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What are the Humanities For?
Martha Nussbaum, in her latest book, warns of a world in which “the humanistic aspects of science and social science — the imaginative, creative aspects of rigorous critical thought” are being lost. Instead of surrendering to “thin market norms” and the demands of the labour market, education must rediscover its goal of creating citizens who are both compassionate and capable of critical thinking. While the impetus behind such demands is laudable, it would be irresponsible — writes reviewer Stephen John — to ignore the shortcomings of Nussbaum’s book in the name of political expediency. Too often she succumbs to hasty overgeneralization, lumping together different trends and developments and, in the process, overlooking sources of political agreement and convergence. While the book’s message is important, it fails in its ambition to map out the future shape of education.
Tracing the Origins of Islamophobia
Recent polls conducted by a number of polling institutes indicate that, in the minds of Germans and Europeans, Islam – more than any other religion – is associated with negative feelings. A recent edited volume, ‘Islamfeindlichkeit – Wenn die Grenzen der Kritik verschwimmen’ (roughly: ‘Islamophobia: When the Limits of Criticism become Blurred’), traces the origins of these negative connotations, along with more recent expressions of resentment towards a visible presence of Muslims in Western societies. But, argues reviewer Mohammed Khallouk, the book may also be read as a manifesto for cultural dialogue, with the goal of finding a consensus on values.
What Can Be Learnt From Piracy
What drives the recent resurgence of piracy, especially in the Gulf of Aden and along other major trade routes? In a recent book, Peter T. Leeson argues that by examining the piracy that reached its peak between the end of the seventeenth and the early eighteenth century, and preyed on the major trade routes, one may hope to get a clearer understanding of modern piracy. Leeson, writes reviewer Daniele Archibugi, adopts a thoroughgoingly economic perspective, according to which pirates have historically aimed at obtaining the maximum result with the least effort and above all minimum risk. The prospect of high profits, together with strict rules for social organisation and a striking commitment to principles of equality, made piracy a lucrative and attractive profession in the arly 18th century – with one important downside: when captured, pirates would almost always be hanged.
Happiness, Sadness, Death
Ten days after submitting the manuscript of his novel “Suicide” in October 2007, French artist and author Edouard Levé hanged himself in his Parisian apartment. Yet, as reviewer Hugo Wilcken argues, it would be quite misleading to read Levé’s last book as a fictionalised account of his own suicide; it many ways it is a negative image of it. While the book may start as if it was a memoir, the reader soon begins to doubt. There are unlikely moments (the night where the protagonist talks for eight hours straight about Marx and Freud); even more suspicious is the way the author gets inside the suicide’s head, and recounts scenes he couldn’t possibly know about. “Suicide” was widely and favourably reviewed in France. It has since been translated into Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese; translations into German and English are in preparation.
Dubai Speed: Inside the Bubble
In the spring of 2007, Michael Schindhelm, the luckless former director of the Berlin Opera Foundation, left the German capital for better shores. As the newly appointed Cultural Director of Dubai’s Culture and Arts Authority, he had high hopes — as well as seemingly unlimited resources. His goal was to construct an exquisite cultural landscape, complete with an opera house and a Museum of World Cultures. Then came the financial crash, and arts and culture were no longer a priority. In his book ‘Dubai Speed’, Schindhelm chronicles his experiences in a city that embodies “not merely a race against time, but an objection to time itself”. While there is much narcissistic navel-gazing in Schindhelm’s book, reviewer Christiane Peitz still finds that, through Schindhelm’s gaze, the scintillating bubble that is Dubai becomes a bizarre reflection of modernity itself.
The Tragedy of Afghanistan
“Those who should hear, they’ll hear nevermore / Destroyed, dispersed is the proud host of yore / With thirteen thousand their trail they began. / Only one man returned from Afghanistan.” On the eve of the 2010 Afghanistan conference in London, The Berlin Review of Books publishes a new English translation, by Gabriele Campbell, of Theodor Fontane’s poem ‘Das Trauerspiel von Afghanistan’. First published in 1848, it tells the story of the sole survivor of a massacre suffered by the British during the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842) in January 1842.
The Possibility of Disinterested Action
Is it possible for a human being to act in a truly disinterested manner? Do disinterested actions have a psychological unity or are they the mere product of circumstances? Is disinterestedness an individual or a collective phenomenon? These are the questions that Jon Elster tackles in the first volume of a trilogy dedicated to a thorough critique of classical conceptions of Homo Economicus. But, asks reviewer Gloria Origgi in light of Elster’s taxonomy of forms of disinterestedness, if so many different motivations may underlie the phenomenon of disinterestedness, are we still talking about one and the same thing?
God’s Executioner
A sixteenth-century journal kept by Frantz Schmidt, a Nuremberg executioner, affords a rare insight into the gruesome world of early modern retribution. But, says author and historian Joel Harrington, beyond the facticity of all the deaths caused by “Meister Frantz”, the journal also throws light on early modern concepts of identity, social status, and the human body as well as on the development of both the picaresque and autobiographical genres. As Meister Frantz grows in both professional and storytelling experience, his accounts of the various unfortunates he encounters become both more colourful and more revealing of his inner world. Consequently, the journal unveils not so much a detailed portrait as a vivid sketch of the moral cosmology of a sixteenth-century executioner.
A German Affair
Germany’s most characteristic contributions to nineteenth-century world culture, music and speculative philosophy, are so thoroughly romantic that they alone would give the whole movement a German flavour. But in Germany romanticism did not stay within the boundaries of art and philosophy, it gave momentum to political nationalism, to an irrational Lebensphilosophie and to a fatal departure from the path of the Enlightenment. In his new book, “Romantik: Eine deutsche Affäre” (Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich, 2007), Rüdiger Safranski travels into “Germany’s heart of darkness”, but, says reviewer Hans-Dieter Gelfert, is missing out on the social dynamics of the romantic value system, which English writers were the first to respond to in the early eighteenth century.
Of Pencils and Pixels
Sonja Neef’s ‘Abdruck und Spur’ (‘Imprint and Trace’, 2008) offers a sweeping re-evaluation of the relationship of handwriting and technology. While the historical part of the book may be overambitious, insofar as it discusses even the evolutionary origins of handedness, reviewer Frank Berzbach applauds Neef for successfully defending her claim that ‘there is no final dichotomy between, on the one hand, printing as a mechanical, technical, or digital way of writing and, on the other hand, handwriting as an individual, unique, and singular trace’; instead, the two have been historically and systematically intertwined, and the Manual continues to survive in the Digital.
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