Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung

In his famous essay from 1784, Kant denied that we "live in an enlightened age"; yet he claimed that we "live in an age of enlightenment". If we should answer the question if we live in an enlightened age now, we could basically give the same...

This article sets out to identify Karl Jaspers as a European thinker, one who understands 'Europeanness' as a cosmopolitan attitude. It recalls Jaspers bio- graphical convictions to the conception of Europe by referencing several of his...

In this paper, I discuss Aristotle's notion of rational powers as presented in his Metaphysics Θ.2 and Θ.5. I argue, first, that his account cannot serve as the model for explaining human rational actions in general. The role of rational powers is...

Most arguments of Applied Ethics (e.g.slippery slope argument, argument of double effect) are well analyzed. An exception is the argument 'I do not do this because it is not my duty'. It makes sense to call the argument the 'argument of...

The aim of this article is to explicate and to defend a desire-based conception of practical reasons. Often such a conception is suspected of reducing reasons to a mere motivational function and to spirit the central normative role away. It is, I...

Andrea Kern has criticized the view that the fallibility of judgements is due to their objectivity and has tried to show that objective knowledge is comprehensible only if its infallibility is not logically excluded. She argues that the notion of...

Starting from the problem of evil, Norbert Hoerster argues for an atheistic position. He discusses several historical and current attempts to reconcile the existing evils with the existence of God and comes to the negative conclusion that all of...

On Chang's voluntarist account of commitments, when we commit to φ, we employ the 'normative powers' of our will to give ourselves a reason to φ that we would otherwise not have had. I argue that Chang's account, by itself, does not have...

A discussion of the nature of cruelty seems to be superfluous: it's infliction of pain for one's own pleasure. This definition is, however, problematic. Neither does it encompass all cases of cruel behaviour, nor is every suffering inflicted in...

The purpose of this paper is to defend an understanding of social participation that spells out inclusion as a dispositional property. I assume that an agent must occupy at least one position within a social order so that he is leastways partially...