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Historical subjunctives : eight theses on understanding past possibilitiesIn Andreas Haug & Andreas Dorschel (eds.), Vom Preis des Fortschritts: Gewinn und Verlust in der Musikgeschichte, Universal Edition. 2008.
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Einführung zu den Schriften [Richard Wagners]In Laurenz Lütteken (ed.), Wagner Handbuch, Bärenreiter. pp. 110-117. 2012.In his writings, Richard Wagner imagines art as something natural. This paradox was only befitting for Wagner’s contradictory historical stance: that of an eminently modern artist loathing the modern world. For him, nature served as a yardstick apt to find the modern world deficient on all counts. But how can something ahistorical, nature, be used to judge a historical phenomenon, modernity? To arrive at the verdict Wagner was keen on, he had to fill his concept of nature with historical content…Read more
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Systemrationalität?In Karl-Otto Apel & Matthias Kettner (eds.), Die eine Vernunft und die vielen Rationalitäten, Suhrkamp. pp. 349-372. 1996.We judge actions to be rational if means are adequate to ends. In modern societies, innumerable actions are interconnected into complex systems. Does rationality, then, become a feature of systems? If so, it will not do to view means in the light of ends, Niklas Luhmann maintained. In ‘The Concept of Purpose and Systems Rationality’ (‘Zweckbegriff und Systemrationalität’) (1968), he defined the rationality of systems as their capacity to reduce complexity (“Reduktion von Komplexität”); in his la…Read more
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Arbeit am Kanon: Zu Hugo Wolfs MusikkritikenMusicologica Austriaca 26 43-52. 2007.Cultivation of the musical canon and canonisation of truly original work can be identified as guiding principles of both Hugo Wolf’s artistic and his critical practice. The latter is shaped by classicist tropes; they may serve strategic functions as well, yet cannot be reduced to them. While he rejects the merely old-fashioned, Wolf also leads a striking attack on what he terms “modern music”. His endorsed aesthetics intertwine the old and the new.
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2682Die Idee der VerwandlungIn Verwandlungsmusik. Über komponierte Transfigurationen, Universal Edition. pp. 11-51. 2007.Within the European history of ideas, at least three conceptions of metamorphosis can be distinguished. First, as celebrated in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, there is the vision of an open-ended flux of shapes in all directions, potentially with the ambiguous result of wavering identity. Secondly, at the centre of the synoptic gospels Jesus’s transfiguration is presented as a luminous elevation, rendering his true nature unambiguous. Thirdly, alchemy conceives of metamorphosis as contingent upon a meeti…Read more
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1Moral als Problem. Friedrich Nietzsche: Fröhliche Wissenschaft § 345Zeitschrift Für Didaktik der Philosophie Und Ethik 30 (1): 56-61. 2008.
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43Über die Intentionalität von EmotionenInternational Studies in Philosophy 29 (4): 11-21. 1997.Intentionality is a key feature of emotions; we understand them as directed towards objects. Intentional objects need not be real objects. Furthermore, objects of emotions can be distinguished from their causes. At the same time, objects and causes may be related, and, for some emotions, have to be related if the emotions are to count as warranted. Psychoanalysis and comparable cures tend to ignore these relationships. That does not necessarily preclude therapeutic success. Yet being based on sa…Read more
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4The Crypto‐Mrtaphysic of ‘Ultimate Causes’ Remarks on an Alleged ExposéRatio 1 (2): 97-112. 2006.
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682Individualism for the Masses: Aesthetic Paradox in Mahler’s Symphonic ThoughtIn Elisabeth Kappel (ed.), The Total Work of Art: Mahler’s Eighth Symphony in Context, Universal Edition. pp. 46-60. 2011.In his Eighth Symphony Gustav Mahler envisions modern artistic production to steer clear of an alternative emerging at the time: that between popular music on the one hand and esoteric avantgarde music on the other; Mahler’s music is meant to reach the masses, but without descending to audiences’ lowest common denominator. One query through which Mahler’s paradoxical aesthetic vision of an ‘individualism for the masses’ can be explored has been hinted at by the composer himself: Does his integra…Read more
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4Vollkommenes hält sich fern. Ästhetische NäherungenUniversal Edition. 2012.In ‘Vollkommenes hält sich fern’ (‘Perfection keeps itself aloof’) – the book title is drawn from a verse of American poet Kimberly Johnson (*1971) –, Philip Alperson and Andreas Dorschel discuss issues in the philosophy of music and general aesthetics related to the body, to practices and genres, values and education.
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Darwinism as a Prohibition of Criticism. A commentary on Friedrich August von Hayek’s Theory of Moral EvolutionInternational Journal of Moral and Social Studies 5 (1): 55-66. 1990.
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33Moralkritik und Kritikverbot: Das naturalistische Fundierungsargument bei NietzscheTijdschrift Voor Filosofie 50 (3). 1988.
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Friedrich von Hausegger, Die Musik als Ausdruck (edited book)Universal Edition. 2010.In 1885, the Austrian music critic and scholar Friedrich von Hausegger published his book “Die Musik als Ausdruck” (“Music as Expression”) which may be understood as an answer to Eduard Hanslick’s “Vom Musikalisch-Schönen” (“On the Musically Beautiful”, 1854). Unlike Hanslick, Hausegger takes the body as central to any adequate account of music. Hence Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, in particular his book “The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals” (1872), becomes a central reference f…Read more
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820The Idea of Order: Enlightened RevisionsArchiv für Rechts-Und Sozialphilosophie 98 (2): 185-196. 2012.Order has been ascribed both to nature and to society. There is a long tradition of claiming that the social order and the natural order are closely linked. Radical enlightenment challenged that tradition. According to Spinoza to call something orderly simply means that we can easily imagine and remember it; ascribing order thus betrays merely something about us, not about things. This challenging idea never became Enlightenment mainstream. In fact, ties between an objective natural order and ou…Read more
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565Gestaltung und EthikConceptus: Zeitschrift Fur Philosophie 28 (72): 63-81. 1995.In design theory, moral categories have traditionally been used in favour of objectivity and soberness to oppose designers' aesthetic narcissism. This use of moral concepts is directed at the individual design object. The situation gets more complicated, however, as soon as the totality (or a large number) of objects of a certain type raises problems which could not have been predicted from features of the individual object as such. The essay attempts to clarify how ethical concepts could be rel…Read more
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248Einwände gegen das Vergleichen. Ein Versuch, sie zu beantwortenPhilosophisches Jahrbuch 113 (1): 175-183. 2006.
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436Rettende InterpretationIn Otto Kolleritsch (ed.), Musikalische Produktion und Interpretation. Zur historischen Unaufhebbarkeit einer ästhetischen Konstellation, Universal Edition. pp. 199-211. 2003.Aestheticians in the tradition of Critical Theory have claimed that the or a purpose of musical interpretation is somehow to save or salvage or rescue ("retten") the musical work. What sense, if any, can be made of this claim? The notion of salvage or rescue presupposes the concept of danger. Threats to works of art emerge from two sources: from outside and from inside. Whilst the former problem is only touched upon, the latter is discussed in some detail, using the example of Brahms' Alto Rhaps…Read more
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Der Mensch als Tier. Anmerkungen zum Programm der ‘human sociobiology’Prima Philosophia 3 (2). 1990.
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1Musik und SchmerzMusiktheorie 23 (3): 257-263. 2008.Ancient mythology related music to pain in a twofold way. Pain is the punishment inflicted for producing inferior music: the fate of Marsyas; music is sublimation of pain: the achievement of Orpheus and of Philomela. Both aspects have played defining roles in Western musical culture. Pain’s natural expression is the scream. To be present in music at all, pain needs to be transformed. So even where music expresses pain, at the same time it appeases that very pain. Unlike the scream, musical disso…Read more
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2Die Biologische Pointe Aller Moralischen PointenZur Neodarwinistischen EthologieBijdragen 50 (1): 24-39. 1989.
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416Der allgemeine Wille. Zu Rousseaus Contrat social (1762)Zeitschrift Für Didaktik der Philosophie Und Ethik 32 (1): 31-33. 2010.In his 'Contrat social', § 2.1, Jean-Jacques Rousseau argues that the general will alone can steer the forces of the state towards the end for which it was instituted, i.e., the common good. The argument's logical structure is more intricate than it seems at first glance. And the intricacy appears to be deliberate. Rousseau's authorial strategy is designed to evoke the reader's voice in articulating the fundamentals of politics.
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16Verwandlung: mythologische Ansichten, technologische AbsichtenV&R Unipress. 2009.Die Alchimie setzte Menschen statt Gotter zu Herren der Verwandlung ein. Zuletzt sind auch Wissenschaft und Technologie auf sie gestossen. Was geschieht mit Verwandlung in diesem neuen, entzaubernden Zugriff?
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240Icons without turn: Über Bilder und WorteIn Wilhelm Vossenkuhl (ed.), Quo vadis Design? 4 Thesen, . pp. 17-37. 2014.Images, or icons, have been made the subject of a ‘turn’. But no new epoch under its sign is looming. The image is just one medium among others. The best we can do is to face what it may and what it may not achieve. Its main competitor is the word – though there is a field of transition between both. Words and numbers surpass the image when one needs to refer to something that cannot be seen – this holds for ‘radioactivity’ just as much as for ‘responsibility’. To unambiguously show a categorial…Read more
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19The Crypto-Metaphysic of 'Ultimate Causes': Remarks on an Alleged ExposéRatio 1 (2): 97-112. 1988.
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22The anthropological argument in practical philosophy and the logic of comparisonHistory of European Ideas 18 (3): 387-400. 1994.Arnold Gehlen's attempt to give anthropological grounds for morality stems from Kant's idea that being freed from the compulsion of instinct left human beings in need of compensation for the loss of the practical guidance which instinct had hitherto provided. Whereas Kant thought this compensation was to found only in reasoned morality, Gehlen would argue that morality provides recompense by becoming a quasi-instinct that functions without reflection and that needs to be bred into human beings. …Read more
Areas of Interest
Aesthetics |
19th Century Philosophy |
European Philosophy |