where the latter is analyzed as coherence between the evaluative content of an emotion and the subject’s internally justified beliefs and values. Truth to the world is argued to be a matter of correct evaluative representation of the emotional object on the one hand, and the existence of the object, or the actuality or accurate probability of the represented situation on the other hand. Finally, authenticity and truth are applied to analyses of the authenticity of occupational emotions and the constitution of sentimental values, respectively. Recommended reading for philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and gender researchers.

In this volume on political argumentation, the study of argument takes place within a rhetorical framework. As such, it is a contribution to the study of argumentation-in-context with an explicit rhetorical approach. Rather than focusing on the poor quality of political participation and political understanding by citizens, this volume explores how the study of rhetoric, both as an academic discipline and as a political practice, stands in a unique position to critically engage with a ‘contextualized’ understanding of politics and civic engagement. Many contributions in this volume confront classical rhetorical concepts and theories with current political developments such as globalization and multiculturalism and the emergence of new democracies. Others focus explicitly on deliberative rhetoric in the political realm, or undertake a critical analysis of political texts and public events in order to explore what this can imply for the development of a ‘critical’ citizenship.

Alignment in Communication is a novel direction in communication research, which focuses on interactive adaptation processes assumed to be more or less automatic in humans. It offers an alternative to established theories of human communication and also has important implications for human-machine interaction. A collection of articles by international researchers in linguistics, psychology, artificial intelligence, and social robotics, this book provides evidence on why such alignment occurs and the role it plays in communication. Complemented by a discussion of methodologies and explanatory frameworks from dialogue theory, it presents cornerstones of an emerging new theory of communication. The ultimate purpose is to extend our knowledge about human communication, as well as creating a foundation for natural multimodal dialogue in human-machine interaction. Its cross-disciplinary nature makes the book a useful reference for cognitive scientists, linguists, psychologists, and language philosophers, as well as engineers developing conversational agents and social robots.

Spanning from care-giving infants and civilian rescuers risking their life to the collapse of empathy in agents of torture and extinction, this unique book deals with and illustrates the altruistic best and atrocious worst of human nature. It begins with infant roots of empathy, then turns to the neurosocial support of empathic participation, and to the nature and nurture of good and ill. It raises questions about how abuse may invite vicious circles of re-enactment, and as to how ordinary people may come to commit torture and mass murders, such as the Auschwitz doctors and the sole terrorist attacking Norway on July 22, 2011.

Die Arbeit versucht über drei, eigens gekennzeichnete und für Wilhelm Ockham (1285–1347) ausgewiesene Beweisarten (Induktion, Überredungsbeweis, Widerlegungsbeweis), die in einer Fülle von Beispielen dokumentiert werden, die Begründung seiner z. T. berüchtigten oder unverstandenen Thesen in ihrer Gesamtheit darzulegen. Sie zeigt, dass alle bekannten Stichworte und Schlüsselwörter bzw. Maximen wie notitia intuitiva, Omnipotenzprinzip, Ökonomieprinzip, daneben technische Begriffe wie consequentia, ratio, Kontradiktion, suppositio und ontologische, darunter forma, substantia, accidens, species, qualitas, quantitas, materia, mit diesen Argumentationsweisen in Zusammenhang stehen, genauer: von ihnen abhängen. Es ergibt sich, dass Ockham jeweils sehr spezielle und inhaltlich äußerst begrenzte Beweisziele verfolgt, deren Gesamtgeflecht in einer großen Struktur besteht, für die ein normaler logischer Beweismodus nicht mehr gelten kann. Die reale Geltung von Sätzen und Begriffen ist für Ockham unbestritten, doch bestreitet er, dass eine solche Annahme aus dem Verhältnis der Begriffe und danach der Aussagen abgeleitet werden könne. Er widerlegt die scholastischen Thesen, die das besagten.

There are three kinds of demonstration (induction, persuasion, and disproof) to be found in the writings of William Ockham (1285-1347) which are the base of his theses (opiniones) so often attacked or misunderstood in ancient and modern times. Famous key words such as intuitive cognition, the principles of omnipotence and economy, side by side with technical terms as consequentia, ratio, contradictio, suppositio, and ontological ones like forma, substantia, accidens, species, qualitas, quantitas, materia, and equally Ockham’s counter-arguments against Aristotelian and scholastic maxims essentially depend on these types of ratiocination. Ockham’s many proofs are especially ingenious and they generally have wide and unexpected consequences for reasoning. But the common pattern of deduction has been abandoned. While he acknowledges the validity of propositions and notions in the physical world Ockham denies that it can be proved as a statement for its own. Sometimes he even refutes it as a corollary of philosophical misconceptions.

One of the most important theoretical and empirical issues in the scholarly study of emotion is whether there is a correct list of “basic” types of affect or whether all affective states are better modeled as a combination of locations on shared underlying dimensions. Many thinkers have written on this topic, yet the views of two scientists in particular are dominant. The first is Jaak Panksepp, the father of Affective Neuroscience. Panksepp conceptualizes affect as a set of distinct categories. The leading proponent of the dimensional approach in scientific psychology is James Russell. According to Russell all affect can be decomposed into two underlying dimensions, pleasure versus displeasure and low arousal versus high arousal.

In this volume Panksepp and Russell each articulate their positions on eleven fundamental questions about the nature of affect followed by a discussion of these target papers by noted emotion theorists and researchers. Russell and Panksepp respond both to each other and to the commentators. The discussion leads to some stark contrasts, with formidable arguments on both sides, and some interesting convergences between the two streams of work.

In Exploring Argumentative Contexts Frans H. van Eemeren and Bart Garssen bring together a broad variety of essays examining argumentation as it occurs in seven communicative domains: the political context, the historical context, the legal context, the academic context, the medical context, the media context, and the financial context. These essays are written by an international group of argumentation scholars, consisting of Corina Andone, Sarah Bigi, Robert T. Craig, Justin Eckstein, Frans H. van Eemeren, Norman Fairclough, Eveline Feteris, Gerd Fritz, Bart Garssen, Kara Gilbert, Thomas Gloning, G. Thomas Goodnight, Dale A. Herbeck, Darrin Hicks, Thomas Hollihan, Jos Hornikx, Isabela Ieţcu-Fairclough, Gábor Kutrovátz, Maurizio Manzin, Davide Mazzi, Dima Mohammed, Rudi Palmieri, Angela G. Ray, Patricia Riley, Robert C. Rowland, Peter Schulz, Karen Tracy, and Gergana Zlatkova.

The notion of controversy space is the key element of the new model of scientific and philosophical change introduced in this book. Devised as an alternative to classical models, the model of Controversy Spaces is a heuristic tool for the reconstruction of processes of conceptual change in the history of science and philosophy. The first chapter of this volume outlines in its initial section the historical trajectory of the dialectical, adversarial approach to the progress of knowledge, from its ancient flourishing and its almost complete oblivion in modernity up to its contemporary revival. Then the main features that characterize the structure and dynamics of controversy spaces are identified and examined. In the rest of the book the reader will find a detailed, fascinating series of case studies that apply the CS model in a variety of scientific areas, ranging from physics to linguistics, as well as the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of historiography.

This expanded second edition carries forward the initial insights into the biological and existential significances of animation by taking contemporary research findings in cognitive science and philosophy and in neuroscience into critical and constructive account. It first takes affectivity as its focal point, elucidating it within both an enactive and qualitative affective-kinetic dynamic. It follows through with a thoroughgoing interdisciplinary inquiry into movement from three perspectives: mind, brain, and the conceptually reciprocal realities of receptivity and responsivity as set forth in phenomenology and evolutionary biology, respectively. It ends with a substantive afterword on kinesthesia, pointing up the incontrovertible significance of the faculty to cognition and affectivity. Series A

Keeping in touch with Pragma-Dialectics is written to honor Frans van Eemeren and his work in the field of argumentation theory on the occasion of his retirement. The volume contains 17 contributions from teams of authors consisting of a combination of a pragma-dialectician and one or two researchers with a different background in the field of argumentation. In this volume, comparisons between the pragma-dialectical approach and other approaches are made, aspects of strategic maneuvering such as the use of presentational techniques, adaptation to the audience and the selection of topics are dealt with and the influence of specific institutional contexts such as politics, medicine and internet forums on strategic maneuvering are discussed.

Geistesgeschichtlich ist die große Vergangenheit des lateinischen Aristotelismus immer noch unbewältigt. Die vorliegende Teiledition eines Cursus philosophicus von 1653/55 [Ms. BU Salamanca 1351-52] dokumentiert den regen Schulbetrieb zu Lockes Zeit. Etwas ‚metaphysische‘ zu betrachten, das hieß im Suarezismus, es gerade unter Bezug auf unser Denken zu betrachten: quoad nostros conceptus (Arriaga). In diesem erkenntnistheoretischen Sinn ‚metaphysische‘ Abhandlungen sind hier zusammengestellt. Hauptfrage: Hat das Urteil schon diesseits des Wahrheitsbezugs einen eigenen Gegenstandsbezug? Die Psychologie des Urteils erscheint systematisch verknüpft mit der Ontologie des Irrealen (ens rationis ratiocinantis). Der Autor González de Santalla, sonst immer nur der Märtyrer der Gesinnungsethik, wird als Scholastiker vorgestellt. Die intellektuelle Biographie dieses Jesuiten konzentriert sich auf seine philosophiepolitische Aktivität: Ab 1687 war er der Chef jenes globalen Bildungskonzerns, der damals über sechshundert Schulen und Hochschulen unterhielt. Hundert Jahre später war diese Institution, die Societas Jesu, vom Erdboden verschwunden.

Interessenten: Philosophen, Mediävisten, Romanisten, Theologen, Kulturhistoriker

In order to trace Psychologism, particularly the 18th-century‚ perception theory of judgment‘ (G. Nuchelmans), a case is made for a fair appreciation of the Aristotelian school philosophy during Locke’s life time. From a hitherto unknown Jesuit Cursus Philosophicus of 1653/55, a substantial portion of its disputations on Logic, Psychology and Metaphysics is edited. A remarkable refutation of Suárez’s classical account of the beings of reason reveals the systematic connection between any theory of judgment and the ideas on how to make sense of the chimaeras. This time, González de Santalla, otherwise famous for his firm stand against ethical Probabilism, is presented as an epistemologist. His intellectual biography focuses on the schoolman and on a future Jesuit General‘s (1687-1703) educational policy, who tried to keep the standards of school philosophy.

Readers: Scholars interested in mediaeval and modern philosophy, in the history of higher education, and hispanists.

Dies ist der erste Teil einer zweibändigen Studie zur Genese unseres heutigen, vom Anspruch her den chronologischen Verlauf der gesamten Menschheitsgeschichte strukturierenden „Epochen“-Systems.

Der Band skizziert zunächst die geistesgeschichtlichen Prämissen. Von der rudimentären paläolithischen Zeiteinteilung führt er über die ältesten schriftlich dokumentierten Ordnungsversuche in den sumerischen bzw. ägyptischen „Königlisten“, griechische und römische Autoren, Petrarca, Bruni und Vasari bis zu Cellarius, der am Ende des 17. Jahrhunderts die Drei-Zeitalter-Distinktion „Antike-Mittelalter-Neuzeit“ zum zentralen chronologischen Gliederungsprinzip der Weltgeschichte erhob. Anschließend stehen die drei klassischen, von Pyrrhon, Polybios bzw. Ptolemaios entwickelten „Epoché“-Konzepte sowie deren Auftauchen und Rezeption im lateinischen Europa im Fokus. Sodann wird die erstaunlich spät, nämlich erst nach Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts einsetzende Transformation der „Epoché“ zur fundamentalen historiographischen Ordnungskategorie thematisiert. Schließlich verfolgen wir anhand zahlreicher Autoren sowie der kontemporären Lexikographie ihren auf Latein wie in den relevanten europäischen „Volkssprachen“ (Englisch, Französisch, Deutsch, Spanisch, Portugiesisch, Italienisch) stattfindenden Divulgationsprozeß. Dabei erweist sich der Ausgang des 17. Jahrhunderts erneut als Wasserscheide.

Der erste Band endet deshalb an dieser Stelle, ein zweite (BSP 56, 2015) analysiert die weitere Entwicklung von 1700 bis 1900.



This is the first part of a two-volume study of the genesis of our modern-day system of epochs, which claims to structure the chronology of the entire history of mankind. The volume sets out by sketching the intellectual premises. It leads from the rudimentary Palaeolithic division of time via the oldest attempts at structuring to have been documented in written form, through to the Sumerian and Egyptian “King Lists”, to Greek and Roman authors, to Petrarch, Bruni, and Vasari, and finally to Cellarius, who in the late 17th century introduced the distinction between the three epochs of “Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Modern Era” as the basic chronological principle of organising the history of the world. This is followed by a closer look at the three classical concepts of “Epoché” as defined by Pyrrhon, Polybios and Ptolemaios, respectively, as well as their surfacing and reception in Latin Europe. Not until the second half of the 16th century, which is an astonishingly late point in time, can the transformation of “Epoché” into a fundamental category of historiographic structuring be detected. Finally, by studying numerous writers as well as the contemporary lexicography, we will outline the process of divulgation that took place both in Latin as well as in the relevant European “vernaculars” (English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian). In the process, the late 17th century again proves to be a kind of divide.

As a consequence, volume one ends here; a second volume (BSP 56, 2015) analyses the development up to 1900.

This book provides a thoroughly worked out and systematic presentation of an interpretivist position in the philosophy of mind, of the view that having mental properties is a matter of interpretation. Bruno Mölder elaborates and defends a particular version of interpretivism, the ascription theory, which explicates the possession of mental states with contents in terms of their canonical ascribability, and shows how it can withstand various philosophical challenges. Apart from a defence of the ascription theory from the objections commonly directed against interpretivism, the book provides a critical analysis of major alternative accounts of mental state possession as well as the interpretivist ideas originating from Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett. The viability of the approach is demonstrated by showing how one can treat mental causation as well as the faculties closely connected with consciousness – perception and the awareness of one’s own mental states – in the interpretivist framework. (Series A)

What will it be like to admit Artificial Companions into our society? How will they change our relations with each other? How important will they be in the emotional and practical lives of their owners – since we know that people became emotionally dependent even on simple devices like the Tamagotchi? How much social life might they have in contacting each other? The contributors to this book discuss the possibility and desirability of some form of long-term computer Companions now being a certainty in the coming years. It is a good moment to consider, from a set of wide interdisciplinary perspectives, both how we shall construct them technically as well as their personal philosophical and social consequences. By Companions we mean conversationalists or confidants – not robots – but rather computer software agents whose function will be to get to know their owners over a long period. Those may well be elderly or lonely, and the contributions in the book focus not only on assistance via the internet (contacts, travel, doctors etc.) but also on providing company and Companionship, by offering aspects of real personalization.

Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) sieht es als Problem an, dass nach dem traditionellen Modell der Kunstproduktion der Gedanke immer nur als Vorkonzeption und damit auf sehr vermittelte Weise in das Kunstwerk eingeht. Entsprechend wäre auch die Analyse von geistigen Hervorbringungen immer ein Prozess, bei dem die Gedanken als etwas hinter dem Gesagten Liegendes rekonstruiert werden müssten. Suárez verwirft dieses auf Nachahmung beruhende Modell und verwendet die Unterscheidung zwischen dem Denkakt – verstanden als "Blick des Geistes" – und dem gedachten Inhalt, um ein ganz neues Modell zu entwickeln. Für ihn ist es die Aufmerksamkeit des Malers, die den Pinsel führt und die so dafür sorgt, dass eine anfangs noch leere formale Repräsentation sich anfüllt.

Während die Innovation von Suárez zunächst keinen Widerhall findet, könnte sie ein Fundament sein für viel spätere Weisen, die Kunst aufzufassen, z. B. für die formalistische Schule der Kunstgeschichte oder für einen Künstler wie Paul Klee, der sagt: "Kunst gibt nicht das Sichtbare wieder, sondern macht sichtbar."

Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) considers it to be problematic that, according to the traditional model of art production, thought only enters a piece of art obliquely, as preconception. Consequently, any analysis of mental creations would have to be a process whereby thoughts are reconstructed as something that lies behind that which is being said. Suárez rejects this imitation-based model and uses the distinction between act of thought – considered as "focus of the mind" – and the cognized content to develop a completely new model. For him, it is the artist's attention which guides the brush and which thus causes the initially empty representation to be filled.

While Suárez's innovation hardly received any immediate reaction, it can be considered as a foundation for later approaches to art, e.g. for the formalistic school of art history or for an artist like Paul Klee, who says: "Art does not reproduce what is visible, but rather produces visibility".

The relationship of emotions, ethics, and authenticity constitutes a nexus of philosophical and psychological problems with wide interdisciplinary relevance. What is the proper role of emotions in moral behavior and theory; are emotions reliable guides to our authentic personal values; and finally; what does it mean to be authentic in one's emotions, assuming that there is such thing as emotional authenticity in the first place? The various contributions of this book seek to answer these vexing but rarely discussed questions, offering a broad intellectual tour that ranges from philosophy to psychology, sociology, and gender studies.

Against the background of jargon-ridden and often obscure semiotic literature Sadowski’s book offers a reader-friendly yet rigorous account of human communication and its evolution from animal and primate behaviour. What is specifically human about the way we exchange information with other people, and to what extent are our facial expressions, body language, and even emotive elements of speech still indebted to our pre-human ancestors? Why can the chimpanzees, smart as they are, not interpret animal tracks in the ground; why did religions often ban representational art; why is photography perceptually more powerful than painting; how have human syntactic speech and combinatorial grammar enabled the “explosion” of culture; and why do otherwise rational humans often strongly believe in the objective existence of unempirical, virtual entities such as religious and philosophic concepts? These and many other fascinating questions are addressed in the book within the methodological framework of systems theory and evolutionary psychology.

Examining Argumentation in Context: Fifteen studies on strategic maneuvering contains a selection of papers on strategic maneuvering in argumentative discourse. Starting point of all of these contributions is that a satisfactory analysis and evaluation of strategic maneuvering is possible only if the argumentative discourse is first situated in the communicative and interactional context in which it occurs. While some of the contributions present general views with regard to strategic maneuvering, other contributions report on the results of empirical studies, examine strategic maneuvering in a particular legal or political context, or highlight the presentational design of strategic maneuvering. Examining Argumentation in Context therefore provides an insightful view of recent developments in the research on strategic maneuvering, which is currently prominent in the study of argumentation.

Panpsychism is the view that all things, living and nonliving, possess some mind like quality. It stands in sharp contrast to the traditional notion of mind as the property of humans and (perhaps) a few select ‘higher animals’. Though surprising at first glance, panpsychism has a long and noble history in both Western and Eastern thought. Overlooked by analytical, materialist philosophy for most of the 20^th century, it is now experiencing a renaissance of sorts in several areas of inquiry. A number of recent books – including Skrbina’s Panpsychism in the West (2005) and Strawson et al’s Consciousness and its Place in Nature (2006) – have established panpsychism as respectable and viable. Mind That Abides builds on these works. It takes panpsychism to be a plausible theory of mind and then moves forward to work out the philosophical, psychological and ethical implications. With 17 contributors from a variety of fields, this book promises to mark a wholesale change in our philosophical outlook. (Series A)

Iconicity and naturalness remain controversial concepts in recent linguistic research. The present volume aims to scrutinize unresolved issues of iconicity and naturalness in language. The studies discuss topics such as naturalism in the philosophy of language and the epistemology of linguistics, linguistic iconicity in semiotics, iconic structures in Sign Languages, natural and unnatural sound patterns, the iconic nature of parts of speech, the relation between (un)markedness and naturalness, and lexical and syntactic iconicity. The research conducted is based on sound (meta)theoretical analyses and/or original empirical research. The data and innovative views presented are bound to spark discussion in an age-old debate that has lost nothing of its significance.

Iconicity has become a popular notion in contemporary linguistic research. This book is the first to present a synthesis of the vast amount of scholarship on linguistic iconicity which has been produced in the previous decades, ranging from iconicity in phonology and morpho-syntax to the role of iconicity in language change. An extensive analysis is provided of some basic but nonetheless fundamental questions relating to iconicity in language, including: what is a linguistic sign and how are linguistic signs different from signs in general? What is an iconic sign and how may iconicity be involved in language? How does iconicity pertain to the relation between language and cognition? This book offers a new and comprehensive theoretical framework for iconicity in language. It is argued that the linguistic sign is fundamentally arbitrary, but that iconicity may be involved on a secondary level, adding extra meaning to an utterance.

There is a large amount of scientific work on emotion in psychology, neuroscience, biology, physiology, and psychiatry, which assumes that it is possible to study emotions and other affective states, objectively. Emotion science of this sort is concerned primarily with 'facts' and not 'values', with 'description' not 'prescription'. The assumption behind this vision of emotion science is that it is possible to distinguish factual from evaluative aspects of affectivity and emotion, and study one without the other. But what really is the basis for distinguishing fact and value in emotion and affectivity? And can the distinction withstand careful scientific and philosophical scrutiny? The essays in this collection all suggest that the problems behind this vision of emotion science may be more complex than is commonly supposed.

Recently, there has been an upsurge of interest in the work Periphyseon of the early medieval philosopher John Scot Eriugena. Previous research has classified the book either as a piece of Neoplatonic philosophy or as part of the Latin dialectic tradition, which has led to one-sided interpretations. The present publication focuses instead on the philosophical claims defended in the Periphyseon itself, examines its originality and discusses the soundness of its argumentation. As a result, a hitherto unnoticed basic thought of the work has been uncovered, namely the concept of a negative ontology, according to which all substance is completely incomprehensible. This notion constitutes the greatest innovation of Eriugena’s thought. In keeping with his negative ontology, Eriugena downgrades the fourfold division of nature that he had presented at the beginning of his work. A critical survey of the current readings of Eriugena as a Neoplatonist and idealist completes this book.

In jüngerer Zeit rückt das Werk Periphyseon des frühmittelalterlichen Denkers Johannes Scottus Eriugena zunehmend in den Fokus der philosophischen Forschung. Die bisherigen Untersuchungen ordnen das Werk entweder der neuplatonischen Denkrichtung oder der lateinischen Dialektiktradition zu, und richten dementsprechend ihre Interpretation daran aus. Die vorliegende Veröffentlichung hingegen betrachtet vorrangig die Darstellung und Argumentation im Periphyseon selbst, prüft detailliert den Innovationsgehalt und die Überzeugungskraft der Aussagen. Als Ergebnis zeigt sich ein bislang ungesehener Grundgedanke des Werks, der einer negativen Ontologie. Diese Ontologie verneint jegliche Bestimmbarkeit aller Substanz. Sie macht die eigentliche Innovation in Eriugenas Denken aus. Im Hinblick auf diese löst er die zu Anfang des Werks präsentierte Vierteilung der Gesamtnatur wieder auf. Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit der bisherigen Einordnung Eriugenas als Neuplatoniker und Idealist rundet das Buch ab.

Because of the need to devise systems for electronic communication on the internet, multi-agent computing is moving to a model of communication as a structured conversation between rational agents. For example, in multi-agent systems, an electronic agent searches around the internet, and collects certain kinds of information by asking questions to other agents. Such agents also reason with each other when they engage in negotiation and persuasion. It is shown in this book that critical argumentation is best represented in this framework by the model of reasoned argument called a dialog, in which two or more parties engage in a polite and orderly exchange with each other according to rules governed by conversation policies. In such dialog argumentation, the two parties reason together by taking turns asking questions, offering replies, and offering reasons to support a claim. They try to settle their disagreements by an orderly conversational exchange that is partly adversarial and partly collaborative.

This volume shows that the notions of embodied or situated cognition, which have transformed the scientific study of intelligence have the potential to reorient cultural studies as well. The essays adapt and amplify embodied cognition in such different fields as art history, literature, history of science, religious studies, philosophy, biology, and cognitive science. The topics include the biological genesis of teleology, the dependence of meaning in signs upon biological embodiment, the notion of image schema and the concept of force in cognitive semantics, pictorial self-portraiture as a means to study self-perception, the difference between reading aloud and silent reading as a way to make sense of literary texts, intermodal (kinesthetic) understanding of art, psychosomatic medicine, laughter as a medical and ethical phenomenon, the valuation of laughter and the body in religion, and how embodied cognition revives and extends earlier attempts to develop a philosophical anthropology. (Series A)

This volume – the first-ever collection of research on healthcare interpreting – centers on three interrelated themes: cross-cultural communication in healthcare settings, the interactional role of persons serving as interpreters and the discourse patterns of interpreter-mediated interaction. The individual chapters, by seven innovative researchers in the area of community-based interpreting, represent a pioneering attempt to look beyond stereotypical perceptions of interpreter-mediated interactions. First published as a Special Issue of Interpreting 7:2 (2005), this volume offers insights into the impact of the interpreter – whether s/he is a trained professional or a member of the patient's family – including ways in which s/he may either facilitate or impair reliable communication between patient and healthcare provider. The five articles cover a range of settings and specialties, from general medicine to pediatrics, psychiatry and speech therapy, using languages as diverse as Arabic, Dari, Farsi, Italian and Spanish in combination with Danish, Dutch, English and French.

The thesis of this book is that neither laughter nor humor can be understood apart from the feeling that underlies them. This feeling is a mental state in which people exclude some situation from their knowledge of how the world really is, thereby inhibiting seriousness where seriousness would be counterproductive. Laughter is viewed as an expression of this feeling, and humor as a set of devices designed to trigger it because it is so pleasant and distracting. Beginning with phonetic analyses of laughter, the book examines ways in which the feeling behind the laughter is elicited by both humorous and nonhumorous situations. It discusses properties of this feeling that justify its inclusion in the repertoire of human emotions. Against this background it illustrates the creation of humor in several folklore genres and across several cultures. Finally, it reconciles this understanding with various already familiar ways of explaining humor and laughter.

Par le biais d’une méthode philologique, historique, et philosophique, ce livre établit l’absence de lien direct entre Maître Eckhart et Jacob Böhme. En réalité, le concept de la “philosophie mystique allemande”, commençant soit disant avec Eckhart et finissant avec Böhme, a son origine dans la philosophie romantique du 19ème siècle et est toujours en usage aujourd’hui. L'étude se concentre sur la théorie eckhartienne du “grunt” et de l’“abgrunt” et sur sa relation possible avec la théorie böhmienne de l’“Ungrund”. elle montre que les différences entre les deux théories sont essentielles et qu’elles aboutissent à une opposition philosophique profonde entre l’intellectualisme de Maître Eckhart et le volontarisme de Böhme. Ainsi, il faudrait réviser aussi bien la relation de Böhme à Maitre Eckhart que la place de ce dernier au sein de l’histoire de la philosophie.Through methods of philology, history, and philosophy, this book establishes that there is no direct connection between Master Eckhart and Jacob Böhme. The concept of the “German mystic philosophy”, starting supposedly with Eckhart and ending with Böhme, actually has its origin in the Romantic philosophy of the 19th century and and is still usual today. This study focuses on the eckhartian theory of the “grunt” and “abgrunt” and its possible relation to the böhmist theory of the “Ungrund”. It shows that the differences between both theories are significant and that they culminate in a deep philosophical opposition between the intellectualism of Master Eckhart and the voluntarism of Böhme. Thus, both Böhme’s relationship to Master Eckhart and the position of the latter in the history of philosophy should be revised.

The total body of papers presented in this volume captures research across a variety of languages and language groups, to show how particular elements of linguistic description draw on otherwise separate aspects (or fields) of linguistic investigation. As such, this volume captures a diversity of research interest from the field of cognitive linguistics. These areas include: lexical semantics, cognitive grammar, metaphor, prototypes, pragmatics, narrative and discourse, computational and translation models; and are considered within the contexts of: language change, child language acquisition, language and culture, grammatical features and word order and gesture. Despite possible differences in philosophical approach to the role of language in cognitive tasks, these papers are similar in a fundamental way: they all share a commitment to the view that human categorization involves mental concepts that have fuzzy boundaries and are culturally and situation-based.

Aristoteles’ De Anima ist einer der zentralen Texte der Philosophiegeschichte. Seine grundlegende Leistung liegt in der alle Lebewesen umfassenden ontologisch-ontischen Bestimmung der Seele und ihrer Vermögen, einschließlich der Lehre vom Geist (nous), deren nähere Explikation seit der Antike Anlaß zu vielfältigen Diskussionen gab. Die vorliegende Studie ermittelt unter Rückgriff auf die traditionellen Schulen des Alexandrismus, Neuplatonismus, Averroismus und Thomismus diejenigen mannigfaltigen philosophischen und theologischen Konstellationen des 16. und 17. Jh.s, die von innerkatholischen wie interkonfessionellen Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Katholiken, Lutheranern und Calvinisten geprägt waren. Unter diesem Gesichtspunkt werden die entsprechenden Werke der Reformatoren Luther und Melanchthon, der Renaissance-Aristoteliker Portio, Toletus, Zabarella und die Conimbrincenser sowie die hier erstmals berücksichtigten Schriften der lutherischen und calvinistischen Schulphilosophen des 17. Jh.s. interpretiert.





Aristotle’s On the soul is one of the most important books in the history of philosophy. Its fundamental achievement is based on the ontological-ontical definition of the soul and its virtues, which embrace all living beings, including the doctrine of the mind (nous), and whose further explication has been interpreted controversially since antiquity. With respect to the traditional schools of Alexandrism, Neoplatonism, Averroism and Thomism the present study studies the various philosophical and theological constellations of the 16th and 17th century, which were determined by the intracatholical as well as by the interdenominational controversies between the Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists. From this point of view the works of Luther and Melanchthon, of the Renaissance-Aristotelians Portio, Toletus, Zabarella, and the Conimbricenses as well as the works of the Lutheran and Calvinistic Philosophers of the 17th century are interpreted, these last ones being taken into consideration here for the first time.

Then follow interpretations of some of the main philosophical concepts of Aristotle’s De Anima in the 16th and 17th century, namely the Protestant Aristotelianism of Luther (1483–1546) and Melanchthon (1497–1560), the ‘Second Scholastic’ of the Jesuits Toletus (1532–1596) and Emmanul de Goes, the Natural Philosophy of Portio (1496–1554) and Zabarella (1533–1589) and at least the New Protestant Aristotelianism of Martini (1570-1649), Evenius (1585/9–1639), Scheibler (1589–1653), Leuschner (1589–1641) and Dannhauer (1603–1666) at the Lutheran Universities in Germany in the early 17th century.

This book is a collection of articles based on a lecture series about Kant's philosophy. The contributions present an excellent overview of Kant's work – the subjects range from metaphysical, ethical, aesthetical, teleological, historical and political aspects to questions of mind, nature and education.

The common topic of all articles is the examination of Kant's current relevance in the context of modern philosophy and society. Each author gives various arguments why a close reading of Kant is still worthwhile and can make important contributions to present philosophical and social discussions.

The lecture series from which the book developed was conceived as an introduction of Kant for students but some of the articles are very profound. Therefore while students and Kant-beginners may find the texts helpful as introductory reading, philosophers and Kant-experts will also appreciate the book for opening up new perspectives on their specific field of interest.

Dieser Sammelband basiert auf einer einführenden Ringvorlesung zur Philosophie Kants. Die Beiträge behandeln sowohl metaphysische, ethische, ästhetische, teleologische und politische Aspekte als auch Fragen zu Natur, Geist und Erziehung und bieten damit einen ausgezeichneten Überblick über Kants Werk.

Der Schwerpunkt liegt in allen Artikeln auf der aktuellen Bedeutung Kants im Kontext der modernen Philosophie und Gesellschaft. Den Autoren gelingt es zu zeigen, dass die Auseinandersetzung mit Kant nicht nur immer noch lohnenswert ist, sondern auch wichtige Beiträge zu den philosophischen und gesellschaftlichen Diskussionen der Gegenwart – von bioethischen und neurophilosophischen Fragen bis hin zu Problemen von Krieg und Frieden – liefern kann.

Die Texte sind nicht nur als Einstieg in die Kantlektüre für Studenten und Kant-Neulinge wertvoll, auch Philosophen und Kant-Experten werden darin zahlreiche neue Gesichtspunkte für eine fruchtbare Auseinandersetzung mit Kant finden.

Since the late 1950s the study of argumentation has developed from a marginal part of logic and rhetoric into a genuine interdisciplinary academic discipline. After having first been primarily concerned with creating an adequate philosophical perspective on argumentation, argumentation theorists have gradually shifted their focus of attention to a more immediate concern with the ins and outs of argumentative praxis. What exactly are the characteristics of situated argumentative discourse in different argumentative ‘action types’? How is the discourse influenced by institutional and contextual constraints? In what way can prominent cases of argumentative discourse be fruitfully analysed? Argumentation in Practice aims to provide insight into some important facets of argumentative praxis and the different ways in which it can be approached. The first part of this volume, ‘Conceptions of problems in argumentative practice’, introduces useful theoretical perspectives. The second part, ‘Empirical studies of argumentative practice’, contains both empirical studies of a general kind and several types of specific case studies.

The book claims that philosophy can be defined by its distinct rhetoric. This rhetoric is shaped by two values: humanism and critique. Humanism is defined as preferring the individual human deliberation to any external authority or method. Self-conviction is the touchstone of truth in philosophy. Critique is defined as suspecting your beliefs and convictions. This is the reason why the book uses Nietzsche’s definition of "the will to truth" – "the will not to deceive, not even myself" – for explaining the nature of philosophical thinking and argumentation. This rhetorical analysis reveals that the danger of self-deception is a constitutive yet irresolvable problem of philosophy.

The subjects of the book are: the relations between philosophy and rhetoric, the speaker and the addressee of philosophical arguments, the subordination of logic to rhetoric in philosophy and the philosophical problem of self-deception.

This work, unburdened with philosophers’ jargon, fits well in the current critical debate about the relevance of pragmatic features of the concepts of subjectivity and truth.

This book treats memory and understanding on two levels, on the phenomenological level of experience, on which a theory of dynamic conceptual semantics is built, and on the neuro-connectionist level, which supports the capacities of concept formation, remembering, and understanding. A neuro-connectionist circuit architecture of a constructive memory is developed in which understanding and remembering are modelled in accordance with the constituent structures of a dynamic conceptual semantics. Consciousness emerges by circuit activation between conceptual indicators and episodic indices with the sensory-motor, emotional, and proprioceptual areas.

This theory of concept formation, remembering, and understanding is applied to Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu , with special attention to the author’s excursions into philosophical and aesthetic issues. Under this perspective, Proust’s work can be seen as an artistic exploration into our capacity of understanding, whereby the unconscious, the memory, is exteriorized in consciousness by presenting the experienced episodes in the conceptual order of similarity and contiguity through our capacity of concept formation. (Series A)

Sverker Johansson has written an unusual book on language origins, with its emphasis on empirical evidence rather than theory-building. This is a book for the student or researcher who prefers solid data and well-supported conclusions, over speculative scenarios. Much that has been written on the origins of language is characterized by hypothesizing largely unconstrained by evidence. But empirical data do exist, and the purpose of this book is to integrate and review the available evidence from all relevant disciplines, not only linguistics but also, e.g., neurology, primatology, paleoanthropology, and evolutionary biology. The evidence is then used to constrain the multitude of scenarios for language origins, demonstrating that many popular hypotheses are untenable. Among the issues covered: (1) Human evolutionary history, (2) Anatomical prerequisites for language, (3) Animal communication and ape "language", (4) Mind and language, (5) The role of gesture, (6) Innateness, (7) Selective advantage of language, (8) Proto-language.

This book examines the various philosophical influences contained in the ancient description of the noun. According to the traditional view, grammar adopted its philosophical categories in the second century B.C. and continued to make use of precisely the same concepts for over six hundred years, that is, until the time of Priscian (ca. 500). The standard view is questioned in this study, which investigates in detail the philosophy contained in Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae. This investigation reveals a distinctly Platonic element in Priscian’s grammar, which has not been recognised in linguistic historiography. Thus, grammar manifestly interacted with philosophy in Late Antiquity. This discovery led to the reconsideration of the origin of all the philosophical categories of the noun. Since the authenticity of the Techne, which was attributed to Dionysius Thrax, is now regarded as uncertain, it is possible to speculate that the semantic categories are derived from Late Antiquity.

This new collection of contributions to the field of Cognitive Technology (CT) provides the (to date) widest spectrum of the state of the art in the discipline — a disciple dedicated to humane factors in tool design. The reader will find here a summary of past research as well as an overview of new areas for future investigations. The collection contains an extensive CT agenda identifying many as yet unsolved, CT-related, design issues. An exciting new development is the concept of ‘natural technology’. Some examples of natural technologies are discussed and the merits of empirical investigations (into what they are and how they develop), of interest to cognitive scientists and designers of new (corrective, digital) technologies, are pointed out. Another distinctive feature of the collection is that it provides examples of scientists’ tools; important, too, is its emphasis on ethics in tool design. The collection ends with a provocative coda (any responses can appear in the new, annual, CT forum of the Pragmatics and Cognition journal). The collection will appeal to all scientists, humanists and professionals interested in the interface between human cognitive processes and the technologies that augment them.

Self-consciousness is a topic of considerable importance to a variety of empirical and theoretical disciplines such as developmental and social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, and philosophy. This volume presents essays on self-consciousness by prominent psychologists, cognitive neurologists, and philosophers. Some of the topics included are the infants’ sense of self and others, theory of mind, phenomenology of embodiment, neural mechanisms of action attribution, and hermeneutics of the self. A number of these essays argue in turn that empirical findings in developmental psychology, phenomenological analyses of embodiment, or studies of pathological self-experiences point to the existence of a type of self-consciousness that does not require any explicit I —thought or self-observation, but is more adequately described as a pre-reflective, embodied form of self-familiarity. The different contributions in the volume amply demonstrate that self-consciousness is a complex multifaceted phenomenon that calls for an integration of different complementary interdisciplinary perspectives. (Series B)

The shaping of complex meanings depends on punctual and relational coding and inferencing. Coding is viewed as a vector which can run either from expression to content or from concepts to (linguistic) forms to mark independent conceptual relations. While coding relies on systematic resources internal to language, inferencing essentially depends on a layered system of autonomous shared conceptual structures, which include both cognitive models and consistency criteria grounded in a natural ontology. Inference guided by coding is not a residual pragmatic device but it is a direct way to long-term conceptual structures that guide the connection of meanings.

The interaction of linguistic forms and concepts is particularly clear in conceptual conflict where conflictual complex meanings provide insights into the roots of significance and the linguistic structure of metaphors.

Complementing a formal analysis of linguistic structures with a substantive analysis of conceptual structures, a philosophical grammar provides insights from both formal and functional approaches toward a more profound understanding of how language works in constructing and communicating complex meanings.

This monograph is ideally addressed to linguists, philosophers and psychologists interested in language as symbolic form and as an instrument of human action rooted in a complex conceptual and cognitive landscape.

The book focuses on the question of how and to what extent cognitive semantic approaches can contribute to the new field of the cognitive science of science. The argumentation is based on a series of instructive case studies which are intended to test the prospects and limits of the metascientific application of both holistic and modular cognitive semantics. The case studies show that, while cognitive semantic research is able to solve problems which have traditionally been the domain of the philosophy of science, it also encounters serious limits. The prospects and the limits thus revealed suggest new research topics which in future can be tackled by cognitive semantic approaches to the cognitive science of science.

Higher-Order (HO) theories of consciousness have in common the idea that what makes a mental state conscious is that it is the object of some kind of higher-order representation. This volume presents fourteen previously unpublished essays both defending and criticizing this approach to the problem of consciousness. It is the first anthology devoted entirely to HO theories of consciousness. There are several kinds of HO theory, such as the HOT (higher-order thought) and HOP (higher-order perception) models, and each is discussed and debated. Part One contains essays by authors who defend some form of HO theory. Part Two includes papers by those who are critics of the HO approach. Some of the topics covered include animal consciousness, misrepresentation, the nature of pain, subvocal speech, subliminal perception, blindsight, the nature of emotion, the difference between perception and thought, first-order versus higher-order theories of consciousness, and the relationship between nonconscious and conscious mentality. (Series A)

Which causal patterns are involved in mental processes?

On what mechanisms does the self-organisation of cognitive structure rest?

Can a naturalistic view account for the basic resources of intentionality, while avoiding the objections to reductive materialism?

By considering the developmental, phenomenological and biological aspects linking mind and causality, this volume offers a state-of-the art theoretical proposal emphasising the fine-tuning of cognition with the complexity of bodily dynamics. In contrast to the de-coupling of mind from the physical environment in classical information-processing models, growth of brain’s architecture and stabilisation of perception­–action cycles are considered decisive, with no need for an eliminative approach to representations pursued by neural network models. The tools provided by physics and biology for the description of massive causal interactions, on top of which ‘qualitative’ changes occur, are exploited to suggest a model of the mind as a many-layered, co-evolving system. (Series A)

Our species has been hunting for meaning ever since we departed from our cousins in the evolutionary tree. We developed sophisticated forms of communication. Yet, as much as they can convey meaning and foster understanding, they can also hide meaning and prevent comprehension. Indeed, we can never be sure that a "yes" conveys assent or that a smile reveals pleasure. In order to ascertain what communicative behavior "means", we have to go through an elaborate cognitive process of interpretation.

This book deals with how we achieve the daily miracle of understanding each other. Based on the author ’s contributions to pragmatics, the book articulates his perspective using the insights of linguistics, the philosophy of language and rhetoric, and confronting alternatives to it. Theory formation is shaped by application to fields of human activity – such as legal practice, artificial intelligence, psychoanalysis, the media, literature, aesthetics, ethics and politics – where interpretation and understanding are paramount.

Using an accessible language, this is a book addressed to specialists as well as to anyone interested in interpreting understanding and understanding the potentialities and limits of interpretation.

A multiple analogy is a structured comparison in which several sources are likened to a target. In Multiple analogies in science and philosophy, Shelley provides a thorough account of the cognitive representations and processes that participate in multiple analogy formation. Through analysis of real examples taken from the fields of evolutionary biology, archaeology, and Plato's Republic, Shelley argues that multiple analogies are not simply concatenated single analogies but are instead the general form of analogical inference, of which single analogies are a special case. The result is a truly general cognitive model of analogical inference.Shelley also shows how a cognitive account of multiple analogies addresses important philosophical issues such as the confidence that one may have in an analogical explanation, and the role of analogy in science and philosophy.

This book lucidly demonstrates that important questions regarding analogical inference cannot be answered adequately by consideration of single analogies alone.

As the title indicates the author presents a contemporary theory of consequence. In so doing he establishes a terminology that enables a description, interpretation and evaluation of medieval theory independently of medieval vocabulary.

In the interest of better understanding the medieval writers the author puts himself in the position of the medieval scholar in Erfurt. The reader learns about the Erfurt schools and the controversal debate on the so-called modi significandi, using only texts that are known to have been available in Erfurt in the first half of the 14^th century.

The two tracts, a short epitome of Thomas Maulfelt and a comprehensive volume of Albert of Saxony represent the two most common tracts of this discipline, and are discussed on the basis of questions arising in the introduction. New conclusions can be reached about the scope and the goal of medieval consequence theory which is an original accomplishment of the high Middle Ages and its place in the history of logic.

Der Ankündigung im Titel gehorchend stellt der Autor eine zeitgenössische Theorie zu Schlußfolgerung dar. Somit wird eine Terminologie erstellt, in der — unabhängig von der Fachsprache des Mittelalters – die verschiedenen Ausführungen zur Schlußfolgerungslehre des Spätmittelalters beschreiben, interpretiert und bewertet werden können.

Um die mittelalterlichen Autoren Thomas Maulfelt und Albert von Sachsen zu verstehen, versetzt sich der Autor in die Perspektive eines Scholars im Erfurt der Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts. Der Leser wird über die Schulsituation in Erfurt unterrichtet, er erfährt von der hitzigen Debatte um die modi significandi und blickt zur weiteren Erläuterung lediglich in solche Schriften, deren Vorkommen für die Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts in Erfurt belegbar sind.

Anhand von Fragestellungen, die sich aus dem Einleitungsteil ableiten, werden die zwei Traktate, die in Form, Inhalt und Umfang die zwei häufigsten Schrifttypen zur Schlußfolgerungslehre repräsentieren, untersucht. So ergeben sich zur Anwendungreichweite, zur Zielsetzung dieser Disziplin, die eine originäre Leistung des hohen Mittelalters ist, sowie zu ihrem Stellenwert in der Logikgeschichte neue Erkenntnisse.

Quantum Closures and Disclosures thinks together two seemingly irreconcilable discourses: An application of quantum field theory to brain functioning, called quantum brain dynamics, and the continental postphenomenological tradition, especially the work of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida. Underlying both developments is a new ontology of nonCartesian dual modes whose rich provenance is their "between." World is disclosed in the lumen naturale of dual modes belonging-together in their between; all presencing is a function of a "~conjugate" form of match in the between. This surprising rapprochement between a powerful tradition within continental philosophy and the 20th-century quantum revolution in science is fruitfully applied to crucial issues in philosophy, brain science, mathematics and psychiatry.



Related Titles: Quantum Brain Dynamics and Consciousness: An introduction, edited by Mari Jibu and Kunio Yasue (1995), and My Double Unveiled: The dissipative quantum model of the brain, by Giuseppe Vitiello (2001)

The disciplines of philosophy make up its methodological and thematic branches of study; they reflect its self-understanding as a science according to both its basic tasks and its different approaches to them. The contributions to this anthology, arranged according to the main disciplines of philosophy, were originally presented in a special lecture series at the Department of Philosophy of the Ruhr-University Bochum, geared towards providing students with a much-needed provisional orientation in the field. The essays included in this volume combine this introductory systematic character with careful historical scholarship. Topics treated include aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, logic, metaphysics, philosophical anthropology, philosophical pedagogy, philosophy of language, philosophy of nature, philosophy of religion, political philosophy, and the theory of the human sciences. This volume should appeal to students and teachers of philosophy as well as to all those interested in a historically grounded systematic introduction to philosophical thinking.

Die Disziplinen der Philosophie bilden die Teilbereiche, in die sie sich sowohl methodisch als auch gegenstandsbezogen gliedern läßt; sie bezeugen das Selbstverständnis dieser Wissenschaft nach Aufgabe und Vorgehensweise. Die Beiträge zum vorliegenden Band gehen auf eine Ringvorlesung zurück, die am Institut für Philosophie der Ruhr-Universität Bochum gehalten wurde. Diese hat den Studierenden zur Einführung in die Philosophie gedient und damit einem elementaren Wunsch nach einer — wenn auch nur provisorisch — wegweisenden Orientierung im Fach entsprochen. Somit werden die Teilbereiche Ästhetik, Erkenntnistheorie, Ethik, Logik, Metaphysik, Naturphilosophie, Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie, Philosophiedidaktik, Philosophische Anthropologie, Religionsphilosophie, Sprachphilosophie und Theorie der Geisteswissenschaften im vorliegenden Band vorgestellt. Der Band ist für Studenten sowie Philosophielehrer vom Interesse, ferner für alle, die sich eine historische sowie systematische Einführung in philosophisches Denken wünschen.