Russia’s war against Ukraine has grave consequences in several political categories. These include: a reassessment of the school of ‘political realism’, one of whose proponents claims to have predicted the war. Was the West partly ‘responsible’ for the war? Second, to what extent does the war of aggression, as an undeniable violation of law, damage the status of international law and justice? Third, the war is embedded in political developments that stretch back a century. It is examined in its context (...) within American foreign policy since the Wilsonian peace programme, in relation to the dangerous reluctance of the EU to pursue a decisive geopolitical policy towards Russia, and interpreted in the light of Stalinist echoes within Russian politics. (shrink)

Martin Seel once made a very derogatory comment on Thomas Mann’s ›Doktor Faustus‹, which can also be called »Nietzsche novel«. I take this as an opportunity to appreciate, in a broader perspective, a thinking born from historical experience and cultural sensitivity in the context of Adorno and Nietzsche. Thomas Mann’s confrontation with the ambivalence of modernity, motivated by National Socialism, points to an unsurpassable intellectual imprint that he shares with Adorno’s experience-bound philosophy. Adorno’s theory of art is aptly corrected by (...) Martin Seel with regard to its aesthetic utopia, but at the same time the affirmative potential of art is vindicated. Following Adorno, art is capable of opening up experiences in its own way that can also provide impulses for politics. This can equally be said about Thomas Mann’s ›Faustus‹. (shrink)

„Historische Verantwortung“ wird zunächst an der Erfahrung von Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust diskutiert. Die moralische Reflexion führt auf einen kollektiven Begriff historischer Verantwortung, der auf einen kommunikativ-dynamischen Prozess der Bearbeitung des geschichtlichen Bedeutungsraums verweist. Systematischer Kern ist eine politische Ethik in internationaler Perspektive, die retrospektive wie prospektive Relevanz besitzt.