NATURE: Latour wants to problematize how several features of the Christian tradition have stood in opposition to man's relationship with nature. Religious thinking usually has an indifference towards the natural world. And it is not unusual that the most militant climate skeptics often also have a positive and religious expectation of the end of the world – where the saved will be saved and the sinners lost.
PAUL: Especially after Nietzsche's later work Antichrist (1895), Paul has attracted interest among atheist philosophers, including Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Slavoj Žižek, Alain Badiou and Jacques Derrida. Was Paul a forerunner of revolutionary communism?
PSYCHOLOGY: Blaise Pascal was a contradictory figure: He was one of the most important mathematicians and scientists of all time, but at the same time a rather strict and dogmatic Catholic. By dogmatic is mainly meant that he emphasized a clear distinction between faith and knowledge. And ask yourself: Is there a difference between 'idiocy's truth' and 'truth's idiocy'?
LIBERALISM: Globally and in the West, liberalism is on the retreat. In the West, liberalism has been replaced by an intolerant hyperliberalism, where citizens have problems living side by side with those who think differently.
ETHNICITY: Maimonides is considered one of the most important Jewish thinkers ever. In his time, the relationship between the Muslim, the Arab and the Jewish was mutually enriching. Rather than viewing the relationship between Jews and Arabs in a polarized way, Maimonides' example shows that their enmity is redundant and intellectually debilitating. The conflict is not about religion, because Judaism and Islam have far too many central similarities.
RUSSIA: Mikhail Khodorkovsky discusses Russia's future after Putin and advocates revolution, democracy and fair distribution of resources. It is about achieving a new, open and fair country that can reclaim its place in the international community...
ŽIŽEK: Despite the fact that he has been a public intellectual for at least 30 years, there has never before been such a multifaceted and nuanced discussion of Slavoj Žižek's thinking as the one we see in the current anthology. But does Žižek recognize the revolutionary potential of desire?
PASOLINI: The apostle Paul shows the revolutionary power of fighting for a cause that defies the usual way of life. Paul becomes the symbol of creating a new reality and defeating hegemonic power. But can we imagine that there is a Paul in today's Israel?