Philosophy

In these collected studies, previously published in various other works, Günter Spendel deals with subjects of general significance which are also of historical and political interest. They have been written in a manner which emphasizes the author's trust in reason and his efforts on behalf of justice. The articles will appeal to those with or without a legal background and will help to counteract the educated laymen's lack of familiarity with the law, a lack which has often been lamented.

Georg Zenkert shows that power in principle develops in three dimensions: power is firstly the ability to act, secondly control and lastly the constitutive power of a group. While Social sciences and political philosophy today reduce power to authority or control, it can be shown that all three dimensions are based in the history of political thought.

Christoph Lütge argues that anthropological qualities cannot serve as a basis for ethics in a globalized world, because they are not immune to erosion by systematic counter-incentives. An order ethics, which is based on weaker prerequisites, namely the characteristics of situations and their basic conditions (orders), is more likely to count on cross-cultural approval in the era of globalization.

Jürgen Große poses four basic paradigms of doubting and denying the absolutism of history that have emerged since the outset of the 19th century. Although having witnessed some metamorphoses, they still persist in our time.