Christoph Menke

Hermann Pfütze und Christoph Menke stellen in dem Podiumsgespräch die Frage nach den widerständigen Potentialen der Kunst. Was ist das Spezifische der Kunst gegenüber anderen sozialen Feldern oder Praxisformen? Was lässt sich unter Ästhetischem Widerstand genau verstehen? Auch wenn die Kunst nicht über Gewaltmittel verfügt, so könnte es doch einen Wettstreit um die Idee der Kunst geben. Ästhetischer Widerstand ist dann der Widerstand einer Kunstform gegen eine andere. Oder ist die ästhetische Erfahrung gerade nicht antagonistisch organisiert? Dann könnte Kunst als eine heilende Praxis erscheinen, die anderen Antagonismen entgegenwirkt und so Angst und Schrecken bannt. Nach Hermann Pfütze weist das Ästhetische eine Nähe zur Demokratie auf, da Kunst wie Demokratie die Unabgeschlossenheit der Welt betonen und von Angst und Schrecken befreien wollen. Dieser an Judith Shklar gewonnene Demokratiebegriff ist für Christoph Menke zu defensiv. Kunst scheint für Menke in unserer Gegenwartsgesellschaft eher der spezifische Ort eines utopischen Potentials zu sein, denn die Kunst kritisiert durch ihren Versuch der Darstellung von Lebendigkeit unbelebte Praxisformen, wie etwa die entfremdete Arbeit.

_Tragic Play_ explores the deep philosophical significance of classic and modern tragedies in order to cast light on the tragic dimensions of contemporary experience. Romanticism, it has often been claimed, brought tragedy to an end, making modernity the age _after_ tragedy. Christoph Menke opposes this modernist prejudice by arguing that tragedy remains alive in the present in the distinctively new form of the playful, ironic, and self-consciously performative. Through close readings of plays by William Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett, Heiner Müller, and Botho Strauss, Menke shows how tragedy re-emerges in modernity as "tragedy of play." In _Hamlet_, _Endgame_, _Philoktet_, and _Ithaka_, Menke integrates philosophical theory with critical readings to investigate shifting terms of judgment, curse, reversal, misfortune, and violence.

The violence of the law, its unavoidability and its foundational character, becomes one of the main features pointed out by a philosophical critical engagement with the sphere of right. The expression "transitional justice" points, not only to the transitional form that legal justice attains in such a context, but also to the fact that justice itself is also in transition, and with it the sphere of law, as its requirement and justification. Transitional justice processes bring to light more than ever the incapacity of the law to provide retribution for the quality and sometimes the sheer quantity of the harms that are to be addressed by the legal process. Christoph Menke sees in law's self-reflective capacity the potentiality of the law to judge differently while being sustained by the very same operation that makes its violence unavoidable.

The concept of negation is the central operator in distinguishing between historical change and natural evolution, which is constitutive of modern thinking. The crisis of this distinction is therefore the »crisis of negation « (Alain Badiou). The text examines this crisis by first considering Hegel’s concept of »determinate negation« and its impact on the modern understanding of revolution and then discusses two possible alternative understandings of negation: abstract negation (Luhmann) and infinite negation (Agamben)

RESUMEN Mientras que en las concepciones neoaristotélicas de la virtud y la Bildung el concepto de segunda naturaleza describe la culminación exitosa de la educación humana, Hegel utiliza este término para analizar la naturaleza irremediablemente ambigua, incluso conflictiva, del espíritu. El espíritu solo puede realizarse a sí mismo creando (1) una segunda naturaleza como orden de libertad, perdiéndose a sí mismo, o (2) una segunda naturaleza, es decir, un orden de exterioridad, regido por los automatismos inconscientes del hábito. En la segunda acepción del término, segunda naturaleza refiere a la inversión de sí mismo del espíritu: la libre exposición del espíritu produce un orden objetivo, incontrolable; segunda naturaleza es aquí un término crítico. Por otro lado, la misma inversión de la libre posición [Setzen] en la existencia objetiva es el momento del éxito del espíritu ("absoluto"). El artículo expone esta ambigüedad indecidible de la segunda naturaleza y afirma que su aceptación y desarrollo son las condiciones de una comprensión adecuada de la constitución y las formas de la segunda naturaleza. ABSTRACT While in neo-Aristotelian conceptions of virtue and Bildung the concept of "second nature" describes the successful completion of human education, Hegel uses this term to analyze the inevitably ambiguous and even conflictive nature of spirit. Spirit can only realize itself creating (1) a second nature as an order of freedom, losing itself, or creating (2) a second nature -an order of externality, ruled by the unconscious automatisms of habit. The second meaning of the term, "second nature" refers to spirit's inversion of itself: the free enactment of spirit produces an objective order, uncontrollable; "second nature" is here a critical term. On the other hand, the very same inversion of free positing [Setzen] into objective existence is the moment of the success of ("absolute") spirit. The paper exposes this unspeakable ambiguity of second nature and claims that its acceptance and development are the conditions of an adequate understanding of the constitution and forms of second nature.

Hannah Arendt's 1949 essay on the critique of human rights was published in English and German in the same year under two quite different titles: while in English the title asks the skeptical question: "'The Rights of Man'. What Are They?", the German title claims: "Es gibt nur ein einziges Menschenrecht " - "there is only one human right". The article shows that the English title's skepticism and the German title's assertion represent two internally connected moves of Arendt's argument. For Arendt aims at a fundamental critique of the modern natural law tradition of human rights which, at the same time, hints at a possible alternative understanding of a " right to have rights" in terms of a political anthropology - a new understanding of human dignity

Ian McEwan's novel centers on a British High Court Judge, Mrs Justice Fiona Maye, who works within the Family Division. For Christoph Menke, the law constitutes subjects in their very autonomy, and thereby hollows out their autonomy from the inside, for the subject becomes a subject by judging and imposing violence on themselves. In McEwan's novel, the law functions alongside other social practices, and different practices demand different but related forms of integrity. McEwan's novel centers on a British High Court Judge, Mrs Justice Fiona Maye, who works within the Family Division. In an article on Marx's critique of the law published two years after the German edition of Law and Violence, he continues the project of probing the limits of legality. Benjamin notes areas of social life that do not depend on violence to resolve conflicts.

In einem Brief nennt Adorno die "Negative Dialektik" kurz nach ihrem Erscheinen unter seinen Schriften "das philosophische Hauptwerk, wenn ich so sagen darf“. Dieser herausgehobenen Bedeutung, die das Werk für Adorno hatte, entspricht nicht nur die lange Zeit, die er mit der Abfassung des Buchs beschäftigt war, sondern auch die lange Geschichte, die ihre zentralen Motive in seinem Denken haben. Philosophische Begriffsklärung, die Arbeit an "Begriff und Kategorien“ einer negativen Dialektik, versteht Adorno dabei als dialektischen Übergang in inhaltliches Denken – und so betreibt er sie auch hier. Das hat Konsequenzen für die Form des kooperativen Kommentars, der in diesem Band versucht wird. Adornos "Negative Dialektik" zu kommentieren, kann nur in dem Bewußtsein der unüberbrückbaren Kluft gelingen, die den Kommentar von diesem Text trennt.

What makes a revolution possible? The text understands this as the question for the subject that is able to make a revolution. Any attempt to answer this question is faced with an aporia: The subject of the revolution can neither be identified with its historically produced social form, nor can it be the subject “as such,” as the power of negativity prior to history and society. The article suggests to find a way out of this aporia in the idea of a transcendental turn of subjectivity: The revolution is the transcendental usage of the subject’s historically acquired and socially formed capacities. The possibility of the revolution lies in the revolutionizing of possibilities.

This article connects two seemingly contradictory Kantian thesis with respect to the aesthetics: the statement of the autonomy of the aesthetic in front of the ethical and the assertion of the beautiful as a symbol of morality. The author points to the fact that this apparent confrontation clears up thanks to the concept of analogy proposed by Kant between the beautiful and the good, and again thanks to the understanding of the orientation of both the aesthetic taste and the moral attitude in front of the good as dispositions resulting from a process of reflexion. This notion is dealt with in the article according to its three meanings.