Albert Dikovich

This article aims to outline a theory of political boredom based on the concept of the liberal temporal dispositive. According to this concept, modern politics is characterized by the reduction of political time consumption to enable the growing temporal autonomy of the individual. However, individuals may experience considerable stress in their pursuit to utilize this free time effectively. Boredom arises when individuals fail to “fill” their available time with meaningful actions. Political crises of boredom occur as attempts by individuals to relieve the pressures accompanying temporal autonomy, sometimes restarting political temporality on a new, massive scale. Furthermore, the article examines modern political philosophy as inherently rooted in the liberal temporal dispositive. Through several historical examples, it is discussed how political philosophy may either contribute to imbuing politics with a desire for meaning or abstain from it in an attitude of serene resignation. It is proposed that liberal democracy requires a temporal ethics based on the latter.

This paper aims at developing an understanding of conspirational thinking as a means for dealing with epistemic and practical insecurity. This strategy of coping with insecurity results in the construction of a metaphysical system, which is centered around the idea of a nearly omnipotent conspirator. The paper argues that there is a relatedness between the Cartesian cogito and conspirational thinking. The latter can be conceived of as an aberration from the philosophical search for a fundamentum inconcussum. After the relevance of the thought of Descartes for the current theorizing on conspirational thinking is explained with reference to its historical context in the first part of the paper, the second part shows that the motive for conspirational thinking lies in the repudiation of responsibility in the face of an often overwhelming perception of insecurity. The third part of the paper reflects on possibilities for the weakening of this ethical motive for conspirational thinking building on the Cartesian concept of generosity.

Auf den Ersten Weltkrieg folgte in Mitteleuropa ein grundlegender politischer Umbruch. Albert Dikovich arbeitet die Folgen dieser demokratischen Zeitenwende für die deutschsprachige Philosophie umfassend auf. Dabei untersucht er zum einen, wie nach dem katastrophalen Gewaltereignis des Krieges und angesichts der akuten Eskalation im Inneren die Grenzen der moralisch legitimen Mittel politischer Konfliktaustragung neu gezogen wurden. Zum anderen beleuchtet er den Zusammenhang zwischen rechts- und erkenntnistheoretischen Annahmen und Positionierungen innerhalb eines Spannungsfeldes konkurrierender politischer Neuordnungsentwürfe. Dabei zeigt sich, dass die damals geführten philosophischen Kämpfe um die Demokratie mit unserer Gegenwart mehr zu tun haben, als es der geschichtliche Abstand vermuten lässt.

For the young philosopher and short-time revolutionary functionary Arnold Metzger, the First World War was of key importance for his idea of a moral conversion which he regarded as the most urgent task of the German Revolution of 1918. According to him, the youth returning from the trenches was united by the collective experience of pain: pain caused by the traumatizing violence of the war and the collapse of old beliefs. Yet for Metzger, this pain also implied a positive element: by providing the evidence of the falsity of the moral norms and guiding values of the Second Reich, the catastrophe would provide a common moral ground for the construction of the new. The paper elaborates this idea of the “pathic foundation” of the new Germany by discussing Metzger’s philosophical writings and political actions.

Der vorliegende Forschungsband möchte der kulturelle Bedeutung der Ersten Republik und deren Leistungen einen gebührenden Platz einräumen. Während sich nämlich Wiener Moderne und Weimarer Republik heute einer fortdauernden Aufmerksamkeit erfreuen, sind die Kultur der Ersten Republik und hier vorab des soziokulturellen Laboratoriums Wien – vermutlich schon in der Wahrnehmung vieler Zeitgenossinnen und Zeitgenossen unterbelichtet geblieben. Versammelt sind Beiträge zur Volksbildung im Roten Wien, zu Architektur und Stadtplanung, zu neuen Diskursen in der Psychoanalyse oder zur Neuorientierung Musils nach 1918, die später zu seinem epochalen Roman »Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften« führen wird. Was ihn von anderen Publikationen unterscheidet, ist ein komparatistischer Aspekt, der etwa im Vergleich zwischen der Revolution 1918 in Wien und Österreich und der (kurzlebigen) Räterepublik in Ungarn aber auch in der Analyse der ungarischen Medien in der Zwischenkriegszeit zum Ausdruck kommt. Durch diese erhellenden Vergleiche fällt neues Licht auf die spezifische Besonderheit der Ersten Republik und der Situation im Roten Wien.

Im Folgenden wird der Versuch unternommen, ausgehend von John Deweys Kunst als Erfahrung ein Verständnis des Kitsches als ästhetischer Untugend zu entwickeln. Dabei wird der leitenden Frage des Bandes, ob Kunst moralisch sein muss, in der Weise begegnet, dass nach der spezifischen moralischen Wirkungsweise von Kunstwerken gefragt wird. Nachdem entgegen einer Dichotomisierung von Kunst und Moral die Leistung moderner Literatur und Kunst darin erkannt wird, die Grenzen lebensleitender moralischer Begriffe und Werte anschaulich zu machen und damit Lern- und Reflexionsprozesse auszulösen, wird Kitsch als Umkehr dieser Wirkungsweise von Kunst aufgearbeitet. Kitsch stabilisiert demnach moralische Überzeugungen, Wertvorstellungen und Lebensmodelle, indem er eine sinnliche Welt vor Augen führt, die einen stetigen Resonanzraum letzterer darstellt. Vom Befund ausgehend, dass sein ideologischer Gebrauch in der Natur des Kitsches angelegt ist, wird schließlich Krieg – und insbesondere der gegenwärtige Krieg in Europa – als ein Anlass betrachtet, der die Untugend der Kunst zum Gedeihen bringt. The following paper aims at developing an understanding of Kitsch as an aesthetic vice, drawing mainly upon John Dewey’s Art as Experience. Does art have to be moral? - the guiding question of this volume is addressed by reflecting on the specific operativity of art in moral terms. The genuine force of modern art and literature lies, contrary to a dichotomic view of the relation of morality and the arts, in showing the limits of concepts and values guiding the recipient and therefore activating processes of learning and reflection. It is then argued that Kitsch is the inversion of such an activity. Kitsch stabilizes moral convictions, value orientations and thus ways of life by creating an image of the world that resonates with the latter. Following the observation that Kitsch has a manifest affinity to be used for ideological purposes, war – with focus on the current war in Europe – is considered a primal occasion for the thriving of the aesthetic vice.

In my paper, I develop a phenomenological and pragmatist reflection on the fragility of liberal democracy’s moral foundations in times of war. Following Judith Shklar’s conception of the “liberalism of fear”, the legitimacy of the liberal-democratic order is seen as grounded in experiences of suffering caused by political violence. It is also assumed that the liberalism of fear delivers an adequate conception of the normative foundations of the European project. With the help of phenomenologists such as Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michel Henry, the paper ants to philosophically deepen the liberalism of fear by outlining a theory of “pathic evidence” as a normative foundation and the concept of a common “flesh of the political” as a shared moral sensitivity that sets boundaries to political conflict as well as the political imaginary, excluding what I call the production of “monumental meaning”. It then examines the question which political conditions are needed for this evidence to become a shared, communal criteria of ethical thought, and considers inner and outer challenges to the transmission and reproduction of this evidence in time, drawing especially on John Dewey’s ideas of democratic communication and social intelligence. In the current war, the following problem appears as crucial for the “soul” of European democracies which are confronted with the need to respond to Russia’s attack: How can a political morality grounded in pathic evidence be sustained, once it is challenged by an aggressor who, out of cultural and political reasons, shows a higher level of toleration towards violence? Besides aggression from an external foe, there are also temporal dynamics that further the loss of the inhibiting force of pathic evidence from the inside. As it shall be argued, boredom can be such a factor. The paper concludes by drawing conclusions for the current war in Ukraine.

My paper aims to outline the concept of the pathic foundation of political institutions. I depart from the observation of a lack of clarity concerning the resources of institutional stability in the work of Chantal Mouffe and the proponents of agonistic democracy. Drawing from the ideas of Claude Lefort and Carl von Clausewitz, I sketch the idea that the experience of confict itself generates the moral and epistemic groundings that legitimize and stabilize its institutional regulations. It is within the pathic experience of exhaustion in the face of the results of escalating confict that a common ground of legitimacy is reached. The bulk of my paper is dedicated to the phenomenological analysis of the foundational pathic experience, of the pathic disposition of political subjectivity resulting from it, and of its institutional manifestations.