Sociability and Its Enemies contributes both to contemporary studies of political theory and to discourse on postwar Germany by reconstructing the arguments concerning the nature and value of sociability as a form of interaction and interconnection particular to modern bourgeois society. Jakob Norberg argues that the writings of Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas, Carl Schmitt, and the historian Reinhart Koselleck present conflicting responses to a hitherto neglected question or point of contention: whether bourgeois sociability should serve as a therapeutic practice and (...) politically relevant ideal for postwar Germany. The book sheds light on previously neglected historical and conceptual connections among political theorists, and it enriches established narratives of postwar intellectual history. (shrink)

From his return to Europe in 1949 to his death in 1969, Adorno was one of the most prominent public voices in West Germany. As a professor and institute director, a frequently heard expert on radio, a prolific cultural critic, and even a sort of public counselor, he helped shape the self‐image of German postwar society. The very term “postwar society” is partly an achievement: Adorno approached Germany sociologically, as a configuration of organizations and groups, as opposed to a community (...) of blood, race, and fate, and he sought to encourage an earnest postwar and post‐genocide reckoning with the crimes committed under National Socialism, against widespread tendencies of evasiveness and disavowal. More insistently and effectively than most, Adorno reminded Germans that they lived “after Auschwitz.”. (shrink)

ExcerptA number of Carl Schmitt's diaries have already been published, and more are being prepared for future publication.1 Naturally, readers of Schmitt hope that these voluminous journals will shed light on his controversial work and biography.2 Yet for reasons that I will seek to make clear in this essay, Schmitt's diaries must be approached with some interpretive caution, for the diarist himself was deeply skeptical of and even averse to his chosen medium. Early on in his career, Schmitt produced a (...) satire of diary writing as the matrix of a self-obsessed human existence, and this critical attitude also comes through…. (shrink)