By Thomas Brussig · Monday, March 8, 2021 This essay was published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on February 9, 2021, and appears here in translation with permission of the author. Footnotes have been added for clarification. Translated by Russell A. Berman, with comments here. The author intends the title as an ironic reference to Chancellor Willy Brandt’s 1969 statement that Germany “must risk more democracy.”
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 The corona crisis remains an experience of helplessness, even though infection rates are falling. Despite all the limitations on everyday life and despite the start of the vaccinations, an end to the restrictions is nowhere in sight—even though a few countries have succeeded in stopping the virus. The feeling of helplessness in the face of corona is due to the fact that we have had to surmount the corona crisis with the tools of democracy.
Sigmund Freud spoke of “three blows to humanity”: first, the Copernican worldview that pushed us out of the center of the universe; second, Darwinism, according to which we did not descend from God but from monkeys; and third, psychoanalysis, which teaches that we are not self-determined but only act due to hidden, unconscious, and instinctual motivations. Now we can speak of three blows to democracy, although it was only thirty years ago when liberal self-consciousness stood at its high point. According to the popular thesis of an “end of history,” market economies and democracy had achieved such an indisputable victory that nothing would stop their spread around the world.
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By Russell A. Berman · Monday, March 8, 2021 To read more in depth from Telos, subscribe to the journal here.
A distinctive feature of public debate in Germany involves prominent literary authors, especially novelists, expounding on current political matters in major newspapers. Thomas Brussig’s essay “Risk More Dictatorship,” translated here, belongs to this genre. Known especially for his satire of East Germany, Heroes Like Us, Brussig chose a provocative title that seems to echo and respond to Chancellor Willy Brandt’s appeal more than fifty years ago to “risk more democracy.” Brandt was speaking in 1969 at a pivotal moment in the history of West Germany, indeed of the whole world, in the face of the protests during the previous year; Brussig in contrast appeals for “more dictatorship” in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, which he depicts as a potentially similar turning moment, with an accelerated “learning process,” that calls old certainties into question. These include the “end of history” claim that liberal democracy is inevitable; Brussig suggests that the “impotence” of democracies in the face of the pandemic raises the question as to whether other forms of government might be superior. The Chinese model of dictatorship casts a shadow across the essay.
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By Telos Press · Tuesday, February 16, 2021 In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, Camelia Raghinaru talks with Russell A. Berman about his article “Reflections on Rights,” one of a group of essays from Telos 192 (Fall 2020) on the U.S. State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights. An excerpt of the article appears here. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Purchase a print copy of Telos 192 in our online store.
Listen to the podcast here.
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By Russell A. Berman · Thursday, February 11, 2021 Both sides of the transatlantic alliance, America and Europe, pride themselves on their commitment to freedom. And rightly so: these political communities emerged out of histories of extended emancipation struggles, laying claim to rights against pre-democratic authoritarian states, just as they have done battle with modern, totalitarian dictatorships. The fundamental assumption that individuals have a right to freedom against the state as part of their catalogue of human rights defines the political self-understanding of this Western community, and this assumption has spread around the globe far beyond the geographical West. It has however not spread everywhere to be sure: neither Putinist Russia nor Xi’s China embraces freedom, although in both countries there are brave regime critics who risk their lives in freedom’s pursuit. They deserve our support.
Yet although liberty is so central to the Atlantic community, we have seen it suddenly and strictly curtailed in the current state of emergency response to the spread of the coronavirus. German philosopher Otfried Höffe examines this alacrity with which liberty has been abandoned here and subjects it to perceptive criticism. Of course public health measures to limit the spread of the virus are necessary, but Höffe points to the disturbing eagerness with which policies have been imposed, which may go beyond appropriate measures. One might dwell on the particular policy failings everywhere—Höffe naturally focuses on Germany and the EU—but his analysis points to several conceptual points that apply broadly and to the United States especially.
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By Otfried Höffe · Thursday, February 11, 2021 Otfried Höffe is a philosopher known especially for his writings on Aristotle, Kant, and ethics. In April 2020 he was appointed to the twelve-member Corona expert commission to advise the government of Nordrhein-Westfalen. The University of Chicago Press has recently published a translation of his Critique of Freedom: The Central Problem of Modernity. The following essay appeared in Die Welt on February 3, 2021, and is translated here with permission of the author.
It is hard to believe. More than seventy years after the adoption of the Basic Law, a constitution opposed to all dictatorships, two principles have ceased to be self-evident: the content of the basic freedoms and the separation of powers in the organization of the state.
That the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the policies of all states is obvious, as is the fact that one could hardly expect to reach an optimal strategy spontaneously. However one should not forget that the virus, and consequently COVID-19, has been known since December of 2019. Therefore the experts and, prompted by them, the media and the politicians should have started making plans already then. One should not have waited for the pictures from Bergamo from February and March 2020 and then react in the sort of panic that disturbing images make inescapable. In any case, there was significant time for preparation that was just not used. Nor did one bother to ask if there were not important difference between the German and Italian healthcare systems.
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By Norbert Bolz · Wednesday, October 14, 2020 Are we living once more in a Weimar Republic that no longer knows a center? The toxic climate of public opinion suggests just that. The language of irreconcilability allows some to speak of “covid idiots,” while others see our politics as heading toward dictatorship. And even government pronouncements are sounding more authoritarian, as with the call for a “tightening of the reins” that Bavarian Prime Minister Söder repeated after the chancellor.
Panic and hysteria are the reliable companions to nearly every major political theme today. But of course, corona is central. The most important political effect of the pandemic could well be the growing readiness to endure whatever may come. By contrast, the “corona rebels” wanted to set an example over the weekend. Their protest drew motivation from the impression that with the slogan “because of corona,” one can at any time call a state of emergency, in which freedom and democracy then no longer play a role.
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