Volume 62, Issue 5

In the following I will attempt to exonerate the contextualist Hegelian account of morality, which he introduces under the title “Sittlichkeit” or “ethical life”, from the charge of mere conventionalism. I will try to show that his concept of ethical life furnishes the author of the Philosophy of Right with a set of historically immanent criteria that allow him to distinguish, within the horizon of a given form of life, between valid norms and merely accepted ones. It will be important to present Hegel’s method in a way that avoids, as far as possible, holding it hostage to his philosophy of spirit, which can hardly serve as an acceptable premise today. Hegel’s doctrine of ethical life will be a viable option for moral philosophy only if it can be translated into an idiom that does not rely on the ontological presupposition of a universally self-realizing spirit. In a first step, I will in this way - post-metaphysically, so to speak - identify the general criteria that Hegel sets out as immanent givens of any ethical form of life (I). In a second step, I am going to examine whether this provides us with clues for discerning a certain directionality of moral development within human history (II).

It is still controversial if and accordingly how the two aspects of the impossibility of the forfeiture of human dignity and the damage of dignity are compatible. The essential aim of the presented proposal is to illustrate the validity of a legal fact of basic law - here: of dignity and personality - as a process of becoming validity. That permits two emphases: The unquestionability of this validity is one of a conditional necessity, not an absolute necessity. And the process of becoming validity is no mere spelling out of a fixed actuality.

In recent years, the theme of neuroenhancement has led to many heated discussions and to a surprising range of academic endeavours dealing with the topic. Most notably, the emerging field of neuroethics has become a prominent, almost monopolistic arena for this debate. In our paper, we provide an overview of issues relevant to the theme of enhancement, starting from a precise conceptualisation of the relevant range of phenomena and practices, including some informed estimates as to the prevalence and efficacy of neuroenhancement. We then sketch an alternative critical perspective that, in our view, is better suited than the narrow perspective of neuroethics to deal with the many relevant societal developments and normative orientations that inform both the alleged enhancement “trend” and the public debates surrounding it. We support our case for what we call a critical philosophy of neuroscience by discussing recent forms of venture science that have emerged in line with the commercialising of academic research and with the commodification of life and health. Furthermore, we point to a trend towards blind acceleration in various spheres of contemporary life, and discuss its ramifications for the theme of enhancement. Countering the perspective of applied ethics, we finally call for a more explicitly political positioning on the part of those that deal with these themes.

In this paper I defend a sophisticated language-bound notion of self-consciousness against so called non-conceptual forms of self-consciousness. I distinguish self-specific (first-order) consciousness from (second-order) self-consciousness and I argue that the proponents of non-conceptual forms of self-consciousness confound both notions.

The present paper argues that the early development of social cognitive and metacognitive abilities informs the ongoing theoretical debate on the ontogenesis of the human self concept. To this end, the article provides first an overview on the early development of a self concept in the toddler years. Subsequently, it reviews central empirical findings and theoretical approaches on the early development of social-cognitive and metacognitive abilities from infancy to the preschool years. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings and approaches for our understanding of the developmental origins of the human self concept.

Mirror self-experience is re-cast away from the cognitivist interpretation that has dominated discussions on the issue since the establishment of the mirror mark test. Ideas formulated by Merleau-Ponty on mirror self-experience point to the profoundly unsettling encounter with one’s specular double. These ideas, together with developmental evidence are re-visited to provide a new, psychologically and phenomenologically more valid account of mirror self-experience: an experience associated with deep wariness.

This paper defends an expressivist approach to explaining the epistemic authority with which self-ascriptions of mental states are made. Following other recent defences of cognitive expressivism, it is assumed that avowals (e. g. ‘I am feeling pain now’) have both a descriptive and an expressive function. Since these functions can come apart, expressivists face the problem of false avowals, which threaten to undermine any claim to epistemic authority. In response to this problem it is suggested that expressivists may draw a distinction between sincere avowals and avowals in the strict sense, and then argue that observing this distinction is part of a linguistic competence which is a precondition of reflective self-consciousness. From these plausible assumptions one can see that no appeal to introspection as a form of privileged access to the mind is needed for explaining the authority of mental self-ascriptions.

Having outlined the development of early modern conceptions of selfconsciousness, this paper then examines and critically evaluates the late eighteenth- century empirical psychology of Karl Franz von Irwing, a German enlightenment thinker. Irwing’s four volume work Erfahrungen und Untersuchungen über den Menschen is devoted to an empirical ‘science of man’. In terms of the notions of consciousness and self-consciousness, he nevertheless follows Wolff in that he adopts the latter’s idea that the capacity to distinguish among perceptions must be assumed for self-consciousness to be possible. As it turns out, however, Irwing’s main interest is in line with his general project and concerns the empirical development of self-consciousness. He argues that non-conceptual, immediate selfawareness or Selbstgefühl has its origin in the sense of touch, but that a conceptually mediated form of self-consciousness requires in addition the development of certain mental activities which are in turn dependent on language. Further he accounts for what he calls ‘continued self-consciousness’ in which consists our personality. Irwing does not explain diachronic personal identity, however, as he is instead concerned only with how the idea of identity develops. This points to the limitations of a project such as Irwing’s, as it avoids the fundamental philosophical issues concerning self-consciousness and personal identity.

The following interview takes up and discusses central questions of Hans Joas’ theory of human rights. Joas explains how the genealogy of human rights relates to their validity and distinguishes his approach from others by stressing the emotive quality of values. He addresses the critique leveled at him of rooting human rights in religion and elaborates on what he terms the “sacredness of the person”. In doing so, he demonstrates that his version of universalism is rooted in the pragmatist understanding of human action which stresses the importance of experience, argument and narrative for the emergencies of values.