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The Political Difference of Life: For a Reconceptualization of the Crisis of State and Society

Applicants Dr. Jonas Heller; Professor Dr. Christoph Menke, since 12/2021
Subject Area Practical Philosophy
Term from 2018 to 2022
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 401048740
 
Final Report Year 2023

Final Report Abstract

The project "The Political Difference of Life" aimed at bringing together two strands of the philosophical discussion of the modern form of politics and its crisis: on the one hand, the discussion about the difference between state and society and, on the other, the discourse about biopolitics. The project assumed that by bringing them together one could better understand not only what modern politics consists of, but also why it is in crisis. In descriptive terms, the project sought to gain a new and more adequate understanding of the relationship between state and society through the discussion of the biopolitical concept of life. At the same time, the project aimed to clarify in normative terms how the difference in this relationship is to be determined in order to provide an answer to the current crisis of politics. To pursue those aims, three steps were considered necessary: first, to develop a concept of life determined by its immanent difference; second, to work out the difference of life from its other (the political form); third, to rethink in this way the relation of the life of society to the state. The critical reconstruction of the relationship between state and society formed the background for a series of events that took place in the first year of funding: workshops with Jean-François Kervégan, Marietta Auer and Joseph Vogl. The interdisciplinary exchange in this workshop series provided important insights for the next steps of the project. It was precisely in the crisis, it turned out, that the form of social life is to be understood in such a way that it is conceived as self-regulating and yet can neither be separated from politics nor reduced to it. In a next step, we organized an international conference on Georg Lukács ("Self-Transformative Life: Lukács and the Critique of Capitalism"), considering that in his work reflections on the crisis of the modern state are closely and fundamentally connected to a specific concept of life. The conference aimed at exploring whether and to what extent descriptive and normative resources can be gained from this understanding of life as a selftransformative process. In doing so, this event contributed to a better understanding of the notion of a "potentiality" of life. Returning to reflections on the relationship between state and society, we organized an international conference on "The Crisis of Freedom: Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right after 200 Years" which took place in 2022. This event explored the logic and relevance of those social and political crises that Hegel focused on in his Grundlinien and that are current today in altered guises. In the same year took place the final conference of our research project, titled "The Return of the Authoritarian Character: Crises of Neoliberal Biopolitics". The aim was to combine the findings of three fields of the project in the interpretation and analysis of a contemporary phenomenon, so that we could understand the current crisis more precisely in descriptive terms through our reflections on a biopolitical conceptualization of the relationship between state and society. In normative terms, we have been guided by the question of the possibility of a genuinely democratic biopolitics.

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