Democracy in Crisis? The Intervention Demanded by the Current Upheavals
04.02.2012
*with Klaus Günther and Joachim Gauck, Moderation: Thomas Biebricher*
The current crises also put democracy under enormous pressure. Experts and practical constraints seem to dominate the actions of government. What about the legitimacy of far reaching political decisions? Which significance does democracy have in times of crisis? When speaking of the future of democracy, one may not remain quiet about Europe – the place in which numerous essential future decisions are made. The 8th Frankfurter Stadtgespräch is shaped by two personalities that can help us in our search for answers: Joachim Gauck, prominent civil rights activist and former head of the agency of the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi records who was candidate for the office of the federal president of the Republic of Germany. Klaus Günther is co-speaker of the cluster of excellence “The Emergence of Normative Orders” and Professor for Legal Theory, Criminal Law and Criminal Procedural Law at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main.
The discussion partners:
Joachim Gauck is pastor, politician and publicist. At the time of the peaceful revolution in the DDR he became one of the leading members of the “Neues Forum” in Rostock, after the first and only free Peoples’ Chamber election 1990 he became Member of Parlament. Gauck was Federal Commissioner of the Agency for the Stasi records from 1990 until 2000 (then called „Gauck-Behörde“), which administers the Stasi files and makes them available. Gauck was often honoured for his merits and publications. His application for the office of the Federal President of Germany was greeted well in the population in 2010.
Klaus Günther is co-speaker of the cluster of excellence „The Emergence of Normative Orders” at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt/Main and Professor for Legal Theory, Criminal Law, Criminal Procedural Law at the faculty of jurisprudence. The focus of his work is on legal philosophy, discourse theory of law and theory of judicial argumentation, concept and theories of responsibility, legal theory of globalization, law sociology, law and literature as well as basic problems of criminal law.
Thomas Biebricher is the leader of a group of young researchers on the topic ‚Variationen des Neoliberalismus und ihre Transformation‘ at the cluster of excellence ‚The Emergence of Normative Orders‘ in Frankfurt. His dissertation was submitted in 2003 in Freiburg was published in Campus under the title ‚Selbstkritik der Moderne. Habermas und Foucault im Vergleich‘. From 2003 until 2009 he was DAAD Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Florida in Gainesville. His latest research project is concerned with the normative dimension of neoliberal thought.
A series of events of the Cluster of Excellence `The Formation of Normative Orders’ in collaboration with the Frankfurter Kunstverein