Prof. Dr. Karsten Fischer

Die Macht der Beobachtung

October 21, 2022

How political crises arise and can be avoided.

Financial crisis, migration crisis, pandemic crisis, peace crisis, economic crisis, climate crisis - apparently we can't get any rest. But what is a crisis anyway? If we think historically, people have already shown very different forms of crisis awareness. They are sometimes viewed as a recurring, predictable, and temporary phenomenon, and sometimes as a new, uncontrollable, and ultimate threat. In addition, we sometimes have to deal with diffuse things like moral cultural crises, when young people are considered spoiled or society as a whole is considered decadent, and sometimes with manifest things like economic crises, to which political means should be used to react.

Or we are dealing with original political crises, when doubts arise about the ability of those in government to act or even about the sense of political institutions, from which radical forces benefit, which in turn have no interest in ending the crisis. The power of observation seems to have its own momentum, especially in political contexts, and this may indicate how such crises can be avoided.

Professor Karsten Fischer has held the chair of political theory at the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich since 2010. He has studied political science, philosophy and international law in Bonn and Frankfurt/Main. His doctorate and habilitation at the Humboldt University in Berlin were supervised by Herfried Münkler. Fischer was a research coordinator of the working group “Gemeinwohl und Gemeinsinn" at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and research assistant at the Humboldt University.

His research and publications focus, among other things, on the theory and history of ideas of democracy and liberalism and the relationship between politics and religion. His most recent publications are "Die Zukunft einer Provokation. Religion im liberalen Staat" (2009) and (as editor, joined with Sebastian Huhnholz) "Liberalismus. Traditionsbestände und Gegenwartskontroversen" (2019).

Only in German

Recording of the lecture on October 21, 2022

Review of the evening lecture with Prof. Dr. Karsten Fischer

What if political crises don't just happen - but are made? In his lecture, Prof. Dr. Karsten Fischer shows how crises often only arise through our perception and political interpretation. Unlike economic or ecological crises, political crises are rarely objectively measurable - they live from media logic, personal fears and systematic distortions. But beware: precisely because they are constructed, they can have real consequences - for our democracy, for example. A lecture that challenges habits of thought.