Volume 60, Issue 2 -

The contents and foundations of intergenerational justice have only recently become the focus of controversial debates in political philosophy. My main purpose in this essay is to outline the idea of an intergenerational libertarianism and contrast it with a skeptical rejection of the moral rights of future persons by contractarians on the one hand and egalitarian conceptions of intergenerational justice by utilitarians on the other. As far as its contents are concerned, the idea contains three main principles: future persons have a moral right to satisfy their basic needs, they have a moral right to develop and exercise their capacity of political and personal autonomy, and they have a moral right to be compensated for harmful actions by their predecessors. And as far as its foundations are concerned, these principles can be justified by a contractualist procedure: considerations of sufficiency, of liberty and of reciprocity cannot reasonably be rejected by either members of future generations or by members of the present one.

Heidegger’s philosophy of being and enowning contains many religious topics, such as the last god , the divinities within his concept of the fourfold or his so called hölderlintheology . In this paper, these aspects shall be illuminated by relating the overall concern of Heidegger’s later philosophy to the tension between philosophy and theology: It will be argued that on the one hand his rejection of ontotheology is justified, since god is not a causally operating entity, and that on the other hand his concept of man being a part of an incomprehensible ongoing is not only an accurate criticism of reason in terms of a reflection on its limits, but also has a religious character, which can be seen as the starting point of an adequate and up to date philosophical theology. Against Heidegger’s exorbitant claim of uniqueness, his later philosophy can thus be placed in the context of traditional critique of religion and reason respectively.

This paper argues that a certain kind of alienation from labour can be analyzed and explained in the theoretical framework that is dominant in current economics. Given a neoclassical model of a labour market, the intrinsic value that different kinds of labour may have for people can be represented as a source of utility (in the technical sense). It can then be shown that in capitalist economies, basing one’s supply decisions on this intrinsic value is predictably costly. So in the long run, rational agents can be – and will be – expected to make their labour supply decisions based only on considerations of income and leisure time. In the resulting picture, rational agents are indifferent with regard to different qualitatively specific kinds of labour. I draw on the theory of efficiency wages to show that this picture lies at the root of contemporary problems such as involuntary unemployment and injustice.

This contribution is based on the observation that many day-to-day discussions as well as introductions to applied ethics emphasize the fact that in individual cases the formation of judgment is no longer open to theoretical analysis, and there is therefore a demand for “the faculty of judgment”. However, it remains unclear as to what is actually meant by “faculty of judgment” and what role ethical argumentation is then able to play in individual decisions. Wouldn’t a remark like “Everyone has to figure it out for themselves!” call into question a claim of ethical judgment for an intersubjectively shared rationality and commitment? This contribution will face the task of distinguishing various argumentative functions of the appeal to “the” faculty of judgment using a model of ethical argumentation. In each case, it will be demonstrated to what extent the sentence “Everyone has to figure it out for themselves!” can not only contribute to immunization, but also be legitimate in its own right. Further, an outline of how to respond to, qualify and invalidate this statement will be provided as well. The main goal of this paper is to show that “the” faculty of judgment does not describe “one” faculty at all but consists of several properties whose profile, demand and development should be examined and discussed discretely.

Zusammenfassung Diverging positions can be identified in applied ethics with regard to the justification, nature and application of ethical principles. In this article we will discuss the preconditions for establishing a relation between general principles and the particular situation which is to be evaluated in ethical judgment. The functioning of principles in applied ethics will be discussed on the exemplary basis of medical ethics. In a first step, current meta-ethical discussions on moral particularism will be analysed to see what aspects they may contribute to the side of the principle or the general in ethical judgment. In a next step, the side of the particular or situational will be illuminated against the background of current discussions in the context of the “empirical turn” in medical ethics. Based on these considerations, the importance of the power of judgment in medical ethics will be stressed and a model of productive and reflective judgment will be sketched.

To demonstrate the necessity of (certain kinds of) social-empirical research in practical-moral judgment, I will present three interrelated arguments. Firstly, skepticism towards ethical expertise; secondly, the normative meaning of being affected; and thirdly, epistemic justice. Epistemic justice will be at the center of my contribution as it can be regarded to constitute the normative and epistemic basic condition for the other two arguments. Taken together they provide a conclusive argument for the necessity of the inclusion of certain perspectives, namely those of affected persons. Relying on Miranda Frickers concept of epistemic justice and Donna Haraways idea of situated knowledge, I will argue that these perspectives should be granted an ethically exclusive place in practical-moral judgment.

The paper addresses an interesting discussion that has arisen in the history of philosophy of science in the last years. It deals with the political development of philosophy of science in the 20th century. It has been argued, in particular by George Reisch, that philosophy of science, once a highly political enterprise, was strongly depoliticized during the cold war in the USA. Over the following decades, the idea of value neutrality as the only guarantor of scientific objectivity was broadly held in this traditionally analytical field of philosophical research. Yet since the late 1980s and during the 1990s, social-epistemological and feminist philosophers of science have begun to tackle this idea by new political and social arguments. Accordingly, I argue that after a long nonpolitical period there has been a development in philosophy of science towards involving g political considerations and methods again. The increasing acceptance of pluralistic concepts in theories of philosophy of science indicate how philosophy of science has gradually been repoliticized. Moreover, it seems possible to draw some interesting conclusions regarding the split between continental and analytical philosophy from this new perspective.

Zusammenfassung Werner Konitzer und Raphael Gross (Hg .): Moralität des Bösen. Ethik und nationalsozialistische Verbrechen. Jahrbuch 2009 des Fritz Bauer Instituts zur Geschichte und Wirkung des Holocaust. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 2009, 269 S. Raphael Gross: Anständig geblieben. Nationalsozialistische Moral. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt/M. 2010, 278 S. Hans Jörg Sandkühler (Hg .): Philosophie im Nationalsozialismus. Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 2009, 344 S. Wolfgang Bialas: Politischer Humanismus und „Verspätete Nation“. Helmuth Plessners Auseinandersetzung mit Deutschland und dem Nationalsozialismus. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2010, 295 S.

Zusammenfassung Dieter Henrich: Werke im Werden. Über die Genesis philosophischer Einsichten. C. H. Beck, München 2011, 216 S.

Zusammenfassung Peter Rinderle: Die Expressivität von Musik. Mentis Verlag, Paderborn 2010, 208 S. Peter Rinderle: Musik, Emotionen, Ethik. Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg 2011, 200 S.