FRANKFURT SCHOOL: The question "Why philosophy?" eventually became the question "Why Adorno?". The intellectual work of Theodor W. Adorno's heirs has been highly productive and diverse. In Frankfurt, ideas critical of authority were promoted, which were largely legitimized by the fact that the shadow of National Socialism rested over the country.

UTOPIA: Without a belief in the glow of utopia, Bloch writes, we end up like TS Eliot's cavemen with a «hollow world space in a disenchanted atheism.» Has the constant work focus, busyness and the search for security and comfort sucked the life out of us and thus also the utopian glow and search that keeps us awake as human beings, asks Alexander Carnera in this essay.

LANYARD: What can a philosopher like French Gilles Deleuze tell us today, 42 years later, regarding Israel's treatment of the Palestinians — and settler colonialism?

PROTESTER: It is as if a generalization of misery, depression, climate anxiety and state terror has taken place, so that young people in both the south and the north are staring in despair at a world in disintegration. In this reworked book excerpt, Mikkel Bolt shows the community of the new mass protests. It is as much an anthropological as a political showdown that we see taking shape.

ESSAY: Most Surrealists had participated in the First World War, André Breton and Louis Aragon, for example, were sent to the front as medical students on the French side, and Max Ernst was an artilleryman in the German army. The senseless trench warfare endowed the Surrealists with an intense hatred of the ideals to which the warring parties referred. The plan was to initiate the necessary dismantling of the basic categories of the capitalist mode of production such as profit and wage labor, but also art and literature as activities reserved for a few selected individuals.

VIOLENCE: Is man fundamentally violent? History does not show exactly that. We have several examples of large societies in prehistory showing few traces of war and authoritarian rule. For example, the Stone Age can be essential for anyone who wants to say something about human evolution and nature.

THE LAW OF THE PEOPLE: Russia's formal justification for carrying out its "special operation" against Ukraine is an exact mirror image of NATO's justification for bombing Yugoslavia in 1999 – despite established international law.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS: For Moscow, the Ukraine war is about defense, not conquest. But for the West, the war is about Russia's attempt to conquer Ukraine and about Ukraine's right to choose an alliance. Like the Western doctrine, the Russian one now allows for the first use of nuclear weapons.

LITERATURE: Han Kang does not turn away from death or the dead. And she also sees the perpetrators, sees them as alive, with their own history. MODERN TIMES gives here an introduction to the Nobel Prize winner in literature for 2024.

BORN: Although Rødt and SV claim that they support Palestine, with the new attitude to NATO they support the maintenance of Israel's 'security'.

MILITARISM: Technonationalism has strengthened Turkey's proactive foreign policy, promoted national pride and reinforced the image of a powerful state. The paradigm of "zero problems with the neighbours", which characterized Turkish foreign policy in the 2000s, has been abandoned in favor of a more interventionist approach under the doctrine of "security at any cost". In 2002, the total volume of defense industry projects was a modest $5,5 billion – By 2023, it rose to over $96 billion.

ENVIRONMENT:With the help of Project 2025, President-elect Donald Trump will stop all attempts to avert the climate crisis and accelerate an irreparable catastrophe. The project believes that the US has an "obligation to develop the enormous oil, gas and coal resources for which the country is responsible". Over the next few years, LNG exports alone will produce more greenhouse gases than every single car, home and factory in the EU.