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[German Version] (Jul 28, 1874, Breslau – Apr 13, 1945, New York), German philosopher and a student of the Marburg Neo-Kantians H. Cohen and P. Natorp (Neo-Kantianism). In 1919, he accepted an appointment as professor at the newly founded University of Hamburg, but emigrated in March 1993 (England, Sweden). As a Swedish citizen, he was visiting professor at Yale and New York from 1941 onward. Cassirer's oeuvre is dedicated to the ideals of humanism and the…

[German Version] is a term and concept developed by Karl-Otto Apel in the context of his conception of morality based on intersubjectivity; it denotes philosophical reflection on the validity conditions of argumentation. In transcendental pragmatics, a “transformation” of transcendental arguments takes place through a theory of linguistic and symbolic action: in the transcendental philosophy of I. Kant with its “Copernican revolution,” the question of the a priori conditions that make experience (I) possible aims at constant involvement on the part of the subj…

[German Version] Philosophy of Art, a subdivision of philosophical aesthetics (I), inquires into the properties and effects of art as the outstanding domain of aesthetic experience. The question (both practical and metaphysical) of the status and value of things fashioned by human beings in the totality of the world is exemplified in the case of art as the hermeneutical question of the conditions associated with the production and understanding of meaning (Hermeneutics). The philosophy of art begins with Plato, whose De re publica criticized art as a kind of mimetic represent…

[German Version] Despite discussion of the problem of culture since antiquity, cultural philosophy is an acquisition of the modern era; it began as a radical criticism of culture in the 18th century. With their attention to everything made by humans (language, science, technology, political institutions, arts), J.-J. Rousseau and the direct contemporaries of the 18th-century Enlightenment and the 19th-century critique of the Enlightenment also emphasize the historicality of humanity. Rousseau assumes conformity with a law operating like a discernible law of nature: to ¶ the sam…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Ethics – III. Psychology – IV. Law I. Philosophy Judgment (Lat. iudicium, Fr. jugement, Ger. Urteil) is the intellectual decision (I) that concludes the process of opinion formation or cognition. It may (but need not) include an utterance of the matching proposition. Philosophically, judgment is one of the most important problems of logic, epistemology, practical philosophy, and aesthetics (discrimination). In ἀπóϕανσις/ apóphansis Aristotle ( De interpretatione) already combined concepts in a predicative proposition joined with…

[German Version] (Lat. gustus/ sapor; Fr. goût; Ger. Geschmack) is the ability to discern pleasure and displeasure. Originally limited to the physical sense of tasting, since antiquity the term has been applied figuratively to perception, judgment, speech, and conduct (e.g. M.T. Cicero). In the mid-17th century, it was discussed in ethics (Gracián, French moralist literature); in the 18th century, it became a central concept of aesthetics (I) throughout Europe. Advanced theories of epistemology grounded…

[German Version] I. Theoretical Philosophy – II. Practical Philosophy – III. Esthetics and Nature Teleology (Apr 22, 1724, Königsberg – Feb 12, 1804, Königsberg), German philosopher whose thought on the critique of reason marks the high point of the Enlightenment and the origin of German Idealism. Kant saw ¶ his epoch as the “real age of criticism, to which everything must submit” ( Kritik der reinen Vernunft, AA 4, XI, note; ET: Critique of Pure Reason, 1881), even religion and legislation. The only authority that is recognized in its claim of “free and public exam…

[German Version] According to I. Kant, the categorical imperative stands for the unconditionally valid moral commandment to heed the general appropriateness of one's actions: “Act only according to that maxim that you could also want to become a universal law” ( Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten [1785], Akademie-Ausgabe [AA] IV, 421; ET: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 1997). As early as the 1760s, Kant had already put forward the idea (crucial for his ethics of autonomy) that the free will of a rational being is subject only …

[German Version] (Lat. ingenium/genius; Fr. génie) is the capacity for creative discovery and production. In analogy to G.W. Leibniz's notion of the divine choice of possible worlds, genius was characterized in the 18th century as the releaser of unrealized possibilities. Through the concept of genius with its productive power of imagination (Imagination, Power of), the aesthetics (I) of the 18th century valued the naturally given, spontaneous and emotionally accented facility for creativity above th…

[German Version] from Greek κρίνειν/ krínein, “distinguish, decide, judge,” is methodical evaluation based on well-founded criteria. In everyday usage, the word is identified with negative assessment; in philosophical usage, however, it denotes the weighing of both positive and negative values and the discussion of validity claims. The ancient Greeks already distinguished epistemological, practical (political), and philological concepts of criticism (Pre-Socr…

[German Version] is an artificial technical term coined by I. Kant to characterize his methodological approach to a critique of reason. While the earlier expression transcendental derived from the transcendentals, the fundamental properties of reality in medieval ontology, transcendental philosophy refers to a form of philosophical cognition, between epistemology and ¶ ontology, “that is occupied not with objects but with the way that we can possibly know objects even before we experience them” ( KrV, 21787, 43). As a philosophy of “pure, merely speculative reason” ( KrV, 45), tr…

[English Version] Transzendentalpragmatik, ein im Rahmen seiner auf Intersubjektivität gegründeten Moralkonzeption entwickelter Begriff Karl-Otto Apels, der die philos. Reflexion auf die Geltungsbedingungen des Argumentierens bezeichnet. In der T. findet mit den Mitteln einer Theorie des Sprach- und Zeichenhandelns die »Transformation« transzendentaler Argumente statt: Zielt in der Transzendentalphilosophie I. Kants mit der »Kopernikanischen Wende« die Frage nach den Bedingungen a priori der Mögli…

[English Version] ist ein von I. Kant geprägter Kunstterminus zur Charakterisierung seines methodischen Ansatzes einer Vernunftkritik (Vernunft). Während sich der ältere Ausdruck »transzendental« bereits von den Transzendent(al)ien, den grundlegenden Bestimmungen der Wirklichkeit, in der ma. Ontologie herleitet, ist mit T. eine zw. Erkenntnistheorie und Ontologie stehende philos. Erkenntnis gemeint, »die sich nicht sowohl mit Gegenständen, sondern mit unserer Erkenntnisart von Gegenständen, sofern diese a priori möglich sein soll, überhaupt beschäftigt« (KrV, 21787…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Philosophy of Religion – III. Ethics – IV. Power of Imagination I. Philosophy Imagination or fantasy (Gk φαντασία/ phantasía, Lat. phantasia; Lat./Eng./Fr. imaginatio[n], “appearance, mental image, idea”; cf. also Gk φάντασμα/ phántasma, “appearance, dream image, vision”) is the primarily pictographic conception of things that dominates in memory and recreation (as in dreams). Its elementary activity also contributes to academic insights, technical inventions, and artistic production. Ever s…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Practical Theology I. Philosophy Irony (from Gk εἰρωνεία/ eironeía, “dissimilation,” attested since the 4th cent. bce; Lat. dissimulatio) is disingenuous speech for the purpose of demonstrative exposure or derisive goading: through the expressive characterization of ambiguity, the opposite of what is meant is said. Rectification through reversal is the method of irony, which is employed as an aesthetic means, in the broader sense, of gaining reflexive distance in philosophy, poli…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Theology I. Philosophy Aesthetics is the discipline concerned with reflective perception, feelings, and the beautiful in nature and art. The discussion of “aesthetics” has used this term, however, only in the modern era. In the context of metaphysics and ontology, epistemology and practical philosophy, poetics and rhetoric, however, the questions of aesthetics have accompanied thought since Antiquity. In fact, the history of aesthetics began with Plato, who designated the beautiful as the goal of human endeavor in the Symposion and underscor…

[German Version] I. Philosophy The expression the sublime (Ger. das Erhabene) refers to our experience of objects that by virtue of their greatness (physical or metaphysical), power, or perfection make us conscious of our own exaltation, often with an accompanying awareness of the limits of our own capacity. In the debate with poetic enthusiasm (I) in antiquity, the sublime was discussed using the term ὕψος ( hýpsos, “height”) as a category of poetics and rhetoric (I): in ¶ the works of writers like Plato, Aristotle, Aristophanes, and Pseudo-Longinus, the issue was the fu…

[German Version] I. Philosophy A value judgment is a judgment by which something is assessed as valuable or valueless. In contrast to the judgment of fact, which constitutes a descriptive statement of facts with a claim to scientifically verifiable objectivity, the value judgment in the sense of a normative (prescriptive) assessment constitutes the act of recognizing or revocating a validity, mostly in practical respects (also indirectly). Where it is not directly meant to guide actions, it contains…

[English Version] I. Philosophisch Ph. (griech. ϕαn̆τασι´α/phantasi´a, lat. phantasia; lat./engl./franz. imaginatio[n], »Erscheinung, Bewußtseinsbild, Vorstellung«; vgl; auch griech. ϕα´n̆τασμα/pha´ntasma, »Erscheinung, Traumbild, Vision«) ist die in Erinnerung und Neuschöpfung wie im Traum dominierende bildhafte Vorstellungskraft, deren elementare Leistung aber auch an wiss. Erkenntnis, technischer Erfindung und künstlerischem Schaffen mitwirkt. Die Philos. setzt sich seit der Antike im Kontext erkenntnistheor…

[English Version] I. Philosophisch W. ist ein Urteil, in dem etwas als wertvoll oder wertlos eingeschätzt wird. Im Unterschied zum Tatsachenurteil als auf Fakten bezogene deskriptive Behauptung mit dem Anspruch auf wiss. beweisbare Objektivität stellt das W. als normative (präskriptive) Einschätzung den Akt der An- oder Aberkennung einer Geltung in zumeist, auch indirekt, praktischer Hinsicht dar. Wo es nicht direkt als handlungsleitend gemeint ist, da enthält es zumindest eine positive oder negati…