Heracles/Hercules is a particularly striking example of how European societies have received, appropriated and reshaped classical heroic myths into the early 21st century. Is the ancient hero thus also a European site of memory? It will be shown that it was a specific aspect of the myth that was evoked particularly frequently and became a topos by…[Read more]

Wissenschaftler und Denker haben sich widerstandslos für die Durchsetzung der herrschenden Corona-Agenda einspannen lassen.

Der durch das Coronavirus veranlasste Lockdown hat nicht nur unsere körperliche Freiheit ausgehöhlt, sondern auch unsere geistige Freiheit untergraben. In vielen Ländern wurde für das Denken Käfighaltung angeordnet. Offen…[Read more]

Although he obtained a medical degree at the University of Caen in 1618, Isaac Beeckman never practised medicine. Instead, he developed an atomistic conception of Galenic physiology by discussing, throughout his notebook, the constituents and functioning of the living body. Interestingly, Beeckman applied his atomistic interpretation to the notion…[Read more]

Although he obtained a medical degree at the University of Caen in 1618, Isaac Beeckman never practised medicine. Instead, he developed an atomistic conception of Galenic physiology by discussing, throughout his notebook, the constituents and functioning of the living body. Interestingly, Beeckman applied his atomistic interpretation to the notion…[Read more]

This essay traces some of the contexts and media in which “Heracles-Hercules” – as a hero between virtue and hubris – was visible in European societies from the end of the middle ages onwards. It discusses whether this example of the reception, appropriation and transformation of classical myths in the early modern period can be understood as a…[Read more]

For two years, from 1788 to 1790, Duchess Anna Amalia of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1739-1807) exchanged her familiar surroundings with Rome and Naples. She undertook her furthest and most ambitious journey at the age of almost 49. For the only time the princely widow left Germany or the German territories of the Reich. During her stay, the Duchess…[Read more]

Lynn Margulis’s writing about symbiosis has profoundly influenced contemporary evolutionary theory, as well as continental and analytic philosophy of science, the materialist turn, and new materialism. Nonetheless, her work, and all symbiosis or evolution, is founded on a paradox: symbiosis fictionalizes customary accounts of the origin and e…[Read more]