Volume 65, Issue 6

In contemporary political discourse, in which many democratic relationships hitherto taken to be self-explanatory and stable have begun to falter somewhat, a call for judgement has, after a lengthy interval, made itself heard again. Yet even if it is in some way clear to us what is meant by political judgement, and clear, too, that it is certainly useful for political actors or institutions to have political judgement at their disposal, it is, nevertheless, difficult to specify the concept precisely. What can we, and what should we, understand by “political judgement”? This essay attempts to address the question. In a first step (1) I try to indicate something of the relevant “disposition” involved. I then (2) take a brief look at conceptions of judgement which have been tried out to date, at least within the philosophical tradition. Here I concentrate on Hannah Arendt’s famous, yet fragmentary and incomplete, contribution and her reflections on Kant’s Critique of Judgment , in which she develops a political reading of what Kant called the “Maxims of Judgment”. In a third step (3) I will briefly elucidate these. In my view, however, we should not be content to leave the matter with Arendt’s reflections. For this reason, I also attempt a pragmatist transformation of these maxims. In a fourth step (4) I try to indicate the consequences which this might have for the way in which theories are formulated in political philosophy.

It is an undoubted fact that neuroscientific models of explanation play a crucial role in the realms of science and public life. Besides some noteworthy theoretical problems (unserious experimental set-ups, mis- or overinterpretation, illegitimate analogies, etc.) there are also practical problems concerning the neuroscientific explanation monopoly. To bring those problems to light, it is reasonable to concentrate on a specific and currently prominent version of modelling – namely that undertaken by so-called biological psychiatry. In this article, it will be shown that the controversy concerning biological psychiatry is often guided by several misunderstandings and wrong-headed accusations. The article starts by giving a minimal definition of biological psychiatry which can be used as a common ground for further argumentation. It differentiates three subprojects of biological psychiatry and examines their risks and potentials in more detail. In sum, the article argues for a nuanced attitude towards biological psychiatry: If we are concerned with diagnostic practices and biological underpinnings of mental illnesses we are well-informed by the methods of biological psychiatry. However, if we want to know something about the nature of mental illnesses, we should imagine other projects which are theoretically much better equipped to answer ontological questions.

Aristotle famously criticizes Plato for confusing in his conceptions of immutable, atemporal and paradigmatic Forms things of two completely different ontological types, i. e. universals and particulars. My aim, in this text, is to reveal the Platonic background of this Aristotelian criticism. Although I generally agree with Aristotle’s diagnosis of the hybrid character of Platonic Forms, I will show that it is important to distinguish between real difficulties of Plato’s conception of Forms and alleged shortcomings that might permit, nonetheless, a plausible interpretation. I start from a brief description of three essential functions which can only be adequately fulfilled by Forms according to Plato. Then, I determine the ontological status of Forms, firstly, as kinds of abstract objects (comparable to Fregean concepts), and, secondly, as paradigmatic particulars. In conclusion, I agree with Aristotle on the hybrid character of Forms, but I am less pessimistic with regard to the unintelligibility of the two different natures of Forms individually.

Plato’s „Theory of Ideas“ is usually taken to be based upon the claim that ideas exist. In this paper, a different reading is suggested, namely, that the theory of ideas is centered around a distinction between two ways of speaking about ideas. One kind of statement corresponds to the singular predications of contemporary logic, the other kind is aimed at definitions expressing an identity. Since these two kinds of statements employ different kinds of predicative tie, no „reification“ of ideas is involved, which causes most of the problems around the „theory of ideas“. In order to argue for such a reading, two texts by Plato are examined more closely. The Laches serves as an example of how the two kinds of statements are introduced and distinguished in Platonic dialogues. The final argument for the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo (99d–107d) is famous for its claim that ideas are causes. An interpretation is suggested which shows that this claim, too, is best understood if seen as depending on a particular way of speaking about ideas.

Plato’s claims concerning the last principles of philosophy differ in the Republic and the Sophist . At first sight, the claim of the idea of good and the claim of the system of the „most important concepts“ (megista genê) seem to be compatible if we insinuate a division of Platonic philosophy into a practical and a theoretical sphere. Yet, this hypothesis cannot be maintained, because theoretical and practical sphere interfere with one another. Through analysis of the significant parts of the dialogues it becomes clear that the theory of the „most important concepts“ is formed by practical thinking, i. e. by the assumption of a force (dynamis) inherent in basic concepts that effects conceptional determining and being determined. The idea of the good on the other hand is both the dynamic foundation of science as well as being the object of science itself. A resolution of the problem of the colliding claims is nevertheless possible based on an analysis of the dialectical inquiry of the Sophistes . The two parts of this dialectical inquiry account for and give reasons: (1) for putting the ideas and basic concepts into an absolute position, and thereby also the idea of good; and (2) for putting the basic concepts into a system of self-legitimating relations of basic concepts determinating one another. The key of this account for both claims is a differentiation of the perspectives according to the differentiation of the two parts of the dialectical inquiry.

As a philosopher educated in the classics, as a crucial communicator of French thinking to the oftentimes heated German-language debates of the 1980s and 1990s, as the author of monographies on the questions of the strange, on answering and responsive rationality, on attentiveness, on “phenomenotechnology” and on problems of moral philosophy, Bernhard Waldenfels points out a direction to contemporary European philosophy that is entirely his own – all of it in the name of phenomenology, and first and foremost, the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. With a tight connection to the classical philosophical tradition as well as to contemporary scientific disciplines, literature, the arts and everyday life, Waldenfels has lent his own signature to phenomenology. In this interview, we ask Bernhard Waldenfels to situate himself with respect to the question: What is phenomenological philosophy and what does it accomplish?