Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte. Band 67,1

This article examines Iris Murdoch’s reflections on language and moral philosophy, with particular attention to her analysis of secondary or “thick” evaluative concepts. In contrast to Richard Hare’s prescriptivism, Murdoch emphasizes the inseparability of the descriptive and evaluative aspects of concepts such as “courageous,” “cowardly,” or “vulgar.” Concepts of this kind disclose moral reality, though only through their context-sensitive appropriation by moral subjects. Murdoch underscores that what she calls “moral work” consists above all in this conceptual practice, which in turn shapes the inner life and self-understanding of those who employ such concepts. At the same time, a certain tension emerges—though not an irresolvable one—between Murdoch’s emphasis on the central role of such concepts and her Platonically inspired notion of the Good. The article offers a systematic discussion of this complex of questions and highlights Murdoch’s continuing relevance to current debates on semantics, moral realism, and particularism.

This article examines Iris Murdoch’s rejection of teleology in moral philosophy, focusing on her striking claim that »the only genuine way to be good is to be good for nothing.« At first glance, Murdoch’s denial of an external telos appears to clash with her insistence on moral progress and her portrayal of the Good as a »transcendent magnetic centre.« The essay explores these apparent tensions through a threefold approach: first, by situating Murdoch’s remarks within her own writings on morality and transcendence; second, by comparing her Platonist orientation with the neo-Aristotelian accounts of Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Elizabeth Anscombe, her contemporaries in the so-called »Wartime Quartet«; and third, by proposing an alternative resolution through Murdoch’s notion of purification, developed in dialogue with Simone Weil. The article argues that Murdoch’s view ultimately avoids contradictions: while human life lacks an external purpose or reward, the orientation towards the Good purifies perception and motivation without rendering life teleological. In this way, moral improvement is not a form of compensation but an uncompromising practice of attentiveness, which preserves the radical character of being »good for nothing.«

The world in which we move as human agents is, in crucial respects, a deeply personal one. Perceptions of meaning and significance, as well as pathways for action, are partly shaped by each person’s idiosyncratic psychological constitution. This insight, long familiar to psychoanalytically inclined thinkers, also plays a central role in the moral philosophy of Iris Murdoch. The aim of this paper is to highlight this point of connection between psychoanalytical thinking and Murdochian moral philosophy, thereby presenting Murdoch as a prime source of inspiration for building bridges between areas of philosophy that are often assumed to be opposed or playing different games altogether. Thus, Murdoch’s repeated emphasis― despite her commitment to the impersonal reality of the Good―on the often highly personal, or even private, dimension of moral insight and action will be reconsidered in a new interpretive framework.

One of the most contentious issues in contemporary philosophy of luck is the account of the so-called significance condition. Reflection on this condition ends to pull in two opposite directions: either toward subjectivism and relativism, which threaten to undermine the philosophical utility of the concept of luck, or toward eliminativism regarding the significance condition, which risks detaching the concept from ordinary usage. This paper explores whether contemporary philosophers of luck can gain from reconsidering Aristotle’s account of luck (tyche) and offers a cautiously affirmative answer. Aristotle develops an objective conception of luck that avoids some of the major difficulties vexing contemporary theories—particularly with respect to the significance condition. Nonetheless, the applicability of Aristotle’s analysis to current debates is limited for at least three reasons: (1) it depends on his peculiar understanding of teleology, which presupposes a nowadays controversial conception of the good; (2) it requires unexpected and sometimes strained explanations of everyday attributions of luck; and (3) it does not treat cases of good luck and bad luck symmetrically.

The paper addresses current concerns about loneliness as a public health problem by examining the rich historical semantics of the terms loneliness and solitude, whose meanings range from involuntary psychosocial isolation to voluntary temporary retreat. The findings presented here suggest that today’s discussions about the political and social dangers of loneliness would benefit from historical-semantic differentiation in a comparative perspective as well as from interdisciplinary reflection.

Conceptualizations in aesthetic theory tend to be visually determined. But it is in the overlapping fields of literary and musical studies that more stringently developed concepts are required. The notion of ‘sonantics’ joining up musical and literary poetics attempts to respond to this need. Generating a concept of this sort, being both synthetic in terms of its formation and analytical in respects of its application, invites reflections on the process of conceptualization as such. The present example illustrates this point with some extensive reference to Hans Blumenberg’s discourse on the emergence of concepts connecting it to his notion of ‘Horizontabschreitung’ as opposed to ‘Horizontverschmelzung’ in Hans-Georg Gadamer’s meaning. In so doing, Sonantics, this new concept of musical and literary analysis, aims to contribute to a discourse on developing a meaningfully imaginative terminology through blending spheres of criticism.

This essay presents a systematic survey of interpretive practices in physics research. It offers key insights into the complex interplay between experiment and theory, as well as into the dynamics of concept formation and theory development. The survey is not only relevant from the perspective of the philosophy of science but also provides a valuable basis for comparing interpretive practices across other academic disciplines—including other branches of philosophy. The paper distinguishes between different types of experiments and highlights the multiple, and at times changing, conceptual roles that experiments can play. Among these, explorative uses of experimentation are shown to be particularly important, as they enable the discovery of new research areas and phenomena. Furthermore, a closer examination of reinterpretations—or role changes—of experiments reveals a distinctive argumentative practice. This practice, which proves to be highly innovative for theory development, combines negative empirical results with inferences from privation in a way that may be characterized as a transcendental argument.

Sebastian Böhm, Thomas Sören Hoffmann, Klaus Honrath (Hgg.): Thomas Nipperdey. Positivität und Christentum in Hegels Jugendschriften. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2024 (= Begriff und Konkretion. Beiträge zur Gegenwart der klassischen deutschen Philosophie. Bd. 14). 201 S. Uwe Vormbusch, Michael Niehaus, Fabian Fechner, Peter Risthaus, Eryk Noji (Hgg.): Glossar der Unsicherheit. Berlin: Neofelis, 2025. 349 S.