Search

[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-¶ …

[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). T…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Theology …

[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 Enlight…

[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…

[German Version] …

[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] 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 subject; Apel’s transcendental pragmatics, reflecting the “linguistic turn” in Anglo-American philosophy influenced by L. Wittgenstein, inquires into the ineluctable conditions of the rational use of language (II) in argumentative discourse. What he calls attention to in this way is the intersubjective basis of the validity of norms, which he also considers the ultimate basis of ethics: whether w…

[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 ( …

[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 examination” is reason – the authority of knowledge and thought that Kant presented, in the conscious double meaning of the titles of his books, as both subject and object of critical analysis. Kant was born into simple circumstances and was raised in the spirit of Pietism. After attending the Collegium Fridericianum…

[German Version] I. Philosophy …

[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 combine…

[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 functional adequacy of the techniques used by language to elevate or exalt the soul. The sublime attracted the greatest attention in the 18th century, with its increased interest in questions of aesthetics. In the works of writers lik…

[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…

[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 something that kindles enthusiasm and gives delight thus leading to a heightened attention and attraction to the object. From the beginni…

[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 to the law that it imposes upon itself as a result of its own insights. It was not until after he had completed the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781; ET: Critique of Pure Reason, 1998) that Kant endeavored to develop this idea in his Groundwork (AA IV, 385–463*). He did so by identifying “good will” as the principle of moralit…

[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 …

[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 possi…

[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…

[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…