Cassirer in Davos. An Intermezzo on Magic Mountain (1929)

The Davos-debate between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger at Davos in 1929 has proved a landmark in the history of twentieth century philosophy. The debate not only marked the end of the heyday of continental Neo-Kantian philosophy, but influenced, although in implicit ways, legal and political theory as well. At various levels of discourse, philosophical, moral philosophical, and that of legal and political philosophy, in the first half of the twentieth century Cassirer acted as the advocate of what remained of the old European humanist tradition. Heidegger, on the contrary, acted as the exponent of the emerging existentialist, anti-humanist movement that would soon supplant the old tradition in significance and force. This is an account of an imaginary encounter between two traditions, so that the clash of their opposing forces may shed sparks on a (still) dark era in Western philosophical history. The conclusion sums up the lessons or wisdom to be learned for political and legal theory.     

艺术中的直觉抽象——朗格、卡西尔的抽象论

一般认为,抽象和直觉是对立的。卡西尔认为,艺术抽象和科学抽象是互逆的:前者是一个不断具体化的夸张的过程,后者是一个不断凝缩的过程。在卡西尔学说的基础上,朗格把抽象和直觉统一起来,从艺术发生学的角度进一步研究后认为,直觉中蕴涵着逻辑经验,直觉是一切抽象的开始。艺术中的抽象是直觉抽象。尽管艺术离不开这种抽象,但抽象在艺术中仍居次要地位。     

人类解放的道路选择及其实现——布洛赫的希望哲学思想探寻

德国哲学家布洛赫的人类解放思想纷繁复杂。在对人类解放实现方式的道路选择上,强调依靠人自身的力量来完成哲学的内在反思,试图通过人类内心的希望超越现存,实现人类解放;他既支持俄国社会主义实践,接受俄国社会主义实践的"政治信息",又深度改造传统马克思主义;他用自己创新的马克思主义思维方式,在辩证法中寻找希望,在希望中运用辩证法,卓有成效地开启了马克思主义的新的广阔视阈。     

A Life in Pictures: Looking for Elizabeth Senior

This essay follows the author’s search for forgotten art historian Elizabeth Senior (1910–41). Using a quest narrative, it traces the process undertaken to piece together the life story of a remarkable young woman, including Internet research, visits to archives and correspondence with family members. Killed at just aged 30 by a bomb during the Blitz in 1941, Senior left a quite substantial body of editorial work and writing. Editress for the inaugural volumes in Allen Lane’s King Penguin series, Senior also wrote multiple reviews for the Burlington Magazine and the British Museum Quarterly, as well as her own art historical books on portraits of Henry VIII and his wives, and on portraits of Christ (co-authored with Ernst Kitzinger). A collaborator and friend to many Jewish émigré art historians, including The Story of Art author Ernst Gombrich, Senior played an important role in facilitating the safe passage of many fleeing the Nazis for England in the 1930s and 1940s. Unmarried at the time of her death, Senior was survived by a 10-week-old baby, whom she had stashed under a table for safety when a bomb landed on her flat.     

Socialist Heroes in East German Schoolbooks

Based on examples of socialist heroes from East German schoolbooks and teaching guides designed for elementary school, this essay examines the role of state ideology in primary education. It assesses the German curriculum of the now-defunct German Democratic Republic (GDR) and illuminates distinctions between civic education and political propaganda. It also shows how the curricular emphasis on socialist virtue helped to form “the socialist personality.”

Observing the Breach: Dignity and the Limits of Political Theology

This paper draws together a number of debates concerning ‘dignity’. It points to reasons for the endurance of the concept of dignity, and thereby indicates some limits to analysis via political theology. Dignity is incongruous in law and ethics: it is naturalised theology illicitly augmenting liberal and postmodern theory. At the same time, phenomenologies of dignity suggest that it is something ‘observed in the breach’ when we encounter the diminution of the individual. Political theology would encourage us to treat this appearance of diminution as a point of aporia in ethics and closure in law, ostensibly articulating the loss of ‘humanity’ but in fact revealing nothing more than the reduction of all norms to sovereign decision. However, deconstructive counter-arguments to political theology are possible. First, the persistence of dignity hinges upon perception of loss rather than on any distinctive norms. Second, language games invoking dignity should be seen as performing solidarity. Third, there is a productive instability in the languages of dignity and human dignity. Together, these qualities mean that dignity, despite its theological genealogy, can justifiably play some role in both liberal and postmodern ethics.

Human Rights and Postmodern Utopia

Human rights have triumphed globally but no other historical period has witnessed greater violations of their principles. Exploring this paradox through the work of Ernst Bloch and by using the psychoanalytical concept of the imaginary, the essay argues that human rights express the utopian hope for a society in which people are no longer degraded and despised. This hope however has been hijacked by governments, submerged into treaties and conventions and often leads to the dismembering and reassembly of people into synthetic entities-carriers of rights. The postmodern utopia is the hope of an (impossible) future existential unity. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.