This chapter traces the genealogy of the term atmosphere in the German language, identifies historical semantic shifts, and points to its grammatical specifics. The state of research on atmospheres is briefly summarized and an overview is offered of the various definitions of the term in different disciplines. Drawing on Timothy Morton’s theory of ambient poetics, and on Hermann Schmitz’s “new phenomenology,” four key characteristics of atmospheres are discussed and elaborated: their mereological constitution, their modal structure, their intensification at affective thresholds, (...) and their affective efficacy through suggestions of movement. (shrink)

This open access book revises Kant’s ethical thought in one of its most notorious respects: its exclusion of animals from moral consideration. The book gives readers in animal ethics an accessible introduction to Kant’s views on our duties to others, and his view that we have only ‘indirect’ duties regarding animals. It then investigates how one would have to depart from Kant in order to recognise that animals matter morally for their own sake. Particular attention is paid to Kant’s ‘Formula (...) of Humanity,' the role of autonomy and the moral law, as well as Kant’s notions of practical reason and animal instinct. The result is a deliberately amended version of Kantianism which nevertheless remains faithful to central aspects of Kant’s thought. The book’s final part illustrates the framework’s use in applied contexts, addressing the issues of using animals as mere means, the ethics of veganism and vegetarianism, and environmental protection. Nico Dario Müller shows how, when furnished with duties to animals, Kant's moral philosophy can be a powerful resource for animal ethicists. (shrink)

Animal ethics has often been criticized for an overreliance on “ideal” or even “utopian” theorizing. In this article, I recognize this problem, but argue that the “nonideal theory” which critics have offered in response is still insufficient to make animal ethics action-guiding. I argue that in order for animal ethics to be action-guiding, it must consider agent-centered theories of change detailing how an ideally just human-animal coexistence can and should be brought about. I lay out desiderata that such a theory (...) of change should suffice so as to be helpful in guiding action. Specifically, a theory of change should determine (1) who needs to do what in order for ideal justice to be achieved in the long run, (2) who should be expected to refuse compliance and how they should be moved to comply, and (3) why specific intermediate steps are necessary. I show how previous “nonideal” contributions, though helpful in other ways, are insufficiently determinate on these points and I sketch a (still somewhat utopian) theory of change for one specific context. This brings animal ethics a crucial step closer to being action-guiding in the real world. (shrink)

In this paper I offer critical attention to the notion of atmosphere in relation to music. By exploring the concept through the case study of the Closed Brethren worship services, I argue that atmosphere may provide analytical tools to explore the ineffable in ecclesial practices. Music, just as atmosphere, commonly occupies a realm of ineffability and undermines notions such as inside and outside, subject and object. For this reason I present music as a means of knowing the atmosphere. The first (...) part of this paper points to the limits of an understanding of atmosphere as a constellation of things, as proposed by Gernot Böhme. In contrast to this, Hermann Schmitz conceptualises atmosphere as half-thing which suggests movement. Drawing on this, I propose to methodologically approach atmospheres as movements. Consequently, in the second part of this paper I closely analyse two motions as they cohere in Closed Brethren worship services: first, becoming (Deleuze and Guattari), a movement on the level of the individual worshiper; secondly, territorialisation (Deleuze and Guattari), a movement of the atmosphere towards its solidification. Here music as atmosphere is not a system of moral signification but a generative power affording intimate processes of divine encounter, whilst producing affective denominational difference. (shrink)

The article aims at contrasting the autopoietic understanding of an individual and her or his actions as described by Niklas Luhmann with Paul Ricoeur’s notion of narrative identity, focusing on people as legal subjects. The article assumes that when legal subjects necessitate ethical engagement and evaluation, the law could cease to deal with problems in a mere legalistic fashion but is allowed the freedom to appeal to norms of justice external to itself as in other natural law theories. Through narrative (...) identity the deeds of role players are to be understood in greater complexity than what a self-referential legal system is comfortable in dealing with. (shrink)

Das deutsche Gesundheitswesen steht durch die schnell steigende Anzahl an CO- VID-19-Erkrankten vor erheblichen Herausforderungen. In dieser Krisensituation sind alle Beteiligten mit ethischen Fragen konfrontiert, beispielsweise nach gerech- ten Verteilungskriterien bei begrenzten Ressourcen und dem gesundheitlichen Schutz des Personals angesichts einer bisher nicht therapierbaren Erkrankung. Daher werden schon jetzt klinische und ambulante Ethikberatungsangebote verstärkt mit Anfragen nach Unterstützung konfrontiert. Wie können Ethikberater*innen Entscheidungen in der Krankenversorgung im Rahmen der COVID-19-Pandemie unterstützen? Welche Grenzen von Ethikberatung sind zu beachten? Bislang liegen hierzu (...) noch wenige praktische Erfahrungen vor. Angesichts der dynamischen Entwicklung erscheint es der Akademie für Ethik in der Medizin (AEM) wichtig, einen Diskurs über die angemessene Rolle der Ethikberatung bei der Bewältigung der vielfachen Heraus- forderungen durch die COVID-19-Pandemie zu führen und professionelle Hinweise zu geben. Mit dem vorliegenden Diskussionspapier möchte die AEM einen Beitrag zur Beantwortung wesentlicher Fragen leisten, die sich für die Ethikberatung in den verschiedenen Bereichen des Gesundheitswesens stellen. Sie regt an, diesen Dis- kurs weiter zu führen und hat ein Online-Forum (s. unten) eingerichtet, in dem Ethikberater*innen ihre Erfahrungen teilen und die professionelle Selbstreflexion der Ethikberatung in Pandemiezeiten mit Anregungen fördern können. (shrink)

Building on her previous work (2004, 2012, 2013), Christine Korsgaard’s recent book Fellow Creatures (2018) has provided the most highly developed Kantian account of duties towards animals. I raise two issues with the results of this account. First, the duties that Korsgaard accounts for are duties “towards” animals in name only. Since Korsgaard does not reject the Kantian conception in which direct duties towards others require mutual moral constraint, what she calls duties “towards” animals are merely Kantian duties regarding animals, (...) verbally repackaged. Hence, Korsgaard’s account is best understood as an expansion (albeit a substantial one) of Kant’s own view of an indirect duty regarding animals. Second, the expansion does not take us quite as far as Korsgaard hopes. She aims for a conception in which our duties towards animals and humans are equally important, but her argument does not support this conclusion. I point out the potential for a more radical revision of Kant’s anthropocentrism that rejects his underlying assumption that duties towards others are based on mutual constraint. (shrink)

The following article was written to honour Johan Buitendag’s contribution to the discipline of eco-theology. Assuming an interdisciplinary stance, eco-theology in general and his work, in particular, is observed from the position of legal theory and sociology. As such, eco-theology is not assessed on theological grounds but is treated interdisciplinary through comparison with environmental law. More specifically, the project of eco-theology is shown to share certain characteristics with the nascent subdiscipline of Earth systems law within environmental law. It is argued (...) that one of the most important of these is the use of norms as an ecological strategy. This is understandable as both the religious and legal systems rely on the norm form to a lesser or greater extent. However, in the legal sociology of systems theory, the shortcomings of norms have been eloquently argued. This article thus posits the limits of norms to eco-theology and Earth systems law as a challenge deserving attention. However, social systems theory has its shortcomings, and a preliminary line of flight away from this challenge is suggested in the shape of Agamben’s description of the monastic form-of-life, where life and norm overlap so intensely that suggestions of a new worldview gain plausibility. (shrink)

Criticism of big data has focused on showing that more is not necessarily better, in the sense that data may lose their value when taken out of context and aggregated together. The next step is to incorporate an awareness of pitfalls for aggregation into the design of data infrastructure and institutions. A common strategy minimizes aggregation errors by increasing the precision of our conventions for identifying and classifying data. As a counterpoint, we argue that there are pragmatic trade-offs between precision (...) and ambiguity that are key to designing effective solutions for generating big data about biodiversity. We focus on the importance of theory-dependence as a source of ambiguity in taxonomic nomenclature and hence a persistent challenge for implementing a single, long-term solution to storing and accessing meaningful sets of biological specimens. We argue that ambiguity does have a positive role to play in scientific progress as a tool for efficiently symbolizing multiple aspects of taxa and mediating between conflicting hypotheses about their nature. Pursuing a deeper understanding of the trade-offs and synthesis of precision and ambiguity as virtues of scientific language and communication systems then offers a productive next step for realizing sound, big biodiversity data services. (shrink)

The theoretical underpinnings of public international law have taken the sovereign status of the nation-state for granted since the beginning of the modern era. After centuries of evolution in legal and political thought, the state's definition as a bounded territorial unit has been strictly codified. The legal development of the nation-state was an ideological project informed by extra-legal considerations. Additionally, the ever-narrowing scope of the juridical idea of sovereignty functioned as a boundary mechanism instrumental in colonising Africa and other regions. (...) While international law claims universal liberalism today, the current system based on sovereign nation-states represents not social inclusion but fierce and dangerous exclusion. -/- The central thesis of this book is that the development of legal sovereignty was, rather than part of the modernist progress narrative, a historically contingent evolutionary regression. While other social systems such as economics and science became globalised, politics and law counterintuitively became more territorialised. It is argued that the nation-state today is not only anachronistic but is dangerously ill-equipped for facing international problems such as the climate crisis or global pandemics. Finally, it also leaves African states and many other formerly-colonised territories at a particular disadvantage by regulating their political practices into a predefined mould. (shrink)

Drie gesprekken over de filosofie van de wiskunde.

Die Rezeption von Walter Benjamins Arbeiten ist von einer Paradoxie durchzogen: Obwohl Konsens darüber besteht, dass er seine Begriffe in ›enger Fühlung‹ mit dem jeweiligen Material entwickelt, werden seine Schriften häufig ohne ein eigenständiges Studium seiner Quellen gelesen, losgelöst vom jeweiligen Problem- und Debattenzusammenhang. Das verstärkt den Eindruck einer Esoterik seiner Texte und kann zu der Annahme verleiten, Benjamin entnehme Motive willkürlich aus seinem Material- und Quellenstudium und nutze sie als Vehikel eines an sich schwer in eine Tradition einzuordnenden Denkens. (...) Die Autorinnen und Autoren des vorliegenden Bandes legen das Gewicht auf Benjamins Material, sei es Literatur, Theater, Metaphysik, Rechts- und Moralphilosophie, Zeitschriftenprojekte, soziale Bewegungen oder Stadtarchitektur. Anhand von Texten unterschiedlicher Werkphasen untersuchen sie das Verhältnis von Material und Begriff aus beiden Blickrichtungen. Dieses Vorgehen ermöglicht es, auch Licht auf theoretische Beziehungen und Arbeitszusammenhänge zu werfen, die bisher eher unbeachtet blieben. (shrink)

In The Innocent Eye, Nico Orlandi argues that vision is not a cognitive process. In particular, she argues that forming subject-level visual representations that are available for reasoning should not itself be understood as a process of inference. This comes to the claim that vision (properly so-called) is a process that produces representations but is not best understood as a process that uses representations.

O objetivo dessa dissertação é discutir alguns conceitos que dizem respeito ao estatuto da eudaimonía, tendo como pressuposto que o texto da Ética a Nicômaco possa por si só esclarecer como ela é entendida por Aristóteles. Na minha hipótese, as discussões metodológicas estabelecidas no livro I servem como orientações suficientes para esclarecer a relação entre a realização da eudaimonía e o exercício das virtudes da alma, sem com isso haver a necessidade de que recorramos a outras obras de Aristóteles. Em (...) conseqüência dessa orientação, priorizei nessa pesquisa entender a afirmativa de Aristóteles de que a eudaimonía é um bem realizável pela ação do homem virtuoso, sendo um bem de caráter prático que consisti no exercício de um érgon, que é exclusivo ao homem; privilegiei então os conceitos relacionados à vida prática para o esclarecimento do que seja a eudaimonía, a relação entre as arētaí ēthikaí, a phrónesis e a sophía na sua realização, objetivando também, através dessa relação, entender as conexões entre lógos, práxis e páthos na realização do bem supremo do homem. Meu objetivo é pensar as relações entre a eudaimonía e as virtudes morais e intelectuais na Ética a Nicômaco; em conseqüência, compreender o lugar da vida prática e da vida teórica na realização da vida plena. (shrink)

Nico Silins (2012, 2013, 2020) argues that conscious judgments justify self-attribution of belief in the content judged. In defending his view, he makes use of Moore’s Paradox, seeking to show how his theory can explain what seems irrational or absurd about sentences of the form, ‘p and I do not believe that p’. I show why his argument strategy is not available to defend the view that conscious judgments can justify the self-attribution of belief in the content judged. I (...) then propose an amended version of his theory, which holds that sincerely asserting a proposition—whether aloud or silently—justifies self-ascribing belief in the proposition expressed. In doing so, I draw on an argument which I made in Gregory (2018) that there is something it is like to make a sincere assertion which is different from what it is like to make an insincere assertion. The phenomenology of sincere assertion provides immediate justification for self-ascription of belief in a proposition which has been sincerely asserted; nonetheless, it may be that we need to interpret our own assertions in order to determine which propositions they express. This paves the way for showing how two competing schools of thought about self-knowledge—one which holds that self-knowledge is immediate and one which holds that self-knowledge is inferential—might be combined. (shrink)

At the time of the disintegration of “actually existing socialism” in the 1990s, it appeared that the inexorable flux of globalization was going to consume the nation-state. However, recent years have witnessed the increasing role of the states in both the Global North and South. The relationship between the state and capital is a frequently traversed subject, but what needs further illumination is the persistence of “many states” and its relation to capitalism as both a national and global formation. While (...) globalization of capital suggests a movement from multiplicity toward a dehistoricized abstraction, a global state has never been actualized. This implies that, unlike capital, the state cannot be dehistoricized or dedifferentiated; therefore, the only way to think about the state is to observe concrete, multiple states. In view of this difference and drawing on Nicos Poulantzas’s and Kōjin Karatani’s inquiries into the states system, this article examines the multi-state system as an internal and external limit to Marxist thought. (shrink)

Before the Doi Moi reforms in 1986, Viet Nam’s economy was devastated by 30 years of warfare with two major military powers, France and the US, ending in 1975. In the subsequent 10 years, Viet Nam suffered from failing economic experiments, including agricultural cooperatization, “industry-commerce rehabilitation,” price-wage-currency reform, among others, under the centrally planned mechanism (Wood 1989), as well as the international isolation and a US trade embargo when its troops entered Cambodia to overthrow the Khmer Rouge (Riedel and (...) Turley 1999). Its per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) declined to USD 97 in 1989 whereas the ratio of external debt to GDP reached 330%. 1 The economy languished and became one of the poorest in the world (VGP 2016). (shrink)

Relying on aesthetic testimony seems problematic. For instance, it seems problematic for me to simply believe or assert that The Velvet Underground's debut album The Velvet Underground and Nico (1964) is amazing solely because you have told me so, even though I know you to be an honest and competent music critic. But why? After all, there do not seem to be similar reservations regarding testimony from many other domains. In this paper, I will argue that relying on aesthetic (...) testimony seems problematic because we are attached to an ideal of aesthetic authenticity and feel that living up to this ideal is anathema to simply relying on aesthetic testimony. (shrink)

Indem dieser Band sich auf das Verhältnis von Naturerkennen und Natursein konzentriert, thematisiert er einen wesentlichen Ausschnitt aus dem weiten Spektrum von Böhmes philosophischer Arbeit. Um die Naturthematik möglichst breit zu entfalten und für Querverbindungen offenzuhalten, ist der vorliegende Band in drei Abschnitte gegliedert. Im ersten Abschnitt stehen Charakter und Reichweite der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis von Natur im Mittelpunkt. Der zweite Teil des Bandes stellt alternative Perspektiven auf Natur vor. Im dritten Teil schließlich stehen der Mensch und sein Verhältnis zu sich (...) selbst im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchungen. Inhaltsverzeichnis Krohn, Wolfgang: Wissenschaftsentwicklung zwischen Dezentrierung und Dekonstruktion. Stehr, Nico: Von den Grenzen der Macht wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis. Schäfer, Wolf: Zweifel am Ende des Baconschen Zeitalters. Kamper, Dietmar: Wissen ist Ohnmacht. Macht ist Unwissen. Gamm, der Technik. Janich, Peter: Zeit und Natur. Kimmerle, Heinz: »Es ist Zeit, daß es Zeit wird«. Wie kann Zeit Zeit werden? Schiemann, Gregor: Natur auf dem Rückzug. Zur Relevanz der aristotelischen Unterscheidung von Natur und Technik. Hauskeller, Michael: Ist Schönheit eine Atmosphäre?. Zur Bestimmung des landschaftlich Schönen. Schmitz, Hermann: Situationen und Atmosphären. Zur Ästhetik und Onthologie bei Gernot Böhme. Rehmann-Sutter, Christoph: Über Relationalität. Was ist das »Ökologische« in der Naturästhetik? Meyer-Abich, Klaus Michael: Erinnerung an die natürliche Mitwelt. Andreas-Griesebach, Manon: Idee plus Erfahrung. Goethes Begründung eines neuen Typs von Naturwissenschaft. Engelhardt, Dietrich von: Madame de Stael über Naturphilosophie, Naturwissenschaft und Medizin in De l'Allemagne. Deneke, Michael: Schramm, Engelbert: »Soziale Naturwissenschaft«. Zwischen Sozialwissenschaften und Naturwissenschaften. Böhme, Hartmut: Enthüllen und Verhüllen des Körpers. Biblische, mythische und künstlerische Deutungen des Nackten. Lippe, Rudolf zur: Eine Logik des gestischen Wissens. Müller, Rudolf Wolfgang: Gernot Böhme - Anima naturaliter japonica. Hoffmann, Gisbert: Das menschliche Sein als mediales. Martens, Ekkehard: »Natürlich« denken?. Heideggers Pseudosokratismus als Irrationalismus. Fleischer, Helmut: Naturalität ohne Naturalismus. Zum lebensweltlichen Fundus jeder höheren Erkenntnis-Artistik. Gerhard: Technik als Medium. Grundlinien einer Philosophie. (shrink)

A reply to commentators -- Jake Beck, Nico Orlandi and Aaron Franklin, and Ian Phillips -- on our paper "Does perceptual consciousness overflow cognitive access?".

The term 'fascism' continues to be very much in currency in Philippines society. To the Filipino people, its meaning is often drawn from pained memory of wholesale deprivation of democratic rights and large-scale human rights abuses. Yet, to many, the fear of fascism has still to give way to a deeper understanding of this menace. This may hold true even among those belonging to the progressive movement. One Marxist philosopher and theoretician who gave extended treatment of the issues surrounding the (...) character and conditions giving rise to fascism was Nicos Poulantzas, whose theory is employed here to interrogate the debates about fascism in the post-Marcos Philippines context. (shrink)

Examina-se o conhecimento científico e a aquisição dos primeiros princípios em Aristóteles partindo da dificuldade suscitada pelo argumento pla- tônico, apresentado em Mênon (80e). Parece que, em Aristóteles, o problema não é que não se possa conhecer, como sugere a dificuldade apresentada em Mênon. Através das sensações obtidas dos particulares e que se tornam expe- riência, engendram-se a arte e a ciência. O conhecimento prévio é suficiente para que se possa prosseguir na investigação e chegar a um conhecimento de um (...) nível maior de abstração. (shrink)

According to Jim Pryor’s dogmatism, when you have an experience with content p, you often have prima facie justification for believing p that doesn’t rest on your independent justification for believing any proposition. Although dogmatism has an intuitive appeal and seems to have an antisceptical bite, it has been targeted by various objections. This paper principally aims to answer the objections by Roger White according to which dogmatism is inconsistent with the Bayesian account of how evidence affects our rational credences. (...) If this were true, the rational acceptability of dogmatism would be seriously questionable. I respond that these objections don’t get off the ground because they assume that our experiences and our introspective beliefs that we have experiences have the same evidential force, whereas the dogmatist is uncommitted to this assumption. I also consider the question whether dogmatism has an antisceptical bite. I suggest that the answer turns on whether or not the Bayesian can determine the priors of hypotheses and conjectures on the grounds of their extra-empirical virtues. If the Bayesian can do so, the thesis that dogmatism has an antisceptical bite is probably false. (shrink)

Book review of Jean-Louis Schefer's The Ordinary Man of Cinema (2016) with particular attention to Schefer's conception of affect and its influence on Deleuze.