Andreas Fahrmeir, Gunther Hellmann, Miloš Vec are presenting their latest book: The Transformation of Foreign Policy: Drawing and Managing Boundaries from Antiquity to the Present, Oxford University Press, 2016.
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This Political Salon addressed the issue of radicalism in the context of European modernity as well as in light of the current crises engulfing the European Union. It made the case for a new politics of moderation to safeguard an open and tolerant Central Europe as a key element of rebuilding the European project after Brexit.
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From November 4 to November 6, 2016 the 10th Conference 'On Solidarity' - Mobilizing for the Commons took place in the European Solidarity Centre in Gdańsk.
The event was organized jointly by the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna, the European network of cultural journals, Eurozine, the European Solidarity Centre in Gdańsk and Res Publica Foundation, in partnership with ERSTE Foundation and the Mayor of Gdańsk.
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In the 20th century, beauty was used by the most barbaric and repressive regimes, be it in Stalin’s Russia, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or Franco’s Spain. In the transition to Modern times aesthetics replaced theology and beauty lost its sacredness. Its secular equivalent–Sublime–was politically instrumentalised by totalitarian regimes which created reactionary populist mobilizational cultural projects based on perfect simulation of beauty. Therefore, totalitarian kitsch has to be understood not simply as a decline of taste, but as a byproduct of cultural democratization and means of legitimizing terror in which aesthetics played a pivotal role.
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Claus Offe presents his latest publication (edited with Ulrich K. Preuß).
Exploring the political order dilemmas of capitalist democracies, the authors address moral and institutional prerequisites on which the deepening of European integration depends. The desirability of such deepening is currently contested, with the membership of some states (and their compliance with the spirit of the Union’s treaties) at stake.
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In December 2015 Adam D. Rotfeld resigned as co-chairman of the Polish-Russian Group on Difficult Matters. In this Political Salon he discussed with Christian Ultsch (Die Presse) and Paweł Marczewski (IWM): What were the achievements and the failures of the Group. Is there a return to an open discussion between Poland and Russia about their difficult past and uncertain future? Can and should Poland engage Russia on this level despite Russian aggression against Ukraine? Moreover, in the face of growing suspicion and increasingly inflammatory political rhetoric in relations between Poland and Ukraine, is there a need for a similar group dealing with “difficult matters” between those two countries?
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Von 23. bis 25. September veranstalteten das Wien Museum und das IWM in Kooperation mit Time to Talk erstmals das „Vienna Humanities Festival“. Rund 40 Vorträge und Diskussionen verwandelten den Karlsplatzes in einen weiträumigen urbanen Salon. Eine Auswahl an Vorträgen gibt es auf unserem YouTube-Channel zu sehen.
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On February 24, 1939, Martin Buber wrote a letter to M.K. Gandhi, the Indian nationalist leader. Buber was reacting to comments made by Gandhi about the inability of Jews in offering non-violent resistance to the Nazi regime and characterising it as helpless and weak.
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Why is there growing support for right-wing political parties? If religion and ethnicity are the new fault lines in European societies, what are the chances for amicable coexistence? This questions were addressed by Chantal Mouffe, Gilles Kepel and Philipp Blom on June 7.
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For his book No Laughing Matter, British sociologist Steven Lukes collected over 600 political jokes from all over the world. He tried out the best of these on a Viennese audience, aided and abetted by Ivan Krastev, who explained some of the jokes’ historical background.
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In his lecture Timothy Snyder considered the possibility that a troubling question at the center of Russian history and politics, the issue of the succession, might be at the root of Russia’s recent wars.
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Where does Europe stand in the debate on freedom of expression? What are the limits of freedom of speech, and should there be any at all? These questions were discussed by Miklós Haraszti, Agnieszka Holland and Claire Fox at the Burgtheater on May 31.
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This year's Fellows' Meeting was opened with a keynote speech on "Free Speech. Ten Principles for a Connected World" by the British historian and Member of the Institute's Board of Trustees Timothy Garton Ash (Oxford University).
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Peter L. Berger, einer der bedeutendsten Vertreter der Wissenssoziologie, setzte sich in der diesjährigen Jan Patočka Memorial Lecture mit einer zentralen Frage unserer Zeit auseinander: Was folgt auf das gescheiterte Versprechen der Säkularisierung?
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Moderne Gesellschaften sind durch eine zunehmende ethnische, kulturelle und religiöse Pluralisierung gekennzeichnet. Einem Prozess, der sich in Europa durch die massenhafte Migration von Kriegsflüchtlingen noch erheblich verstärken wird. Dieser Befund zwingt mehr denn je dazu, über Strategien des Umgangs mit Diversität nachzudenken.
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At the Political Salon on April 18, former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, spoke about global responsibility and the ongoing refugee crisis. The debate was chaired by Gerald Knaus and Christian Ultsch.
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One of the most enduring topoi of political philosophy is that particular interests and passions, combined with ignorance, are the major obstacles in the way of a rational ordering of public affairs. The goal of this keynote speech was to analyse the inherent conceptual content of such a desire and to ask for the place of solidarity in a reified society.
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This lecture examined the imagined geographies of Islamic presence in today’s Europe. It looked at contestations regarding not just the right to places of worship and religious presence, but more broadly the very right to appear in urban spaces.
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If we’re troubled by the ways in which the transformation of war undermines existing international norms and institutions, we will need to rethink the categories and rules we currently use to constrain and control state violence and coercion, said Rosa Brooks in her 3rd IWM Lecture at the IWM.
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In her second lecture, Rosa Brooks focused on consequences of the increasingly blurry lines around “war.” It looked at several examples, including US drone strikes and “personalized” forms of warfare, and examine the impact on the law of war, human rights, sovereignty and international institutions.
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In the first IWM Lecture in Human Sciences, Rosa Brooks give a look at historical efforts to police the boundaries between war and “not war,” and efforts to make war subject to rules and law.
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Jeffrey Sachs, world-renowned Professor of Economics, leader in sustainable development and Senior UN Advisor, gave a lecture at the IWM on migration and global inequalities.
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While Syrians have been by far the most important group in the last few years, Afghans have consistently constituted during the last decades one of the single largest groups of asylum seekers in European countries, said Alessandro Monsutti at the Political Salon on February 22.
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Peter Pomerantsev took his newly published book “Nichts ist wahr und alles ist möglich” as a starting point to explore – in converstion with IWM Visiting Fellow Anton Shekhovtsov – new forms of Russian propaganda.
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