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The subject of this thesis is the ethics of German 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The study examines Schopenhauer’s ethics and investigates his criticism of the ethics of his older German colleague Immanuel Kant. By arguing that all true morally acceptable and good actions originate from compassion, Schopenhauer distinguishes his view from the deontological ethics held by Kant. The study focuses on Schopenhauer’s view on the basis of morals. Its purpose is to consider an ethical perspective that interconnect moral considerations with human empathy. By comparing the arguments presented by these two philosophers one can get a clearer view of the extent to which Schopenhauer’s criticism of Kant’s ethics is justified. In the analysis, five major parts of Schopenhauer’s criticism are identified and studied one by one. The findings suggest that Schopenhauer’s ethics and the ethics of Kant can be represented as two different ethical paradigms.

Le présent travail de thèse portant sur la vie et l’œuvre de Carl Ludwig Fernow a pour principal objectif de présenter sous un jour nouveau la genèse de ses idées sur la théorie de l’art, aussi à l’égard des aspects socioculturels et anthropologiques de son temps. Pour ce qui est des principaux axes de recherche, on tentera, dans un premier temps, de reconstruire les sources philosophiques ayant nourri sa pensée esthétique et surtout les écrits de Kant, de Schiller et de Winckelmann, tout en opérant une sélection des textes les plus importants. Puis, nous nous demanderons, dans un deuxième temps, dans quelle mesure les monographies d’artistes de Fernow comportent des élans sociocritiques, se dirigeant non seulement contre la politique de formation des académies, mais également contre l’hétéronomie de la production artistique de son temps. Cet aspect sera envisagé sous la forme d’une comparaison de la monographie d’Arioste à celles d’Antonio Canova et d’Asmus Jakob Carstens. La troisième partie sera consacrée à une présentation synthétique des idées esthétiques de Fernow, afin d’évaluer, de façon cohérente et sous un nouveau jour, de l’originalité de sa conception de l’art autonome. / AThe main target of the present study is to reconstruct the genesis of the esthetical ideas of the German art theoretician and writer Carl Ludwig Fernow (1763-1808), whose work and intellectual importance has been recently rediscovered and revalued by several researches. Carl Ludwig Fernow’s name is particularly related to the art discussion of the so called “Weimarian art friends”, the circle of amateurs of beauty who assembled very famous members and personalities such as Goethe, Schiller and Meyer. However, Fernow has always acted in the shadow of these main actors, trying to make him known as an author. Thus, quite a number of his publications and articles in German appeared in German well known revues such as “The Propylees”, “The new Mercury” or “The journal of fashion and luxury” have never been touched a large public, but still would merit a closer look, based on a reexamination of the role he played for the formation of the movement of art’s autonomy, in order to show his art theory, resuming his main ideas and concepts concerning the character, the ideal of beauty and the enthusiasm of the artiste, which he personally considered as the principal components of genuine art expression representing the key to real artistic creation.

In der Geschichtsphilosophie der europäischen Aufklärung nimmt Immanuel Kant eine besondere Stellung ein. Er schreibt keine große Erzählung und äußert sich eher zurückhaltend gegenüber der Fortschrittsidee. Gleichwohl lassen sich eine Reihe von Gemeinsamkeiten feststellen wie die teleologische Begründung, der weltgeschichtliche Entwurf und die praktische Zukunftsperspektive. Das kann dazu verleiten, das geschichtsphilosophische Denken von Kant ebenso scharf zu kritisieren, wie es mit Blick auf andere Geschichtsphilosophien üblich ist. Verbreitet ist jedoch auch der Versuch, Kant vor einer solchen Kritik in Schutz zu nehmen. Die Absicht dieses Artikels besteht hingegen darin, mit Kant die Geschichtsphilosophie insgesamt zu rehabilitieren. / Within the European Enlightenment Immanuel Kant has a special standing in the Philosophy of History. He does not write a grand narrative and cautiously comments on the idea of progress. Nevertheless, they share a common ground, such as teleological reasoning, the concept of world history and a practical future perspective. So this might lead to severe criticism of the Kantian Philosophy of History as it is usually the case regarding other Philosophies of History. On the other hand it is also popular to defend Kant against such criticism. However, the present article intends to rehabilitate the Philosophy of History as a whole with the help of Kant.

Die Dissertation untersucht Samuel Taylor Coleridges Praxis der Selbstredaktion in den Jahren von 1814 bis 1818 und beleuchtet dabei die zentrale Rolle, die William Wordsworths The Excursion, 1814 als Teil von The Recluse erschienen, in der Herausbildung von Coleridges Œuvre einnimmt. Die Arbeit entwickelt ihre zentrale These zu Coleridges Überarbeitungspraxis durch eine detaillierte Analyse der Verfahren, über die Coleridge aufhörte, durch Wordsworth zu sprechen. Ich beziehe mich dabei in erster Linie auf die Überarbeitungen von Biographia Literaria (1817), Sibylline Leaves (1817) und dem 1818 erschienenen rifacciamento zu dem Periodikum The Friend, das ursprünglich 1809–1810 publiziert worden war. Vor dem Hintergrund von Coleridges in den 1790er- und 1800er-Jahren neu aufgekommener und sich später weiterentwickelnder Rezeption von Immanuel Kants kritischer Philosophie werde ich argumentieren, dass sich die „radikale Differenz“ zwischen Coleridge und Wordsworth, die seit den Lyrical Ballads (1798) und dem „Preface“ (1800) bestand, weiter verstärkte, nachdem es Wordsworth nicht gelungen war, das groß angelegte Konzept eines „first genuine philosophical poem“ – The Recluse – zu vollenden. Insbesondere nachdem Coleridge 1807 The Prelude gehört hatte, enttäuschte The Excursion nach den Maßstäben seiner „vergleichenden Kritik“ seine lang gehegten Erwartungen. Während sein organisches Weltbild einen aktiven Geist kannte, der nach universaler „Wahrheit“ sowohl durch innere synthetisierende Kräfte als auch empirische Naturgesetze strebt, gründete sich Wordsworths Gedicht auf ein obskur-labiles Fundament zwischen Außenwelt und Selbst. Coleridges aus seinen eigenen Theorien zu Sprache und Einbildungskraft erwachsene Enttäuschung über The Excursion und die nachfolgende Loslösung von Wordsworth und ihrem gemeinsamen Werk verschafften ihm letztendlich die notwendige Autonomie, die einerseits einen nüchternen Blick auf die eigene Vergangenheit und andererseits eine dialogische Freundschaft zu Wordsworth ermöglichten, innerhalb derer Coleridge die Bedeutsamkeit erkannte, zu einem Freund zu sprechen. / This thesis is an examination of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s revisionary activity from 1814 to 1818, considering the integral role of William Wordsworth’s The Excursion, published as part of The Recluse in 1814, on Coleridge’s conception of his discrete oeuvre. It is via a detailed analysis of the way Coleridge ceased to speak “through” Wordsworth that this thesis unfolds its principal argument on Coleridge’s revisionary activity. I principally consider the revisions at work in the Biographia Literaria (1817), Sibylline Leaves (1817) and the 1818 rifacciamento to The Friend (the periodical originally issued in 1809-1810). Taking into account Coleridge’s newly-emerging and subsequently evolving responses to Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy in the 1790s and 1800s, I will argue that the already-existing “radical Difference” between Coleridge and Wordsworth ever since the Lyrical Ballads (1798) and the “Preface” (1800) further intensified following Wordsworth’s failure to bring their grand scheme for a “first genuine philosophical poem”, The Recluse, into completion. Especially after The Prelude Coleridge heard in 1807, The Excursion by means of his “comparative censure” fell short of meeting the long-cherished expectations. Whereas Coleridge’s organic view of the world involved the recognition of an active mind seeking universal “Truth” through the inner synthetic faculties as well as the empirical laws in nature, Wordsworth’s poem was founded upon an obscurely precarious ground between the phenomenal world and the inner self. Ultimately, Coleridge’s disappointment with The Excursion on the basis of his theories on language and imagination, and the ensuing detachment from Wordsworth and their joint oeuvre gave him the autonomy to revise his past works in a way that ensured formation of a more sober relationship with his own past and a dialogic friendship with Wordsworth in which Coleridge came to realise the importance of speaking to a friend.

The dissertation re-examines the philosophy of Georges Bataille within the context of post-Kantian aesthetics and argues for a re-evaluation of Bataille’s notion of expenditure [depenser] within this context. The dissertation argues further that the artistic practice of Robert Smithson is an exemplary case of an ‘aesthetics of expenditure.’ It is our contention that Bataille’s cosmic-energetic philosophy finds a complementary material expression in Smithson’s abstract geology and its confrontation with post-Kantian aesthetics. We will argue that this occurs through Smithson’s varying strategies, which are grouped conceptually according to the broader logic of their expression:seriality, sedimentality, monumentality, and meandering. While Smithson’s own references to Bataille in the early 1970s are discussed in detail, it is not our position that Smithson was enacting Bataille’s philosophy ‘aesthetically’; rather, by reading Bataille’s evaluation of Kant’s aesthetics and teleology in relation to Smithson’s artistic practice, we emphasize instead that the politics of disgust shared by both figures advance a radical decentring and repositioning of the human in relation to planetary and geological forces. If, as geologists now agree, our present age is that of the Anthropocene1, our argument is that Bataille and Smithson anticipate this precarious condition analytically, and, perhaps more importantly, that their analysis suggests further important diagnostic considerations at the level of social organization and political composition that might help defer, if not entirely prevent, the catastrophic end of this all-too-human period.

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<p>Human reproductive cloning came to the public´s attention when Dolly the sheep was cloned in Scotland in 1997. This news quickly spread around the world causing both excitements at the possibilities of what cloning techniques could offer, as well as apprehension about the ethical, social and legal implications should human reproductive cloning become possible. Many international organisations and governments were concerned about the impact of human reproductive cloning on human health, dignity and human rights. To this day, many institutions have drafted resolutions, protocols and position statements outlining their concerns. This paper outlines some of the major ethical issues surrounding human reproductive cloning and the position towards this novel technique taken by three important international organisations - Council of Europe, World Health Organization, and United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization - expressed in different regulatory frameworks. Proponents of human cloning occasionally point out that cloned humans are already among us in the form of twins - people with identical sets of DNA - so what is the problem? Besides avoiding the fact that natural twins are always siblings, whereas a clone could be the twin of a parent or grandparent, this observation ignores a crucial moral difference: natural twins arrive as rare creations, not as specifically designed products. Instead of being an uncontrolled, self-regulated evolutionary process, creation of man through reproductive cloning are shifting from being natural to a state of instrumentality where parental interests constitutes what is important. This shift will inevitably lead to the child being a means for some other end (parental interests). However, this is not the same as being subdued into genetic determinism, but the point brought forward is the child´s lack of freedom caused by the interests of the parents. In this sense the clone´s genome constitutes a heavy backpack because of our pre-knowledge of its physical building blocks - or in other words its potentiality. Even though the argument of genetic determinism is a weak one, our subconscious"forces"us to create hopes upon the child because of its potentiality. No longer is the evolution the creator with the dices of randomness. A new gambler is in town and this time the dices are equilateral.</p>