Andreas Niederberger

Sabine Gürtler: Elementare Ethik. Alterität, Generativität und Geschlechterverhältnis bei Emmanuel Lévinas; Simon L. Frank: Der Gegenstand des Wissens. Grundlagen und Grenzen der begrifflichen Erkenntnis; Bernhard Rang: Identität und Indifferenz. Eine Untersuchung zu Schellings Identitätsphilosophie; Thomas Bedorf / Stefan A. B. Blank (Hg.): Diesseits des Subjektprinzips: Körper - Sprache - Praxis; Hans-Helmut Gander: Selbstverständnis und Lebenswelt. Grundzüge einer phänomenologischen Hermeneutik im Ausgang von Husserl und Heidegger.

This volume offers a systematic philosophical analysis of the normative challenges facing European refugee policy, focusing on whether the response to it can be based on European values. By considering the refugee policy through the lens of European values, cosmopolitan norms and universal human rights, the contributions expose the weaknesses and limitations of existing regulations and make proposals on how to improve them. The EU is often seen as a cosmopolitan project. Europe is supposed to be a community of states that aspires to be guided by cosmopolitan norms. However, the idea of a cosmopolitan Europe has never been unanimously shared, and in recent years, it has come under increasing scrutiny, particularly with regard to the EU’s refugee policy. The guiding idea of this book is that a deeper philosophical understanding of the normative issues at stake can foster greater conceptual clarity and enrich political debates on the future of European refugee policy. The first part of the book revolves around the question of whether the rise in refugee numbers over the past decade has led to a crisis in the EU and, if so, how this crisis relates to or impacts European values. The second part traces the history of the discourse on “European values” and examines from a philosophical perspective how we can plausibly understand these values in terms of their moral grammar, their normative content and their implications for the behaviour of the EU and its member states. Finally, the third part puts forth recommendations for a feasible and normatively more compelling European refugee policy based on human rights, human dignity, justice and democratic self-determination as the decisive normative requirements. Cosmopolitan Norms and European Values: Ethical Perspectives on Europe’s Refugee Policy will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in ethics, political philosophy, political science, social sciences and law. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Although metaphysics as a discipline can hardly be separated from Aristotle and his works, the questions it raises were certainly known to authors even before the reception of Aristotle in the thirteenth century. Even without the explicit use of this term the twelfth century manifested a strong interest in metaphysical questions under the guise of «natural philosophy» or «divine science», leading M.-D. Chenu to coin the expression of a twelfth century «éveil métaphysique». In their commentaries on Boethius and under the influence of Neoplatonism, twelfth century authors not only anticipate essential elements of thirteenth century metaphysics, they also make an original contribution to the history of metaphysics by attempting to integrate the theory of first principles, philosophical theology and ontology. This volume presents and examines the contributions of the twelfth century to metaphysics made by selected Jewish, Christian and Muslim authors of the Iberian Peninsula and Francia. Contributors include Matthias Lutz-Bachmann (Frankfurt am Main), Andreas Speer (Würzburg), Charles Burnett (London), Alexander Fidora (Frankfurt am Main), Thomas Ricklin (Neuchâtel), Yossef Schwartz (Jerusalem), Josep Udina (Barcelona), Jack C. Marler (St. Louis/USA), Gillian R. Evans (Cambridge), Andreas Niederberger (Frankfurt am Main) and Françoise Hudry (Paris).

Unter den Menschenrechten findet sich das Recht eines jeden, den Staat zu verlassen, in dem man geboren ist oder sich gerade aufhält. In jüngerer Zeit wird insbesondere unter Verweis auf verheerende Effekte eines Brain-Drain insbesondere für ärmere Staaten die Frage diskutiert, ob Staaten dennoch das Recht haben, direkte oder indirekte Maßnahmen zu ergreifen, um Personen an der Emigration zu hindern. Der vorliegende Beitrag analysiert die in diesem Kontext vorgebrachten Argumentationen für mögliche Grenzen eines Rechts auf Emigration und die Legitimation staatlicher Gegenmaßnahmen. Die meisten vorgeschlagenen direkten und indirekten Maßnahmen zur Abwehr eines normativ relevanten Brain-Drain werden dabei als Formen der Zwangsausübung als nicht rechtfertigbar zurückgewiesen: Der Brain-Drain ist als Folge gravierender globaler Ungerechtigkeiten einzuordnen, für die die Verantwortung nicht einzelnen Hochqualifizierten aus dem globalen Süden zugeschrieben werden kann, die die Gelegenheit nutzen, ihre individuelle Situation zu verbessern.

El presente artículo comienza reconstruyendo las razones por las cuales las teorías modernas se concentran en la ciudadanía como una garantía muy importante de legitimidad -arguyendo que la ciudadanía está intrínsecamente ligada a una forma republicana de orden político. La segunda parte del artículo muestra que, bajo las actuales condiciones de la globalización, la ciudadanía crea o mantiene un orden transnacional multinivel que impide que otras personas y políticas puedan realizar una ciudadanía (completa), y que incluso contribuyen a violaciones directas de exigencias legítimas por parte de no-ciudadanos. La tercera parte discute críticamente las propuestas de Archibugi, Owen y Baubóck acerca de cómo repensar la ciudadanía transnacional o formas equivalentes de participación y control. En la parte final, el artículo aboga por una conexión entre la concepción de la ciudadanía constelación y una forma específica de democracia transnacional. Tal conexión permitiría a la ciudadanía seguir siendo el factor clave para la legitimidad. This article starts by reconstructing the reasons for the modern focus on citi-zenship as a major guarantee for legitimacy - arguing that citizenship is intricately linked to a republican form of political order. In its second part this paper shows that under the current conditions of globalization citizenships creates or maintains a transnational multi-level order which prevents other persons and polities from realizing (full) citizenship, and even contributes to direct violations of legitimate claims of non-citizens. The third part of the article critically discusses proposals by Archibugi, Owen and Baubóck, how to rethink transnational citizenship or equivalent forms of participation and control. And in its final part it advocates linking the conception of constellational citizenship to a specific form of trans-national democracy. With such a link citizenship could continue to be the key factor for legitimacy

This chapter examines the assumptions of republican theory in relation to common notions of a legitimate international order. It considers an alternative definition of a legitimate global order that makes a distinction between states, federations of states, other organisations and political communities. In this definition, republican theory defends transnational democracy as the basic structure of a legitimate global order. The chapter begins with an overview of republican political theory and its differences from other approaches. It then discusses the internal relationship between republicanism and modern statehood and shows the implications of reducing republicanism to individual states or attempting to ‘globalise’ the single republican state. Finally, it describes a model of transnational democracy that differs from the single state model.

This article starts by reconstructing the reasons for the modern focus on citizenship as a major guarantee for legitimacy – arguing that citizenship is intricately linked to a republican form of political order. In its second part this paper shows that under the current conditions of globalization citizenships creates or maintains a transnational multi-level order which prevents other persons and polities from realizing (full) citizenship, and even contributes to direct violations of legitimate claims of non-citizens. The third part of the article critically discusses proposals by Archibugi, Owen and Bauböck, how to rethink transnational citizenship or equivalent forms of participation and control. And in its final part it advocates linking the conception of constellational citizenship to a specific form of transnational democracy. With such a link citizenship could continue to be the key factor for legitimacy

The notion of human dignity stands at the core of contemporary debates on rights, politics, and ethics. Many scholars consider the Renaissance discourse on dignity as one of its main contributions to the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. This article examines the role of human dignity in the philosophies of Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. In their works human dignity relates both to freedom and to a Neo-Platonic ontology, which raises the question of how they reconcile these two possibly contradictory elements. I show that starting from the insight that human beings are “naturally” free and able to make right choices, Ficino and Pico argue that human dignity consists in the ability of humans to understand what is good and to act accordingly. I thus defend the thesis that their conception of human dignity is not modern because it liberates human beings from the “history of being” but rather because it paves the way for their liberation to become rational beings.