Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte. Band 50

This paper pursues two objects which are partially interfering: (1) to study the relation between the different defi nitions of both παρáδειγμα and 'παγυγ given by Aristotle in Topics, Rhetorics, and Analytica Priora, (2) to clarify the relation between the definition of 'παγυγ and the example Aristotle offers in Analytica Priora. Both the corresponding defi nitions in relation to each other and the defi nition in relation to the example show some incompatibilities. Theproblems concerning the defi nitions may be solved by understanding them as adapted to the context; whereas I suppose the deviation of the example from thedefi nition to be simply a mistake. (The paper does not elaborate the epistemic, but the formal status of παρáδειγμα and 'παγυγ.)

›Anger‹ and ›shame‹ are exemplary emotions in the ancient refl ections concerning the relation between emotions, the good and the just as well as the relationbetween emotions and reason. It is shown that these emotions have a regulative function for the community in the ancient world. But they have also quite animportant function for becoming an autonomous self and even for the change in character of a self. It is then shown in interpreting the notions of anger andshame in Augustine’s writings in how far this changes for late antiquity. Emotions have still a function in relation to the just but only a marginal one to thegood, and none for the developing of a self or for reasonable actions. They also do regain a cognitive function in the Middle Ages as is shown in an exemplaryway in Thomas Aquinas’ writings on emotions, the function they had in relation to the just is of no great importance anymore. It is then interesting to see thatalso a theory of emotions, as Thomas Aquinas developed is a theory that might be compared with modern theories of emotions, one has to look back to the ancient reflections on shame and the good in order to understand more fully what an author like Imre Kertész being a survivor of German concentration campswrites on shame and the good in his novels.

The philosophical thought of Damascius (about 456–540), the last head of the Platonic Academy, forms also the last original speculative system of ancientneoplatonism. Within his sceptical metaphysics the refl ections on the essence, on the principles, on the possibilities, and on the limits of knowledge are of immense importance and constitute a fundamental contribution to epistemology in general. Damascius works on the recognizability of the absolute, the one, andthe being. He distinguishes – on the basis of his theory, that between the levels of reality exists a necessary, irreversible, and non-reciprocal progression of difference – in an innovative terminology between recognizable and recognized object, between intended and realized object of knowledge, between being,phenomenon and subjective perspectives on the phenomenon. He makes the pioneering distinction between the formal and the material aspect of the objectof cognition; and Damascius investigates the difference between the being itself and the being’s relations to the other. Not only his detailed distinctions butalso his formation of new concepts, contents and their integration in neoplatonic henology, ontology, and theory of causation make Damascius an outstandingfigure in the history of philosophy.

The history of the concept of ›discretion‹ has not yet been written. This lacuna may be due to the complexity of the historical semantics of ›discretion‹, thevariety of its synonyms, antonyms, derivatives and compounds. Furthermore, there are signifi cant differences in what ›discretion‹ means and has meant up tonow in Romance languages, in English and in German. Proceeding from the rich semantics of ›discernere‹ / ›discretio‹ in late Latin, the present study focusses onthe semantical differentiation and multidisciplinarity today in Romance languages as well as in German and in English. It is only since the 18th and 19th centuries that ›discretion‹ normally means tact and secrecy. Beyond the patristical (theological), scholastical (logical), the mathematical and technical and a juridical sense of ›discretion‹, this essay concentrates on the philosophical and epistemological meanings of the term (designating the faculty of discernement, prudence, soundjudgment, precise perception). During the Italian Renaissance, ›discrezione‹ had become a key word of an empirically based epistemology. Hegel, in his Phänomenologie des Geistes, quite surprisingly returns to elder meanings of ›discreteness‹ as a ›Diskretion der Einzelnheit‹.

The paper is aimed to show the specifi c critical meaning of the concept of ius naturale that Leibniz delineates in a critical essay on Pufendorf’s theory of naturaljustice published in 1706. Leibniz’s criticism of Pufendorf has an »exoteric« character and follows a »protreptic« aim. First, Leibniz discusses Pufendorf’s theorystarting from representations of the common sense based on the authority of the revealed religion. Nevertheless, Leibniz’s fi nal aim is not to justify the religiousauthority but, on the contrary, to show the radical antithesis between ratio and auctoritas in order to urge the reader to adopt a rational attitude. The oppositionof ratio vs. auctoritas, e. g. free rational mindset vs. forced submission, is also the leading thread of Leibniz’s essay. Pufendorf’s doctrine of natural justice doesnot aknowledge this principled alternative. Moreover, the above-mentioned opposition marks the argument of Leibniz himself. Namely, Leibniz approachesthe opposition ratio vs. auctoritas from two very different points of view. At first, he points it out from the perspective of those who are submitted to that authority. Then, he discusses the opposition in a strict rational way by showing that Pufendorf’s theory is self-defeating. Therefore Leibniz’s rational demonstrationis a kind of Aristotelian elenchos or »refutation«: through the prove of the selfcontradiction in the discussed thesis the opposite point of view is proved.

In general, »anthropomorphism« denotes the humanization of something that is not human itself (e.g. inanimate nature, animals, or God). The first part of thecontribution (cf. AfB 49, 2007) follows the history of this concept from its origins in classical antiquity up to Kant. This second part examines the continuing conceptual history in the 19th and 20th century, commencing from German Idealism and ending with »the end of Man« proclaimed by Foucault and Lyotard. Characteristic of the anthropomorphism discourse of the 19th century is what could be called »Critique of Concrete Reason«: Reason in its concrete manifestation is supposed to be perceived and explicated as human. It follows that every activity of Reason generates anthropomorphisms. In the 20th century, this equation ofReason and Man is criticized (e. g. by Husserl). On the other hand, the origin of humanization, Man itself, becomes the focus of anthropology and anthropologycritique. In a well understood sense, Man itself can be seen as an anthropomorphism, namely as the result of the self-humanization of a being that continuallysearches for its own essence.

In this paper I try to establish three claims. First, I try to identify the distance from Dilthey’s psychologism taken by Georg Misch in his hermeneutic reformulation of the philosophy of life. Secondly, I try to argue that the outcome of Misch’s criticism of transcendental and hermeneutic phenomenology is theintegration of a certain paradigm of constitutional analysis in the philosophy of life. Finally, I try to show that Misch’s project for a hermeneutic logic is quiterelevant to the process of conceptual construction in the human sciences. It is my contention that the common of denominator of the antipsychologist orientation,the elaboration on a constitutional theory, and the development of a hermeneutic logic is Misch’s critical reception of Kant’s transcendental logic.

The concept of ›stereotype‹ is used in a variety of disciplines with changing meanings. They intersect – up to synonymity – with neighboring notions such as›prejudice‹, ›cliché‹, ›image‹, ›phrase‹, ›common place‹ and ›prototype‹. Stereotypes are related to semantic features such as stenciled simplifi cation, generalization and caricaturing, biased presumption, far-reaching infl exibility as well as independence of experience, habitualisation and emotionally tinted evaluations.They are usually located in the area of preconceptional cognition, but sometimes (especially within linguistics) on the level of semiotic and especially linguisticmanifestation. Their ambiguous functional status oscillates among apperceptive economy, linguistic schematizing and the (dangerous) coining of predispositionsto act. All this is exposed in detail in the present article after the reconstruction of the linguistic history of the term.

Small mistakes in the English translation appear significant enough to force us to think that Tocqueville understood the term ›civil society‹ in a completely different way than his contemporaries, that is Hegel and Marx. In their works civil society as bourgeois or market society was a sphere of economic activity, ›system of needs‹ fulfilling the desires of consumers through the work of producers. The causes of a wrong understanding of Tocqueville lay in a long tradition of mistakes in the English translations and in a lack in the Anglo-Saxon world of a concept of ›civil law company‹, in French société de droit civil, in German Gesellschaft bürgerlichen Rechts – imposed upon the whole of continental Europe by Bonaparte with his Civil Code. To get out of the semantic confusion one should assume that Tocqueville, while writing about civil(ian) associations, thought rather of business entrepreneurships than of non-governmental organizations. Tocqueville was writing about America rather in a liberal than a republican spirit.