Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte. Band 51

This paper is concerned with the history of the concept of where in ancient philosophy. Though Aristotle was the fi rst to recognize the concept as a topic of philosophical interest, numbering the category of where among his ten categories, it is only from late antiquity that more extensive treatments of the concept have come down to us, in Plotinus’ The Genera of Being and Simplicius’ Commentary on the Categories. Plotinus rejects the category of where on the ground that, on any plausible understanding of locatives (i. e. expressions we use to say where something is), the things they signify do not make up a special category. To show this, Plotinus considers three at least plausible ways to construe the semantics of locatives: they may signify either (i) places or (ii) something in something else, or (iii) relations. The paper examines these three construals together with Plotinus’ dialectical arguments and Simplicius’ counter-arguments, concluding thatthe former, though highly illuminating, are unsuccessful and that, by and large, Simplicius is right in his defence of the category of where.

The following study should be considered as a contribution to the understanding of both Hegel’s interpretation of Aristotle’s concept of νος and Hegel’sown concept of subjectivity as principle of self-knowledge in his theoretic writings. Its starting point is a closer examination of the famous quotation from Aristotle’s Metaphysics Lambda 7 which can be found at the end of the Berlin Enzyklopädie. Hegel himself gives a thorough discussion of Aristotle’s metaphysicsin his Vorlesungen zur Geschichte der Philosophie which should be regarded as the main source of Hegel’s understanding of Aristotelian νος. Hegel’s interpretation of Aristotle’s concepts of νος and unmoved mover in the Vorlesungen are critically discussed in this study, and the importance of the principles ofδúναμις and νéργεια for Hegel’s own understanding of »Sich selbst Denken« (self-knowledge) of the spirit is analysed in detail. Thereby, the different sensesof ›subjectivity‹ Hegel’s own theory includes are defi ned and differentiated. However, their interrelation remains unclear.

The article tries to reconstruct a module of human cognition integrated in early forms of thinking e. g. in magic and taboo. The module consists in the creation of contiguous identities and entireties. Magical thinking supposes a kind of identity between an object and a person who has touched the object. All entities which are bound in such a relation of contiguity form an entirety and in a wider sense an identity. They can be conceptually identified with each other. The role of contiguity in this respect was discovered by the psychology of association and conveyed to the study of language. It can be shown that the conceptual identification or equation plays an important role in the history of mankind. Indeed, it seems possible that they distinguish the premodern from the modern mind.

The concept of ›stereotype‹ is used in a variety of disciplines with changing meanings. They intersect – up to synonymity – with neighboring notions suchas ›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 especiallylinguistic manifestation. Their ambiguous functional status oscillates among apperceptive economy, linguistic schematizing and the (dangerous) coining ofpredispositions to act. All this is exposed in detail in the present article after the reconstruction of the linguistic history of the term.

The following study is a contribution to the history of the ambivalent using of ›fanatisch / Fanatiker / Fanatismus‹ in the 19th and 20th century. The positivemeaning is not only a characteristic indication of the fascistic language. Surprisingly there are several examples in the works of Lion Feuchtwanger, GermanJew and indisputed anti-fascist, so that Klemperers thesis of the only negative meaning by democrats, in the tradition of the Enlightenment, is not true. Using›fanatic‹ in a positive manner, Feuchtwanger himself is standing in the tradition, of Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and other radical democratsand communists. This result shows the diffi culty to defi ne the German fascistic language by lexical meanings.

The term ›catastrophe‹ is nowadays applied to a great variety of scientific as well as public discourses, but its historical roots have rarely been investigated. While its meaning in ancient Greek literature is not unanimous, it became a key word in late Roman poetics where it refers to the happy endings of comedies. In our article we intend to unfold that the popularity of the term ›catastrophe‹ is due to its use in these poetics and their reception during the age of enlightenment. Its special application to natural events is a relatively late phenomenon and can be dated not before sporadic references in the writings of Helisaeus Roeslin and Johannes Kepler. Early English geological theories of the seventeenth century, which introduced and established the term in scientific debates, were also influenced by the Old Testament, where parts of its positive meaning had been preserved. It remains to be shown in the last section of the article, how ›catastrophe‹ has lost all its positive connotation in twentieth century discourses.

The paper analyses the human rights discourse in the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev era. It explores in what way and to what extent the international human rights norms as stipulated in the Final Document of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) transformed the Soviet discursivepractices. Thereby it considers the fact that one of the main features of the Soviet public space in the Brezhnev era was its division into an offi cial and anunderground realm. This divide provided the battle ground for fi erce contestations concerning the correct interpretation of these norms and rights. The Sovietoffi cials regarded human rights as an internal affair whereas dissidents advocated that these comply with international laws. Within this turmoil dissidentsappealed at the international human rights catalogue questioning the legitimacy of the Soviet state and thus they radically changed Soviet power practice.

This essay deals with an ethnographic-historical motive of apes conceptionalised to be competent of language but refrained from actualizing their potential in order not to pressed to (slave-)labor. This idea was coined in the 17th century and transmitted in various contexts for three centuries. The mental image of apes competent in language can be understood as a variation of the popular motive of bon sauvage transformed into the world of the animals. This evocative image was generated within the discourse on language, labor and social hierarchies. Looking at the history of the motive we can detect various significant variations. Furthermore this article sheds some light on the usage of ethnographical anecdotes in philosophical and literary texts.