ABSTRACT When examining Nietzsche's Nachlass from 1885–89, international Nietzsche scholarship still predominantly relies on the Colli/Montinari edition of these writings, even though a new historico-critical edition of the Nachlass that fulfills the standards of current textual criticism is being published since 2001: KGW IX. In this article we want to outline the philological considerations that led to this new critical edition with its “diplomatic transcription” of Nietzsche's late “manuscripts.” In a second step, we demonstrate the consequences of KGW IX for (...) the interpretation of Nietzsche's Nachlass and his late published writings. It is our aim to show that the complexity of Nietzsche's writing in his sketches and drafts from 1885–89 makes any philosophical approach untenable that ignores this complexity—at least under a philological perspective. (shrink)

Vor 50 Jahren veröffentlichten Gretel Adorno und Rolf Tiedemann erstmals eine aus dem Nachlass edierte Ausgabe von Theodor W. Adornos Ästhetischer Theorie. Obgleich das von Adorno selbst als opus magnum verstandene Werk unvollendet blieb und nur als posthumes Kompilat erschien, entfaltete es in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhundert eine enorme Wirkung, die weit über den Bereich der philosophischen Ästhetik hinausging. Renommierte Autoren und Autorinnen unterschiedlicher Disziplinen nehmen das Jubiläum des erstmaligen Erscheinens der Ästhetischen Theorie zum Anlass, diesen Klassiker aus (...) verschiedenen Perspektiven noch einmal neu in den Blick zu nehmen. Neben Essays zur Relevanz und Aktualität der Ästhetischen Theorie für die philosophische Ästhetik im 21. Jahrhundert stehen persönliche Texte, die die Bedeutung des Buches für das je eigene Denken schildern. Darüber hinaus finden sich Beiträge, die der Frage nachgehen, in welcher Weise einetextkritische Neuedition zu einer Relektüre dieses kanonisch gewordenen Textes führen und die Rezeption verändern könnte. Zu den Autor/innen gehören unter anderen Horst Bredekamp, Bazon Brock, Eva Geulen, Lydia Goehr, Robert Pippin, Martin Saar, Martin Seel und Beat Wyss. (shrink)

Beim Stichwort „Gedächtnis“ denken die meisten Menschen zuerst an das Langzeitgedächtnis, weshalb dieses Thema zuerst und am ausführlichsten behandelt wird. Verschiedene Vorschläge, das Langzeitgedächtnis in Subsysteme zu unterteilen, werden vorgestellt und gewürdigt. Anschließend fokussiert das Kapitel auf Prozesse, die dem Langzeitgedächtnis zugeordnet werden können, z. B. das Vergessen. Besonders vielversprechend scheinen formale Gedächtnistheorien zu sein, in deren Rahmen sowohl die Strukturen als auch die Prozesse beschrieben werden, die an einer Gedächtnisleistung beteiligt sind. Zum Arbeitsgedächtnis werden zwei Modelle vorgestellt: das modulare (...) Arbeitsgedächtnismodell – ein traditionelles Modell, das inzwischen mit immer weniger Befunden in Einklang steht – und das Embedded-Processes-Modell. Am Ende wird das sensorische Gedächtnis behandelt, das sozusagen die Schnittstelle zwischen Gedächtnis und Wahrnehmung darstellt. (shrink)

Durch den Fokus auf die epistemische Negativität kann Kants Transzendentalphilosophie noch einmal aus einem anderen Blickwinkel begriffen werden. Die Autor:innen leuchten in ihren Beiträgen wesentliche Facetten der komplexen Strukturen falschen Denkens aus und schaffen damit eine Grundlage, von der aus sich Negativität als erkenntnistheoretischer Grundzug von Kants Systematik verstehen lässt. Dabei widmen sich die Beiträge selten diskutierten Quellen, wie etwa Kants Inauguraldissertation, der Amphibolie der Reflexionsbegriffe, den handschriftlichen,,Reflexionen" und den Vorlesungsnachschriften, da Kant hier seine Theorien des Vorurteils, Irrtums und Scheins (...) entwickelt. So eröffnet dieser Band einen sowohl historischen als auch systematischen Zugang zu Kants Theorie der epistemischen Negativität und lässt Kants,,Revolution der Denkungsart", die die Klassische Deutsche Philosophie einleitet, auch in Bezug zu Vorläufern und zu ihrem Nachwirken in einem neuen Licht erscheinen. (shrink)

Die Publikation stellt den Eröffnungsband der Reihe Textologie der Philosophie, Literatur und Wissenschaften dar und versammelt Beiträge, die sich ausgehend von der Frage nach der Bedeutung und Funktion von Textualität der Entwicklung eines erweiterten Textbegriffs aus transdisziplinärer Perspektive widmen. Gemeinsames Ziel der Beträge ist es, Wege aufzuzeigen, wie die traditionelle Arbeitsteilung zwischen Philosophie, Linguistikund Philologie aufgegeben und wie für die Darstellungsformen des Denkens sensibilisiertwerden kann. Klassische Textbegriffe werden so zur Diskussion gestellt und revidiert, indem auf ästhetische, erkenntnistheoretische, sprachphilosophische, editionsphilologische und (...) literaturtheoretische Problemkonstellationen fokussierte Textinterpretationen vorgelegt und die philosophischen Implikationen philologischer Entscheidungen aufgezeigt werden. In Anknüpfung an diese theoretische Reflexion erproben die Beiträge neue Lektürepraktiken, die die Performativität und Medialität philosophischer, wissenschaftlicher wie literarischer Texte vor Augen führen. (shrink)

When consciousness is examined using subjective ratings, the extent to which processing is conscious or unconscious is often estimated by calculating task performance at the subjective threshold or by calculating the correlation between accuracy and awareness. However, both these methods have certain limitations. In the present article, we propose describing task accuracy and awareness as functions of stimulus intensity as suggested by Koch and Preuschoff . The estimated lag between the curves describes how much stimulus intensity must increase for awareness (...) to change proportionally as much as accuracy and the slopes of the curves are used to assess how fast accuracy and awareness increases and whether awareness is dichotomous. The method is successfully employed to assess consciousness characteristics on data from four different awareness scales. (shrink)

This broad and insightful book presents current scholarship in important subfields of philosophy of science and addresses an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary readership. It groups carefully selected contributions into the four fields of I) philosophy of physics, II) philosophy of life sciences, III) philosophy of social sciences and values in science, and IV) philosophy of mathematics and formal modeling. Readers will discover research papers by Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Keizo Matsubara, Kian Salimkhani, Andrea Reichenberger, Anne Sophie Meincke, Javier Suárez, Roger Deulofeu, Ludger Jansen, (...) Peter Hucklenbroich, Martin Carrier, Elizaveta Kostrova, Lara Huber, Jens Harbecke, Antonio Piccolomini d'Aragona and Axel Gelfert. This collection fosters dialogue between philosophers of science working in different subfields, and brings readers the finest and latest work across the breadth of the field,illustrating that contemporary philosophy of science has successfully broadened its scope of reflection. It will interest and inspire a wide audience of philosophers as well as scholars of the natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities. The volume shares selected contributions from the prestigious second triennial conference of the German Society for Philosophy of Science/ Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftsphilosophie (GWP.2016, March 8, 2016 - March 11, 2016). (shrink)

Philosophen, Philologen und Editionswissenschaftlern widmen sich der Frage, inwieweit die in den Texten Friedrich Nietzsches und Theodor W. Adornos realisierte "Ästhetisierung des Denkens" als ein zentrales Charakteristikum philosophischer Argumentation erachtet werden muss. Ziel ist eine Neubestimmung philosophischer Lektüre und die Erarbeitung einer Methodik, die sich an der individuellen Verfasstheit und Materialität des Textes bemisst.

Together, the two volumes underscore the richness and variety of Habermas's project.Contributors: Karl-Otto Apel. Richard J. Bernstein. Peter Burger. Martin Jay. Thomas McCarthy. Herbert Schnadelbach. Charles Taylor. Michael Theunissen.

Once referring to the debt he owed to Martin Heidegger for his research on the question of death, Emmanuel Levinas explained that, though he distinguished his work from Heidegger’s thought, he did so in spite of “whatever” the debt “every contemporary thinker” owed to Heidegger—a debt that, Levinas then quipped, one “often owes to his regrets.” Contemporary thinkers working in the field of Black Studies have acknowledged their own “debt” to the black philosopher Nahum Chandler for the concept of (...) paraontology. Fred Moten, most notably, credits Chandler for providing a conceptual opening for a renewed thinking of blackness’ modes of resisting ongoing regimes of racial predation. Typifying disturbance, therefore, paraontology offers us the possibility of considering blackness beyond (though always with and against) the violence of its constitution. To heed the ramifications of transformative events, I attempt to measure those hermeneutical passages often compressed by the force of such groundbreaking discursive moments. Thus, responding to Chandler’s wish for his concerns to remain “perennial” rather than “fashionable,” I trace the history of the concept of paraontology back to its first use by Heidegger’s student Oskar Becker, whose main concern uncannily echoes the concept’s seemingly axiomatic use in Black Studies: namely, a radical disruption in the hegemonic and purist logic of ontology. (shrink)

This article offers a topological account of Martin Heidegger’s 1942 lecture course on the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin’s hymn Der Ister. The main goal of the article is to explore the relationship between the poetic disclosure of place and the place of poetic disclosure in Heidegger’s thought in the 1940s. Firstly, the backward streaming of the river is identified as the central theme of the hymn, which leads to Heidegger’s idea of dwelling as poetic homecoming. Secondly, after elucidating the (...) link between the Danube river and Antigone, and assessing the philosophical underpinnings of Heidegger’s withdrawal from politics, Heidegger’s pre-political idea of the polis is examined as tied to his thinking of place-making. Finally, the interplay between journeying and remaining is issued to clarify Heidegger’s notion of dwelling, time, and place and his critique of the metaphysical conception of space and time. (shrink)

Das Verhaltnis von Spekulation und Vorstellung in Hegels enzyklopadischem System ist von einer eigentumlichen Spannung gekennzeichnet. Spekulation ist nicht nur die kritische Reinigung der Inhalte der Vorstellung von ihren Vorurteilen und Irrtumern, sondern zugleich Anerkennung des endlichen, vorstellenden Denkens innerhalb seiner Grenzen, sowohl auf dem Gebiet der Erkenntnistheorie als auch der Religion. Wie verhalten sich aber Spekulation und Vorstellung zueinander in verschiedenen Teilen des enzyklopadischen Systems, in der Logik und der Philosophie des Geistes? Diesem Zusammenhang gehen die Beitrage des Tagungsbandes (...) im Detail nach und uberprufen kritisch das enzyklopadische Zusammenspiel von Spekulation und Vorstellung in den Spharen des subjektiven und des absoluten Geistes. Mit Beitragen von: Kazimir Drilo, Markus Gabriel, Christoph Halbig, Gunnar Hindrichs, Axel Hutter, Franz Knappik, Anton Friedrich Koch, Christian Georg Martin, Jan Rohls, Rainer Schafer. (shrink)

This article critically discusses Hubert Dreyfus’s idea of mindless-skillful coping, arguing that this notion provides an incomplete picture of human dwelling. While contemporary scholarship addressed the problematic aspects of Dreyfus’s pragmatic approach to Martin Heidegger’s notion of being-in-the-world, a concentrated effort to show the discord between Dreyfus’s skillful coping and Heidegger’s account of dwelling is wanting. Refuting the idea that the most complete version of human dwelling only signifies immersion in bodily practical skills, the article brings into view the (...) significance of the confrontational nature of dwelling, which requires a hermeneutic capacity of defamiliarization from our everyday worlds and habits. Explaining how humans’ relation to the world is different than those of robots or computers does not suffice to explicate authentic human dwelling. The author elucidates why Dreyfus’s prioritization of the practical over the theoretical and the corporeal over the mental leads to a dualistic mode of thinking. Finally, returning to the discussion of existential spatiality in Being and Time, the author identifies Dreyfus’s lack of an explicit understanding of place, one that would be necessary for a coherent account of poetic human dwelling. (shrink)

The paper aims at demonstrating that Martin Seel’s aesthetic theory suffers from the same unresolved tension that can be found in Schiller’s ›Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man‹: On the one hand, art is assigned the task of bringing to our attention the undiminished complexity of an object’s qualitative properties; on the other hand, however, art is also given the role of putting us into a state of »active determinability« thanks to its liquefaction of all our well-rehearsed determinations (...) and determinations, thus allowing us the freedom of experimental self-exploration. Both theories fail to make plausible the argumentative transition that could establish a link between these two tasks of art. (shrink)

These 11 essays by noted philosophers and social theorists take up the philosophical aspects of Jürgen Habermas's unfinished project of reconstructing enlightenment rationality. They range in subject matter from classical problems to contemporary debates, covering historical perspectives, theoretical issues, and post-enlightenment challenges. A companion volume of essays will take up the cultural and political aspects of the work. Together, the two volumes underscore the richness and variety of Habermas's project.Contributors: Karl-Otto Apel. Richard J. Bernstein. Peter Bürger. Martin Jay. Thomas (...) McCarthy. Herbert Schnädelbach. Charles Taylor. Michael Theunissen. Ernst Tugendhat. Albrecht Wellmer. (shrink)

This paper challenges the claim – found in the work of scholars such as Robert Pippin, Sebastian Rödl and Dennis Schulting – that for Kant the objective validity of judgments is fully determined by the unity of apperception. It argues that Kant uses “objective validity” not merely to indicate objective reference but also, in key contexts, to denote truth or correctness. Drawing on Kant’s distinction between Denken (thinking) and Erkennen (knowing), and on his analysis of error and illusion, the paper (...) defends the view that not all judgments in which the categories are instantiated are objectively valid. Properly understood, objective validity presupposes not only apperceptive form but also relation to intuition and the possibility of empirical verification. (shrink)

Hegel is often regarded as a thinker of identity who marginalizes differences. The essay examines this criticism in four steps. (1) With regard to the science of logic, it can be seen that the absolute idea is conceived as contradictory in itself and does not mean subsuming the individual or the particular under the general. In a further step, finite reality in the philosophies of nature and spirit is examined, beginning with the determination of nature as the externality of the (...) idea (2), in order to then analyze two cases from the realm of objective spirit in which there is not a negation but a lasting negativity: the simultaneity of the right of blood and the right of reason and the lasting rift between civil society and the state in modernity (3). Finally, the critical function of the concept in relation to reality is discussed (4). (shrink)

In this chapter, I examine the metaphysical systems that Kant so sharply criticized, using Crusius’s approach as a case study. I argue that these systems leave no conceptual room for a robust notion of deceptive appearance. Instead, what might seem like deceptive appearance ultimately reduces to the limitations of human understanding, whose restricted scope leads to error. This is because the principles of logic, as rules of thought, and the very possibility of attaining certain knowledge, are grounded in the nature (...) and authority of a perfect divine intellect. Consequently, in Crusius’s view, error arises not from an appearance of truth, but from a misplaced sense of indubitability. More broadly, my aim is to shed light on the challenges posed by Kant’s attempt to abandon theologically grounded metaphysics—an endeavor that necessitated the emergence of new conceptual space, now occupied by notions such as appearance and negativity, which were previously reducible within earlier systems. (shrink)

In this article, passages on prejudice in Hegel’s writings are addressed and complemented with further thoughts on Hegel’s theory of recognition in relation to the practice of avoiding prejudice. Although Hegel did not develop his own theory of prejudice, reflections on prejudice appear at various points in Hegel’s oeuvre, for which Hegel’s reception of Kant and the moment of negativity play a key role. Moreover, although not always explicitly addressed as such, prejudices are implicitly relevant to Hegel’s dialectic. In his (...) theory of recognition, prejudiced thought and action play a key role. Furthermore, Hegel’s writings contain practical examples that deal with the effects of prejudiced thinking. The article concludes with an outlook for possible further fields of research focusing on sense-certainty. (shrink)

Sleep spindles are frequently studied for their relationship with state and trait cognitive variables, and they are thought to play an important role in sleep-related memory consolidation. Due to their frequent occurrence in NREM sleep, the detection of sleep spindles is only feasible using automatic algorithms, of which a large number is available. We compared subject averages of the spindle parameters computed by a fixed frequency (11-13 Hz for slow spindles, 13-15 Hz for fast spindles) automatic detection algorithm and the (...) individual adjustment method (IAM), which uses individual frequency bands for sleep spindle detection. Fast spindle duration and amplitude are strongly correlated in the two algorithms, but there is little overlap in fast spindle density and slow spindle parameters in general. The agreement between fixed and manually determined sleep spindle frequencies is limited, especially in case of slow spindles. This is the most likely reason for the poor agreement between the two detection methods in case of slow spindle parameters. Our results suggest that while various algorithms may reliably detect fast spindles, a more sophisticated algorithm primed to individual spindle frequencies is necessary for the detection of slow spindles as well as individual variations in the number of spindles in general. (shrink)

Limited data exists that examines the reasons clinical ethics consultations in the healthcare industry are requested. To add to the literature, we have evaluated the reasons clinic ethics consults were requested at Indiana Health University (IUH) in 2023 to improve future patient care, identify quality improvement opportunities, educate fellow team members at IUH, as well as to inform research and address institutional policy changes. This information was identified through data collected using the REDCap Database and Cerner, the electronic medical record (...) that is used at IUH. Our results show 170 ethics consultations were requested between the dates of January 1, 2023, to December 31, 2023, for adult patients, including inpatient and outpatient locations. Provider moral distress was identified to be the most frequent ethics issue that arose, along with patient best interest and decision-making capacity. The ethics consultation service at IUH has reviewed the data collected in this study and is actively working to improve ethics education opportunities for bedside team members, identifying recurrent ethical dilemmas, and improving the overall function of the ethics consultation service. (shrink)

This introduction to the Common Knowledge symposium titled “Comparative Relativism” outlines a variety of intellectual contexts where placing the unlikely companion terms comparison and relativism in conjunction offers analytical purchase. If comparison, in the most general sense, involves the investigation of discrete contexts in order to elucidate their similarities and differences, then relativism, as a tendency, stance, or working method, usually involves the assumption that contexts exhibit, or may exhibit, radically different, incomparable, or incommensurable traits. Comparative studies are required to (...) treat their objects as alike, at least in some crucial respects; relativism indicates the limits of this practice. Jensen argues that this seeming paradox is productive, as he moves across contexts, from Lévi-Strauss's analysis of comparison as an anthropological method to Peter Galison's history of physics, and on to the anthropological, philosophical, and historical examples offered in symposium contributions by Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Marilyn Strathern, and Isabelle Stengers. Comparative relativism is understood by some to imply that relativism comes in various kinds and that these have multiple uses, functions, and effects, varying widely in different personal, historical, and institutional contexts that can be compared and contrasted. Comparative relativism is taken by others to encourage a “comparison of comparisons,” in order to relativize what different peoples—say, Western academics and Amerindian shamans—compare things “for.” Jensen concludes that what is compared and relativized in this symposium are the methods of comparison and relativization themselves. He ventures that the contributors all hope that treating these terms in juxtaposition may allow for new configurations of inquiry. (shrink)

Das Verhaltnis von Spekulation und Vorstellung in Hegels enzyklopadischem System ist von einer eigentumlichen Spannung gekennzeichnet. Spekulation ist nicht nur die kritische Reinigung der Inhalte der Vorstellung von ihren Vorurteilen und Irrtumern, sondern zugleich Anerkennung des endlichen, vorstellenden Denkens innerhalb seiner Grenzen, sowohl auf dem Gebiet der Erkenntnistheorie als auch der Religion. Wie verhalten sich aber Spekulation und Vorstellung zueinander in verschiedenen Teilen des enzyklopadischen Systems, in der Logik und der Philosophie des Geistes? Diesem Zusammenhang gehen die Beitrage des Tagungsbandes (...) im Detail nach und uberprufen kritisch das enzyklopadische Zusammenspiel von Spekulation und Vorstellung in den Spharen des subjektiven und des absoluten Geistes. Mit Beitragen von: Kazimir Drilo, Markus Gabriel, Christoph Halbig, Gunnar Hindrichs, Axel Hutter, Franz Knappik, Anton Friedrich Koch, Christian Georg Martin, Jan Rohls, Rainer Schafer. (shrink)

Despite considerable attention given in the literature to Martin Heidegger’s ideas of dwelling, space and spatiality, earth and world, the core issue of Heidegger’s “topology of being” (Topologie des Seins/Seyns), or what his topo- logical way of thinking means, oddly, remains enigmatic for many readers of Heidegger. It is peculiar that the following question is rarely raised: Was the question of place (Ort, Ortschaft) for Heidegger only a theme among many oth- ers, or rather does the topological thinking of (...) being – the thinking of τόπος of λόγος but also the λόγος of τόπος – determine his entire philosophical trajectory? How could we recognize the ontological idea of place – the bounded openness of being where human dwelling takes place – and differentiate it from a narrow view of place as metaphorically imagined landscape, mathematically deter- mined point in calculable space, or politically defined geo-political location? Is there a way to distinguish, first, Heidegger’s nostalgia for the pre-industrial Swabian countryside from his entanglement with Nazism between the early 1930s and 40s, and then the latter from the philosophical idea of the reciprocal unity of τόπος and λόγος – the locality or “placefulness’ of being” (Örtlichkeit des Seins)? (shrink)

The interaction between American pragmatism and German critical theory has a long history. While Horkheimer and Adorno, the founding fathers of critical theory, were quite critical of the native American philosophy they encountered when they fled from Nazi Germany, American pragmatism has had a considerable influence on both Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth—the two most prominent thinkers within critical theory’s 2nd and 3rd generations. As is well known, however, their prime inspiration has been George Herbert Mead’s symbolic interactionist sociology as (...) well as Peirce’s theory of signs, while James’ and Dewey’s thinking has played a minor role for them. However, in Axel Honneth’s most recent book, The idea of... (shrink)

In these original and imaginative essays, delivered as the Tanner Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley in 2005, the philosopher Axel Honneth attempts to rescue the concept of reification by recasting it in terms of the philosophy of recognition he has been developing over the past two decades.

As one of the most important movements in twentieth century legal thought, legal realism continues to be a source of controversy and inspiration. This study provides the first critical comparison and evaluation of American and Scandinavian legal realism. Presenting, evaluating, and reformulating the basic ideas of American legal realists such as Karl Llewllyn, Walter Wheeler Cook, Herman Oliphant, Jerome Frank, and Underhill Moore in the first part of the book, the author devotes the second part to a critical appraisal and (...) reformulation of the major doctrines of Scandinavian legal realists such as Axel Hägerström, A. V. Lundstedt, Karl Olivecrona, and Alf Ross. The book also reveals the misunderstanding of legal realism by legal philosophers such as H. L. A. Hart and Ronald Dworkin and the connections of legal realism to the critical legal studies movement. (shrink)

Vulnerabilität als unhintergehbare Dimension der Leiblichkeit kann als Quelle von Normativität und Verantwortung verstanden werden. Emmanuel Levinas' Reflexionen über die Verletzlichkeit der/des Anderen als konstitutiv für den ethischen Anspruch sowie die eigene Verletzlichkeit als Einfallstor für diesen Anspruch sind hierfür von zentraler Relevanz. Levinas geht allerdings von einer Unbedingtheit des singulären Anspruchs aus und inkludiert erst durch die Figur des Dritten eine ambivalente Sozialität bzw. Politizität in seinen Überlegungen. Gerechtigkeit hat aus dieser Perspektive immer den Widerhaken, dass zwischen singulären Ansprüchen (...) abgewogen, also das Unvergleichliche verglichen werden muss. Mit Überlegungen von Maurice Merleau-Ponty und Judith Butler ist es aber möglich, auch die soziale Dimension der Anerkennbarkeit und Sichtbarkeit von Vulnerabilität in den Blick zu bekommen. Gerechtigkeit ist dann nicht nur der nach Levinas gewalttätige Ausgleich singulärer Ansprüche, sondern auch abhängig von herrschenden Diskursen. Solidarität spielt demgegenüber eine ambivalente Rolle. Denn als das „Andere der Gerechtigkeit“ (vgl. Jürgen Habermas und Axel Honneth) kann Solidarität einerseits als Korrektiv der Gerechtigkeit gelten, andererseits aber auch nicht gänzlich unabhängig von hegemonialen Normen wirksam werden. Schlussendlich wird argumentiert, dass Solidarität als offener und a-teleologischer Prozess einer Inklusion dessen verstanden werden kann, was vielleicht nie ganz inkludierbar ist. (shrink)

This article examines Grotius’ lifelong support for Dutch expansion overseas. As noted in other publications of mine, Grotius cooperated closely with the directors of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the years 1604–1615. Right up to his arrest for high treason in August 1618, he contributed towards Dutch government discussions about the establishment of a West India Company (WIC). Three years of imprisonment at Loevestein Castle and, following his escape, long years of exile could not weaken his dedication to (...) the cause. His relatives in Holland, in particular his brother Willem de Groot and his brother-in-law Nicolaas van Reigersberch, kept him up-to-date on the fortunes of the VOC and WIC. His expertise on maritime affairs was in high demand. For example, Cardinal Richelieu invited him in November 1626 to become actively involved in the establishment of a French East India Company. As itinerant ideologue of empire, Grotius sought to further his own career and those of his nearest family members, without damaging the interests of the United Provinces. Through Willem de Groot and Nicolaas van Reigersberch, he provided informal advice on Dutch imperial policy to the VOC directors and government officials in The Hague. He was rewarded with the appointment of his brother and his second son, Pieter de Groot, as VOC lawyers (ordinaris advocaten) in 1639 and 1644, respectively. They served as his proxies in diplomatic disputes involving the VOC, the States General and the Portuguese ambassador in autumn 1644, when Pieter and Willem de Groot wrote a defense of VOC claims to the cinnamon-producing areas of Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka), liberally citing De Jure Belli ac Pacis. Grotius’ vision of empire hardly changed in the course of 40 years. In his view, the Dutch had gone to the Indies as merchants, not conquerors, and should regulate themselves according to natural law and the law of nations. Thus he contributed to the creation of two political orders, one for Europe and one for the Indies. European diplomatic relations counted for little beyond the Line. VOC and WIC officials could act as judges and executioners in their own cause, without reference to indigenous rulers, other colonial powers, or even the political authorities back home. (shrink)

Review of the following books (in German): -/- Michael Ruoff: Foucault-Lexikon, München 2007. Fink/UTB. -/- Clemens Kammler, Rolf Parr und Ulrich Johannes Schneider (Hrsg.): Foucault-Handbuch. Leben – Werk – Wirkung, Stuttgart 2008. Metzler. -/- Paul Veyne: Foucault. Der Philosoph als Samurai, Stuttgart 2009. Reclam. -/- Thomas Lemke: Gouvernementalität und Biopolitik, Wiesbaden 2007. VS Verlag. -/- Patricia Purtschert, Katrin Meyer und Yves Winter (Hrsg.): Gouvernementalität und Sicherheit. Zeitdiagnostische Beiträge im Anschluss an Foucault, Bielefeld 2008. Transcript. -/- Daniel Hechler und Axel Philipps (...) (Hrsg.): Widerstand denken. Michel Foucault und die Grenzen der Macht, Bielefeld 2008. Transcript. -/- Jeffrey T. Nealon: Foucault Beyond Foucault: Power and its Intensifi cations since 1984, Stanford 2008. Stanford University Press. -/- Amy Allen: The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory, New York 2008. Columbia University Press. -/- Wendy Brown: Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire, Princeton 2006. Princeton University Press. -/- Giorgio Agamben: Was ist ein Dispositiv?, Zürich-Berlin 2008. Diaphanes. -/- Philipp Sarasin: Darwin und Foucault. Genealogie und Geschichte im Zeitalter der Biologie, Frankfurt/M. 2008. Suhrkamp. (shrink)