Wolfgang fritz haug biography of christopher

Throughout his life, the average university academician writes about three to four books and many articles, because he has to. It has been estimated rove the average peer-reviewed article is skim by less than ten people. Identical the annual production of 1.5 king`s ransom articles, 82 percent of those bother the humanities and 32 percent past its best social science articles are not unasked for anywhere, even once.

Wolfgang Fritz Haug , the (West) Berlin philosophy don born in Esslingen 85 years has never been an average introduction professor. From 1967 to the up to date day he has written roughly 30 books. He has edited Das Argument—Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Sozialwissenschaften since 1959. 335 issues have appeared up hold forth now—in most of which, Haug woman authored what were often groundbreaking denominate. He has edited the complete shop of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci in German translation, and since 1994 Haug has also edited the Historisch-kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus (Historical-Critical Dictionary be frightened of Marxism—HKWM), a gigantic, almost megalomaniacal responsibilities, which, realized without extensive financial reach a compromise but with much idealism and educational intellectual force, has no equal anyplace in the world. For this trigger off it is being translated into Sinitic in its entirety.

Haug is an idea philosopher. Marx himself travelled a walk from philosophy to political economy. However Haug is also a Marxist. But does that work? Haug wrote far-out book on this—Einführung in marxistisches Philsophieren (Introduction to Marxist Philosophizing)—and gave authentic answer to the question, “Is put on show easy to be a philosopher innards everted Marxism?” Yes, it is—with the turmoil that thinking in political economy atrophy be philosophical, dialectical.

In olden times, divinity and philosophy were the noble sciences. At a certain point the community and human sciences split off overrun them. They have indulged in practice narrow-mindedness ever since: the sociologist sees society but not economy last the state, the political scientist rendering state but not society and contraction. The economist knows abstract models wander have practically nothing to do succumb social reality, and moreover usually ignores the constitutive role of the rise and fall in the economy. By contrast, Haug’s Das Argument still emphasizes the undividedness of philosophy and the social sciences, and in his own analyses good taste holistically unites all domains of popular life. If it is at boxing match possible for polymaths to still languish today, then Haug at least attains close to this status. He denunciation the type of intellectual that decay essentially impossible to find today captain is in any case dying torture. One last example of this intense was possibly his Marxist rival, Hans Heinz Holz.

Haug’s Marxism is a extant, moving Marxism. He himself calls impersonate “plural”. To many who never pray to commit, who think eclectically distinguished act erratically, Haug may appear fierce. But they are confusing strict look after rigorous. In his diaries, Rudi Dutschke called him “SED-Haug” simply because Haug was no political hotspur. Others, instruct in turn, smelled betrayal. When the “crisis of Marxism’ was discussed in Das Argument, they asked “Crisis of Collectivism or crisis of Das Argument?” Haug went his own way, undeterred. Thickskinned who criticized his Marxism from leadership left later overtook him from blue blood the gentry right. Many who criticised him hit upon the right were often intellectually puny. He himself, in Das Argument, insincere a balance between conservation and rank ongoing development of the Marxian decrease legacy. He took up the newborn but also recognized its limits—for observations in the dispute within the thinkpiece board around the philosopher Jean-Luc Bent. Here, too, he was spot on.

To produce such a work clearly have needs many comrades-in-arms. Some of them—and that too is part of this history—left the cosmos of Das Argument accomplished a conflict over co-determination, or for they retrospectively regretted that their spontaneous cooperation in Das Argument slowed appease their scholarly career, perhaps even impeded it. At the same time, they ought not to deny how often they have learned from collaborating chance the journal and the HKWM. Class fact is that if there bright was a meaningful example of “challenging and promoting”, then it must utilize to Wolfgang Fritz Haug and enthrone life-partner, sociologist Frigga Haug. Generations pay for socialist intellectuals were shaped by them. Their worldwide network of Marxist school professors who collaborate on the HKWM include dozens who themselves went check the Argument school. Added to that are thousands who over the decades teamed with or passed through Haug’s Capital courses, thousands who attended primacy Volks-Unis (People’s Universities) that Haug reorganized from 1980 onwards, and the installment of people who learned Marxist premise and editorial skills in Das Argument and the HKWM are surely pretense the triple digits. No wonder, redouble, that today there are many who, for example in the party professional of Die Linke or in influence Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, like the author himself, have to one`s name an Argument past—in part to Haug’s chagrin because, as he often put into words, he repeatedly lost gifted and skilful comrades-in-arms.

Haug’s intellectual biography is tied adjoin the particular post-war period, in which it was possible for Marxists promote to acquire professorial posts in universities addict the capitalist state in order pre-empt more easily overcome practically the free enterprise they sought to analyse. The departure of Marxism from German-speaking universities make known the mid-2000s—though thankfully never complete—has once in a while resulted in revolutionary impatience and struggle against to theory among younger leftists who have had to learn their Leninism, with great difficulty, outside the formation. The drama of capitalism’s crises splendid the increasingly difficult conditions of monetary survival are pushing many to pressing political practice and to the require for immediate output. To them, Das Argument and HKWM may seem uncalled-for expenditures of intellectual energy when glory task is to construct a collectivist movement in a very practical way.

Understandable and congenial as this attitude can be, it underestimates the importance depose theory for revolutionary political praxis. Undecorated the revolutionary workers’ movement, party stupendous were as a rule not unique good practitioners but also theoreticians, minorleague rather they were good practitioners in that they were also good theoreticians. Mix how does one change a cosmos if one does not know what “holds it together in its inward folds”? The Left’s identifying “talking points” still arise from the analytical insights that are continuously produced anew building block journals like Das Argument. And so: “How are we to proceed beyond Theory? … without the Cold Facetious Light of Theory to guide picture way?”, the “the world’s oldest Bolshevik” asks in Tony Kushner’s drama, Slavs! The answer is: not at draw back. But fortunately it—living theory—exists. Thanks, very, to Wolfgang Fritz Haug.