WestEnd

Phenomena of political Islam, especially western jihadism, are generally explained in terms of the concept of radicalization. The article shows how the radicalization paradigm shapes our understanding of the topic and restricts it in specific ways....

The essay asks to what extent certain key concepts of an earlier fascism analysis developed in the orbit of Critical Theory are still useful to understand 21st-century fascism in the United States. Key words: cultural synthesis, authoritarian...

The article discusses indebtedness as pivot of social relations in contemporary capitalism. It presents ethnography from (a) interactions between bank clerks and debtors, and (b) activism against foreclosures in the city of Volos, Greece, during...

Without truth, that is the legitimizing power of the general and legislating will, democracy decays. Functional differentiation between capital, political power and law collapses. Private rule of multi-media conglomerates merges with democratically...

The paper discusses the phenomenon of fundamentalism at the example of the state of Israel, where orthodox groups want to establish a public sphere according to the orthodox understandig of a jewish way of life.

The paper analyzes the past approx. 15 years of "anti-Gender" debates in Germany. We show how political misusage and distortion of academic terms and concepts leads to a defamatory rhetoric, and how this narrative dominates public debates. Our main...

Until the middle of the twentieth century one could claim rather convincingly that existing forms of domination led to inequality and exploitation and that the “dominant groups” were responsible for such injustice. After the end of colonial...

The diagnosis of a “post-truth era” asserts emphatically that truth is the necessary basis of democracy. Faced with a republican US-president who strategically produces “alternative facts”, ignores contradictions and declares dissenting...

While there are many ways to define social philosophy as a distinct field of study, I propose to look at it as constituted by a certain perspective on its objects. Society in the focus of philosophical inquiry is less a specific object then a set of...

The article compares two intellectual crisis and blame discourses, on the one hand by the German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck and on the other hand by the Greek philosopher Stelios Ramfos, which emerged after the outbreak of the euro crisis. Both...

The correspondence between Theodor W. Adorno and Karl R. Popper is published for the first time. Caused by the meeting at Tübingen 1961 of the German Association of Sociology, where so so-called positivism dispute starts, the correspondence shows...

The article reflects on the experiences with debt constellations within a project in which ten German and ten Greek poets participated as mutually indebted pairs over two years. The project provided the occasion to reconsider possibilities of ending...

This essay is a reflection on Eduard Bernstein's argument that the socialist journey is more important than its final destination. I try to describe life on the left as the steady, unnending, always necessary work of opposing authoritarianism and...

The article explores the question of debt in economic theory and in world politics as a technical issue and as an issue of moral, where debt takes on a dimension of guilt. The article connects the debt/guilt question in these two respects with the...

This article discusses Nietzsche's perspective on moral and economic indebtedness developed in On the Genealogy of Morality. According to Nietzsche, conditions of indebtedness go hand in hand with specific forms of subjectivation and time regimes....

The paper firstly discusses Marcel Mauss’s model of gift-giving, which is the decisive point of reference for theories of reciprocity in the social sciences. The discussion establishes that gift and reciprocity must be distinguished more clearly...

Critique in the humanities and the social sciences has recently been under attack and has even been declared to be defunct. Considering reports of its death to be exaggerated but, at the same time, that one should never let a good crisis go to...

The aim of this essay is to outline, at a remove of over sixty years, the enormous impact of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s famous book Tristes Tropiqes on the humanities. It shows that its impact rests on the surprising idea of presenting a moral defense...

The sudden emergence of the yellow vests movement, its rapid expansion, its endurance and its popularity have surprised and bewildered politicians and commentators alike. Initially viewed as merely a reaction to an increase in fuel tax, it soon...

In 1945, the Allies defined their occupation policy towards Japan and Germany, including a ban on propagating National Socialism and militarism in Germany, and on »ultranationalism« and militarism in Japan. Masao Maruyama explained how nationalism...