Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte. Band 60/61

At 236D-239C, Sophist presents three arguments to the conclusions, that the expression ›not-being‹ does not say or express anything, that we cannot even conceive of the alleged entity of notbeing and that we contradict ourselves when claiming that not-being is not and that the expression ›not being‹ does not express anything at all. I intend to answer five questions concerning these arguments: (Question 1) What does Plato mean when he says that the expression ›not-being‹ does not say anything at all? (Q2) What sort of semantic relation does he think the expression ›not-being‹ involves? (Q3) How couldhe possibly explain that ›not-being‹ is, after all, an expression? (Q4) What does he think we are to learn about the contradictions ensued by our talk of not-being? (Q5) And what does he think is the ontological status of notbeing? My motivation for consideringthese questions is that the arguments against not-being in Sophist 236D-239Chave not been charitably discussed and therefore have not been fully explored.

In this paper I try to explore Plato’s concept of power in the first book of the Republic as opposed to Thrasymachus’.I argue that the core of Thrasymachus’ position is not to be found in his definitions of justice, but in his concept of power and, in this sense, he has a coherent philosophical position. I also claim that although Plato does not explicitly develop a concept of power, it is possible to find it in his arguments throughout the dialogue. Moreover, the link Plato establishes between power and knowledge is going to play a big role in the entirety of his political philosophy.

Der Bezug zwischen ›Erscheinung‹ (phainesthai), ›Schein‹ (dokein), und›Wahrheit‹ (alêtheia) spielt in Platons Politeia eine wichtige Rolle. An mehrerenStellen im II., VI. und X. Buch wird die ›Wahrheit‹ im Gegensatz zu einer ›Unwahrheit‹ definiert, die in einem irreführenden›Erscheinen‹ (phainesthaibzw. dokein) von Gegen-ständen besteht. Die aus dem Erscheinen hervorgehende Sichtbarkeit der Gegenstände ist zugleich trügerisch und erkenntnisstiftend:Einerseits trägt nämlich das Erscheinen dazu bei, die Wahrheit zu verbergen, andererseits kann nur durch dieses verbergende Erscheinen die Wahrheit hervortreten. Diese Ambivalenz wird im vorliegenden Aufsatz in Bezug auf das irrtümliche Erscheinen des Gottes (II, 378a–383c), die Mimesis (X, 596d–601b) und die Manifestation der alêtheia (VI, 510a–VII, 532c) näher untersucht.

Das Bild des »goldenen Berges« (mons aureus) geht zurück auf geographische Angaben und Beschreibungen, die in der Antike als glaubwürdig angesehen wurden. In der Literatur illustriert die Metapher das Bedeutungsspektrum von Reichtum, Wohlergehen, Überfluss und Glück, spricht aber auch Warnungen aus. Dagegen werden in den philosophischen Interpretationen (im Rahmen der griechisch-lateinisch-arabischen Rezeptionen der Aristotelica) vor allem Konstitutionsprobleme des Fiktiven, auch der entia rationis, thematisiert. Die Metapher exemplifiziert Objekte, die logisch möglich sind, aber nicht wirklich existieren. In der Philosophiegeschichte – bis in die aktuellen Analysen der non-existent objects hinein – wurdedas Bild des »goldenen Berges« daher stets mit der Frage verbunden, welche Instanzen wir als »wirklich«, »möglich« oder »unmöglich« rechtfertigen können. Als Beispiel spiegelt die Metapher die Transformationen, in denen sich das Wirklichkeitsverständnis der philosophischen Tradition wie in einem Prisma gebrochen hat.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the controversy between W. Warburton and J. J. Rousseau on civil religion, especially with regard to the relevance of this concept for the political theory of both philosophers. In order to analyze this, we consider (I) the relationship between Church and State in Warburton and the importance of religion for the political order, the significance of a harmonious alliance between Church and State and the pertinence of Christianity for this association. Furthermore, we explain (II) Rousseau’s categorization of civil religion with regard to the deficiency of the intellect, the necessity to complement it and the particular character of religion. Finally, we expose (III) the dilemma of the tolerance of these theories.

This article aims at providing a comprehensive account of Lambert’s notion of a system with regard to both his main works Organon (1764) and Architektonik (1771) and his posthumously published Fragment einer Systematologie (1778). I will argue that the mathematical method that so far has been taken to be the key feature of Lambert’s systematic method by most of his scholars, only serves as one part of a broader systematic approach. The latter is characterized by its teleological orientation and only becomes intelligibleby reading Lambert’s main works in the light of Fragment einer Systematologie (1778).

Although pregnancy as a semantic and perceptual density is a central notion of aesthetics, scholarship has not yet conducted a genealogical inquiry into its early-modern roots. It is the aim of this investigation to make a contribution in this direction. My thesis is, that the idea of aesthetic pregnancy emerges in Alexander G. Baumgarten’s philosophy as the outcome of the convergence between Leibnizian assumptions and a series of hermeneutical categories, which have hitherto been overlooked. After analyzing the role of pregnancy in Lutheran hermeneutics, I examine its reception in Baumgarten’s philosophy, in the attempt to enhance the relationships with the earlier tradition. By reconfiguring the semantic density with the instruments of empirical psychology, I argue, Baumgarten is able to shift pregnancy from the hermeneutical domain of sense to the metaphysical domain of sensibility, thus paving the way for its fortune in future aesthetics.

From a philosophical point of view, the concept of Willkür is highly problematic. Although the word »Willkür« can be originally translated as »choice of the will«, which means a kind of individual freedom, it has, over the last 300 years, experienced a semantic pejoration, and now often stands for mere »arbitrariness«. The article examines the philosophical ambivalence of the concept of Willkür. It defends this concept from the charge that it is no consistent thought and rehabilitates it both historically and systematically. First, it exposes the pre-Kantian concept of the »liberum arbitrium voluntatis« in Augustine, Aquinas, and Leibniz’ »franc arbitre«, which demonstrate the positive sense of the concept. Then it explores the systematic role of Willkür in Kant’s philosophical work. Finally, it addresses contemporary attempts to revitalize this concept in the analytic debate on freedom.

German words ending in ›-nis‹ can have either the female or the neutral gender. As is well known, in his Critique of Pure Reason as well as in other writings, Kant often shifts from the neuter to the feminine for words having the mentioned ending, without thereby leading to a difference in meaning. However, in German the word »knowledge « (as a neuter noun) does not only have an epistemological meaning, but a legal sense as well. It has the meaning of »arbitration award, a judge´s decision, verdict«. In the present article I try to prove that Kant occassionally uses the word »knowledge« in the legal sense rather than in the epistemological sense.

As a result of the problem how revelation could be understood as an eternal event, Schelling developed a new theory of a double eternity. Drawing on said theory, he was also able to solve the problem how time itself could begin. The aim of this article is to reconstruct Schelling’s way of developing this theory in comparison with the state of theory of eternity of its time. It shows that Schelling’s investigation also included a new view on the state of tense (past, present and future) which Schelling took as an important part of each time philosophy.

The aim of my paper is discussing the question, whether Kierkegaard’s concept of a self can be interpreted as a prereflective form of self consciousness. Thereby, I will connect Kierkegaard to the tradition of both idealism (e.g. Fichte) and romanticism (e. g. Hölderlin, Schleiermacher), which have been analyzed by the so-called »Heidelberger Schule« influenced by Dieter Henrich and especially Manfred Frank. By doing so, I will firstly point out, what a prereflective reasoning of selfconsciousness means, and I apply these findings in a second step to Kierkegaard’s definition of the self by making primarily use of the opening passage of Sickness Unto Death.

This article aims to give some explanations about the concept of philological research, writing, and training in the second half of the 19th century. It is shown how the difficulty of methodological explication led to the use of scientific language for the description of methods used by the humanities. Within a case study about the term ›crystallisation‹, this study wants to spell out the plausibility of such a ›language- transfer‹ for the methodology of the philologies and furthermore delineates the story of the popularization of the term and its general use around 1900.

This essay investigates the history of the concept of ›society‹ in the mid-19th century discourses of early socialism and anarchism in German-speaking countries. It shows that in these writings the term ›society‹ had positive connotations, in contrast to its more negative associations in Hegelian philosophy. As a term and slogan, ›society‹ evoked a future freedom and functioned as an polemic alterative to the concept of the ›state‹.

With his understanding of reason, the Protestant theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich (1886-1965) tries to show, especially with his doctrine of polarities both in relation to postmodern approaches and to the concept of a transversal reason (Wolfgang Welsch), that the different forms of reason or of rationality are nevertheless founded in the »one« reason and that some so called different types of reason are only distorted forms.

Ernst Cassirer and Helmuth Plessner published their most important works in the 1920s. This paper explores the relations – both contentwise and methodological – between their conceptions of philosophy, contrasting the symmetrical terms ›anthropological philosophy‹ (Cassirer) and ›philosophical anthropology‹ (Plessner). The comparison focusses on the problem of philosophical self-reflexivity, which is central to the modern age of philosophy. When Plessner considers the basic concept of human lifeform (›eccentricity‹), it follows that the foundation and medium of philosophy is affected, while Cassirer develops his symbolic philosophical approach recursively within the medium of history of philosophy.

The aim of this article is to examine the concept of ›custom‹ (Gepflogenheit) in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Any meaningful human action is underpinned by rules. Custom is situated in the transition phase from the actual rule to the following of this rule. However, as the concept of ›rule‹ is a term with blurred edges and does not allow any ›interpretations behind interpretations‹, it cannot guarantee objectivity. Therefore, a platonic perspective must be adopted which involves fixed rules but makes it impossible to distinguish between appearance and reality. From a grammatical point of view, it is impossible for an agent to follow a rule privately and only once. In this context disposition characterizes the process of a game in two ways, both psychologically as well as physiologically. The notion of custom is examined in the context of an understanding of language game. For Wittgenstein, neither ›Intention‹ nor ›Absicht‹ are considered states of consciousness because they are only of temporary but not of permanent nature.

Within the history of international law, »sovereignty« is inextricably tied to the notion of the state. As this article will show, this is not only the case with regard to its external dimensions, i.e. the relations of a sovereign state vis-à-vis other legal subjects. Rather, international law also had severe repercussions on the domestic dimensions of sovereignty, since the criteria a state had to meet in order to be recognized as »sovereign « by other international actors often changed with the transformations of sovereignty on the international level. This article traces the transformations of these criteria throughout the history of international law and shows that effective political control was never sufficient for an entity to be recognized as sovereign.

A monographic conceptual history of the West has yet to be written. This article discusses the multiple challenges such an undertaking faces and suggests how they can be met theoretically and methodically. By sharing some preliminary findings, this article, moreover, demonstrates that a history of the concept of the West will produce empirical results relevant for the modern political history of Europe and North America.