Eivind Tjønneland

EUROPE: Peter Sloterdijk saw Europe as a kind of theater, with ever-new attempts to recreate and imitate the Roman Empire. The continent stands for humanistic ideals, but has nevertheless produced imperialism and countless wars. Why does a Europe characterized by a stoic ethic of self-restraint and a Christian message of peace and love lead to so much exploitation and oppression in practice?

PHILOSOPHY: Jürgen Habermas' growing interest in religion in this new conversation book can be interpreted as a symptom that the concept of rationality with which he initially operated was too narrow. Today, philosophy and religion, as well as psychology and a number of other sciences, are struggling to understand or redefine the incomprehensible in our lifeworld.

GERMANY: Alternative sources can challenge Merkel's polished self-image. For example, the closeness to the GDR regime in terms of both herself and her father. The message is that Angela Merkel has destroyed the CDU and is responsible for the political, economic and cultural problems Germany is currently struggling with. Much of the criticism from the right also touches on the Stasi. Merkel has underemphasised the collaboration between herself and the GDR regime.

ESSAY: According to Erich Fromm, the new freedom and individual independence must be paid for with insecurity, isolation and alienation. A society in rapid transition can pack in tough demands for adaptation to the market, 'change skills', mobility, the necessity of constantly starting over as having more freedom and choices. MODERN TIMES here puts the newly published classic in context with other books on the subject of freedom.

LITERATURE: Atle Kittang's insistence on close reading warns against hasty ideological historical categorizations and easy-to-buy ideological criticism. But Atle Kittang's distinction between the sympathetic, the objectifying and the symptomatic way of reading seems "roughly masked" today, according to the publishers of this anthology.

LITERATURE: It is time to come to terms with the absence metaphysics of Georg Johannesen (GJ), Arnfinn Åslund and Arild Linneberg. The metaphysics of absence, the alleged incomprehensibility, was the basis for GJ to ride his own fads. This is a basic structure in GJ's own rhetorical control technique.

HEALTH ANXIETY: Do you have anxiety about having or getting a serious illness? The public is inundated with advice about exercise, diet, healthy eating, health hazards, new symptoms etc. The war headlines in health journalism play on our fear of death. One in five doctor visits in the UK's National Health Service is related to irrational fear of one's own state of health.

GERMANY: The merger of West and East Germany took place on the former's terms. But the problem with Oschmann's book on this lies in the tension between the rhetorical and the socio-economic perspective: What is rhetoric, and what are facts?

EAST GERMANY: Wellmer's observation that the war in Ukraine has triggered a new distance or 'Entfremdung' between East and West Germany is apt. Criticism of Putin is experienced today by East Germans as an attack on their East German identity. The West is now wronging Russia in the same way that West Germany dominated the East after the fall of the Wall.