Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte. Band 43

The article explores the history of the concept of impossibility from early Greek thought to the present day. Unlike the history of the concept of possibility, impossibility as such has never been looked at by itself. The article focuses therefore on actual occurences throughout the ages. lt is shown, how under theological premises (God's omnipotence and the understanding of miracles, as weil as logical speculation) the concept of impossibility receives a special interest from early Christianity through the middle ages. In the modern age, impossibility is also explorcd as cpistemic category. Existentialism gives the concept a new dynamic. Throughout the ages, the idea of impossibility has been involved in foundational speculations of philosophy.

The study seeks to explain Suarez' analysis of transcendental unity with regard to the scholastic debate on the formal sense and the ontological status of ,unum' as an attribute of being as such. lt neither corroborates the view of older studies, which place Suarez in the thomistic line, nor the prevailing view of recent investigations, according to wich Suarez follows the , via scoti'; rather it shows, that within the scope of the traditional program of the ontological explanation of heing Suarez unfolds an original understanding of unity. In this interpretation Suarez - in order to preserve thc aristotelian approach to unity and to keep up with Franciscan arguments - does not follow Aquinas.

The paper discusses the philosophical relevance of military metaphors in the writings of Lucius Annaeus Seneca and Justus Lipsius. In both cases, these metaphors play a crucial, but different role: Seneca uses them in order to neutralizing the impact of the external reality, e.g. the reality of war, on the soul of the philosopher. According to him the real war is the fight against our affects. On the contrary Lipsius constructs a strong relationship between the warrior and the intellectual - a relationship which confirms the tendency of Lipsius' philosophy to implement discipline in a greater social framework. Military metaphors appear the works of both thinkers as >absolute metaphors< (Hans Blumenberg). Their stoicism turns out to be a metaphorical philosophy.

By reverting of diversest ideal-historic sources and with reference to contemporary problem areas Friedrich Schlegel develops a far-reaching concept of critique, neithcr should be limited on single areas nor exhausts in the very analysis of deficiencics. Rather Schlegel understands critique as a productive matter which always has to account for the own critical intentions and procedures. Schlegel's concept of critique gets its innovative potentiality in the struggle for models explaining a new age. In the following the claim is to explain the various implications of Schlegel's concept of critique. to discuss their systematical interrelation and to judge their theoretical results.

»Responsibility« is an issue which has been much discussed in the context of Nietzsche 's philosophy. However, whereas it seemed generally agreed that the understanding of this term had tobe negative, the author of this paper tries to prove that a positive understanding is allowed of, too. He outlines both ways of looking at it, and also tries to differentiale between the subject and the object of responsibility (i.e. the understanding of it). Positive responsibility - as opposed to negative responsibility, which turns to the past and is connected with a general character of guilt - is defined as being directed towards the future and connected with a general character of a task. Subsequently. the idea of positive responsibility will be related to such fundamental philosophical ideas of Nietzsche as the Death of God, the Eternal Return and the Will of Power, which, from a point of view based on the concept of positive responsibility, emerges as the Will of Responsibility.

»Europe« is a concept with a referent that has been an object of much contention. This is not a side effect of its usage but rather the vcry propcrty of this concept. In the introductory paragraphs it is made clear that some terms or concepts can be reduced to the mere appeal or postulate of what they are supposed to denote. Considering the examples of Thomas Mann, Ernst Robert Curtius, Jan Patocka and others, it is shown that the concept of Europe serves conflicting geographical, intellectual and political purposes, none of which gives a full meaning to it. Tue only common denominator is, indeed, that it calls for action, as Europe is continuously pcrceived as an >Cntity< which is endangered from outside and, even more, by seif annihilation.

After its creation in 16th century Poland, the term of »Dissidents« remained subject of political debates. This article traces its history and focuses especially on the reintroduction of the concept in the German political discourse around 1848 and on its different meanings in the German political Janguage afterwards. The notion first defined separatist groups in both the Protestant and the Catholic confessions; later it became a legal term and a concept of self-identification among materialistic and atheistic groups face to society and churches, before finally being banned from public discourse in 1936. Even though the concept made a new appearance in the German language in the l 970s, I will deal with this most recent history of the conccpt only briefly, since it is not linked with the previous evolution of the concept within German language.

The status of names, even the of names of diseases, is subject of much controversy. Are names mere pragmatical conventions? Are they relicts of former magical relations between name and thing? Analysing cholera discussions in nineteenth-century medicine, this article illustrates how the posession of the name gave power over the disease. This magical aura of names is not just a premodern relict. but is generated permanently anew in modern science.

Two concepts of utmost importancc for the analytic philosophy of the twentieth century, »sense-data« and »knowledge by acquaintance«, were introduced byBertrand Russell under the influence of two idealist philosophers: Francis Herbert Bradley and Alexius Meinong. In this paper we will trace the cxact history of theirintroduction. We will see that betwecn 1896 and 1898, Russell had a well-elaborated theory of »sense-Jata«, which he abandoned after his analytic turn of the summer of 1898. However, following his new turn of August 1900 - after he bccame acquainted with the works of Giuseppe Peano and later of Gottlob Fregc - Russell gradually Jeveloped a new. second theory of sense-data. He reintroduced the term »sense-data« in 1911 with the crucial help of his friend George Edward Moore. In parallel, Russell also introduced the epistemological term »knowledge by acquaintance«, which came to designate, above all, the grasping of scnse-data.