The Political Difference of Life: For a Reconceptualization of the Crisis of State and Society

• Applicants: Dr. Jonas Heller; Professor Dr. Christoph Menke, since 12/2021
• Subject Area: Practical Philosophy
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 401048740

The following project attempts to bring together two threads of the philosophical debate on the modern form of politics and its crisis, and discusses the two in their relation to each other: on the one hand, the debate concerning the difference between state and society; on the other, the discourse on biopolitics. The project begins with the assumption that these two threads are relevant to and can learn from each other, and that bringing them together not only produces a better understanding of modern politics but also of why (and in which sense) the latter is in a state of crisis. In this context, “state” refers not only to the modern nation state but also to supranational and transnational forms of constitutionalization. At the center of these reflections stands the work towards a “biopolitics of difference”; a figure that can be won from the mutual elucidation of the two threads proposed here. Against proposals to respond to the contemporary crisis that dominate current discourse, this project pursues a double aim: regarding its descriptive aspect, the discussion of the biopolitical concept of life aims to produce a new and more adequate understanding of the relationship between state and society. In this way and at the same time, a normative clarification of how the difference of this relation is to be determined in order to respond to the contemporary crisis of politics understood as the state will be produced. 

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Ehemalige Antragstellerin: Dr. Marina Martinez Mateo, until 12/2021