Panajotis Kondylis, Machtfragen. Ausgewählte Beiträge zu Politik und Gesellschaft, ed. Volker Gerhart (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006). Paul Piccone, Confronting the Crisis: Writings of Paul Piccone, ed. Gary Ulmen (New York: Telos Press, 2008).
There are two main reasons for pairing these posthumously published essays of Paul Piccone (1940–2004) with those of Panajotis Kondylis (1943–1998). One, both of these authors, who died in the last few years, were my friends, whose lives moved along much the same general trajectory as my own. None of us could be described as an academic luminary; although neither Paul, who mentored later successful professors, nor Panajotis, who called himself a “Privatgelehrter,” periodically associated with Heidelberg and the University of Athens, had as close an association as I’ve had with a long-term academic post. These brilliant social thinkers spent their lives on the edge of a university world that would have benefited greatly if they had been linked to it in appropriately high places.
