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23Some Problems in the Justification of Moral RightsVienna Circle Institute Yearbook 2 43-55. 1994.“Having a moral right” in private and public debates probably is one of the most important arguments to bring some foundation to one’s claims. Within international law and politics, for example, one easily falls back on universal “human rights”, especially if neither a more subtle moral argument nor prudential reasons find a hold. But in some contrast to this agreement on the strong practical relevance of rights, both the conceptual analysis and normative justification of rights are rather contr…Read more
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9Einleitung: Ethik zwischen Hobbes und KantIn Moral Als Vertrag?: Beiträge Zum Moralischen Kontraktualismus, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 1-36. 2002.
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8Comment on Robert H. Myers. Finding Out What is Substantive in CooperationAnalyse & Kritik 33 (1): 141-148. 2011.Myers' offer of cooperation as a medicine for ailing moral theories is welcomed as potentially helpful, even if his handling of it is diagnosed as implicitly one-sided consequentialist. His search for an ethically “substantive way of engaging with others” is shown as not coherent with his remarks on the tasks cooperation as an ethical concept has to fulfil. Instead, it is proposed that the concept be disentangled from the micro- problems Myers' wants it to solve, and that it be read more freely,…Read more
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2II. Menschliches Leben an der GrenzeIn Ethik der Beziehungen: Versuche Über Eine Postkantianische Moralphilosophie, Akademie Verlag. 2005.
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89What makes bodies beautifulJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 28 (2). 2003.Health and beauty are the most important physical ideals. This paper seeks to compare and contrast these ideals, based on a value theory of human abilities. Health is comprehended as a potential ability to act grounded in bodily functions. Beauty is explained as a symbolising reference to happiness, physical beauty as a combination of organic orientation to purpose and virtuous orientation to action. Physical beauty is the implicit symbolic expression of mental and physical health. This teleolog…Read more
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29The Long Goodbye: On the Development of Critical TheoryAnalyse & Kritik 30 (2): 331-354. 2008.It is not easy to give up on a tradition that promises to rationalize, explain, and thereby ultimately help improve, society. This article narrates the history of Critical Theory in three stages, following the dynamics of its own self-criticism during distinct historical periods and within different societies. Horkheimer/adorno, Habermas and Honneth are read as participating in a philosophical project of societal rationalism which can be criticized by appeal to a pragmatist view of social theori…Read more
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17G.A. Cohens materialistische Geschichtstheorie: Einige Einwände Überblick zu einer DiskussionAnalyse & Kritik 4 (2): 131-158. 1982.During the last years Anglosaxon discussion about Marx and Marxism has been characterized by an intensified interest in historical materialism as a general theory of history. The most extensive, careful and analytically rigorous among several new treatments is the one by G.A. Cohen, which is the subject of four critical articles in the present issue of Analyse & Kritik. To make these articles and Cohen’s project understandable to the German reader, an attempt is made in the following to summariz…Read more
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36Potentials of CooperationAnalyse & Kritik 33 (1): 7-34. 2011.Since Hobbes' Leviathan was published in 1651, the 'problem of order' has been known for some time. Despite this long gestation period for social theory even today we do not have a universally agreed upon answer to this 'problem'. One of the reasons behind this lacuna may be the overly dispersed work being done in the economic and sociological traditions. Whereas one tradition favours 'collective action' as a central answer, the other thinks of the problem itself being dissolved by the acceptanc…Read more
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3Die sanktionistische Theorie des SollensIn Moral Als Vertrag?: Beiträge Zum Moralischen Kontraktualismus, Walter De Gruyter. 2002.
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30Klima auf GegenseitigkeitJahrbuch für Wissenschaft Und Ethik 16 (1): 159-178. 2012.Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 16 Heft: 1 Seiten: 159-178
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5Back MatterIn Ethik der Beziehungen: Versuche Über Eine Postkantianische Moralphilosophie, Akademie Verlag. 2005.
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52Action in Context (edited book)De Gruyter. 2007.The book illustrates the concept of action in three different contexts - the justification of actions, people's life history, and pragmatism.Because of ...
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39Individuelles Handeln und Macht: Foucaults HerausforderungAnalyse & Kritik 13 (2): 170-183. 1991.Foucault’s twofold attack on the modem concept of power gives us something to think about. Backed by ingenious historical analyses he devises an idea of systemic and productive power, abstracted from the conceptual connections between power and individual power-sources, viz. power and restrictions of freedom. The article probes Foucault’s historical sketches on. these two tasks. It defends the less radical view of power as constraining interests and freedom.
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4Trust and Community on the Internet (edited book)Lucius & Lucius (Analyse und Kritik 26(1). 2004.
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35Social Relations Instead of Altruistic PunishmentAnalyse & Kritik 27 (1): 158-171. 2005.Ernst Fehr’s experimental research on altruistic behaviour aims at superseding the classical homo oeconomicus in micro-economic behaviour theory. This essay discusses Fehr’s results from two points of view: first, in regard to the understanding of social action associated with the term “altruism”; second, in regard to the ‘anthropological’ strategy of research that is based on the laboratory method. Against the emphasis on altruism it will be argued that it misleads into providing a distorted de…Read more
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6Eine individualistische Theorie sozialen Handelns. Zu Raimo Tuomelas "A Theory of Social Action"Analyse & Kritik 7 (2): 180-205. 1985.This critical review concentrates on four important parts of Raimo Tuomela’s analytical theory of social action. It examines the book’s reconstructions of social action, of practical reasoning in this context, of social norms and it investigates its claim to a conceptual individualism. The result is critical in several aspects. Tuomela’s most original idea in the analysis of joint action, that of we-intentions, is not broad enough to cover more than a part of social action in the commonly unders…Read more
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37Sustainability is currently the term dominating environmental policy. Its extensive political diffusion is in stark contrast, however, to the extent to which there is agreement over its meaning. Its ability to motivate is not in question, but a certain scepticism surrounds its ideological content. Since ideological terms have no objective basis, it is therefore important for the purposes of environmental policy to establish whether such scepticism is justified.
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III. Moral und GesellschaftIn Ethik der Beziehungen: Versuche Über Eine Postkantianische Moralphilosophie, Akademie Verlag. 2005.
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1Überlebt der Utilitarismus? Peter Singer und das TötungsverbotStudia Philosophica 50 (n/a): 143-161. 1991.
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12Why Participate in Pro-Environmental Action? Individual Responsibility in Unstructured CollectivesAnalyse & Kritik 36 (2): 397-416. 2014.The degradation of natural resources in the environment is, technically speaking, a form of depleting a public good. Public goods are notorious for free-riding among egoists, but the marginality of individual contributions provides no less an obstacle, both to moral duty and motivation. This article discusses the problems of minimized and missing causal involvement on the empirical side; and, in the applicability of classical moral arguments, on the ethical side. It. suggests that individual res…Read more
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Am Abgrund der Grunde Zu: Rudiger Bittner: Doing Things for ReasonsDeutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 51 (2): 335. 2003.
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8I. Abkehr von KantIn Ethik der Beziehungen: Versuche Über Eine Postkantianische Moralphilosophie, Akademie Verlag. 2005.
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18Troubling oneself with endsIn Paul Blackledge & Kelvin Knight (eds.), Virtue and Politics: Alasdair Macintyre's Revolutionary Aristotelianism, University of Notre Dame Press. 2011.
Areas of Specialization
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Meta-Ethics |
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