Ulrich Arnswald

Die Bedingungen wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens an Hochschulen und Forschungseinrichtungen sind dabei, sich grundlegend zu ändern. Die Öffentlichkeit fragt lauter als zuvor nach dne Früchten staatlich finanzierter Forschung, und die Politik fordert von den Universitäten tiefgreifende Reformen. Der öffentliche Legitimationsdruck, der angesichts von Sparzwängen und notwendiger Modernisierung auf die Universitäten zukommt, bringt die Geisteswissenschaften in besondere Bedrängnis. Wenn sie den praktischen Nutzwert ihrer Forschung vorweisen sollen, geraten sie meistens in Verlegenheit. Droht den Geisteswissenschaften der disziplinäre Tod, oder wächst ihnen angesichts neuer Herausforderungen eine um so wichtigere Aufgabe am Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts zu?

To place Ludwig Wittgenstein’s early philosophy specifically in the context of the Great War, which we now call the First World War, is absolutely decisive for understanding his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. According to the motto “Fear in face of death is the best sign of a false, i.e. bad, life” found in a July 1916 entry in Wittgenstein’s Private Notebooks 1914–1916, only recently translated into English for the first time, Wittgenstein tried to clarify the question of the meaning of life for himself in the middle of the raging war. These thoughts also changed the nature of his Tractatus from an originally purely logical work to an ethical, religious, and mystical one, as the Notebooksshow us in parallel with the creation of the Tractatus. The abysses of war, the mystical, ethical, religious, and logical insights recognized in it, and the self-knowledge gained in war allowed his treatise to mature through the existential intensification caused by war.

Philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer has made major contributions to aesthetic theory, Plato and Hegel studies, humanistic studies, and the philosophy of history. A student of Martin Heidegger, Gadamer took up and developed a number of central Heideggerian insights. He also had productive public debates with contemporaries such as Emilio Betti and Jürgen Habermas. The shape of contemporary hermeneutics is due almost entirely to Gadamer's influence, and his magnum opus, Truth and Method, is considered one of the great philosophical works of the twentieth century. This book is dedicated to Gadamer in honor of his hundredth birthday, in 2000. The essays provide a measure of the classical character of Gadamer's work by showing the breadth of engagement his ideas have provoked. As in Gadamer's own life and work, dialogue and conversation figure as important themes in all of the essays. While they encompass a diversity of philosophical perspectives, interests, and styles, the essays also suggest the ever-present possibility of dialogue across language and tradition and of the formation of new modes of discourse and philosophizing.

Im 20. Jahrhundert ist das Verhältnis von Metapher und Philosophie zu einem grundsätzlichen Problem der Selbstreflexion des Denkens geworden. Die Entlarvung der Sinnlosigkeit, Sprachwidrigkeit oder vergegenständlichenden Bildlichkeit spielt auch in Wittgensteins Philosophie eine bedeutende Rolle. Die Sinnkritik Wittgensteins hat nun aber keineswegs zum Absterben der Philosophie geführt, sondern sein eigener Sprachgebrauch ist von schillernden Metaphern durchsetzt. Daher stellt sich auch für Wittgensteins Philosophie die Frage, wo die Grenze zwischen eigentlichem und uneigentlichem Sprachgebrauch verläuft. Trotz einer breit gefächerten analytischen Diskussion über die Semantik der Metapher gerade bei den philosophischen Klassikern des 20. Jahrhunderts ist für die Philosophie Wittgensteins bisher noch nichts Vergleichbares geleistet worden. Die verschiedenen Beiträge dieses Bandes sollen diese Lücke schließen. Sie beleuchten die Funktion der Metapher in Wittgensteins Werk sowie hinsichtlich der Frage nach einem aus dem Werk zu extra-polierenden Beitrag Wittgensteins zu einer Semantik der Metapher. Mit Artikel von Ulrich Arnswald, Jens Kertscher, Matthias Kross, Thomas Macho, Walter Mesch, Dieter Mersch, Regine Munz, Hans Julius Schneider, Hans-Peter Schutt, Ilse Somavilla, Samuel C. Wheeler III, Anja Weiberg, Rüdiger Zill.

Ludwig Wittgensteins Werk hat Anlaß zu unterschiedlichen Interpretationen gegeben. Seine Philosophie bewirkte die Gründung verschiedener philosophischer Schulen. Nicht nur Vertreter der analytischen Philosophie berufen sich auf ihn, sondern ebenso Phänomenologen, Hermeneutiker, Kultur- und Sozialphilosophen, Anthropologen, Religionsphilosophen und Theologen. Obwohl Wittgensteins Werk in seinen Hauptmotiven gut untersucht ist, werden seine Gedanken zu Religion, Ethik und Mystik immer noch weitgehend vernachlässigt. Im vorliegenden Sammelband wird deshalb der Versuch unternommen, diese Gedanken - möglichst unvoreingenommen durch die Zugehörigkeit zu philosophischen Schulen - in breit gefächerter Form darzustellen und zu untersuchen.

Realistically, one has to assume that the many who have entered Germany in recent years, especially in the context of the so-called »refugee crisis«, have not come as temporary seekers of protection, but rather in the majority want to settle permanently. This is precisely why the question of integrating migrants into society will become one of the most important societal challenges of the next decades. The call for state integration measures will be just as loud as that for an obligation for integration by the immigrants. If there is such an obligation for integration, or, if from a constitutional point there can exist such an obligation for integration at all, is subject of this article.

Coming from anarchist circles and revolutionary-syndicalist trade unions, Simone Weil initially saw herself as a Marxist and an anarchist, before increasingly becoming their early and extremely pointed critic. From 1933 on, she distanced herself more and more from the syndicalist movement in terms of content, and at the same time she was increasingly skeptical of its politics. She saw in the syndicalists, socialists, and communists no more accurate knowledge of society than in the conservatives or fascists. Moreover, she came to realize that they did not have the necessary means of action to carry out a revolution. In the assertion of the "historical mission of the working class," she saw a phrase that served the functionaries but only further humiliated and betrayed the working class. In this respect, even Marxism was for Weil still the intellectual expression of the bourgeoisie, because even a change in property relations would not have eliminated the oppression of the working class. Until the end of her life, she held that instead a radical change in labor relations was necessary to end the oppression of the working class and its social misery. The article attempts to situate Simone Weil's early disillusionment with syndicalism, socialism, Marxism and Stalinism, as well as her recognition of what was widely labelled totalitarianism in Western societies at the latest after the Second World War, in her writings.

Otto Neurath habilitierte sich 1917 an der Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, nachdem ein erster Anlauf an der Grazer Karl-Franzens-Universität unter dem Dekan Joseph Schumpeter im November 1916 unter bis heute ungeklärten Umständen – hierzu liegen keine Dokumente vor – zu keinem erfolgreichen Abschluss führte. Dabei könnte für Neurath den Ausschlag für Heidelberg gegeben haben, dass er bereits wiederholt in der seit 1904 von den Heidelberger Professoren Edgar Jaffé, Werner Sombart und Max Weber herausgegebenen Zeitschrift Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften und Sozialpolitik publiziert hatte und Max Webers jüngeren Bruder, den Nationalökonomen Alfred Weber, bereits von seinem Studium in Berlin sowie aus dem „Verein für Socialpolitik“ kannte. Zugleich aber dürfte für Neurath vermutlich auch das Entgegenkommen der Heidelberger Universität maßgeblich gewesen sein, da er dort die Habilitation mit seinen veröffentlichten Aufsätzen zur Kriegswirtschaft im Kumulativverfahren vornehmen durfte. Mit erfolgreichem Abschluss des Verfahrens wurde ihm die Venia Legendi für das Fach Politische Ökonomie in Heidelberg zuteil, wobei Neurath aufgrund vielfältiger Verpflichtungen in Wien und Leipzig, später dann in München, bis zum weithin bekannten Entzug der Lehrbefugnis im Jahr 1919 in Heidelberg nie gelesen hat, was als Grund für den Akt der Aberkennung geltend gemacht wurde (vgl. Sandner 2014, 104f.).

ZusammenfassungErinnerung ist für Wittgenstein ein komplexer Vorgang, der mit einer Vielzahl von Schwierigkeiten verbunden ist. Dies gilt besonders für seine Überlegungen zur Erinnerung einer Absicht – ein in der Wittgenstein-Literatur bis dato vernachlässigter Aspekt, obwohl er in diversen Manuskripten des Nachlasses hervorsticht. Nach Wittgenstein erlaubt uns der Erinnerungsvorgang nicht, uns eine vermeintliche Absicht „vor Augen zu führen“, dennoch verwenden wir den sprachlichen Ausdruck, um mittels einer Erinnerungsbeschreibung eine vergangene Absicht zu äußern. Nur was bringen wir damit aber zum Ausdruck? – Da die Worte sich weder auf Tatsachen beziehen noch mit diesen korrespondieren, kommt es zur paradoxen Situation, dass jemand sich des Inhalts einer Absicht zu erinnern meint, nicht aber der einstigen Worte. Dies wirft im Umkehrschluss die Frage auf, was unter diesen Umständen die Artikulation der Erinnerung einer Absicht überhaupt aussagen soll und kann, und weiterhin, was der Unterschied zu einer gegenwärtigen Absichtserklärung ist.

For Emmanuel Levinas, the death of the other is the "first death" and the fundamental ethical experience. He emphasizes that it is through the experience of the death of others that we develop a relationship with death. Thus, Levinas reverses the traditional perspective. Death breaks down the isolation of the self and makes existence pluralistic. It is the occasion for breaking out of one's own self-reference. The "death of the other" is the starting point of ethics, as it marks the beginning of an infinite responsibility of the self towards the other. This aspect of Levinas's work has only been considered from an ethical point of view to date. However, this is not the only conceivable one. Ethics and anthropology have areas of overlap. It is equally plausible to consider this aspect from an anthropological perspective. The article will do so using the Holocaust and the actions of the Nazis as examples.

The criticism of neoliberalism is omnipresent. The term is seemingly self-explanatory, but its original use in public has been forgotten. Its form originated in the international movement of ordoliberalism in the 1930s, which used neoliberalism to describe its distinction from laissez-faire capitalism. This conceptual confusion has created considerable consequential problems that overlay today’s debate on the future of the market economy. The fact that the neoliberalism of the ordoliberals is today equated by its critics with the capitalism of the libertarians raises questions. Since the economic dogma of Milton Friedman, who was the inspiration for the so-called Chicago Boys in Chile, whose economic policy was first captured by today’s negatively connoted term neoliberalism, this approach needs to be looked at more closely. Should the ideas of the Chicago school of thought substantially distinguish themselves from the other currents of economic liberalism, a solution to the confusion of terms could be possible, giving a new twist to the debate on the market economy. Such a clarifiation would be of fundamental importance for the ethical question of the social orientation of the economic order, since ordoliberalism was in turn the godfather of the social market economy. Furthermore, this would have consequences for applied political ethics in the context of political theories of justice, whose theoretical constructs reflect the existing economic order as a fact of experience.

Superficially, the proximity of Wittgenstein's work and its undisputed influence by Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas and concepts suggests that there are also overlaps in the large and in Nietzsche's work decisive field of progress and criticism of progress. The article tries to show that this is not the case. Despite all the overlaps that may exist between Friedrich Nietzsche and Ludwig Wittgenstein, these do not come to light in the concept of progress and the critique of progress. Both thinkers pursue a very different movement of thought; Wittgenstein sees Nietzsche's focus on the "idea of great progress" as a "delusion", which he does not consider to be expedient. Ludwig Wittgenstein explicitly distances himself here from the spirit that defined the prevailing European and American civilization in the 1930s. He does not succumb to the delusions of grandeur of new, higher-level civilization, but leaves progress as the constantly progressing background noise of any civilization.

Hermeneutics can be understood on the one hand as the art of interpretation, and on the other hand as a medium for dealing with the past, for conveying events, contexts or even writings in new ways of speaking for new recipients. The interpretation of writings, however, places special demands on hermeneutics: it does not take place in a sterile vacuum, but is rather embedded in a social and cultural context that shapes the interpretation or mediation and is an expression of a time, a fashion or a specific requirement of modernity. The question therefore arises as to what role reason and experience, science and/or social ideas, tradition(s) and/or community play in interpretation. Using Thomas More's masterpiece Utopia as an example, various resulting interpretative approaches to a concrete writing will be presented. Through the hermeneutic design of a historical horizon in relation to Thomas More's time as well as through the development of a historical awareness of the work, the possibility of an understanding of this world-famous, still controversial writing as well as the efficiency of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics will become recognisable.