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1310Distortions of NormativityEthical Theory and Moral Practice 14 (3): 329-356. 2011.We discuss some implications of the Holocaust for moral philosophy. Our thesis is that morality became distorted in the Third Reich at the level of its social articulation. We explore this thesis in application to several front-line perpetrators who maintained false moral self-conceptions. We conclude that more than a priori moral reasoning is required to correct such distortions
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936Rechtfertigungen des Unrechts: Das Rechtsdenken im Nationalsozialismus in Originaltexten (edited book)Suhrkamp. 2014.Auf welchen normativen Grundlagen beruhte das NS-System? Mit welcher Rechtfertigung konnte der Führerwille dort zu einer Quelle des Rechts werden? Wie war es gemäß der NS-Strafgesetzgebung möglich, Handlungen zu bestrafen, die gegen kein geschriebenes Gesetz verstießen? Die in diesem Band versammelten und kommentierten Originaltexte geben Einblick in das Denken von Rechtstheoretikern, die mit dem Nationalsozialismus sympathisierten, und belegen deren Versuch, autoritäre und dem Rechtsstaat wider…Read more
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725Über transzendentale ArgumenteGrazer Philosophische Studien 20 (1): 57-85. 1983.Ausgehend von der These, daß jeder Versuch einer Klärung der Struktur transzendentaler Argumente Kants entsprechende Ausführungen berücksichtigen muß, erfolgt zunächst eine Rekonstruktion von Kants Auffassung transzendentaler Beweise. Im folgenden wird St. Körners Kritik an Kants transzendentalen Deduktionen diskutiert und argumentiert, daß Körners Zurückweisung dieser Beweisformen eine Kant nicht ganz angemessene Interpretation transzendentaler Deduktionen zugrundeliegt. Dennoch sind transzende…Read more
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560Complicity and Conditions of AgencyJournal of Applied Philosophy 35 (4): 643-660. 2018.In his ground‐breaking study Complicity, Christopher Kutz introduces the notion of ‘participatory intentions’ (individual intentions whose content is collective) to explain an agent's complicity with groups or organisations. According to Kutz, participatory intentions allow us to hold individuals morally accountable for collective wrongs independent of their causal contribution to the wrong and its ensuing harm. This article offers an alternative account of complicity. Its central claim is that …Read more
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496The moral standpoint: First or second personal?European Journal of Philosophy 18 (2): 296-310. 2010.
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492The Second-Person Standpoint in Law and MoralityGrazer Philosophische Studien 90 (1): 1-3. 2014.The papers of this special issue are the outcome of a two-‐day conference entitled “The Second-‐Person Standpoint in Law and Morality,” that took place at the University of Vienna in March 2013 and was organized by the ERC Advanced Research Grant “Distortions of Normativity.” The aim of the conference was to explore and discuss Stephen Darwall’s innovative and influential second-‐personal account of foundational moral concepts such as „obligation“, „responsibility“, and „rights“, as developed…Read more
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471Contractualism and the Second-Person Moral StandpointGrazer Philosophische Studien 90 (1): 149-168. 2014.This article explores Darwall’s second-‐personal account of morality, which draws on Fichte’s practical philosophy, particularly Fichte’s notions of a summons and principle of right. Darwall maintains that Fichte offers a philosophically more appealing account of relations of right than Kant. Likewise, he thinks that his second-‐personal interpretation of morality gives rise to contractualism. I reject Darwall’s criticism of Kant’s conception of right. Moreover, I try to show th…Read more
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364What picture do we get when wie apply gender analysis to mainstream moral philosophy? Starting with an analysis of Kant, Hume and Rawls, Pauer–Studer develops the categorical framework of a moral theory that is free from any "male bias".
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168Conditions of KnowledgeGrazer Philosophische Studien 14 97-111. 1981.In this paper I suggest an account of knowledge by adding a fourth condition to the traditional analysis in terms of justified true belief. I am going to make a first proposal ruling out the Gettier-counterexamples.1 This proposal will then be corrected in the light of other counterexamples. The final analysis will be a combination of a justified-true-belief-account and a causal account of knowledge. Some philosophers have disputed that Gettier‟s examples must be accepted as refutations of the j…Read more
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159Hitlers Ernennung zum Reichskanzler am 30. Januar 1933 brachte eine radikale Veränderung der politischen und staatlichen Strukturen mit sich. Erklärtes Ziel der Nationalsozialisten war, die Übertragung der Kanzlerschaft als Instrument zur umfassenden Machtausübung zu benützen. Die Strategie richtete sich von Beginn an auf die Ausschaltung des Reichstages und das Verbot der anderen politischen Parteien. Die Einschränkung der in der Weimarer Verfassung garantierten Grundrechte und Grundfreiheiten …Read more
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113Liberalism, perfectionism, and civic virtuePhilosophical Explorations 4 (3). 2001.This paper explores the question whether perfectionism amounts to a political doctrine that is more attractive than liberalism. I try to show that an egalitarian liberalism that is open to questions of value and that holds a conception of limited neutrality can meet the perfectionist challenge. My thesis is that liberalism can be reconciled easily with perfectionism read as a moral doctrine. Perfectionism as a political doctrine equally stays within the value framework of liberalism. Finally, I …Read more
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107Peter Singer On EuthanasiaThe Monist 76 (2): 135-157. 1993.This paper criticizes Peter Singer‟s position on euthanasia. Singer uses two versions of utilitarianism in order to deal with the issue of the morality of killing: preference-utilitarianism for persons, classical utilitarianism for sentient beings that are not persons (in Singer‟s sense). I try to show that Singer‟s back and forth between preference-utilitarianism and classical utilitarianism raises difficulties in regard to his arguments for the permissibility on non-voluntary euthanasia in the…Read more
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96A Kantian Reading of 'Good' and 'Good For'. Some Reflections on Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen's Fitting Attitude Analysis of ValueValue,Morality and Social Reality. 2023.The paper argues that Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen’s fitting-attitude analysis of ‘good’ and ‘good for’ allows us to interpret and justify Kant’s Formula of Humanity (FH) in a constructive way. His classification of ‘good’ as a non-relational intrinsic final value and ‘good for’ as a relational extrinsic final value sheds light on two main features of FH, namely that it requires us to display a specific attitude to human beings, while also obligating us to recognize this value in the relational dimensi…Read more
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96A Constitutive Account of Group AgencyErkenntnis 79 (S9): 1623-1639. 2014.Christian List and Philip Pettit develop an account of group agency which is based on a functional understanding of agency. They claim that understanding organizations such as commercial corporations, governments, political parties, churches, universities as group agents helps us to a better understanding of the normative status and working of those organizations. List and Pettit, however, fail to provide a unified account of group agency since they do not show how the functional side of agency …Read more
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90Korsgaard’s Constitutivism and the Possibility of Bad ActionEthical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (1): 37-56. 2018.Neo-Kantian accounts which try to ground morality in the necessary requirements of agency face the problem of “bad action”. The most prominent example is Christine Korsgaard’s version of constitutivism that considers the categorical imperative to be indispensable for an agent’s self-constitution. In my paper I will argue that a constitutive account can solve the problem of bad action by applying the distinction between constitutive and regulative rules to the categorical imperative. The result i…Read more
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83Konrad Morgen: The Conscience of a Nazi JudgePalgrave Macmillan. 2015.Konrad Morgen: The Conscience of a Nazi Judge recounts the wartime career of Georg Konrad Morgen (1909–1982), a judge who prosecuted crimes committed by members of the SS in Nazi concentration camps, including Buchenwald, Dachau, and Auschwitz. In 1943, Morgen discovered the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. He tried to throw sand in the works by prosecuting concentration camp officials for lesser crimes. He charged the chief of the Auschwitz Gestapo with for 2,000 murders, and ev…Read more
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69IntroductionErkenntnis 79 (S9): 1563-1563. 2014.The main impetus for organizing this event was the publication, in 2011, of Philip Pettit’s and Christian List’s book, *Group Agency*. List and Pettit argue that interpreting institutions like commercial corporations, governments, political parties, trade unions, churches, and universities as group agents offers a better understanding of their internal working and their effects on social life. Pettit and List base their account of group agency on a so-called “functionalist account of agency” whi…Read more
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67Conditions of KnowledgeGrazer Philosophische Studien 14 (1): 97-111. 1981.Since Edmund L. Gettier's famous paper a series of counterexamples has been raised against the traditional analysis of knowledge in terms of justified true belief. Some of these (not only Gettier-type) counterexamples can be ruled out by adding a fourth condition to the traditional account which demands a causal connection between the belief of a person and the fact the person believes. This causal connection is specified in a particular way so that counterexamples put forward against causal acc…Read more
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54Autonom Leben. Reflexionen über Freiheit und GleichheitSuhrkamp. 2000.In dem vorliegenden Buch wird in kritischer Abgrenzung zu den Ansätzen von John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin und Jürgen Habermas eine autonomiebezogene Konzeption des politischen Liberalismus entwickelt, welche die Herstellung sozialer Gleichheit als Mittel der Freiheitssicherung begreift. Neben einer detaillierten Analyse der Begriffe »Freiheit«, »Gleichheit« und einer Diskussion der angemessenen Parameter der Verteilungsgleichheit wird auch gezeigt, dass ein autonomiebezogener Liberalismus wichtige I…Read more
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53Positivismo jurídico de Kelsen e sua rejeição pelo direito nazistaEthic@ - An International Journal for Moral Philosophy 3 (20): 942-965. 2021.Traduação O positivismo jurídico de Kelsen é frequentemente acusado de submeter o judiciário alemão ao direito nazista. Sobretudo a insistência do autor na separação entre direito e moral foi considerada uma deficiência crucial. Rejeito essa crítica. Meu argumento consiste na afirmação de que a tese de Kelsen, da distinção entre direito e moral em duas esferas normativas próprias, refuta tal acusação, sabendo que os juristas do programa nazista almejavam a ‘unificação do direito e da m…Read more
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42“A Community of Rational Beings”. Kant’s Realm of Ends and the Dinstinction between Internal and External FreedomKant Studien 107 (1): 125-159. 2016.This paper proposes a new account of the relationship between Kant’s ethics and Kant’s philosophy of right. I reject the claim of some philosophers that Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals cannot offer a foundation for Kant’s philosophy of right. While I agree that the basic principles of Kant’s philosophy of right cannot be deduced from Kant’s ethical Categorical Imperatives, I try to show that we find in Kant’s Groundwork the normative resources for grounding his philosophy of right…Read more
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36The Moral Standpoint: First or Second Personal? (review)European Journal of Philosophy 18 (2): 296-310. 2010.
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35Kelsen’s Legal Positivism and the Challenge of Nazi LawVienna Circle Institute Yearbook 17 223-240. 2014.In this paper I am going to examine Kelsen’s legal positivism in the light of Nazilegal theory. My claim will be that Kelsen’s thesis that law and morality constitute two distinct normative spheres is highly plausible, but that some of his metaethical assumptions are seriously flawed
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35Philosophy, as we know, is an abstract expression of worries, sentiments and longings that move people and societies. Philosophical debates are often innovative, but sometimes we have reason to ask ourselves why they develop at all and what general social trends they follow. An example of such a philosophical discussion-one that seems bewildering to many-is the current dispute between egalitarians and anti-egalitarians which has also reached German-speaking countries and which divides philosophe…Read more
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32Published in: European Journal of Philosophy 18, 2, June 2010, pp. 296-310European Journal of Philosophy 18 (2): 296-310. 2010.
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32Humean sources of normativityIn Charles R. Pigden (ed.), Hume on Motivation and Virtue, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 186. 2009.
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27Christine CHWASZCZA:. Weilerswist: Velbrück 2003Grazer Philosophische Studien 68 (1): 213-217. 2005.