Upon its publication in Germany in 1983, this author's book stirred both critical acclaim and consternation, attracting a wide readership. He finds cynicism the dominant mode in contemporary culture, in personal and institutional settings; his book is both a history of the impulse and an investigation of its role today, among those whose earlier hopes for social change have crumbled and faded away.

Freedom, value, power, justice, government, legitimacy are major themes of the present inquiry. It explores the ontological structure of human beings associating with one another, the basic phenomenon of society. We human beings strive to become who we are in an ongoing power interplay with each other. Thinkers called as witnesses include Plato, Aristotle, Anaximander, Protagoras, Hobbes, Locke, Adam Smith, Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Schumpeter, Hayek, Schmitt, Ernst Junger, et al.

The first aim is to provide well-articulated concepts by thinking through elementary phenomena of today's world, focusing on privacy and the digital, to clarify who we are in the cyberworld - hence a phenomenology of digital whoness. The second aim is to engage critically, hermeneutically with older and current literature on privacy, including in today's emerging cyberworld. Phenomenological results include concepts of i) self-identity through interplay with the world, ii) personal privacy in contradistinction to the privacy of private property, iii) the cyberworld as an artificial, digital...

A fantasy in the sense of "Alice in Wonderland," but not for children. It's cock-and-bull like "Tristram Shandy," but without the digressions. It's satire in the tradition of "Gulliver's Travels," but the satire is on modern science. The humour is British, like the Goons or Monty Python. The protagonists are two young students, Phi and Psi, finding their way in life. In Book I, "In Quest of Mu," they go in search, in search of the ancient Mu, a philosophical refugee from Athens to Upper Matta. Mu himself is on a philosophical quest to answer his guiding question, Why is there movement at all,...

Today's composers are preoccupied first and foremost with exploring the possibilities of producing new and hitherto unheard-of kinds of different-sounding music. In particular, they employ advanced, mainly electronic, technologies, or invent new musical instruments that break the mould of traditional music-making, thus introducing new sounds to music. On this front there are exciting, creative developments for those willing to open their ears. These contemporary composers also often take a piece of literature, an art work, a landscape or an historical event for extraneous orientation. The...

To bring Heidegger and Marx together in all the radicalness of their respective thinking means endeavouring to see what light the genius of each of these philosophers throws on the respective blind spots of the other, in particular, with regard to the questions: What is technology? and What is capital? Heidegger goes in search of the essence of technology, articulating it finally in what he calls the Ge-Stell (set-up). The set-up is the historical hermeneutic constellation of being AS which beings present themselves in the consummated technological age. From this determination of the essence...

Heidegger und Marx in der ganzen Radikalitat ihres jeweiligen Denkens zusammenzufuhren, heisst, den Versuch zu unternehmen, welches Licht das Genie des einen Philosophen auf die jeweiligen blinden Flecken des anderen wirft, insbesondere im Hinblick auf die Fragen: Was ist Technik? Was ist Kapital? Heidegger geht auf die Suche nach dem Wesen der Technik, wobei er dieses letztendlich im Begriff des Ge-Stells artikuliert. Das Ge-Stell ist die geschichtlich-hermeneutische Konstellation des Seins ALS welches das Seiende im Ganzen im vollendeten technologischen Zeitalter sich prasentiert. Bei...

Der Titel "Entstandigung" soll anzeigen, dass in unserer Zeit uberall die Vollendung und die Grenzen des abendlandischen Logos - was er an Seiendem, Mensch und Welt in Bewegung gesetzt und zu Stande gebracht hat - zumindest fur das phanomenologisch-hermeneutische Denken sichtbar geworden sind. Diese Aufsatze von den spaten 1980er und fruhen 1990er Jahren legen die Grundlage fur das, was spater kommt. Die Auseinandersetzungen mit Aristoteles und Heidegger stehen im Zentrum, wobei unter dem Titel "Der Mann" ein erster Versuch einer Phanomenologie des Werseins, der den Hintergrund fur diese...