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Articles published in Eurozine
Anger at Kohl
Franz Josef Strauss and other once controversial political figures of the old Federal Republic of Germany no longer arouse much emotion in erstwhile colleagues and observers. But Helmut Kohl is a very different story, writes Berthold Franke. [more]
The unwilling hegemon
On Germany's position in the European Union
Having become the European hegemon against its will, Germany must now act as a moderating power and gauge diverging interests and powers within the EU, argues Christoph Schönberger. [more]
One voice above the rest
Avowedly enthusiastic about reader interaction, journalists in fact prefer to keep their distance, writes Kathrin Passig: readers might not be clever enough or worse, more clever. It's not sheer laziness but solid reasoning that lies behind journalists' aversion to participation. [more]
The nature party
For the fledgling German Green Party, nature was both a term of political struggle and the basis for a new social morality. The Green horizon of self-induced annihilation has since led to a fundamental change in political agenda-setting. [more]
The republic of outsiders
The outsider and non-conformist as saviour of the world: Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski took this revenge fantasy seriously, writes Jörg Lau. But what separates Kaczynski from his hero Thoreau, whose works paved the way for the civil rights movement and political ecology? [more]
The urban commons
On the sustainable city's challenge to urban planning culture
All of the ideas for a sustainable urban structure point to the compact city, but this might be a shortsighted view. What is needed now, Georg Franck suggests, is to fundamentally reconsider the organism that is the body of the city. [more]
Education cannot be redistributed
The obligation to do more for poorer students is a legitimate mission of public education. But applying the idea of redistribution to educational policy can be dangerous, argues Konrad Adam. After all, education is not a zero-sum game in which one student wins what another has lost. [more]
The culture of denunciation
A culture of historical denunciation is not contained to history, writes Bernhard Schlink: no present moment, when it becomes recent past, can withstand denunciation; there will always be new subjects about which to be morally scandalized. [more]
Swamps and salons
Bettering the quality of the discussions on blogs and Internet forums is an important task. But how? Is complete anonymity the best solution for cultivating civilized web debates? Are moderators necessary, and if so, who should select them? Kathrin Passig weighs up the options. [more]
Celebrities: The new cultural elite?
Attention is the currency of the new media, which like any other asset is profitable only when possessed in sufficient quantity, writes Georg Franck. There is nothing democratic about celebrity culture, where the media have the sole power to appoint the new elite. [Lithuanian version added] [more]
On neighbourhood
The advantages and disadvantages of partnership, membership and friendship
Where regional organizations get involved in relations between bordering states, it means that neighbours are unable to sort out problems between themselves. Two-way "special relationships" are necessary and strengthen the organization as a whole, writes Herfried Münkler. [more]
Make live and let die
Facets of bio-power
The economic form of life becomes the model for the individual relation to the self. Lifetime, acquired skills, education and pleasure have a single purpose: self-increase of imaginary life-capital. Dietmar Voss gets to the bottom of the homo economicus. [more]
Is the idea of the nation state outdated?
Israel from a European perspective
"It is not by some fluke that we constantly hear Israel and its soldiers constantly being compared to the Nazis." Israeli political philosopher Yoram Hazony seeks to explain European "rejection" of the Israeli nation and its actions through recourse to Thomas Kuhn's theory of the paradigm. [more]
The book, a money tree
Speculations about the future of the book that deal only with the switch from analogue to digital fall short of the mark, writes Kathrin Passig. The real issues to discuss are changes in reading habits, reasons for purchasing books and the social meanings of book owning. [Czech version added] [more]
The future of responsibility
The 19th and 20th centuries saw the institutionalizion of mutual solidarity. Lacking today, according to Bernhard Schlink, is a sense of responsibility that takes into account the effects of actions inherent to particular systems on society as a whole. [more]
Commonplaces of technology critique
What is it good for? A passing fad! It makes you stupid! Today's technology critique is tomorrow's embarrassing error of judgement. Katrin Passig's suggestion: one should try to avoid repeating the most commonplace critiques, particularly in public. [English version added] [more]
Threats to freedom
On the necessity of liberalism
"Those that see in the welfare state a cave in which morality can hibernate during the cold winter of capitalism are seriously mistaken", writes Wolfgang Kersting in a broadside against state paternalism. "Its system of incentives pander to the ego no less than the market." [more]
On the evolution of society
On Niklas Luhmann's "Political Sociology" and the virtues of waiting
Niklas Luhmann's theory helps explain why democratic competition between political parties leads not to diversity but to convergence; why commitment to "values" is so beloved in politics; and why the ability to wait is society's greatest virtue. [more]
The devalued man
The profound shift of the image of men in western culture has not been sufficiently discussed, writes Walter Hollstein. Misogyny has long been a recognized subject to which the public is continuously re-sensitized; "misandry", however, has yet to be addressed. [more]
Nature reflected in the human mind
On Darwin's insights into the evolution of nature and culture
The human being is related to all animals and is at the same time unique, above all in the ability to empathize with others and in the passion for searching for a cause for every occurrences. Hubert Markl infers from this a definition of human freewill beyond acausality. [more]
Philanthropy and atrocity
On Schopenhauer's ethics
Schopenhauer's emphasis on cruelty aligns him with the moral consciousness of the nineteenth century, writes Henning Ritter. The philanthropic enterprises of the time shared a secular approach to dealing with the facts of suffering that had elicited the philosopher's pessimism. [more]
The limits of universalism
After Afghanistan, the West must retract
As long as the West equates its sphere of influence with the universalism of human rights, each and every problem in the world threatens to become a problem for it, writes Heinz Theisen. "Politics, as the art of the possible, requires recognizing the boundaries of the possible." [more]
Nature: Object of science and aesthetic category
In the natural sciences, transformation is more important than diversity, writes Hansjörg Küster. Conservation laws prevent us thinking about our landscapes, which are not always as natural as they seem. More research is needed into how landscape can be managed. [more]
Reducing CO2 -- and increasing growth!
Mankind, with its "lack of laziness", hyperactivity and dash of fatalism, is unflinchingly heading for climate catastrophe. The entrepreneurial spirit is celebrating new triumphs in the guise of environmentalism. [more]
Neurocapitalism
The fear of depression, dementia and attention deficit disorder legitimizes the boom in neuro-psychotropic drugs. In a performance-driven society that confronts the self with its own shortcomings, neuroscience serves an expanding market. [Lithuanian version added] [more]
Group texts
A critical look at edited collections and research groups
The trend in academic publishing away from the peer review journal towards the conference reader and the exhibition catalogue has brought a drop in editorial standards, writes art historian Wolffgang Kemp. [more]
The pathos of obstinacy
Civil courage and heroism
In the German discourse, "civil courage" replaces "heroism", which carries asscociations with the war ethos of earlier eras. But can civil courage truly be de-heroized? According to Jörg Lau, "people must come forward who are not afraid to 'act the hero'." [more]
Equality
A systematic argument
"Propagandists of equality" claim that the struggle for equal distribution of resources is essentially the same as the struggle for elementary opportunities for participation. They have a lot to answer for, argues Rainer Paris. [Hungarian version added] [more]
"Morality goes without saying"
Hannah Arendt wrote that after the Holocaust and the Gulag, nobody in full possession of their senses can claim that "morality goes without saying". Yet the originator of this idea, the German philosopher Friedrich Theodor Vischer, was using sound Darwinist arguments that are not so easily refuted. [more]
After the crisis, back to a Protestant ethic?
"After the financial crisis, back to a Protestant ethic?" Rather not, says Ralf Dahrendorf, but still: the reduced circumstances in which developed countries are finding themselves call for a return to a responsible, parsimonious capitalism. [more]
The "Sonderweg" on foot
Walking as Germany's place of remembrance
"Given walking's role in the constitution of the German nation, one can assume that if there was a 'Sonderweg', then it was probably travelled on foot." Bodo Mrozek writes a short history of walking. [more]
Observations on the construction of politics
Why political communication is geared towards electoral success rather than problem-solving
For politicians, making their point is more important than doing the right thing; for that reason, media and politics have developed "a strange, parasitic complementarity", argues Helmut Fangmann. [more]
On mass democracy
The situation according to Panajotis Kondylis
Mass democracy is a new social form that includes capitalism without the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. It is something like a caricature of the communist ideal of the classless society, writes Peter Furth. [more]
History without memory
Gothic morality in post-Soviet society
The witches and werewolves of post-Soviet fantasy fiction embody the morality of a society in denial about its criminal past. Personal loyalty towards superiors and respect for hierarchy constitute gothic society's only uncontested law. [more]
Those who solicit trust arouse mistrust
Political semantics between challenge and appeasement
As former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt recently commented, politicians depend on the trust of the electorate, yet forfeit this trust soon as they make an effort to solicit it. [more]
The new liver
In his account on receiving a new liver, David Wagner confronts us with a life dominated by disease, reflections on the perception of a fragmented body, and the nature of a donated organ. [more]
Mistaken identity
Multiculturalist advocacy of collective rights opens the door for religious law to take precedence over civil law, argues Kenan Malik. Partly responsible is the idea that people are bearers of a particular culture as opposed to social and transformative beings. [more]
Cities for living
Roger Scruton bemoans the "moral disaster" of cities in which "no one wishes to live, where public spaces are vandalized and private spaces boarded up". He lays the blame at the door of modern architecture ā la Le Corbusier or Walter Gropius. Yet there is hope: the "New Urbanism" of Léon Krier. [more]
Risk as religion, envy of the future
Who still marches at the forefront of progress?
The environmentalist debate of the 1970s and 80s gave rise to the theory that saw risk as the defining moment of modern society. Today, risk-oriented politics is itself seen as suspicious, writes Jörg Lau. [more]
"Reform must cause discontent"
And its implementation is always a failure, as Joseph II experienced
Gerhard Schröder's reform programme "Agenda 2010" was successful yet it cost him his post. Two hundred years ago, Austrian Kaiser Joseph II experienced the same. A pattern of euphoria followed by rejection emerges, writes Ralph Bollmann. [more]
The fleeting perception of art
A feast of Adonis in Alexandria
To learn how people truly deal with art, writes Heinz Schlaffer, it is worth listening to Theocritus, a worldly poet who in a short play shows how two petty bourgeois women experience the Feast of Adonis in Alexandria 273 years BC. [more]
Under the shower
Have you ever caught yourself musing about shower gel? Then you have been responding to what product designers call "cue management". Wolfgang Ullrich looks at how cue-management creates a set of stimulants for the senses and communicates these to the consumer. [more]
The daily state of emergency
Or: Necessity knows many commandments
The state no longer keeps its distance; invasion of privacy, surveillance, CCTV, and strip searches influence the daily lives of ordinary people. Has the state of emergency shifted into society's interior for good? [more]
On the difference between "serious" and "popular" music
"Good popular music is not advanced mathematics but it teaches us the basic multiplication table of emotions." Jens Hagestedt marks the distinction between serious and popular music while revealing the errors in the reasoning of popular music sceptics. [more]
The incapacitation
How the state corrupts its citizens
The welfare state is considered one of Germany's greatest achievements. But even Bismarck called his own social legislation a kind of "state socialism", promising an authoritarian, guaranteed security rather than freedom. [more]
Religion versus the religion of art
German art critics were outraged after the bishop of Cologne found Gerhard Richter's new stained-glass window for Cologne cathedral to be insufficiently religious. Their response reveals the enduring Romantic ideology of artistic genius, writes Wolfgang Ullrich. [more]
Craziness
"Craziness only half believes in the ideology to which it prescribes, but also believes that it can't believe in anything else. The top priority becomes to constantly repel doubt via relentless activism." [more]
The science of others
Laymen's publications observed critically and with only slight irritation
The venerable sub-academic institution of laymen's publications has found a huge new platform in blogs. Is this cause for celebration or concern? [more]
Muslims and the decadent West
Some commentators interpret young Muslims' self-segregation as the fault of the majority, writes Jörg Lau. What motivates this alliance between liberal self-critique and Muslim religiosity? [more]
The imperial temptation
French foreign policy: rhetoric and reality
Contrary to belief, French and American political traditions have much in common. Both countries make global missionary claims; both are unaccustomed to pluralistic decision-making processes; and both find it hard to resist imperial temptations. [more]
The old man's magic horn
Bob Dylan's radio
Bob Dylan's "Theme Time Radio Hour" won over listeners and critics and broke broadcasting records. "Dylan undertook acoustic cross sections through the cultural archive of the US", writes Heinrich Detering. "Each of his themes contributed to a common mythical story -- just as every landscape, every social group, every state contributes to what is called 'America'." [more]
Military and decadence
War has always been the best means of suppressing decadence, with the soldier as the counterpart to the spoiled and softening civilian. The military's rejection of decadence, however, can be costly. [more]
Decadence as export hit
Semantics and strategy in the clash of cultural critique
The accusation of decadence is an old one, but now, for the first time, we must not deny it with disgust but can instead recognize it as a rhetorical strategy. [more]
"Put the past to use in the present!"
The Nanking Massacre and the politics of Chinese history
The Nanking Massacre serves as the paradigm for the victim perspective in Chinese nationalism. The Chinese government strikes a balance between promoting anti-Japanese sentiment and maintaining beneficial relations with Japan. [more]
"The Zionist state as toehold of imperialism"
Forty years ago the New German Left turned anti-Israeli
Until the Six Day War of June 1967, sympathy for the Israeli state reigned on the Left. All that changed as the APO began to regard the Jewish state as a "toehold of US imperialism". According to Martin Kloke, anti-Zionism is now embedded in German society. [more]
Thoughts on the new function of writing
Nowadays, an empty surface not covered with advertising text induces horror vacui. Commerce and new media are changing the way we use and understand script, writes Klaus Laermann. [more]
Learning to die in order to live
Medical advances combined with humanitarian dispositions mean that death is brutally dragged out beyond tolerability. We need a new "Ars moriendi", a new art of learning to die, in order to unlock the preciousness of life. [more]
The concept of God - and why we don't need it
In these newly religious times, it no longer seems superfluous to rearm the atheists with arguments. When push comes to shove, atheists can only trust their reason. [more]
Ich wäre gerne European
European identity as confusion of tongues? The Tower of Babel casts its shadow over Marco Pautasso's experiment in authentic European essay writing. [more]
On the future of the class society
While some Germans see nothing but pauperized masses, obdurate observers deny that social classes even exist. Hans-Peter Müller on the discourse and reality of today's class society. [more]
The suppressed division
In the reunified Germany, the public memory of the division has been suppressed. But these four decades were crippling: more visibly in the East, less so in the West. [more]
Europe - nothing but a promise
A new narrative
Wanderlust has made Europe into a transcontinental continent. Will the world and its cultures ever be able to disentangle themselves from their Europeanization? [more]
The cultural bases for economic success
Why are there rich and poor countries? The relative prosperity of immigrant groups internationally suggests that it isn't geography, climate, or economic policy that decides the success of a country, but culture. [more]
Self-esteem and self-improvement
The patriotism of the Berlin republic
In Germany, both Right and Left have shifted the patriotism discourse away from the past towards the present and the future. Following Richard Rorty's idea that patriotism is to a nation what self-esteem is to an individual, Jörg Lau welcomes the new patriotism's integrative potential. [more]
Dispatch from Oceania
An outsider's view of the absurdities, both great and small, of the official Berlin. [more]
In the national museum tradition invents itself
Cracow's monumental painting
The Polish national museum of nineteenth-century art does not represent a real past but the ideas of a group of conservatives from the last century. For contemporary Poland, however, it has become the authentic image of the past. [more]
On the secular spirit of politics
It is not merely political freedom that leads to political independence from religion, but the freedom of faith that makes religion necessary. [more]
Blasphemy
On the structure of mass insult
Satire, a necessary instrument of rationalist critique, becomes triumphalist when directed at the humiliated. It was the perception of the Mohammed cartoons as the West's victorious mockery that so incensed the Islamic world. [more]
Articles published in the partner section
The end of Europe?
Perspectives on Muslim integration
Never before has there been such material, legal and ideological support for immigrants as in today's Europe. Despite this, the facts show that integration is on the decline, writes Siegfried Kohlhammer. [more]
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