SDF

I am originally from Germany. I studied in Berlin, London, Oxford, and Princeton, and then also spent about a decade in Oxford as a research fellow. At the turn of the century, I was one of the founders of Germany’s first English-language liberal arts college (European College of Liberal Arts, Berlin), which sought to combine continental European and US approaches in the liberal arts. In 2000 I published a book about the reaction of West German intellectuals to unification (revolving around questions which, if I understand it correctly, also often come up in South Korea). Three years later a volume about the way the authoritarian German jurist Carl Schmitt’s work had been used by different thinkers and movements in post-war Europe appeared. In 2007, a small book on Constitutional Patriotism - an alternative to nationalism as a conception of collective belonging - came out. By that time, I was a professor in Princeton, where I have worked continuously, with occasional visiting appointments in Germany, France, Israel, and Lebanon. In 2011 I published a history of political thought in twentieth century Europe, to be followed in 2016 by a slim volume on populism, which ended up being translated into more than 20 languages. 2019 saw the publication of a book on liberalism in German (which will eventually also come out in English); in 2021, Democracy Rules - my attempt to remind us of the basic principles of democracy and suggest how they can be realized to day - came out. It’s a book that addresses what is nowadays often simply called “the crisis of democracy,” but also tells a story about the basics of democracy. I am currently writing a book about architecture and democracy.

Democracy is said to be in crisis. But what’s actually a crisis, and what is merely a matter of policy challenges, which might be very serious, but do not threaten democracy as such? I want us to turn back to the basics, or first principles, of democracy better to assess our current moment; I also urge audiences to repair what I call the critical infrastructure of democracy, pluralistic parties and professional news organizations in particular.