Papers at the Max-Weber-Kolleg – Seite 4

Andreas Pettenkofer presents a working paper on ‚Formal Organizations and the Destruction of political Alternatives. A pragmatistic Reconstruction of Robert Michels’ Sociology of Political Parties‘

This paper discusses how modes of social coordination can destroy the plausibility of egalitarian norms. It focuses on formal organizations – more specifically, on political parties – and on the mechanisms through which these organizations can destroy the plausibility of the ideas that they were meant to institutionalize. Its goal is to save some of the insights that can be found in Robert Michels’ Sociology of Political Parties (1911/1924), a now mostly unread ‘classic’ that, precisely because of its age, has the advantage of not treating party organizations, and the ways in which they typically operate, as a natural fact of social life. Michels’ book remains interesting for its ethnographic descriptions of everyday micro-practices, and for its ideas on how these practices can transform the ways in which party members understand themselves and their worlds. In order to reconstruct the social mechanisms that can be found in Michels’ descriptions, this paper uses the pragmatist concepts of selective attention, situated reflexivity, and social self.

The paper will appear in: Jenny Brichzin, Jasmin Siri (eds.), Soziologie politischer Parteien, VS 2021.

Ramón Soneira Martínez presents a working paper on „‚Unbelievers‘ in Classical Athens“

This paper summarises some of the main ideas that shape the theoretical terminology of my project. It focuses on the application of the term “unbelief” in Classical Athens reflecting on the establishment of “self-world relations” at that time. This draft belongs to the final chapter of my dissertation (see the table of contents) in which I analyse some of the most relevant sources to study “atheism” in Athens during the second half of the 5th and the first decades of the 4th centuries BCE. The paper is structured in four main sections. The first one deals with Protagoras and his “agnosticism”. The second section reflects on Prodicus’ theory of religion and his connections with the so-called Sisyphus fragment. Thirdly, the paper follows some ideas developed in this fragment that resonates with Democritus’ theology. Finally, the last section focuses on Diagoras of Melos and the relationship between being “atheist” (atheos) and the crime of “impiety” (asebeia). The text concludes with some reflections on unbelief as part of the “religious individuation”.

Antje Linkenbach presents a working paper on ‚Value Discourse, Normative Conflicts and the Politicization of Nature‘

Nature has become explicitly politicized since the second half of the 20th century: hegemonic forms of human-nature relationships started to be critically challenged, and alternatives emerged in public debates, civil society, as well as on the level of state policies. Environmental ethics as an academic field of reflection on values and norms emerged, and soon radiated into larger society and inspired environmental movements.

The paper explores conflicts as well as value- and normative transformations in the field of human-nature relationships. On a theoretical level it will discuss concept and phenomenon of politicization, and the relationship between values and norms. Empirically it will focus on different strands of environmental ethics, including environmental pragmatist ethics; on debate and practices of environmental and ecological justice, and on attempts to impinge on the legal order through juridification of nature (rights of nature-debate). Finally, the paper makes a plea for re-territorializing humans in nature. Starting from pointing out affinities between pragmatist environmental ethics and indigenous worldviews, it argues for situated, localized and contextualized ethics and praxis of care.

Hartmut Rosa presents a working paper on ‚Resonant Sovereignty? The Challenge of Social Acceleration – and the Prospect of an Alternative Conception‘

Traditionally, conceptions of sovereignty are based on, and dependent on, the capacity to synchronize political decision making with both the internal dynamics of social and economic life and the external speeds of global markets and technologies as well as environmental processes. Only as long as politics is capable of setting and/or following the pace of societal life, the idea of sovereignty appears to be plausible. Yet, modern societies continue to operate in a mode of dynamic stabilization, which means that they are persistently forced to grow, accelerate and innovate in order to reproduce their structure and to preserve their institutional status quo. This leads to a form of social acceleration which threatens or even destroys this very capacity for synchronization; it leads to serious forms of desynchronization on all levels of social and political life (i.e. between citizens, between markets and politics, between states as well as between social life and environmental temporalities). Hence, this contribution argues, what is needed is a different conception of ‘soft sovereignty’ which is not based on autonomy and instrumental control, but on responsivity on all those levels: This form of sovereignty, or of the common good, is realized when a body politic establishes ‘axes of resonance’ a) between citizens b) between citizens and the ‚body politic‘ as a whole, c) towards the (natural and institutional) environment d) towards history and e) towards other political bodies beyond its borders.

Vanina Kopp presents a working paper on ‚Lay confraternities and their artistic devotion between 1400 and 1750 in French urban centres‘

The aim of my talk is to discuss how elements of economic history and art history continue or change between 1400 until 1700. Confraternities of lay men and women, mostly dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and featuring literary and various artistic activities, called puys, existed in various cities from 1400 to 1700 in several French urban centres (Amiens, Rouen, Abbeville, Paris…). Visual images such as huge paintings, material objects such as silver reliquaries, chapel dedications in cathedrals or a sculptural program in the sacred space were underlining as well as undermining the pious undertaking. The textual productions of the Paris confraternity, as well as those of several older communities in Rouen and Amiens, show the entanglements of literary culture, visual art, and social practices of pious association and economic distinction. I analyze the textual and visual sources produced by these confraternities to express their devotion.

Jörg Rüpke presents a working paper on ‚Grasping urbanity: Propertius’ Book 4 and urban religion of the Augustan period‘

Propertius’ last book of elegies (publ. c. 16 BCE) has been read as a staged conflict between antiquarianism and love elegy. This article argues that the book as a whole is above all a reflection on the spatial and temporal boundaries of the city and the internal impact of the permanent crossing and breaking down of these boundaries. Then and now, imperial expedition and internal treason, permanent and temporary absence, burying outside and loving inside, admission to and exclusion from sacralised and gendered space and finally the vertical dimension of life’s above and death’s below explore these limits and transfers and constitute the urbanity of the city as well as the urbanity of religion.

David Palme presents a working paper on ‚In the Turn of the River‘

The river as a metaphor for „the world“, „the things“, „time“, etc. is ubiquitous in philosophy. This paper starts with a short-story by Bertolt Brecht and investigates the meaning of the metaphor in Brechts story about philosophy and transfers this to Hercalitus‘ and Wittgenstein‘s use of the river-metaphor. The paper differentiates the river-metaphor into two „rivers“, an actual river and a metaphorical river. Brecht‘s story gives an account of philosophy as criticizing the metaphorical river. With Wittgenstein and Marx the paper suggests a critique of language that goes back to the actual river. This critique of language can help to solve problems of modern moral philosophy.

Markus Vinzent presents a working paper ‚From a critical theory of scholarship to a critical historiography‘

The present paper reflects upon a post-postmodern criticism of scholarship from a historical perspective. Taking into account the move from hypersceptical auto-criticism of the postmodern period to a rather sceptical understanding of auto-criticism of scholarship in light of Trumpism, the paper advocates that scholarship cannot dispense of auto-criticism or relegate it to specialist fields like philosophy or sociology. In contrast, even a discipline like history has to critically reflect upon its own methodological approaches if it keeps to being scholarship and does not hand over agency to populists.

Urs Lindner presents a working paper on ‚Affirmative Action and Equality: A Synthesizing View‘

The aim of the paper is to draft an outline of how an egalitarian justification of affirmative action might look like. I do so by injecting the ideas of parity, equal representation and participation into what has been established within the US philosophical debate on the policy. An egalitarian justification of affirmative action has to answer four questions, which, at the same time, structure the argument of my paper. First, I will consider whether and to what extent affirmative action measures are compatible with procedural fairness or may be even required by it, and which role equality plays in this connection. In the second paragraph, I will introduce a substantive account of equal opportunity and analyze how the policies in questions may contribute to the realization of this meritocratic ideal. In a third step, I will try to make sense of parity, equal representation and participation by connecting them to a concept of political equality, again, asking how affirmative action fits the bill. Finally, I explore the connections (and tensions) between procedural fairness, equal opportunity and parity and situate these ideas within a broader framework of democratic or relational equality.

Tullio Viola presents a working paper on ‚Edgar Wind on Symbols and Memory. Pragmatist Variations on a Warburgian Theme‘

This paper deals with Edgar Wind’s texts on symbols and cultural memory from the early 1930s. It emphasizes in particular the connection these texts establish between Warburg’s ideas and the pragmatist philosophy to which Wind was exposed during his first stay in the United States. I will argue that Wind’s interpretation of the polarity of symbols takes up a quintessential pragmatist focus on habit as the mechanism that lets us understand how expressive gestures develop out of practical actions. I will then show that Wind used the idea of a mnemonic power of symbols to fine-tune the pragmatist conception of thought and action as a permanent oscillation between doubt and belief.