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donate Summary of Merkur 8/2008
Not only German Chancellor Schröder has with his "Agenda 2010" learned the painful lesson that reforms are disliked and, so the omnipresent reproach, fail in their technical implementation; Kaiser Joseph II experienced something similar over two hundred years ago. Ralph Bollmann tells the story of one great reformer; comparisons to today are emphatically encouraged.
Trust may be good, but control is better? Wrong again, Comrade Lenin, because the price of permanent mistrust is much too high, say Hubert Markl's calculations.
If sociology has largely lost its relevance to society, Heinz Bude argues, it is because it can't grasp the real phenomena and problems for its obsession with theory.
The August issue (Number 711) opens with an essay by Lee Harris, who depicts the shared logic of Fascism and Islamic terrorism and explains why the "war against terror" can't be won militarily. And apropos military: in Iraq, the Americans have now deployed more mercenaries and "private service providers" than soldiers, which gives Thomas Speckmann pause.
Michael Stolleis scourges the printed slander against Horst Dreier; Horst Meier laments the enduring existence of capital punishment; and Gunnar Heinsohn analyzes the Kosovo-Albanians' demographic offensive.
In the architecture column Christopher Mäckler bestows justice upon today's often neglected entryway; Lothar Müller's literature column eavesdrops on the rumblings of the essay in modern novels. Gerd Schäfer portraits Fritz Stern, the great thinker and researcher of German (un)culture; Jörg Drews contemplates Enzensberger's most recent coup, the Hammerstein book.
Up until now, brain research has produced mostly bad philosophy and very bad psychology when it tries to say something about human consciousness, Wolfgang Marx argues. And finally, after eight years, the last segment of Iris Hanika's "Chronicle" – with a flourish and thanks.
Published 2008-08-01
Original in German
© Merkur
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