Good morning, I greet you, Dr. Guérot! You don’t really need to be introduced today, you are known to a large audience through your many publications, books and television appearances. You are an expert on EU issues and that’s where I would like to start:
How do you see the role of the EU today , do you see it as a failure or do you still see opportunities to revive it? In fact, the question is what is the EU now? We never became the political union that we wanted to become, the EU now has
No constitution, but the Lisbon Treaty, it makes a lot of substantive policies. The technocratic structures have created a populist defensive attitude against the EU, which makes it very, very difficult to argue for the EU today. In the last few years after
The banking crisis, when it became increasingly clear that citizens were somehow left out, we had a big debate about “European citizenship,” we had a European civil society as a counter-movement to these technocratic structures and this democratic deficit . We already have the first Europe-wide parties – but it’s not enough.
We have now recognized the problem that the EU has very weak democratic structures that do not resonate with the citizens. There is already a countermovement to this. But somehow it seems as if the EU cannot move. And it’s true too.
How is the EU supposed to suddenly say on its own, so to speak: ‘I’m going to create a real democratic parliament, I’m going to create one person – one vote!’ This could only happen through a constitutional assembly of all European citizens. I think we should do that. But of course that’s somewhat utopian.
And in this situation, what you already set out in your question arises, namely the discussion: Back to the nation state or defense of the EU, which can no longer be defended. What we are actually looking for here is tertium non datur, the third. This is the work
I am trying to do with my European Democracy Lab. Our motto is shaping Europe beyond the EU – thinking Europe beyond the EU. We have a very difficult discussion to undertake on the European continent, and that too with 27 states and with several languages
and with several audiences. How we get out of a dichotomy, defend the EU or go back to the nation state, and how we can look for the third, in my opinion that is the thinking task, namely a Europe beyond the EU in a way that we retain the achievements
Of the last few years , i.e. the internal market, the euro, Schengen, Erasmus, whatever, but embed the whole thing in a veritable political and social union so that citizens are once again in touch with their political system. In order to prevent the same mistakes from
Repeating themselves or becoming even worse in the new system, whatever that might be, you first have to understand why things didn’t work with the EU. I think we actually already understand that. It should not be overlooked that we drafted a European constitution exactly 20 years ago. I do
N’t want to praise it to the skies, unfortunately it was already very neoliberalized, but at least it was a draft constitution. During this time, I would like to say clearly, we have had different and better discussions in the academic world about what
A European constitution should be. Let’s go back 20 years, back then Étienne Balibar already said that ultimately, despite the internal market and the euro and so on, we are still French, Finnish, Slovenian, German, Portuguese citizens.
So of course there is an idea like the EU or something else , which could replace the EU , is highly problematic for cultures because it is artificially created from above. If I had to do it again, I would start with culture. We’ve already come a long way,
20 years ago there was obviously a different feeling in Europe, which was at least enough for the heads of state and government to decide that we should do it a constitution. It was exactly 20 years ago and that failed for many reasons. The mood was different, the political commitment was different,
And there was a different academic work on Europe about the concept of the citizen. You would now have to analyze what has happened in the last 20 years, has the political ambition diminished, have we just designed the structures incorrectly? I think we have that. Many are bad institutional developments
That have not connected citizens with Europe, but something else must have happened. The fact that we didn’t create the institution in such a way that it was democratic, closer to the citizens and social, that went wrong from 2003 onwards, and because that didn’t succeed, the emotions
Disappeared afterwards, a lot of people then said: “EU – This is the banking crisis, the refugee crisis, the climate crisis, all of which cannot be brought under control, and now the EU is not directly at war, but now arms deliveries are being organized, although
Europe should be called: “Never again war”. they have had the experience of a Lanz broadcast ; You say that at a certain point in your biography you became critical and then discovered that there were several narratives. In the Lanz program you can see that there are stories that are conveyed and other stories
That are not conveyed. Michel Foucault also dealt a lot with the question of power and spoke of “truth regimes” or “pastoral power”, and we see that very clearly in this Corona matter. Who actually has the power? Does Markus
Lanz have the power? Does Ms von der Leyen have the power? Do the investors have the power? Who decides who is heard and who is not heard and according to what criteria? And is democracy still possible under these conditions?
In fact, Europe as a political union has also been a story. I have to admit that I actually followed this story for a while, especially in the 90s when it was actually grounded in reality. Things were done in the 1990s, the euro, eastern expansion, and the constitution were
At least tried. This means that the narrative of the EU as a peace project failed when there was no more effort to get it into politics, and you can see that from 2005 onwards with the French no to the constitution. There was no longer any political effort
To somehow implement this narrative. I think that is the very important point. In the 90s everyone was talking about Europe, this narrative worked because it was somehow in people’s heads and everyone wanted to have twin town relationships and so on. The narrative then stopped working when it was broken, so to speak, the
Air was gone, there was no longer this political ambition, and then – and this is important to understand – it degenerated into a technocracy. So from 2005 onwards I would say. That means we’ve been in a techno structure for about 20 years now and
That’s why we have this populist resentment against the European Union. I think that with Corona, many people noticed that a narrative was being told that was not congruent with reality, we know that too, we know today that by
June 2020 at the latest everything will be clear. How dangerous is Corona really and that the vaccination is not has worked, we won’t get herd immunity, etc. That means, especially with Corona, we have a powerful experience of how a narrative can continue for two years, even though it is clear
That this narrative does not work and even though there is civil society protest. There were protests, demonstrations, Monday walks, etc. And I also think it was a very interesting experience to see the brutality with which a narrative can be enforced in Western democracies, right up to the exclusion of journalists,
Critical doctors, of critical lawyers, etc. Also with imprisonment and persecution. Detention, persecution, exclusion, termination, etc. Now the interesting question for me is, Who has experienced it like that and who hasn’t experienced it, and who believes that it was like that
And who doesn’t believe it, who doesn’t see it or doesn’t want to see it or wants to suppress it? That’s what society is working on right now. There are those who went through all of it, “Corona was so bad and blah and everything was necessary,” and the RKI has just
Written us another study saying that all of it was right and important – but there is enough evidence, In order to be able to say that none of this was right, we have comparative studies, we see the number of deaths increasing, there is a correlation with vaccination, etc.
That means that society is currently negotiating on a scale of around 20 to 80%. Those who don’t want to get involved in this Corona narrative because they want or need to stabilize it, because they took part, because they don’t want to see themselves as deceived,
Because they want to suppress injustice or because they took part themselves, otherwise it would be their own fault would be, as a doctor who vaccinated, whatever. And 20% who are now working to ensure that we get a commission of inquiry, clarification, etc.
Now you ask, with Foucault, who has the power to enforce this, and I think it is no coincidence that we are in this situation Crisis, we thought about the media like rarely before, what are the media, what do they report, who pays for them, we had all this information about the
Bill & Melina Gates Foundation, which financed Spiegel, or Eckart von Hirschhausen, who ran this vaccination propaganda made, etc. That is, who owns the newspapers? We had the case of Ringier Verlag, which told all of its newspaper products to praise vaccination, we have the Twitter files… So we have very clear evidence of
Restrictions on opinion correctors, and now I’m on the Lanz show, exactly the same. But is the evidence publicly visible? When I talk to people in Finland or in Germany – I think the situation is a little better in Germany, there are a lot of people who notice this, all the dissonance
That exists in society, and the lies and so on Manipulation and so on, but of course there are also very, very many people who don’t notice this at all and the media still doesn’t take notice of it or only neglects it,
And it’s clearly visible that there is a monopoly of power, that controls the discourse. Exactly. The question then is, assuming we still have any chance of breaking it, which I would highly doubt, but assuming we would succeed – and the question is: Who is “us”…
Yes, exactly! Who is “us”, who are “we”? Assuming that we would succeed in breaking up this monopoly of power that reigns supreme, and we also see that the EU and German politics are simply governed through, and actually ignore the citizens to a great extent,
Then that is always the case Ask what to replace it with and according to what principles. When you say, according to democratic principles, that presupposes a democracy, but then you are back to the people who do not notice certain things, which are comfortable, who
Think according to their own gut and are uncritical. Through Corona we learned for the first time that a high level of interpretation can really be brutally staged. You could say that we didn’t notice it before, the Yugoslavia war, the Iraq war, weapons of mass destruction… We used to think that
They were all good people who meant well… There was no internet yet either. How has the Internet changed due to this digital negotiation? “The medium is the message,” say the media scientists, that is, we are now negotiating our democracy on the Internet
With Twitter, where you experience shitstorms and where we actually have a frothy mob, except that this lynching is now taking place on the Internet and no longer real. If there had been a mob like there used to be, I would be
Hanging from a lamp post by now, but thank God that’s not the case and I’m in a position to analyze with you: What has happened there? Why do people react in such panic? Why do they allow themselves to be so incited? Is the incitement targeted? Is this encouraged with algorithms? Which mechanisms
Are involved, namely human mechanisms? A good friend once told me, that’s all Aeschylus, “It’s human character to kick someone who falls.” Someone is literally released as fair game, then everyone is allowed to attack them and you are in a lawless state. We experienced all of this with Corona,
But also partly with the discussion about Ukraine. We are experiencing ideologized, moralizing discussions: Anyone who is not in favor of the injection is not good, anyone who is not in favor of the use of weapons is a supporter of Putin, etc. So these absolutely irrational discussions that
Are no longer moderate or, as you say, either are no longer led by responsible citizens, but are led by a mass that can be led almost like propaganda. With Corona it was really on the verge of tolerable how a mass could be incited
Against the unvaccinated. I feel the same way about the Russophobia that we indulged in at the beginning of the Ukraine war and about “lumpenpacifist”, including the linguistic distortions. It starts with the words. So now we are analyzing that we are in a problematic media landscape
Because we have an Internet that is organized under private law. People either no longer read the leading media, or the journalists in public broadcasting apparently came under so much pressure in the last two crises (Corona and Ukraine) that they were no longer
Able to report properly. We could no longer have a reasonable discussion about who blew up this pipeline, the Americans or the Russians or, for that matter, the Norwegians? We could no longer have a reasonable discussion about what about the consequences of vaccination? We have this on the
Fringes, where the information trickles out, where it is discussed, but as you say, only a little and not in the middle of society. Now the question is: What does a lack of pluralism of opinions do to democracy? It causes people to no longer
Trust the media, it leads to a discourse of “street against those up there”, “lying press”, “we no longer believe you”, “we are the people”, “we want one reasonable representation”. And what then does the system, i.e. those who feel attacked, do? They have now
Discovered a discourse for themselves that says, every criticism is right-wing, i.e. everyone who raises their finger at Corona, at refugees, at the climate, at arms deliveries and says “Wait a minute, can we discuss this differently? “Present other facts, hear other voices,” he is a
Right-winger. I’ve experienced that a lot too. And of course that bends two basic criteria of democracy: it bends the basic criterion of the fourth power, i.e. that of pluralism of opinion, and of course it bends the criterion of minority protection, i.e. hearing the other voices. Bending is a bit gentle…
…to put it politely, yes, exactly. And of course it gets twisted when we get to the next stage, so to speak, where those who criticize are also arrested, as you said, then we are already at the judiciary and have to ask ourselves
Whether there is still an independent judiciary . We had cases like Michael Ballweg, who remained in custody for 10 months because of a few donation receipts, or an acquaintance of mine who went into construction for a few days because of a speech about peace. And of course it’s
All scandalous, it has to be stated. But the point is that we can no longer have this discussion ourselves, and now I’m coming back to Lanz, because if you think of Lanz, who had Mr. Aiwanger on the show last year, and Mr. Aiwanger says
After this one Demonstration in Bavaria: “We have to rediscover democracy,” then Mr. Lanz doesn’t say, “Explain what you mean by that! Why do you have the feeling that we have to rediscover democracy?” Instead, Mr. Lanz accuses Mr. Aiwanger of feeding the monkey sugar
And to promote populism. This means that we see a system that hermetically seals itself off from criticism, while criticism on many social issues is always bubbling up, so to speak, against the EU, climate, wokism, arms deliveries and so on, i.e. all the
Hot topics. And we as a society literally can no longer grasp it because we no longer allow the discussion to be differentiated and the Internet is rampant. This all sounds very bad now. That’s why I would like to say: Nevertheless, we are talking here now. Thank God we are also able to
Organize a counter-public via the Internet. Of course we are not the ARD, the ZDF, we are sitting here, not with Markus Lanz, which is actually a shame, but still, no matter how bad the Internet has been in this Corona crisis, of course, by capping the discourse and the Internet
Has been cleaned up and Voices were banned, so much so that the Internet has created a new counter-public, and you are a part of it, just like all the others who make YouTube clips, Kontraffunk, Apolut or the NachDenkSeiten, etc. That could Without the
Internet it wouldn’t take place. That means: it’s still somehow balanced and we’re not being taken down yet. Not yet… Yes, indeed, thank you, it’s more subtle… Some pages are already being taken down, RT for example. Yes, exactly, RT too, But otherwise it’s more subtle, it usually cuts off at a certain threshold.
Nowadays there is a lot of talk about inclusion and that Europe or our European values are based on loyalty, everyone belongs, everyone is listened to, people are not actually ignored, and if you see now, transsexuals may not be ignored now, but that is the case a tiny minority in society,
But 20 million in Germany have been ignored and a lot of people have been threatened that they will lose their existence if they don’t go along and so on. The question is, what kind of human image is Europe actually based on? If we assume equality and
Loyalty and such values and that every person should be or is a responsible citizen, we can actually now see that this image of humanity is not at all correct, that you can actually only use propaganda, for example, to influence opinions can control and that it
Actually doesn’t fit from the inside because people are simply not as mature as they are always made out to be. This image of humanity that we have in Europe goes back to the Enlightenment and was then reinforced over time by such ideals as Kant’s, which is a universal idea…
Or Roussau, Emile. This means that our thinking actually assumes that reason is the same everywhere. Only if you now go into your everyday experience, you immediately notice that your reason is completely different than mine, for example, or my reason is different than my husband’s and so on and so forth,
The Finnish culture is different than the German one, so there can’t actually be a universal principle that can be applied equally everywhere, and therefore a principle like equality must actually fail because, for example, I have three children, I ca
N’t treat my three children equally because they are not the same. and applying a principle like equal rights throughout society ultimately only means that those cheeky people who can particularly distinguish themselves get preference, whereas if you have a society that
Looks at culture, at the natural ones Bonds of a society, then you are always asked to look and decide within these concrete situations, and that also has a lot to do with the values, whether someone is more likely to serve or act more for their own gut.
I mean that we live in a society , who only lives for her own stomach, and that’s how it’s taught everywhere, I studied economics, That was the basic principle of “Homo economicus”, and that wasn’t even questioned, and when I spoke to the professors, for example, and tried to
Scratch that idea of humanity a little, then I was always told, “ That’s an interesting question, but it doesn’t belong here.” And so science has closed itself off from other questions, and that is also a question of power. I was also a research assistant and I realized that if I really asked questions,
I wouldn’t get very far. So I didn’t go any further and left, and this shows that society uses its power to insulate itself from unpleasant questions, that there is an image of humanity that benefits power because it can assert its interests, and other
Opinions, other questions are eliminated. And I think that has a lot to do with the underlying view of humanity. In the end, isn’t it the case that if you really want to make progress on these questions, where to go with nation states, where to go with Europe,
Then you actually have to start rethinking these very fundamental questions! If our view of humanity, which we have had since the Enlightenment, should actually be declared bankrupt , shouldn’t we now replace it with something else? Don’t we have to ask ourselves the question, what is human beings? How could living together really succeed
And according to what principles? What is the goal of life, what is the goal of community? After the Second World War we had this reconstruction phase, and it was very materialistic and it was actually just about owning your own property,
Building a house, a building savings contract and so on. But if you have a society that consists of people who only live for themselves, then a community is no longer possible at all, and you can see this visually when you
Drive through Germany and look at towns One house has a red roof, the other house has a blue roof, one house is built in one style and the next is completely different, so you can see visually that the will for community is no longer there at all and you
Can see it too the disintegration of society, the disintegration of marriages, for example, the disintegration of families, that is also a form of community that no longer works because people start with their own needs and cannot go beyond them, and who today in this
Predatory society is above that goes out, he is of course an idiot from a social point of view. We reflect here on the Enlightenment, postmodernism, consumer society and the image of humanity and what all of this has to do with Europe,
And whether there is a specifically European approach to these topics, to a European culture that has a European image of humanity, from which a political concept emerges could result. We argue: yes! But we do not take the concept of the Enlightenment
In the sense in which it is perverted today, namely “Science is the new religion”. That’s the problem that we misinterpret Kant’s saper audere as ” Today, thinking is science and science is necessarily mathematical and science is then a simulation and it is precise and if you don’t do that, then…”
What we negotiate in society is a new spirituality, a new feeling that everything is not science, we have now learned through Corona how much we have been lied to, that is a fact today. And about a quarter in Germany noticed it,
So a quarter followed it like this, that is, this follow the science, what the PCR test was for Corona is now the CO2 footprint for climate. Here too we see a hysterical, fear-driven, ideologically exaggerated discussion, which is now reduced to a scientific criterion
, PCR test for Corona, CO2 footprint for climate, and we then call that science and say follow the science, and everyone who doesn’t makes, is a “denier” You can see that in your contribution and in your question I can of course recognize that we as Society
Is currently renegotiating our relationship to the afterlife or to something that we do not understand scientifically . It seems obvious to me that Corona could only happen because society literally fell away from faith and thought that it could prolong death into the finite and that we could still decide that
If we developed the great vaccine now, that would not be it Amor Vati gave more, no more acceptance, no more acceptance, i.e. all these classic, essentially Christian concepts that we also have on the continent, amor vati, a certain fatefulness, but that we have actually slipped into this homo Deus, man is now God,
And we now have the great vaccine, and 5 billion people will be vaccinated, and then the crisis will be over, and that we could think that, that it was so monstrous to think that, I think that will fall now at our feet. And there are people who say that this
Naturally touches on the beginning of the Enlightenment because: this cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am, is, so to speak, the original sin of “Now I have become homo Deus, just because I think.” and do this science.” When was that cogito ergo sum?
250 years ago. We can say, now we stand up and say, “I think, therefore I am”, which means that I no longer assume that I am somehow given to God or whatever , of course it is exactly this cogito ergo sum, what human existence relates to thinking
, from which this exaggeration of thinking, namely homo Deus, scientificity is the new religion, could arise. Now you say there is something else. Count me in. I think I have a very personal concept of otherworldliness across many approaches, i.e. that what is, what you can see, is not everything.
Now, of course, it’s up to every person to live it one way or another, and that’s why we have anchored freedom of belief in the Basic Law, so that everyone can believe what they want… But is that actually a sensible principle? Because this principle cogito ergo sum,
Once you leave it, you will find a world around you that is given, you cannot influence it through your thinking, but it is given, and if God is real, then He is given and not an object our thoughts. The problem is that
In the Basic Law we actually refer this freedom of belief to religions, relatively specifically and then we also separate between religions and sects and those that we then classify as sects and so on, which means that the state actually measures itself that he can decide
Between good faith, the religions that we recognize and those that we do not recognize and call sects. But that is not the state’s place to decide. What I’m getting at is, the moment we have made science a belief with Corona, Follow the science, we
Of course decree that there is a belief system that you are not allowed to question and belief systems that you are allowed to question. That means everything that we somehow assume to be related to religion, you can doubt it, you can believe it, that’s your business and
We protect that in some way, but of course, as you say, it’s fundamentally problematic by saying that it is the approved, legitimate religion, and these are the sects. But society, of course, functions according to principles of order that
Are de facto structured materialistically in the Hegelian sense and have a scientific concept and where we, one would almost have to say: still say that we have a world that we can measure. And now I would tell you that we are currently in the process of discussing it as humanity,
So first of all we are both discussing it here in this Zoom but we have already had Daniel Kehlmann’s The Measuring of the World, we have considerable doubts about this whole thing Simulations We currently have a strong countermovement against agriculture,
Against our pharmaceutical industry, we have just experienced through Corona that we may have one want different medicine that is perhaps more geared toward healing than “I’ll give you a pill and an injection and then you’ll be healthy,” which means that, thanks to what we’ve learned
In recent years, we’re at least having a lively discussion about what’s really happening is good and whether the principles of the society that we have built for ourselves, namely Big Pharma, media, digital economy, whether that is so good, we are having a discussion about the digital school,
Whether it is good for our children, we are having a discussion about whether the vaccination cures everything, etc. In this respect, one could at least hope that this discussion will break out. This view that a person is a seeker who simply discusses and
Opens up various options is a step forward, that a person has the freedom to step out of the talk show confines and can look a little more at what’s behind it the objects he sees or behind the things that happen,
But of course you haven’t really come very far if you see yourself as a seeker. It’s interesting that this conversation, which was planned about Europe, is now already about the human image and philosophy! I find that very interesting, and then actually the core of the question is, is there a European philosophy that
Would somehow resonate with us, beyond Finland, Portugal, Greece, and so on, and would be that philosophy and that approach to man and to the image of man that is different from a Chinese, Indian, whatever image of man, that is what I would support.
I would like to stay on this point again, because you also had two other people’s views of humanity, you said the concept of equality and then you started with the queer demonstrations about how some groups effectively enforce their rights.
I would like to say two things again: The concept of equality is of course problematic , we are all unequal, yes, we are all unique, so not just unequal, but unique, everyone is unique, it starts with the fingertips, But we are
Of course equal, so if we remember the legacy of the Enlightenment in the sense of the French Revolution and the sentence, which was the first sentence of the Declaration of Human Rights, that all people are born free with equal dignity and with equal rights, then I would say,
This is the legacy of the Enlightenment, which is universalistic in that it applies to all people on the globe, to all people in China, in India and so on, regardless of their culture and so on, these people are also born free and equal in dignity and rights.
If we take this sentence, it made its way into the UN Charter, so for me it is a gem that we have codified, yes then these seven billion people are actually all born free, theoretically, and equal in dignity and rights , I have
N’t said anything yet about what view of humanity they have, what religion they belong to, what language they speak, they are still free… but you used these terms: “free”, “dignity” and “rights”, and You have to fill in these terms first, for example if you take the word “dignity”, there is a huge
Sex industry in Germany. In my view, a country that can accept such a sex industry is a country that has a completely different concept of dignity than I have now, for example, so for me it is not compatible. Or if I go to a company and I’m fobbed off digitally,
Then you could also say that that’s actually against human dignity because life is so automated… So I understand you. It’s largely anti-dignity, but… I understand you. … that these terms are simply written on paper, but they are also subject to the power of definition, they are
Defined differently depending on who is in charge or what strength or power has the say, and they simply do not apply across all cultures even. How can we agree not to confuse “equality” and “equivalence”? That’s what goes wrong in the discussion, a lot of people say, wait a minute,
We’re not all the same and that’s why we’re like this and so and so, yes and it’s probably also a translation error in this revolutionary idea or in this Enlightenment sentence , all people are born equal in dignity and rights, yes, all people are, as I said
, unique but equal, that is the point, they are unique but equal in their right to dignity and freedom. yes, but the forced prostitute in Germany who has to serve 50 clients a day is not of equal value in our society.
What we can say is that we have a big problem with a concept of equality, which, as I tried to say, would have to be interpreted as legal equivalence, what we also have, I’m with you, is a big discussion about the Enlightenment, if we have obviously misunderstood the Enlightenment, this saper audere
That man thinks, but let’s say no longer thinks in humility, no longer in humility before creation or in humility before some devotion, before some otherworldliness, but where this Saper audere, we already had that with cogito ergo sum,
Has become a philosophy of thought that in principle comes across as almost humanly imperial – homo Deus, I can decide everything now, I’ll do the vaccination, I’ll shoot cars to Mars, that is where we are looking for the solution to human errors in technology, to put it this way
, and I actually believe that the Enlightenment has taken a wrong turn, I think that is what we are discussing at the moment in areas such as biopolitics, and that has Yes, Foucault has already said everything, biopolitics, digital capitalism, and so on.
I think that is being discussed here, I would also agree with you that it is not discussed vehemently enough, yes, I am also in a “Right to Analogue Life Action Group” because I, like Günther Anders or Walter Benjamin, do not see the solution I would like to look for human
Deficits only in technology, but I would like to look for them in renunciation, in love, in humility, in changing human behavior. I am also surprised that we are no longer even capable of discourse, so that we
Don’t even get these issues into the debate anymore, so to speak, the work on people and the work on educating the heart and we always believe that the next technological solution is the solution to the problems of civilization. Yes, I would also like to put that at the center of the debate,
But we can say that the Tower of Enlightenment is currently shaking, so to speak, precisely because it has become so inflated, and it is now getting a slap in the face, so to speak. In the Hegelian sense, the Enlightenment now gets its dialectical loop,
In that the Enlightenment is now exposed that people could have misunderstood it, namely as an exaltation, as an absolute With technology we solve everything / Cogito ergo sum / homo deus, and in that The moment that happens, there is a huge backlash
Asking the very questions you just asked. Actually we’re back to Kant, what is man, yes, what can I want, what can I do, do I really live because I think, or maybe I live because I eat or because I help others or whatever, yes , you can
Ask the questions differently, and in fact and I think the important thing is what you said: we cannot elevate science to religion, especially since we also have methods in the philosophy of science, Paul Feyerabend for example, Against the pressure of methods. What exactly is the experiment? Can I repeat the experiment?
What do I hide? What is a statistic? what does a statistic explain to me? What do I see when I look at a statistic? What questions am I not asking? What questions do I ask? And so forth. That means that science is also unfathomable, and science doesn’t take final stock, we know
That the stone falls downwards, but that’s only true here and not on the moon. And the moment this falls at our feet, something happens in society, and my question, or similar to yours, would be whether we could go back to a discussion
Where the mono-causality, that we look at human problems or the Civilization problems, overpopulation, hunger, whatever, climate change, that we can only solve them through new technologies, or whether we can come to different discourses, to a different view of humanity, for example, whether we can completely talk about the question of capitalism
And its Incompatibility with democracy, whether we can address it. We have known from political science research for 20 or 30 years that capitalism is structurally incompatible with democracy, which would mean that we would have to address questions of the common good,
We would have to get new economic concepts into school textbooks, we must have the experience that you have had in your economics studies – by the way, my son had the same experience, don’t ask any critical questions about the subject of supply and demand,
We reduce a market to supply and demand, we don’t think about the fact that a market, a housing market, a relationship market, a Whatever, an education market… has to do with people and therefore should not only meet the criteria of supply and demand.
But now we ask ourselves why we don’t get this criticism into society, and here we’re actually back to where we started: who has the power of interpretation, who can bring which narrative into society, and as long as we have the capitalist one , so to speak
If there are drivers behind the press, other narratives will have a hard time. That’s exactly the point, we’re currently negotiating other narratives, other perspectives on the world, we might even want to work on Hannah Arend’s sentence, she said that
The goal of politics in the 21st century should be to create a world , in which everyone is without need and without coercion. That would resolve the question of your prostitutes, yes, but we are not working on the question of how we are all without coercion and need, but rather we are still
In market structures and power structures in every discussion, regardless of whether we are in the war look at Ukraine, it’s essentially about arms delivery and money, yes, whoever gets Ukraine’s good land now, there are already investment plans, and of course we say that it’s about values, but it’s about money. And with
Corona and the pharmaceutical industry it was also about money. That means the question is now that we are aware of it , can we manage to address it, I really mean that, in my opinion we have to think about leases again, about Institutions of public law, about the concept of
Possession and not property, we have to talk about the republic and not about democracy, because democracy, as you said, can of course be simulated very quickly on the one hand. We all vote, but we have no choice. The monotony of politics remains
The same, that was already the case in France in the 1990s, the monotonous thinking, we are the good guys, that is, we go to the polls, but we have no choice, that’s what it’s called in political science Simulative democracy, these discourses are also coming up, and I’m actually wondering whether we
Need even more destruction of our communities at the moment in order to understand that democracy and capitalism are structurally incompatible, or whether we can have this discussion beforehand, because That would be the request that we think again fundamentally about how we feed seven billion people on the continent,
How we feed them, and ask these questions that we can ask, we can feed them all, the distribution is just right not, yeah, you know what I mean? So you talk about democracy and about values and about dignity, and I want all of that too,
But I don’t necessarily want it about technology. I would like us to talk again about how we as humans manage this, and then the rest of us have to Bring concepts into the debate, for example the concept of distribution, yes, and then I think we have to
Fundamentally rethink our economic system, and that’s what’s happening, we have Thomas Piketty, we have Kerstinschulenburg, we have quite many economists who tell us something about the economy for the common good. There is a book by Sheldon Wolin about totalitarianism, he did a very good analysis of the situation in the
USA, but a lot can be transferred, and I’m interested when someone analyzes problems, what are their solutions. His solution was the renaissance of democracy. He wrote that one should become “a self that recognizes the values of shared commitment and common effort and
Finds in them a source of self-realization.” This means that he still remains trapped in this dominant image of humanity, self-realization occurs, the “self” is explicitly mentioned again, that is the goal of development, “values of common commitment and common efforts”. That all sounds very nice, but he doesn’t jump out of the system,
He remains trapped in this system and doesn’t actually see where it all started, actually exactly what got us into this mess, because That’s how everyone does it. They are looking for themselves, yes, and they are using the common commitment, so that’s
What all these meetings, Bilderberg and World Economic Forum, these are also meetings, that’s also common commitment, it’s just more powerful than if you and I’m talking here now, yes, so that’s the one point I want to address is that there
Are actually a lot of thinkers who are very smart, very well-read, very experienced, and actually don’t have any real answers , but are still in the usual system of thinking, which is problematic. I am with you that we are currently
Having new discussions about the negotiation of I and we, yes, that was also Corona, suddenly the we was there in a completely individualistic society: We have to protect ourselves, we have to do that, so The new meaning of this absurd Corona policy was “From I to We”.
And the interesting thing is actually that in this book by Klaus Schwab, which has now appeared in the newspapers, with this Great Reset, you will own nothing but be happy, and I actually find it very, very striking that we suddenly
Bring a socialist concept of we and renunciation, “you will own nothing”, through the capitalist door via capitalist control, namely Corona, Big Pharma, digital economy, etc. This means that the aim is obviously to satisfy needs, you will be happy, but you will own nothing, that is conceptually very interesting, that
What socialism always wanted, namely that we locate ourselves in the we, in the collective, oriented towards the common good everyone according to their abilities, according to their needs, that we weigh it up ourselves, that it should now come about through capitalist control, so to speak.
In this respect, I am also with you in that we are currently renegotiating the concept of the Enlightenment , the concept of religion, what actually is religion, how independent is people’s faith, what do they believe in, we just had that. Now also: What can I actually want and what is
My democratic life like now? Is that selfish that I’m here now in freedom? Is everything I want selfish? So I want to go on vacation, is that selfish? A look at the climate debate and so on. And I think we’re negotiating that now too,
And it’s a bit like Karl Jaspers’ anchor time, he said, how did the ego get into philosophy in the first place? Around 700 years before Christ in Greece, where some condensation arose with Plato and the first thinkers, who suddenly
Allowed something like the subject to emerge, that is, that the human being as a subject who then understands himself in an ego perception and as an individual was given dignity, so that a political System that aims at legal equality in the sense of equal value, I mean,
The Romans already had that in the Republic, yes, women weren’t there back then, I know there were still slaves, but this one was at least thought of as patriarchal The concept of republic was already there in ancient Rome, namely a system that was built on law.
So, now we’re back to Europe. These are actually systems of thought that emerged in Europe, the Republic, that is my jewel in principle as a concept, and the Republic offers answers to your question, namely individualism, transcending individualism, actually egoism, can I build a society on it? I also think that
The Republic offers a good bridge between the I and the We, the Republic is basically liberte egalité fraternité through the French Revolution, so it actually has, if you like, I also see your icon, in the I really like the background, but it’s a holy trinity, so liberte egalité fraternité also means,
None of it comes alone, you don’t get freedom without fraternity, you don’t get fraternity without freedom, and you don’t get equality either or equality without freedom, and vice versa. And I actually think that one could make this point, for example, to think of the third, tertium non datur, the third is
Not thought of, that this is something original European, for example, in the sense of the Holy Trinity, the connection between heaven and earth is the Holy Spirit, but also the connection between thesis and antithesis, so the connection of polarization is the synthesis,
Thesis antithesis synthesis. In Hegel, as in the Bible, there is the third thing that connects, and in this respect the search for the third is also between capitalism and socialism. In between there is also the republic, namely an economy that is not capitalist
Because it is oriented towards the common good , which has the concept of ownership, but not necessarily of ownership, which has a concept of lease, of institutions under public law, we were already there in 1806 with Hardenberg’s reforms. I would just urgently
Want to argue that we should go back in our intellectual history, that we must return to the concept of the republic, to the concept that builds the bridge between the I and the we, between socialism and capitalism, which
Combines the three elements of brotherhood, equality and freedom. I think there is a lot to be gained and this term would then offer a European approach to the new definition of what you are striving for, image of humanity, dignity, what is that actually, how do we define it, is it just that
We are indulging in the sex industry , or do we have another concept of dignity. When we say that we have to link the concept of dignity with freedom again in a society that we actually agree again that not everyone
Has to do everything, as long as some of those who do something you don’t like don’t harm others , yes, that is actually the basis of the constitutional state, no harm and no transgression. With Corona, I always said, I don’t have to protect the other person, I just have to make sure
That I don’t harm them. I don’t have to jump after someone who wants to kill themselves in the river, but I have to throw a life preserver after them, and that’s how I think we could, in principle, get a basic rule of law again. Basically, it is almost secondary whether we
Understand each other on certain points with regard to society, as long as we agree that the foundations of democratic localization and the rule of law have been undermined, or whether we agree on that, and that is what we do Obviously,
We have to think about terms like I and we, enlightenment, saper audere, completely differently with a different foundation – the second point I wanted to address, if you or any other smart people have good ideas about what would make sense to implement ,
There are really a lot of very, very good ideas everywhere about what you could do in detail but you always need power. Without power you can’t do anything. But there’s also the problem with power: As soon as you have it, a lot of people become corrupted, and
Power also corrupts your character. Therefore, it is perhaps a form of self-protection not to strive for power at all. But then you can’t design either. So people are actually in a bit of a dilemma. But if you think democratically,
Then you always have the majority, you then have to convince them, that can often only be done through tricks or you just have to be particularly telegenic and so on, so actually gaining and using power is also important not easy. For example, how do you want to implement all of these things
That are now being discussed? How do you also want to implement them? Well, on the one hand, there is a lot of concrete thought in Germany about founding a new party, and if there was any doubt, I would be there if Sarah Wagenknecht, who
Indicated that here, were to do that, but I agree with you, so I agree with mine Character knows pretty well that I don’t have a killer instinct, so I have a tactical sense. I actually believe in the argument and in the persuasion and I am tactically very unwise
And I can say that I have no instinct for power in the true sense. But that’s good because then it’s about the actual content. Exactly R You have to go back to that, that you can express any point of view and then you think about it, but also consistently until the end.
Well, I have that very often, you present 100 arguments for one thing, and then they are not even taken into account. That’s right, here we are again with Corona, so everyone who criticized it, the measures taken, had 100 arguments, and the others said, we don’t believe you because we
Want to impose this other narrative, with force. How do you want to build a society with such people ? If, for example, you want to build a society with Ursula von der Leyen or Markus Lanz , you also have to get along with these people. But the fact is
That these people are probably not capable of reform, they are in their own way and you will not be able to change them. So then the question is always, what do you do if you really had the power to change something, what do you do with all the
People who are not willing to reform? I recommend Richard Sennett’s book, Authority, he starts with a scene where a conductor enters the stage and this conductor convinces through respect and not through authority. And he raises the baton and
Gets the orchestra right, not because he hits them on the fingers with the ruler, but because those who sit there and are in the orchestra know that this baton will somehow guide them, and Richard Sennett develops it This makes a great argument that respect and
Strength of character can be convincing, and to be honest, that’s my hope. Time and time again in human history, whether you think of Gandhi or Kennedy or whoever, we have had convincing leaders, you can also think of Willy Brandt or Kreisky, who achieved exactly that, that they
Were convincing in a certain situation through their actions and thereby actually convinced that they cannot be corrupted, and a society understands that intuitively, i.e. people who do something without any instinct for power, and I think people can literally understand that. And now Bourdieu said that every historical epoch produces its historical subject, which
Means that I am actually deeply hopeful that this time, which has shown us all this, the distortions of the media, the rejection of science, the problems of democracy, which we now want to call simulative democracy, narratives that
Are pushed through, we have now discussed all of that here, even if I would like to say that unfortunately we don’t have it completely, it was so broadly defined, that we do too now cannot illuminate in every detail. But we have seen some things where
The foundations are now shaking and many people see it that way, and I am firmly convinced that this has given an energy to the political system, which is why the response that things actually have to be different now, we have 38% AFD, everyone has a longing, a desideratum
For honesty, for decency, for good press and then for the law to apply again, so to summarize it this way, beyond excessive discussions about “What is dignity now?” and so on, that’s what it’s all about, that people know in their gut that that wasn’t honest,
That wasn’t decent, we want the law to apply again, and we want to have politicians we can respect, who take their office seriously take in the sense of a mandate that they speak for the majority of the population, to summarize it like this.
And I believe that in such a situation, it would be my hope, but I personally believe that, some historical subject will come up with that It remains to be seen whether this is Sahra Wagenknecht, but it seems as if many in society are projecting this onto her. Sometimes there are situations in which
A single person, say Vaclav Havel, say Bismarck, in the individual person has exactly this vibration of a society, that things should turn out differently and there should be a different narrative that takes that up and then actually bring about a game-changing shift
. That doesn’t mean that everything is good, that there is corruption, that there are power games, etc. But that something like this works in individual situations. Personally, I would like to believe that we are in such a situation and that, regardless of whether
Any signals are sent next year with the American elections, they are always very decisive, or now with the European elections, that we will be there next This year we will receive such a signal that the whole of society will make us
Think about it in a completely different way, about the problems we have, about concepts like dignity, about the tension between socialism and capitalism, about the tension between We and I, I am there for everything you mentioned, and that we get out of these
Narrow discourses, that the next solution is only the technological solution, so the next offshore windmill that is built there saves us Now in view of the climate, that is unfortunately absurdly naive, and I only hope, with you, I believe that we
Can allow the depth of the discussion again, of what we are negotiating. I think we are in a moment like this from Stefan Two people are unable to understand the historical turning point in which they find themselves, and I believe that we are really at such a moment that
We are all being put through a turning point in which we are renegotiating such fundamental things: what is democracy , what is the I, what is the we, what is our economic system, etc., that is what we are currently negotiating, and we do not understand it, and that explains the unrest of
Society, and it is currently being renegotiated. Basically, this is Hannah Arendt’s concept of crisis in “What is the Meaning of Politics”: Crisis is when the judgments are renegotiated. we had a society that was built on certain judgments, that’s how we saw it,
That’s our science, our dignity, whatever, we had judgments, and Hannah Arend says very clearly, because a person can’t judge everything, Nobody can judge everything every day, if the milk is too expensive or whatever, a society needs, so to speak, basic judgments that have already been negotiated before, basically a constitution, and
You can only judge on a small scale if you have that has a frame of reference, no one can judge everything , and when society’s judgments become confused because science has lost its way, because politics has lost its way, because the foundations have been shaken,
Then the judgments of a society are renegotiated and that’s what happens us right now, and that is a massive effort, everyone feels it, and that’s why we’re sitting here right now, because you and I feel the need to talk about it, to renegotiate it, and many other people.
The crucial question now is how we organize this renegotiation of our terms, our values and the forms of democracy into which we want to cast them. That, I think, is the crucial thing now, and it won’t be a task for
Three Days, three weeks or three months, like all historical epochs, this will probably last for decades, but the moment we do it, we are already part of the solution, so I would like to add that as optimism for Monday morning enter into the debate. Yes… it probably depends on whether
All positions really come to the table in this debate that is now starting in your opinion. I would hope that these questions of meaning would be asked again in a completely new way in such a discussion . The Reformation made faith something purely private, while genuine
Christian faith is something public. Christianity is also something European, the connection between Marxism and Christianity is something European, i.e. early Christianity and Marxism. Oswald von Nell-Breuning’s “Catholic Social Teaching”, if you read the texts today, that is just before Marxism, and that had
A resonance in the Federal Republic until the 1950s. What we call “social market economy” arose from this, that has long since been disposed of, today we only have the term, but it is completely meaningless about this neoliberalized society,
Which in turn is not compatible with democracy, which is why we use it Having trouble. If the church could turn back to its actual calling, I would be happy, I see the function of the church in that we used to have educational institutions, i.e. religious instruction, whatever, that
Get exactly this “heart education” in people have, but also personal responsibility, it doesn’t really matter whether you are a socialist and went to the seamstresses in 1880 and taught them how to sew and think and write and said: “You are responsible for your own emancipation”, or Whether you had a catechism class and
Told the children: “In humility you are responsible before God for what is in front of your door,” if in doubt, I don’t care if I’m being liberal. But in responsibility for yourself and your environment and for your dignity in your environment and
That there is justice in your environment and that you enforce it and not with a pompous egomania, that I am now indulging my egoism here, but that an individual is always one A contribution must be made to a society that is just, i.e. fraternité liberte,
Which can be found in Marxism as well as in socialism and in Christianity, and they are currents that are intellectually compatible. The Republica Christiana is also a republic, the term republic is used a jewel in European intellectual history. If we could get back to that and play these things forward again instead of
Making fetishized debates about climate protection, then I think we would progress as a society and feel better about it. Nobody wants to live in the apocalypse, nobody wants to live in a state of powerlessness, many people want to contribute to a just society, and
I think it’s incredibly important to support them there. So take the fetishization out of society, and already personal responsibility, also a concept of the I, but of course not an individualistic, post-humanistic, consumerist concept of the I, “I can have everything, that is my freedom”. That’s why again: The concept of the republic,
Liberte fraternité egalité, in the connection, there is something very European in it, I think it is very compatible with Christianity if you understand it correctly. When I wrote the book about the European Republic, I was invited to the German Bishops’ Conference, and the bishop who introduced me
Said to me: “Dear Ms. Guérot, you work on the Res Publika Europa, we are the Res Publica Christiana, can we help you?” Then I said: Yes, that would be nice! That’s a nice final word, thank you very much, Dr. Guérot, that was a very varied and interesting conversation! Thank you!
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