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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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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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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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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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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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Der Mensch als Tier. Anmerkungen zum Programm der ‘human sociobiology’Prima Philosophia 3 (2). 1990.
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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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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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1Utopie und Resignation. Schuberts Deutungen des Sehnsuchtsliedes aus Goethes ‘Wilhelm Meister’ von 1826Oxford German Studies 26 132-164. 1997.In the lied, music interprets poetry. Interpretation is not arbitrary. At the same time, there is no such thing as a single correct interpretation of something else – at any rate not of something as complex as a poem by Goethe. Mignon’s song of longing “Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, / weiß, was ich leide” can be taken to manifest subjectivity utterly barren within itself. Yet the ability to express that state of mind transcends it; it implies imagination of something else. Thus the freedom achiev…Read more
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Über moralische Bemühungen um LebenZeitschrift Für Didaktik der Philosophie Und Ethik 16 (4). 1994.
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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
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56Ästhetik des FadoMerkur 69 (2): 79-86. 2015.Fado, the urban folk of Lisbon and Coimbra, is an art of nuances. These nuances music takes from poetry; as ‘sung poetry’ (‘poema cantado’ in Portuguese) fados are not to be equated with ‘songs’ that turn the word into a vehicle – a dominant procedure in, e.g., rock music. Again, ‘voice’ in fado does not so much manifest individual expression; rather it is, as it were, ‘on loan’ from tradition. Keeping some distance from dance, too, fado at the beginning of the 21st century could and can resist …Read more
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325A morál költségei – Kant nyomán számolvaMagyar Filozofiai Szemle (4-5): 678-708. 1991.Acting morally comes at a price. The fewer people act morally, the dearer moral acts will be to those who perform them. Even if it could be proven that a certain moral norm were valid, the question might still be open whether, under certain circumstances, the demand to follow it meant asking too much. The validity of a moral norm is independent from actual compliance. In that regard, moral norms differ from legal rules. A law that nobody obeys has eroded and thus lost validity; a moral norm that…Read more
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55Handlungstypen und Kriterien. Zu Habermas' "Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns"Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 44 (2): 220-252. 1990.In his 'Theory of Communicative Action', Jürgen Habermas wishes to distinguish between three types of action: instrumental achtion, strategic action, communicative action. The distinction is meant to be drawn along three criteria: different 'ontological presuppositions' , different types of motives for action , different attitudes of actors . Criteria and do not work, and there are difficulties about criterion
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FormIn Petra Kolmer, Armin G. Wildfeuer, Hermann Krings, Hans Michael Baumgartner & Christoph Wild (eds.), Neues Handbuch philosophischer Grundbegriffe, Verlag Karl Alber. pp. 771-786. 2011.‘Form’ was a fundamental category of European philosophy from its beginnings in ancient Greece until the 19th century. As Aristotle’s examples show, it originated in craft. Making a pot out of clay is a paradigm case of giving form to matter. During its long career in philosophy, this concept of humble origin expanded into a category for everything: In the 18th century, vide Kant, cognition could have a form (and even had to have it), or ethical decisions, or the experience of beauty. Yet even v…Read more
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Prosa der AufmerksamkeitIn Jürgen Hosemann (ed.), Die Zeit, das Schweigen und die Toten, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. pp. 258-261. 2011.
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213Das ‘Urteil der Geschichte’. Über ‘historische Gerechtigkeit’ in der Wertung musikalischer WerkeÖsterreichische Musikzeitschrift 58 (2): 6-17. 2003.
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90Music and painIn Jane Fulcher (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music, Oxford University Press. pp. 68-79. 2011.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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17Über die Rationalität von Prozeduren und ResultatenInternational Studies in Philosophy 24 (3): 1-14. 1992.
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35In Die idealistische Kritik des Willens [German Idealism’s Critique of the Will] Dorschel defends an understanding of freedom as choice against Immanuel Kant’s and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s ethical animadversions. He objects both to Kant’s claim that „a free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same thing“ („ein freier Wille und ein Wille unter sittlichen Gesetzen einerlei“) (Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten AB 98) and to Hegel’s doctrine that „freedom of th…Read more
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Zur Kritik des totalisierenden Erklärungsprogramms. Über normative Voraussetzungen der Wissenschaft, am Beispiel der SoziobiologieTheologie Und Philosophie 63 (3): 384-395. 1988.
Areas of Interest
Aesthetics |
19th Century Philosophy |
European Philosophy |