If one compares Hans Blumenberg with the dominant contemporary German-speaking characters of philosophy and heads of their own schools, Husserl, Heidegger and Adorno, then one sees that Blumenberg’s understanding of philosophy proves tobe emphatically unemphatic, withdrawn, and deeply stacked. He exchanges the big bills of those philosophies for small coins: Philosophy is attention first, thoughtfulness second, consolation third, and memory fourth. – An introduction is evidence of the reorientation that Blumenberg undertook in the 1950s with regard to his Catholic-theological and (...) Heideggerian philosophical beginnings. This led him to redefine the modern age from one of crisis to one of overcoming the crisis. (shrink)

Unentwegt werden neue technische Produkte gestaltet. Doch was macht die technische Gestaltung aus? Wie lässt sich ihr Gegenstand - (noch) nicht existierende Artefakte - adäquat auf den Begriff bringen? Michael Kuhn begreift technische Ideen vor ihrer Realisierung als Fiktionen. Er bietet eine fiktionstheoretische Rekonstruktion der Gestaltungstätigkeit und entwickelt hieraus eine Ethik der Gestaltung. Der stark interdisziplinäre Zugang zwischen Technikphilosophie und Ingenieurwissenschaften liefert neue Erkenntnisse für beide Fachrichtungen und stellt wertvolle Grundlagen bereit.

This paper discusses attempts to think historicity in the work of the theologian Rudolf Bultmann and the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg. It then draws on the work of the Jesuit theologian Robert Doran in order to suggest how an historical pragmatics without historicism might be relevant to a future theology with social import.

The text presents the general cultural-historical thesis that one cannot adequately understand philosophy after the Second World War if one does not understand it in interaction with politics and popular culture. These three spheres find themselves in a variable triangular constellation after the Second World War. Methodologically, the text is guided by the fact that this interplay is also organised in a triangular and variable way, namely according to the options of coexistence, conflict and cooperation. Adorno’s philosophy serves as a (...) challenging example. The principle of coexistence, conflict and cooperation also serves as a framework for the second part of the text, which reformulates Adorno’s socio-critical question about the possibility of change as an ontological question. In the constellation with politics, pop music can in this context express in its own way what in philosophy is called the principle of ontological contingency. (shrink)

Resumen Mi intención es sugerir y abrir un diálogo entre Platón y Adorno, para lo cual he elegido el concepto de mímesis, un concepto que juega un papel central en ambos pensadores tanto gnoseológicamente como estéticamente. Mientras que el término le sirve a Platón para expulsar a los poetas de Kallipolis, más exactamente ciertos tipos de poesía como la tragedia y la comedia, Adorno lo usa para mostrar el lazo entre el arte y la belleza natural, la dimensión somática del (...) conocimiento, y la importancia subversiva de los poetas y los artistas. Para Platón los poetas están tres veces alejados de la verdad y para Adorno, por el contrario, la obra de arte es un vehículo de la verdad. Este diálogo quiere mostrar no sólo la presencia de lo antiguo en lo moderno, sino la valiosa actualidad y la fructífera transformación que puede padecer un concepto antiguo.My purpose is to suggest and open a dialogue between Plato and Adorno, and for this I have chosen the concept of mimesis, a concept that plays a central role in both thinkers both epistemologically and aesthetically. While Plato uses the term in order to expel the poets from Kallipolis, to be more precise certain kinds of poetry such as tragedy and comedy, Adorno uses the term to show the relationship between art and natural beauty, the somatic dimension of knowledge, and the importance subversive poets and artists. For Plato, poets are three times removed from the truth and for Adorno, by contrast, the work of art is a vehicle of truth. This dialogue between an ancient and a modern intends to show not only the presence of the old in the new, but the valuable present and the fruitful transformation that an old concept can have. (shrink)

My purpose is to suggest and open a dialogue between Plato and Adorno, and for this I have chosen the concept of mimesis, a concept that plays a central role in both thinkers both epistemologically and aesthetically. While Plato uses the term in order to expel the poets from Kallipolis, to be more precise certain kinds of poetry such as tragedy and comedy, Adorno uses the term to show the relationship between art and natural beauty, the somatic dimension of knowledge, (...) and the importance subversive poets and artists. For Plato, poets are three times removed from the truth and for Adorno, by contrast, the work of art is a vehicle of truth. This dialogue between an ancient and a modern intends to show not only the presence of the old in the new, but the valuable present and the fruitful transformation that an old concept can have. (shrink)

Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental guardian and legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too.... Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial. It is the want of nerves of understanding for such a talk; (...) it is the degenerate fondness for tricking short-cuts and little fallacious facilities, that has in so many parts of the world created governments with arbitrary powers. (Edmund Burke). (shrink)