Merkur
Eurozine
Merkur
2006-12-04
Summary for Merkur 12/2006
Democracy is all well and good, but the most important thing is a constitutional state: Otfried Höffe on equity in times of globalization. Bernhard Schlink describes (and regrets) how jurisprudence of the constitutional court is distancing itself evermore from the study of law. Helge Rossen-Stadtfeld asks if Islam can be allowed to be satirized -- there is no reason to think otherwise, constitutionally speaking. Based on the example of Zinédine Zidane's World Cup performance, Sigbert Gebert analyzes the reasons and dangers of "equitable" violence.
These subjects are thematically bookended by two essays that celebrate European thought, with brave leaps from Homer and Caesar into the present. Wolf Dieter Enkelmann describes Europe's serious yearning for faraway places as a mission of worldwide socialization. Jürgen Paul Schwindt shows us that the study of antiquity remains indispensable, as old texts' lessons educate the modern people within us.
Also columns on law and society, portraits of the writers Maugham and Hawthorne, and an illumination of the difficult relationship between author and publisher -- Peter Weiss meets Siegfried Unseld.