Changes in the American political system: Tea Party and political narrowcasting

von Stefan Drößler Veröffentlicht am 12. Juni 2012

I watched Fareed’s Take on CNN about the success of small interest groups in the United States – like the Tea Party. I recommend to watch this video on YouTube, because it’s very instructive and gives a good overview of the changes in the political system of the United States. But in „European“ ears Fareed Zakaria’s comments about the „European parties“ sounds a little bit funny. We have different political systems, of course. Great Britain is not Germany. In Germany it is for a party very difficult to dominate all levels of legislation. Even a big people party have to compromise to build a government coalition or to find support in the second chamber, the Bundesrat… After Adenauer it is for a single party no longer possible to rule all levels („durchregieren“). I think Zakaria oversimplified „European“ politics in the end of his take, even for the American audience. – Here is a summary:

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Dilthey‘s distinction between Natural Sciences and Human Sciences

von Stefan Drößler Veröffentlicht am 10. Juni 2012

At the end of the 19. century the german philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey triggered a debate about the basic epistemological distinction between Natural Sciences and Human Sciences. This is, until today, a debate about methods. On the one hand, Dilthey hypothesises that the Natural Sciences like Physics or Chemistry explain processes in the nature. On the other hand, he argues that the Human Sciences like History or Philology seek to understand phenomena in the history or different cultures. Dilthey works out his explanation-understanding distinction in his „Ideas for a Descriptive and Analytic Psychology“ of 1894 (see Rudolf Makkreel‘s Article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dilthey/). Makkreel cites Dilthey‘s „Ideas“ as follows:  “We explain through purely intellectual processes, but we understand through the cooperation of all the powers of the mind activated by apprehension.”

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