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Abstracts
Michael Zichy: »Menschenbild«. Begriffsgeschichtliche Anmerkungen
The German term ›Menschenbild‹, which, in its modern sense, might be translated as (public) understanding of human nature, is very popular both in public and in academic discourse. There is widespread consensus that ›Menschenbilder‹ are fundamental to human selfunderstanding and the organisation of society. This paper examines the history of this concept and follows the multiple changes of its meaning that have occurred between the middle ages and today.
Stephan Zimmermann: Reflexion und freies Spiel. Kants »Schlüssel zur Kritik des Geschmacks«
As the »key to the critique of taste« in §9 of his Critique of Judgement Kant offers the well-known doctrine of a »free play of the cognitive faculties«. What exactly this play consists in is still much discussed in the literature. Kant describes it as a state of harmony between imagination and understanding, for which the reflecting judgement, which mediates between the two, is responsible. This paper turns against the popular interpretation that considers »free play« as an exceptional state of the mind in which the said faculties are relieved from their actual cognitive activity. This view, however, creates a number of inconsistencies. Above all, Kant explicitly speaks against it. The paper therefore argues for an alternative reading that is able to take these objections into account.
Kay Herrmann: Das Apriori, seine Geltung und Entdeckung – ein Rekonstruktionsversuch
The problem of synthetic judgments touches upon the question whether philosophy is in fact capable of making independent truth statements. According to Kant, synthetic judgments formulate the conditions for the possibility of objectively valid knowledge a priori. As far as empirical attempts at reinterpretation of the aprioristic fall short of this ambition, Kant's a priori goes deeper. This is because modern science strives towards objective knowledge, although its statements are fundamentally fallible. The topic of synthetic a priori thus continues to be relevant. This paper will show that, in order to be viable at all, a modernized version of transcendental philosophy must ›depart from‹ the concepts of »independence from empirics« and/or the »purity« of the aprioristic. Kant's reflections on nonpure synthetic a priori knowledge already contain attempts at this. Furthermore, the aprioristic validity of knowledge does not exclude the possibility, that it can be discovered empirically. Fries and, subsequently, Nelson proceeded with this separation (initially ascribed to Reichenbach) between the contexts of validity and discovery of knowledge, pointing out that the a priori can indeed be discovered empirically, yet never be proven. Currently, there are still a number of valid reasons for arguing that concepts from transcendental philosophy (space, time, substance, causality, freedom and the distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal worlds) continue to be of fundamental importance for the modern sciences. However, it must not be neglected that, even within a modernized framework of transcendental philosophy various unsolved problems remain and/or are created (such as the unfeasibility of the aprioristic claim to general validity and necessity, the problem of drawing a clear boundary between the noumenal and phenomenal worlds). Moreover, the »beautiful structure« of the Kantian system, which constitutes much of its persuasive strength, is lost.
Gisela Schlüter: Was ist Scheu? Zur Wort-/Begriffsgeschichte und zu einem Essay Joseph Jouberts (1815)
›Shame‹/›Scham‹ has recently been dealt with in diverse contexts. This paper focuses on ›shyness‹/›Scheu‹=›Schamhaftigkeit‹/›pudeur‹ corresponding to ›aidos‹ and ›verecundia‹, retracing the history of the concept in German, French, Italian, and English language.