Alle Publikationen
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2017
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(2017): Kant, Oppression, and the Possibility of Nonculpable Failures to Respect Oneself. In: The Southern Journal of Philosophy 55 (3), S. 285-305. DOI: 10.1111/sjp.12242
Abstract: I argue that Kant's ethical framework cannot countenance a certain kind of failure to respect oneself that can occur within oppressive social contexts. Kant's assumption that any person, qua rational being, has guaranteed epistemic access to the moral law as the standard of good action and the capacity to act upon this standard makes autonomy an achievement within the individual agent's power, but this is contrary to a feminist understanding of autonomy as a relational achievement that can be thwarted by the systematic attack on autonomy that occurs within oppressive social conditions. Insofar as Kant's negative duty of self-respect is unable to accommodate the ways immersion in oppressive social environments can warp an individual's understanding of what she is owed and capable of as a moral agent, it perpetuates the cruelty of unjust social systems in the guise of respecting individual autonomy. I conclude by considering Carol Hay's argument that those who are oppressed have an obligation to themselves to resist their own oppression, in order to explore how this limitation in how Kant conceives of the duty to respect the self may reach expression in contemporary ethical theory inspired by Kant.
Keywords: agency, Autonomie, Diskriminierung, Disziplin, Ethik, feminism, Feminismus, Gender, Handlungsmacht, Hay, Kant, Macht, Modelle/Theorien, Moral, moral agents, moralische Gesetze, moralisches Wissen, Moralphilosophie, oppressive social systems, Philosophie, Respekt, social systems, ethics, Three main normative ethic perspectives Kant, Utilitarismus virtue ethics, Unterdrückungssysteme 2016
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(2016): A Critical Social Systems View of the Internet. In: Philosophy of the Social Sciences 37 (4), S. 471-500. DOI: 10.1177/0048393107307664
Abstract: The article discusses principles that form part of evolutionary systems thinking in social sciences and humanities. It is argued that introducing the concept of self-organization relates agency and structures in a way that makes it possible to take up certain features of Critical Theory by which it can meet the demands for a critical social science. These principles are applied to the question of whether there is convergence or divergence in and by means of the Internet. It will be clarified that the Internet is basically a social system and that it is a subsystem of the larger and overarching system of the whole society. It will be shown how the Internet can be perceived as a possible trigger for societal developments bringing about fundamental change in the nature of society. Thus the article cuts across philosophical, system theoretical, social theoretical, sociology of technology, and information society theory considerations.
Keywords: agency, critical Theory, Disziplin, dynamic, epistemology, Evolution, Handlungsmacht, information society, Informations- & Kommunikationstechnik, Internet, Kritische Theorie, mechanism, Mensch-Technik-Relationen (MTR), Philosophie, Realtechnik, revolution, Selbstorganisation, self-organization, social system, social systems, soziales System, Soziologie, STS, Technik 2010
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(2010): The Causal Power of Social Structures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Abstract: This book offers a solution to the problem of structure and agency: a new solution, but one that draws on a number of existing traditions of thought, most significantly philosophical theories of emergence and causality, and the sociological debates around structuration theory. This introductory chapter sets the context by explaining the problem of structure and agency and its significance for sociology, and outlines some of the key points of my argument. It also offers the reader some hints on different ways to read the rest of the book and briefly locates it with respect to critical realism, the main philosophical tradition on which I draw. The problem of structure and agency Sociology is founded on the belief that our behaviour is causally influenced and in particular that there are social factors that influence our behaviour. Karl Marx, for example, famously wrote ‘It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness’ (Marx 1978 [1859]: 4). Émile Durkheim, similarly, argued that ‘the individual is dominated by a moral reality greater than himself: namely, collective reality’ (Durkheim 1952 [1897]: 38). Conventionally, the social factors that are held to influence our behaviour are known as social structure, a concept that even today remains implicit in, and indeed essential to, much of the work done in the social sciences. Yet there is also widespread disagreement about what social structure really is and how it could affect us.
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(2010): Plurale Weltinterpretationen und Transdifferenz: Dominanz- und Interaktionsmodell in der alltäglichen Praxis der West-Tyva in Süd-Sibirien. In: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 135 (2), S. 305-336
Abstract: This article analyses the flexible way of handling plural models of world interpretation in West Tyvan daily practice. Based on fieldwork in the Republic of Tyva (Russian Federation) in 20042005, it is part of a research project that led to a dissertation submitted to Leipzig University in 2010. At least two models of world interpretation could be identified. Both exist as realities of equal value but can structurally be differentiated as "model of dominance" and "model of interaction." The first stresses "the human dominance over the environment, seen as a series of more or less passive objects of human agency," the second emphasizes the "interaction in a world enclosing humans and consisting of both human and non-human subjects." Both models are coherent systems and belong in equal degree to the repertoire of knowledge, behaviour and acting of West Tyvan agents. To them, these models count as equal and mutually contradictory. The models compete and oppose each other, but form a continuum within a single person to the effect that the human agent is constantly positioning itself, depending on situation and context. The empirical material demonstrates that West Tyvans use these models in various ways - replacing, complementing and mixing them according to their needs in specific contexts.
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