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[German Version] I. Theoretical Philosophy – II. Practical Philosophy – III. Esthetics and Nature Teleology (Apr 2…

[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 Metaphysic…

[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 discuss…

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[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 …

[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, practi…

[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…

[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] 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] 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…

[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 – 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 – 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. History of the Concept – II. Bible and Theology – III. Systematic and Practical Theology I. History of the Concept Beauty – Gk τὸ καλόν/ tó kalón, Lat. pulchritudo/pulcher, Ger. die Schönheit, Fr. la beauté – is the positive aesthetic attraction which an object exercises on the beholder by virtue of its felicitous form. In contemplative, aesthetic, and erotic experience beauty is experienced as harmonious and stimulating, as some…

[German Version] I. Cultural History The Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga identified play as a fundamental cultural phenomenon and thus a defining feature of human life. His thesis of homo ludens supplements the anthropological theories of homo sapiens and homo faber and other explanations of culture grounded in reason and fabrication (Labor). Huizinga posits the following definition: “Play is a voluntary activity or occupation executed within certain fixed limits of time and place, according to rules that are freely accepted …

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Philosophy of Religion – III. Fundamental Theology – IV. Dogmatics – V. Ethics – VI. Practical Theology and Psychology of Religion I. Philosophy Feeling or sense (Lat. sensus, Fr. sentiment, Ger. Gefühl) is the direct sensate awareness of an inward state, in which a unique access to reality is articulated. Until well into the modern era, the term encompassed without distinction both sensory perceptions and emotions (affects, passions, moods). During the 18th century, feeling came to be defined more precisely in its cognitive, expressive-¶ ev…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Church History – III. Philosophy – IV. Fundamental Theology – V. Ethics – VI. Culture, Art, and Religion – VII. Practical Theology I. Religious Studies The word “culture” derives from Latin cultura, “tilling of land”; since antiquity it has been used metaphorically for cultura animi, “cultivation of the mind,” and for status culturalis, the desirable refinement contrasting with the human status naturalis. Since the Enlightenment, the word has taken on different meanings. In the European context, culture co…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies Use of the Greek word σύμβολον/ sýmbolon in a sense relevant to religious studies is attested quite early in the history of European religions; Dio of Prusa (1st/2nd cent. ce), for example, used it in his speech on Phidias’s statue of Zeus in Olympia ( Oratio 12.59). In this context, the Greek term reflects the problem posed by images of the gods: what is intrinsically inaccessible to human vision (Vision/Intuition) is somehow to be represented visually. In religious studies, especially in the phenomenology of religion, the concept of sy…