Volume 66, Issue 4

The article looks at Marxist theory under two separate aspects: the socialist perspective of teleological determination of actions and causal determination over the long duration of historical periods. The first aspect is historically very changeable; Marx was thinking within the conditions of 19th century. As for the second aspect, his assessment of economic development trends was generally accurate. However, nowadays new societal aspects also need to be taken into account and their potential to contribute to the free development of society evaluated – albeit without one able to build on the traditional working class (in the sense of the first aspect of Marx’s theory).

The essay is a critical revision of various of Marx’s approaches in his analysis of capitalism in “Das Kapital”. One can distinguish immanent, normative critiques from transcendental and objectivistic ones. The review of the normative standards used in each case leads to the questions of how Marx determined and used the relationships of justice and law and the capitalist mode of production. Orthodox Marxist views (most recently C. Menke) claim that Marx did not criticise capital as unjust and understood the law of capital only as private law that stabilised domination. Against this, it is shown that he certainly bases his “critical presentation” on an (almost Kantian) constitutional (“rechtsstaatliches”) concept of private law and public law. Thus the “popular prejudice” of “human equality”, defined by Marx as an epochal and systematic condition of the capitalist exchange of goods, becomes apparent as a covert reference to the historical (America, French Revolution), public - law declarations of human rights. And in the chapter “Struggle for the length of the working day” Marx presents the decisions of this dispute between “equal rights” first and foremost in the systematic historical actions of the constitutional powers (legislature, executive and judiciary). At the same time, however, he attempts to ironise and defame this public-law and deliberative, democratic dispute and then to misinterpret it as a violent “civil war”. Because Marx in his further presentation ignores this legal-democratic dispute, including a potential human-rights critique and (possible!) future regulation of capitalism, focussing instead on objectivist concepts of history and development, he can only insufficiently grasp the still challenging relationship between democracy and capitalism.

The conflict over the classic problem of philosophical anthropology, i. e., what man actually is, is not only a conflict about what – X – determines something to be human. It also requires clarification of the manner in which something is determined to be human by the X in question. There being different options for the latter, the classic anthropological conflict concerns not only definitions of being human, but also models of being human. The present paper investigates four such models: the addition model, the interior model, the privation model, and the transformation model. While the first will serve as a baseline for comparison, the three other models will, in order to escape the danger of making too formal an argument, be discussed exemplarily, i. e. by focusing in each case on a certain proponent of the respective model. Those proponents will be Martin Heidegger for the interior model, Arnold Gehlen for the privation model, and Helmuth Plessner for the transformation model.

This paper presents and discusses Karl Löwith’s anthropological critique of existential analytic that is formulated in his Habilitation thesis ( Das Individuum in der Rolle des Mitmenschen , 1928), where he develops an anthropological counter-paradigm, i. e. Mitanthropologie , in opposition to Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. Given the extent and the complexity of such a subject, I will limit the present inquiry to two specific topics: the Miteinandersein (Being-with-one-another) and above all the Sein zum Tode (Being-towards-death). In practice, I will first explain the basic features of Mitanthropologie together with the crucial critique that it levels at Being and Time . I will follow by outlining the importance of the Todesfrage (the question of death) within the existential analytic by means of a comparison between Heidegger’s Being - towards - death and Kierkegaard’s Sickness unto death ( Krankheit zum Tode ). Finally, I will expound Löwith’s objection to Being - towards - death , which is expressed in the alternative formula Freiheit zum Tode (Freedom-towards-death).

We know that Helmuth Plessner complained about his anthropological magnum opus, published in 1928, being overshadowed by Heidegger from the beginning. When the latter, in turn, responded to Plessner, for example to his preface to Stufen , it was always anonymously; Heidegger never actually mentioned Plessner in any publication. Plessner on the other hand emphasized that he had developed his concept without any knowledge of Sein und Zeit , even though since 1924, he had shown strong interest in the yet-unknown colleague’s work. Thus, it appeared to the public that they philosophised independently of one another. In fact, the situation is much more complicated. This paper tries, above all, to identify the sources of the peculiar discomfort caused on both sides by the work of the respective other, as well as to delineate the philosophical effects. Notably in Heidegger’s case, not enough is known about this. Heidegger starts out, in the 1920’s, cultivating a strong anti-anthropological affect; however, after his triumphal success, both with his publication and in the institutional field, in 1927/1928, he finds himself in an orientation crisis; it is from this point onwards that traces of Plessner’s anthropology can be found in his thinking. Ultimately, Plessner will prove a serious source of irritation as well as of inspiration for Heidegger. Additionally, from a systematic point of view, the present text retraces the main points of Plessner’s critique (subjectivity, disembodiedness of fundamental ontology). The investigation makes use of a broader corpus of text than was available to Plessner and Heidegger’s contemporaries, and concentrates on two questions: Did Plessner understand his opponent? Is he able to raise valid objections? It becomes obvious that Plessner is right in complaining about disembodiedness (even though his own Leib philosophy remains conceptually diffuse), while some differentiation is advisable concerning the subjectivism charge.

Stephen Houlgate is one of the leading Hegel scholars of the English-speaking world. In this interview he explains how he became a “Hegelian” while studying in Cambridge, and he offers a fundamental profile of his account of Hegel. The interview addresses the following questions: Why does Houlgate consider Hegel’s philosophy to be the “consummate critical philosophy”? What are the main barriers to a proper access to Hegel’s thought? Why is logic as dialectical logic still indispensable for philosophical thought? And finally, what can both analytical and “continental” philosophers learn from Hegel?