Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie: Heft 40.1/2015

Abhandlungen:

• Dirk Quadflieg: Die vergessene Negativität sozialer Freiheit. Anmerkungen zu F. Neuhouser und A. Honneth
  Abstract

  In recent work by Frederick Neuhouser and Axel Honneth, the concept of »social freedom« has become synonymous with a strand of social philosophy associated with Rousseau and Hegel, in which the positive institutional conditions of freedom are emphasized in contrast to a liberal reduction of the concept of freedom as the mere absence of external impediments. However, despite Neuhouser’s and Honneth’s avowal that negativity is an essential component of social freedom – and in light of their convincing rejection of one-sided concepts of negative freedom, such as that put forward by Isaiah Berlin –, they nevertheless allow the moment of negativity to be eclipsed by the positive conditions of the actualization of freedom. By contrast, through a renewed engagement with Hegel and Rousseau, this article argues in favour of a more fundamental concept of negative freedom, in the sense of a liberation from natural determinism, and shows that this more fundamental concept is a necessary aspect of social freedom.
  Buy article
• Jongseok Na: Ambivalente Moderne: Wie Hegels Parteinahme für den Westen seine Fehleinschätzung Ostasiens erklärt
  Abstract

  This paper criticizes Hegel’s pejorative view of East Asia and Confucianism. His biased understanding of the West’s role in history is the basis for his systematic misconception of East-Asian cultures, particularly of China. This article consists of four parts. First, the general traits of Hegel’s conception of East Asia will be explained. Secondly, it will be shown how Hegel’s Orientalism is closely connected with the Colonialism of European modernity that he justifies with his philosophy of history. In a third section, Hegel’s central justification of European colonialism, namely the »cunning of reason« will be scrutinized and rejected. Fourthly, Hegel’s misunderstandings of East Asian religion, scholarship and bureaucracy will be clarified, with a particular focus on Confucianism. It will become clear how Hegel’s misunderstandings of essential elements of Confucian East Asian culture are closely connected with his systematic attempt to conceptualize the teleological philosophy of universal history.
  Buy article
• Fabian Heubel: Kritik als Übung. Über negative Dialektik als Weg ästhetischer Kultivierung
  Abstract

  This essay takes its start from the remark by Jürgen Habermas that negative dialectics is nothing more than a kind of (spiritual) exercise. In contrast, I propose a re-reading of Adorno’s conception of critique from a perspective that mainly has been opened up by Michel Foucault’s work on an aesthetics of existence and self-cultivation. However, Foucault could only locate the ethical significance of ascetic practices in the aesthetic freedom of self-transgression. The normative content of negative dialectics as an exercise also arises from the relation to freedom. But the aesthetic exercise emerging thereby is nourished by a paradigm of a transformative subjectivity, which is characterized by a paradoxical communication between the subject of identity and the non-identity of the subject with itself. Negative dialectics as a way of cultivation is thus inextricably linked to the experience of the »failure of culture«. Thereby a new understanding of Adorno’s conception of experience-bound metaphysics appears.
  Buy article

Berichte und Diskussionen:

• Silvio Vietta: Heideggers Hölle. Eine Replik auf Luca Di Blasis Heidegger-Kritik
  Abstract

  My paper opposes Luca Di Blasi’s thesis that Heidegger’s philosophy of being is fundamentally antisemitic. Heidegger’s criticism of the Western history of being is rooted in his criticism of the history of Western metaphysics. He sees the political catastrophes and devastations of the 20th century as consequences of the metaphysical (seinsvergessenen) »Machenschaft« of men: Heidegger’s hell. His criticism of the Jews is relevant only insofar as their »gift for calculation« draws them into complicity in such a »Machenschaft«. Heidegger’s metaphysical criticism understands racism too as a form of »Machenschaft«, and so by no means supports such a standpoint, as Di Blasi wrongly supposes.
  Buy article
• Thorsten Streubel: Der Ursprung der Sprache. Überlegungen zu Herders und Tomasellos Sprachursprungstheorien
  Abstract

  Against the backround of Tomasello’s theory of the origins of human communication, Herder’s theory of the origin of human language might appear as a curiosity. In this paper I want to show that appearances are deceiving and that Herder’s thoughts are useful and can be integrated in Tomasello’s approach to bridge a gap in his theory.
  Buy article