Dieter Thomä - Böcker

The political crises and upheavals of our age often originate from the periphery rather than the center of power. Figures like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Chelsea Manning acted in ways that disrupted power, revealing truths that those in power wanted to keep hidden. They are thorns in the side of power, troublemakers in the eyes of the powerful, though their actions may be valuable and lead to positive changes.In this important new book, Dieter Thomä examines the crucial but often overlooked function of these figures on the margins of society, developing a philosophy of troublemakers from the seventeenth century to the present day. Thomä takes as his starting point Hobbes’s idea of the puer robustus (literally “stout boy”), meaning a figure who rebels against order and authority. While Hobbes saw the puer robustus as a threat, he also recognized the potential, in the right conditions, for figures to rise up and become agents of positive change. Building on this notion, Thomä provides a rich survey of intellectuals who have been inspired by this idea over the past 300 years, from Rousseau, Diderot, Schiller, Victor Hugo, Marx, and Freud to Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and Horkheimer, right up to the recent work of Badiou and Agamben. In doing so, he develops a typology of the puer robustus and a means by which we can evaluate and assess the troublemakers of our own times.Thomä shows that troublemakers are an inescapable part of modernity, for as soon as social and political boundaries are defined, there will always be figures challenging them from the margins. This book will be of great interest not only to students and scholars in the humanities and social sciences but to anyone seeking to understand the crucial impact of these liminal figures on our world today.

This book critically engages with the idea of transparency whose ubiquitous demand stands in stark contrast to its lack of conceptual clarity.

This volume aims to commemorate, criticize, scrutinize and assess the undoubted significance of the Russian Revolution both retrospectively and prospectively in three parts.

This volume aims to commemorate, criticize, scrutinize and assess the undoubted significance of the Russian Revolution both retrospectively and prospectively in three parts.

Current research on social capital tends to focus on an economic reading of social relations. Whereas economists pride themselves on reaching out to social theory at-large, sociologists criticize the economization of the social fabric. The concept of social capital serves as a touchstone for the study of the role of the economy in modern societies. It serves as a breach for expanding the reach of economic categories, yet it also yields the opportunity for questioning and transforming economic premises in the light of social theory and philosophy. Exploring the concept of social capital in the context of related terms like embeddedness, trust, sociability, and cooperation is particularly instructive. This collection of papers from various disciplines (philosophy, sociology, economics, religious studies) combines conceptual studies and empirical findings. It is a plea for re-embedding economic thought in a broader theoretical framework. By exploring the varieties of social identities implied in the theories of social capital, the authors argue for a social (or more sociable) conception of man.

This book critically engages with the idea of transparency whose ubiquitous demand stands in stark contrast to its lack of conceptual clarity.

Er ist umstritten wie kein Zweiter. Dabei gilt Martin Heidegger neben Ludwig Wittgenstein als der bedeutendste Philosoph des 20. Jahrhunderts. Das Handbuch zeigt die Gründe für die anhaltende Faszination von Heideggers Schaffen: Es stellt die zentralen Werke vor und erklärt wichtige Schlüsselbegriffe. Wie wirkte Heidegger auf Hannah Arendt, Sartre, Hans Jonas, Foucault und Habermas? Welchen Einfluss hatte sein Denken auf andere philosophische Richtungen? In der 2. Auflage mit neuen Begriffen, z. B. Mitsein, Sprache und Seinsgeschichte. Ebenfalls neu: die Rezeption durch Oskar Becker und Franz Rosenzweig sowie die Wahrnehmung Heideggers in Musik, Kunst, Film und neuen Medien.

Ist Glück messbar? Kann man lernen, glücklich zu sein? Was passiert eigentlich im Gehirn eines glücklichen Menschen? Kann die Politik zum Glück beitragen? Macht Geld glücklich? Mit diesen und anderen Fragen nähert sich das Handbuch einem Thema, das immer und überall aktuell ist. Es präsentiert gegenwärtige Sichtweisen verschiedener Disziplinen, wie z. B. Neurowissenschaften, Sozialmedizin, Psychologie, Ökonomie, Pädagogik, Kunst- und Literaturwissenschaft, und skizziert unterschiedliche Positionen zum Thema Glück von der Antike bis heute. Mit Bibliografie und Register.