“The fact that things have to go on like this is the crisis,” says Hartmut Rosa, referring to Walter Benjamin. The climate crisis, economic crises, COVID pandemic and now the war in Ukraine are an expression of an “aggressive world relationship”. The fact that we have to be ever faster, ever further, ever more innovative is the basic mode of modernity’s relationship to the world. This acceleration of the world is driven by the “promise of global expansion and resonance”. Resonance is the promise. Alienation is the reality. How can we heal this diseased world relationship?
About the person
Hartmut Rosa is Professor of General and Theoretical Sociology in Jena (Germany) and Director of the Max Weber Kolleg in Erfurt (Germany). He is regarded as one of the leading intellectual voices in the German-speaking world.