Nöel Carroll has been one of the most eloquent proponents of an anti-essentialist view of art, in particular, of cinema. He seems to think that Stanley Cavell holds an essentialist view of film, put forward in his foundational work, The World Viewed, and developed in later essays and books. While Carroll admires Cavell’s philosophical readings of…[Read more]

Paper on performance and personal identity in the television series “Battlestar Galactica”.

Both Xenophon and Isocrates use the past to analyse and comment on political problems of the present, and to provide authority for political programmes of the present and for the future, through connecting them to revered past figures and mythologies. For both, idealised versions of historical Greek communities provide a counterpoint to the…[Read more]

Vor wenigen Tagen hat das Hamburger Kabarett-Theater Schmidts Tivoli die Zusammenarbeit mit dem Komiker Kay Ray beendet, offenbar weil rassistische Witze in der Show einen zentralen Platz einnehmen. Kurz nach der Cancel-Affäre zwischen Lisa Eckhart und dem Hamburger Nochtspeicher sieht sich nun auch Ray als Opfer von „Cancel Culture“, die die Kuns…[Read more]

The Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville was one of the most widely read works of the early Middle Ages, as is evidenced by the number of surviving manuscripts. August Eduard Anspach’s handlist from the 1940s puts their number at almost 1,200, of which approximately 300 were estimated to have been copied before the year 1000. This article, based on a…[Read more]

What about insāniyat (humanity)? Or put differently, how are morality and ethics compelled and shaped in the pahars (mountainscapes) of Kashmir? Insāniyat is an emotion and ethics that expresses interdependencies between people. Insāniyat is moral and ethical proclivity. It is not enforced by an external authority but inheres in human en…[Read more]

Literary journalism offers an important way for explaining the complexity of the scientific world to a lay audience. An analysis of two of Richard Preston’s pieces published by The New Yorker, “The Mountains of Pi” and “Capturing the Unicorn” and how they give emphasize science-in-the-making.

It becomes hard for me to think of morality as inherently an oppressive tool of the ruling class. After all, we would be hard pressed to find a communist who isn’t drawn to Marxism—or any left tendency for that matter—who doesn’t possess a strong, disciplined moral conviction that guides their actions and assists them in determining what is the…[Read more]

Foucault bildet eine zentrale Grundlage der queeren und schwulen Theorie, die sich seit den späten 1980er Jahren insbesondere in den USA entwickelt hat. Seine Macht- und Subjekttheorie ist die Basis für eine nicht- essentialistische Analyse von Sexualität und für die Kritik ihrer normierenden Wirkung, die Foucault selbst in Der Wille zum Wis…[Read more]

The genesis and growth of minerals, as well as the existence in ore veins of such organic features as ‘seeds’, ‘matrices’, and ‘nourishment’, remained central and recurrent issues for natural philosophers, technicians, alchemists and practitioners throughout early modern Europe. By providing an overview of the main themes, voices, and concurrent…[Read more]

In der postmarxistischen politischen Philosophie wird die Veränderung gegenüber der Verstetigung analytisch und normativ bevorzugt. Deshalbleistet die postmarxistische Theorie keine realistische Analyse und normativ-differenzierende Bewertung von politischen Institutionen, insbesondere des Rechts. Der Beitrag liefert einen Ansatz, um diese L…[Read more]

Over the last four decades of the 18th century, the image of Sparta began to include a few characteristic elements that later became an important point of reference for 19th-century writers, philosophers and historians. Issues of Spartan equality of citizens, fully responsible for their country, and also soldierly honour and Sparta’s military c…[Read more]

In the history of early modern science, the German physician Andreas Libavius (Halle, Saxony, c.1550–Coburg, Bavaria, 1616) is known for having promoted the institutionalization of alchemy in the academic sphere along with the creation of laboratories and instruments. Libavius was also remarkable for his extended network of scholarly friends and f…[Read more]

English abstract: A paper arguing the relevance of a cognitive narratological perspective and a retrospective stance attentive to hindsight bias in order to clarify the debate on racial differences and population diversity in biology. The issue is discussed with reference to the dichotomy between ‘lumpers’ and ‘splitters’ in paleoanthropology as…[Read more]

España tiene una relación traumática con su guerra civil. Del franquismo ni hablamos: es para el discurso oficial del régimen político actual la personificación abyecta del mal, y esa versión oficial es defendida por el actual gobierno izquierdista como la única verdadera y aspira a ser impuesta como la única autorizada. En 2020, y con Franco y…[Read more]

Wir wissen nicht, wie eine emanzipative und kritische Institutionentheorie aussehen kann, weil wir in einem theoretischen Dilemma stecken: Traditionelle politische Theorie, von Liberalismus bis Marxismus, ist machtblind und damit unrealistisch – dies hat Foucaults Kritik gezeigt. Unrealistische Theorie kann nicht die Basis für die Konzeption gu…[Read more]

I would like to deal with the following questions: What is the reason for the failure of Western states to protect refugees and to welcome migrants? And what is an ad-equate response? One popular hypothesis is that liberalism is the problem. The most elaborate version of this hypothesis comes from Christoph Menke, who employs his radical critique…[Read more]

Thank you very much for this excellent presentation. In my comment I aim to render more explicit some fundamental tensions or contradictions between legal emancipation and queerness, which are at stake in your description of the legal frameworks for the protection of queers. It thereby reopens the question of the strategic choice between appealing…[Read more]

One of the longest lasting problems in the discussion about Foucault has been the problem of freedom. More precisely the question is: How can freedom and resistance be thought and explained in a theory of power and subjectification?
I will address this problem not by talking about Foucault himself, for example by offering a new interpretation of…[Read more]

Wie können Freiheit und Widerstand innerhalb von Foucaults Theorie der Macht und Subjektivierung konzipiert werden? Karsten Schubert liefert die erste systematische Rekonstruktion der sozialphilosophischen Debatte um Freiheit bei Foucault und eine neue Lösung für das Freiheitsproblem: Freiheit als die Fähigkeit zur reflexiven Kritik der eig…[Read more]