Published by De Gruyter (A)

Volume 67 Issue 1

Issue of Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie

Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available March 8, 2019

Frontmatter

Page range: i-iv

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March 8, 2019

Philosophie in ihrer (und gegen ihre) Zeit

Martin Saar

Page range: 1-22

Abstract

It is not evident in what sense philosophy relates to its own time and present. From the history of philosophical thought, several models have been suggested, ranging from a strong reliance on tradition to the wholesale rejection of the present and demand for a ‘philosophy of the future,’ from the suspicion that philosophy is nothing but one ideology among others to the demand that philosophy should engage in the struggles and conflicts of its time in order to prepare for a better future. The essay presents an assessment and problematization of these approaches and argues for a point of view that starts from philosophy’s precarious, ambivalent and contingent relation to its time and contemporaneity. Neither wholly independent of nor entirely subjected to its own time, philosophy can inhabit a shifting position from which critique and resistance are possible even if not ultimately guaranteed.

Publicly Available March 8, 2019

Skeptizismus und negative Theologie

Endlichkeit als transformative Erfahrung

Rico Gutschmidt

Page range: 23-41

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Abstract

Scepticism and negative theology are best understood not as theoretical positions, but rather as forms of philosophical practice that performatively undermine our knowledge claims or our seeming understanding of God. In particular, I am arguing that both scepticism and negative theology invoke the failure of the attempt to understand the absolute, be it God or the notion of absolute objectivity. However, with reference to L. A. Paul’s notion of epistemically transformative experience, I am arguing that we still understand something about the absolute through the experience of failing to think it. This, of course, is a non-propositional form of understanding, and I am arguing that there is something about the finitude of the human condition that can only be understood through a transformative philosophical experience with respect to the absolute.

March 8, 2019

Dogmatischer Dogmatismusvorwurf

Eine Replik auf Stefan Müller-Doohm und Roman Yos

Fabian Freyenhagen

Page range: 42-58

Abstract

Does theorising always presuppose a programme of justification? Does the Critical Theory of Adorno and Horkheimer do so? Do they claim it does? The answer should be a resounding ‘no’ to all three questions. In regard to the second and third question, I have sketched an argument to that effect in an earlier paper in this journal. In this paper, I offer a rejoinder to the critical reply offered by Stefan Müller-Doohm und Roman Yos on behalf of the Habermasian mainstream in Frankfurt School Critical Theory. This rejoinder depends on giving a negative answer also to the first question. In rejecting the Habermasian idea of a programme of justification, I stand accused of dogmatism and, consequently, decisionism (for how else than by an arbitrary decision can one choose among dogmas?). I show that this accusation itself betrays a certain dogmatism – insofar as it accepts that such a programme of justification is undeniably possible and required, without consideration of evidence or arguments to the contrary. Self-reflective and critical theorising about society can, indeed must, take other forms.

March 8, 2019

Metaphysische Unzufriedenheit

Barry Stroud

Page range: 59-73

Abstract

What do we seek in metaphysical reflection on the world we live in? Kant thought the urge is “something more than a mere thirst for knowledge.” Here I introduce the question whether we could ever gain sufficient “distance” from our knowing the things we know about the world to arrive at satisfyingly independent verdicts about the metaphysical status of what appear to be indispensable ingredients of our conception of the world and of ourselves as agents within it. Could we consistently explain the necessity with which certain truths are true, or the causal connections we believe to hold between certain events, or the values we ascribe to certain objects or actions, as not really part of the way things are independently of our speaking and thinking and acting in the ways we do? The question is whether and how we could consistently accept such apparently negative metaphysical conclusions while continuing to understand ourselves and the world in the ways we do.

Schwerpunkt: „Kritische Metaphysik“

March 8, 2019

Schwerpunkt: „Kritische Metaphysik“

Johannes Haag, Till Hoeppner

Page range: 74-75

March 8, 2019

Denken und Welt – Wege kritischer Metaphysik

Johannes Haag, Till Hoeppner

Page range: 76-97

Abstract

We begin by considering two common ways of conceiving critical metaphysics. According to the first (and polemical) conception, critical metaphysics analyses nothing more than the form of thought and thereby misses the proper point of metaphysics, namely to investigate the form of reality. According to the second (and affirmative) conception, critical metaphysics starts from the supposed insight that the form of reality can’t be other than the form of thought and it is thus not necessary to analyse anything but that form. We argue that the first conception is too weak while the second is too strong. Then we sketch an alternative conception of critical metaphysics, a conception we find expressed both in Kant’s B-Deduction and in the way Barry Stroud has recently investigated the possibilities of metaphysics. According to such a conception, a properly critical metaphysics needs to proceed in two steps: first, it needs to analyze the most general and necessary form of any thought that is about an objective reality at all; second, it needs to investigate how that form of thought relates to the reality it purports to represent. But unlike Kant, Stroud remains sceptical regarding the possibility of a satisfying transition from thought to reality in metaphysics. We argue that this dissatisfaction can be traced back to a notion of objectivity and reality in terms of complete mind-independence. Then we sketch an alternative notion of objectivity and reality in terms of distinctness from subjects and acts of thinking, and argue that it is that notion that allows Kant, with his Transcendental Idealism, to make the transition required for any satisfying metaphysics, namely that from the form of thought to reality.

March 8, 2019

Das metaphysische Unternehmen

Sebastian Rödl

Page range: 98-117

Abstract

In Barry Stroud’s book Engagement and Metaphysical Dissatisfaction , the eponymous dissatisfaction is said to be due to our inability to obtain certainty about the correspondence between the world and our ways of thinking it. In Stroud’s terms, this dissatisfaction is caused by the failure of the metaphysical enterprise. Beginning with Aristotle’s metaphysics, this paper discusses Stroud’s misunderstanding which stems from his particular construal of the object of metaphysics: There is no metaphysical enterprise and thus, there can be no metaphysical dissatisfaction.

March 8, 2019

Kritische Metaphysik oder Analytische Hermeneutik?

Über die Lesbarkeit der Dinge und die apriorischen Voraussetzungen der Bezugnahme

Anton Friedrich Koch

Page range: 118-131

Abstract

Kant in his critical metaphysics, as one might call his transcendental philosophy, proceeds from the syncategorematic, subject-sided forms of thinking, which are revealed by general logic qua doctrine of the inferences of reason (i. e. syllogistics), and assigns to them one-to-one categorematic, object-sided forms of thinking: the categories qua pure, non-empirical predicates of things. Kant then shows in his transcendental deduction that the categories are objectively, – i. e. without our invasive intervention – valid of all things in space-time. In the present essay, philosophy is understood not so much as critical metaphysics in a narrow sense of “metaphysics”, but rather as the a priori hermeneutic science; and the transcendental deduction of the categories is replaced by arguments for (1) a readability thesis and (2) a theory of the a priori presuppositions of referencing things in space and time. The readability thesis states that things can be read (1) as world-sided primal tokens (ur-tokens) of proper names of themselves and also (2) as world-sided primal tokens (ur-tokens) of elementary propositions about them. The theory of the a priori presuppositions clarifies the conditions of the possibility of subjects orienting themselves in space and time and being able to refer, first, to themselves qua embodied thinkers and then as well to arbitrary individual items.

Buchkritik

March 8, 2019

Zwischen den Zeilen lesen

Wolfgang Huemer

Page range: 132-138

March 8, 2019

Wissen, Können und Verstehen

Hannes Worthmann

Page range: 139-145

March 8, 2019

Philosophie betritt Neuland

Was von der Maschinenethik zu halten ist

Martin Gessmann

Page range: 146-150

March 8, 2019

Auf der Suche nach dem Politischen

Gerhard Thonhauser

Page range: 151-156

March 8, 2019

Editorial

Page range: 157-157

About this journal

Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie

A bimonthly journal of international philosophical research

As an open forum for discussion, the German Journal of Philosophy promotes dialogue and communication between different philosophical cultures, transcending any one school of thought.

The journal primarily publishes studies that are actively engaged in modern international philosophical discourse and that explore new conceptual approaches.

In addition to scholarly papers, essays, interviews, and symposia, the journal publishes discoveries from philosophical archives, discussions, and book critiques.

Current Special Topics:

2024-4: Günther Anders

2024-3: Intentionalität: Mittelalterliche und phänomenologische Zugänge

2024-2: Was kann philosophische Theorie leisten?

2024-1: Philosophie der Gewalt. Lateinamerikanische Perspektiven

2023-6: Politische und kritische Phänomenologie

2023-5: Ästhetisches Denken

2023-4: Die Formierung der menschlichen Lebensform

2023-3: Postdemokratie. Pragmatistische Perspektiven auf eine umstrittene Diagnose

2023-2: (Selbst-)Kritische Philosophiegeschichte

2023-1: Verlegenheit als Phänomen und als philosophische Denkfigur

2022-6: Emotionale Fähigkeiten und die Fühlbarkeit des Sozialen

2022-5: Philosophische Erfahrungen und epistemische Transformation

2022-4: Rassebegriff und Rassismus in der Philosophiegeschichte

2022-3: Angstverfassungen. Über die affektiven Untergründe des Rechts

2022-2: Marcel Proust als Philosoph?

2022-1: Diskursbeobachtungen – Care, Sorge und Fürsorge

Book Series: http://www.degruyter.com/view/serial/234813