self-realization

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.

SUBJECTS: Hartmut Rosa points out that today's late modern people react to the flood of information without "developing a stable understanding of what is relevant, of direction and prioritization". But does the well-educated academic here become an ideologue with religion as a weapon against an increasingly purpose-rational world where the economy colonizes the social?

MIDDLE CLASS: Current in these corona times is whether Reckwitz's analysis opens up a restructuring of the economy back to a "real economy" – from the cultural capitalism in which the goods promise consumers symbolic, narrative, aesthetic and ethical experiences.