Suchergebnisse

This article considers the state of the humanities, particularly in disciplines like philosophy, in light of the institutional structure of the university. Arguing that the bureaucratization of the contemporary university is thwarting learning and thinking, the author suggests that we begin to consider academic institutions through lenses less focused on the production of measurable knowledge and more attentive to the practice of teaching as an end in itself. He invites readers to imagine alternatives to current academic institutions, challenging us to envision better, collaborative institutional forms for thinking. The increasingly corporate academic model needs to move away from its instrumentalizing emphasis on output, this essay suggests, to acknowledge, instead, the pleasures of teaching, of learning, and of thinking.

"Woher rührt der Impuls der Regierten und politischen Subjekte, Verantwortung auf sich zu nehmen oder Verantwortung von anderen einzufordern? Dem Autor zufolge ist es gerade die prinzipielle Unbegrenztheit der Verantwortung, die das Individuum zur politischen Aktion und konkreten Verantwortungsübernahme treibt. Eine solche wird vor allem dann zur politisch relevanten Tat und erhält die Dynamik einer ‚radikalen Politik', wenn der betroffene Einzelne aus seiner Partikularität heraus gelangt und eine Universalisierung seines Status erfolgt. Eine Politik, die sich in diesem Prozess von partikularen Ansprüchen hin zu universellen Bedeutungen vollzieht, steht in einer deutlichen Distanz zum Staat. Echte Demokratisierung stützt sich allein auf ethische Forderungen, die wesentliche Bestandteile einer wirkungsmächtigen Meta-Politik sind." (Autorenreferat)

This essay attempts to sharpen significantly the critical debate around Levinas's work by focussing on the question of politics, which is, it is argued, Levinas's Achilles'heel. Five problems in Levinas's treatment of politics are identified and discussed: fraternity, monotheism, and rocentrism, the family, and Israel. It is argued that Levinas's ethics is terribly compromised by his conception of politics. In order to save Levinasian ethics from this compromise, two possibilities are explored: first, to follow Derrida's separation of ethical form from political content in his recent reading of Levinas, which allows for a notion of political invention linked to ethical responsibility, and second, to link Levinas's conception of ethics to what is called in the essay the anarchistic disturbanceof politics. In conclusion, this anarchistic experience of ethics in linked to a quite different understanding of politics as the dissensual space of democracy.

Areas of agreement & disagreement in Jacques Derrida's & Jurgen Habermas's accounts of justice are examined. Derrida's deconstructive approach is defended against the claims that it obfuscates the genre boundaries between literature & philosophy & reduces certain historical, social, & political issues to issues of real existence. Although Derrida's notion of democratic politics that is ultimately founded on the universality of justice is similar to Habermas's understanding of democracy, it is contended that Habermas's metaphysical orientation would cause significant problems for Derrida; in addition, it is claimed that Derrida would reject Habermas's understanding of the relationship between the social sciences & philosophy. Moreover, Derrida's notion of "infinite indebtedness" & its role in creating intersubjectivity are viewed as posing a significant challenge to Habermas's conception of ethics. Additional attention is directed toward examining Derrida's conceptualization of the relationship between ethics & politics & his concept of "democracy-to-come." The need to perceive democracy as processes of democratization rather than a fixed political system is stressed. J. W. Parker

Der Autor beschreibt Eindrücke und Reflexionen kurze Zeit nach dem Todesfall von Prinzessin Diana und wundert sich, wie sehr so viele seiner britischen Landsleute, aber auch eine unbekannte junge Frau in einer deutschen U-Bahn, aufgeklärte SozialwissenschaftlerInnen auf einer US-amerikanischen Politologentagung und er selbst emotional ergriffen waren. Er spekuliert über die Identifikationsmomente, etwa die Erkenntnis der "möglichen Bedeutungslosigkeit von Schmerz", das aber dennoch entgegengestellte Verlangen nach "Bedeutung" und nach "Gerechtigkeit". Abschließend schlägt er den Bogen zu der ihm in Gestalt Dianas paßgerechten Delegitimation der englischen Monarchie. (RG)

Examines the philosophical roots of psychoanalysis & social theory, focusing on the tragic-heroic paradigm of German philosophy & the role played by humor in psychoanalytical thinking. The "tragic" as the aesthetic form that reconciles the freedom of the subject & the necessity of nature is discussed, along with the relation of the tragic-heroic & the comic-antiheroic paradigms to finitude. The importance of laughter & the comic to Freudian psychoanalysis is examined, stressing Sigmund Freud's view of humor as the contribution made to the comic by the superego as a positive development of the internal logic of narcissism. Freud's line of thought is compared to tragedy & humor in the work of Jacques Lacan. The many meanings of laughter are discussed, suggesting the ability of humor to allow for the sharing of lifeworld practices in a quiet, rather than heroic way. Comedy is seen as an oblique phenomenology of the ordinary that compensates for the miseries of life while simultaneously emphasizing them. J. Lindroth

A metaphysician in the dark, twanging An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend, Beyond which it has no will to rise. Wallace Stevens, Of Modern Poetry