PHILOSOPHY: Wolfram Eilenberger describes here the struggle four philosophers – Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Ayn Rand and Simone Weil fought to become independent people. The book succeeds well in putting them in context with the current events they got involved in and at the same time tried to get out of.
CAPITALISM: 'Techno-feudalism' is a global expansion with an all-consuming, limitless development of non-material phenomena. Here, social democracy can no longer make any difference, according to Yanis Varoufakis in this book.
ESSAYS: Is the truth scandalous? Michel Houellebecq hides behind masks, and in the end the masks are stuck to his face: He has become his own self-representation.
HOLDERLIN: Giorgio Agamben makes a loose juxtaposition between Goethe and Hölderlin, between madness and reason. Did the latter allow himself to be pushed psychologically to the limit?
PHILOSOPHY: While postmodernism involved an explosion, today's posthumous condition, according to Marina Garcés, involves a liquidation of all possibilities – an implosion. Yes, are the hopes we cling to today just market-adapted needs for hope?