Published by De Gruyter (A)

Volume 67 Issue 6

Issue of Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie

Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available December 18, 2019

Frontmatter

Page range: 1-4

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Publicly Available December 18, 2019

Der Begriff des Lebens in der Klassischen Deutschen Philosophie – eine naturphilosophische oder lebensweltliche Frage?

Birgit Sandkaulen

Page range: 911-929

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Abstract

In this paper, I point to two connotations that come with the concept of ‘life’: it may refer to the natural phenomenon of organic life studied by the “life sciences” and philosophy of nature – Naturphilosophie – but it may equally refer to the lives we lead in a complex lifeworld . Of course, natural features belong to the lifeworld as well. However, the lifeworld is also shaped by various individual and cultural practices and, as such, it is not reducible to the natural. I defend a twofold claim: first, a genuine interest in the lifeworld informs Classical German Philosophy throughout on a meta-level; second, it is this interest in the lifeworld that grounds and motivates considerations of natural phenomena in Classical German Philosophy. I trace the shared interest in the lifeworld from Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte back to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi’s formative ideas. Jacobi profoundly influenced the debates in Classical German Philosophy with his “resolute realism.”

December 18, 2019

Zur Funktion des Vortheoretischen bei Adorno

Der Erfahrungsbegriff der Kritischen Theorie und die Phänomenologie

Christian Ferencz-Flatz

Page range: 930-951

Abstract

Pre-theoretical experience and the lifeworld are traditionally seen as a key reference for phenomenology. In the present paper I intend to point out their relevance for critical theory as well. To this extent, I start off with a brief overview of phenomenological approaches to pre-theoretical experience and their relationship to empirical research. In sketching out some of the overlaps between phenomenology and early critical theory in this regard, I then specifically focus on Adorno’s reflections concerning the role of an extended concept of experience in both his sociological and his philosophical work. Outlining Adorno’s methodological appropriation of “unregimented experience” in the guise of what he terms “physiognomic interpretation” – a procedure intended as a corrective to both rigorous empirical research and philosophical aprioric reasoning – I try to show wherein Adorno’s own approach to the pre-theoretical diverges from phenomenology. Finally, I conclude with some reflections concerning the different functions experience acquires in traditional phenomenology and critical theory.

December 18, 2019

Der Zwang zur Tragödie

Zur Selbstdurchbrechung des Politischen bei Carl Schmitt

Jonas Heller

Page range: 952-973

Abstract

The concept of the political in Carl Schmitt’s works is not only defined by the distinction between friend and enemy, but also by the criterion of breaching the rules in a normatively unbound act of decision. According to Schmitt, this decision is, however, not arbitrary, but provoked by the necessity of a historical situation. This aspect of necessity calls the freedom of the decision into question and leads to tensions within Schmitt’s theory of the political. More explicitly than in Schmitt’s political and legal writings, this conflict between freedom and necessity is exposed in his theory of tragedy. In a reading of his book Hamlet or Hecuba , published in 1956, I will show, in a first step, how the act of breaching the rules is not external to normativity, but occurs from within normativity itself. It is the act of self-breaching – of breaking the rules of its own genre – by which, according to Schmitt, modern tragedy is defined. This breach, however, is compelled by the necessity of a real, i. e. extraliterary, event. In a second step, I will expound on how this idea of self-breaching, which also characterises Schmitt’s understanding of the political, leads to a loss of decision which not only questions his idea of sovereignty, but also topples his concept of the political.

December 18, 2019

Schwerpunkt: Zeugenschaft

Sibylle Schmidt

Page range: 974-978

Schwerpunkt: Zeugenschaft

December 18, 2019

Das Zeugnis der Holocaustüberlebenden: Gewissheit, Skeptizismus, Relativismus

Martin Kusch

Page range: 979-991

Abstract

To date philosophical reflections on the Holocaust and Holocaust survivor testimony have come almost exclusively from authors in the so-called “Continental tradition”. This paper is an attempt to contribute to the scholarship on Holocaust survivor testimony using some of the concepts and conceptions of “analytic philosophy”, more precisely, some of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s remarks in On Certainty . The paper uses these remarks to analyse the “linguistic despair” expressed by many Holocaust survivors when trying to put their horrendous experiences into words.

December 18, 2019

Entkräftung und Widerruf

Fügsame Überzeugungen im Zeitverlauf

Benjamin McMyler

Page range: 992-1007

Abstract

A speaker’s retraction of her own previous testimony serves to defeat the reason for belief provided by her testimony in a distinctive way. In telling an addressee that p , the speaker purports to settle for the addressee the question whether p . In retracting her testimony, the speaker then revokes her settling of this question for the addressee, cancelling the addressee’s entitlement to pass the epistemic buck back to her should the content of her belief be challenged, and this entitlement is cancelled even if the addressee has good reason to believe that the speaker’s retraction is misguided or mistaken. Deferentially believing a speaker and allowing them to settle a theoretical question thus has a distinctive temporal and interpersonal character, requiring the addressee to assume that both she herself and the speaker will continue to do their part in the joint activity that is the addressee’s holding p true.

December 18, 2019

Umkämpfte Zeugenschaft

Der Fall Serena N. im Brennpunkt von Holocaust-Forschung, Psychoanalyse und Philosophie

Emmanuel Alloa

Page range: 1008-1023

Abstract

The article focuses on a controversy between historians and psychoanalysts around the testimonial value of a Holocaust survivor (Serena N.). The survivor’s account of the Auschwitz uprising includes factual exaggerations, which has led historians to discard it. Psychoanalysts on the contrary stressed that the testimony accounted for something else: the possibility of resistance in the concentration camp, which gave the inmates hope in their struggle for survival. Survivors’ testimonies, so the argument, have both an epistemological and an ethical content. While philosophy’s insistence on the epistemological dimension of testimony has long generated a disregard for this ethical dimension, it would be equally wrong to construe a pure ethicality of testimony. Testimony is, first and foremost, an entangled social practice, which has tobe acknowledged in its agonal, its aporetic and its performative implications.

Buchkritik

December 18, 2019

‚Eine auf Dauer gestellte Provokation‘: Die Philosophie J. H. Jacobis

Brady Bowman

Page range: 1024-1034

December 18, 2019

Kulturphilosophie(n) als Bollwerk gegen den Naturalismus

Sebastian Luft

Page range: 1035-1041

December 18, 2019

Nun sag, Frege, wie hast du’s mit der Existenz?

Robert Schwartzkopff

Page range: 1042-1048

December 18, 2019

Interpretativer Realismus

Günter Abels Zeichen- und Interpretationsphilosophie

Emanuele Arielli

Page range: 1049-1057

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