Oskar Negt

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Oskar Negt, 2016

Oskar Reinhard Negt (born August 1, 1934 at Gut Kapkeim in East Prussia ) is a German social philosopher . In addition to his scientific work, Negt also turned to daily political issues.

Origin and academic career

Negt was born in 1934 on the East Prussian Gut Kapkeim near Königsberg as the youngest of seven children. He comes from a family of small farmers and workers. In January 1945 Negt fled with two sisters via Königsberg and Gotenhafen to Denmark, where he lived separately from his parents with the two sisters in a refugee camp for two and a half years before moving to Lower Saxony.

After attending the Oberrealschule in Oldenburg , Negt began studying law in Göttingen , but then moved to Frankfurt am Main , where he studied sociology and philosophy with Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno . Adorno Negt in 1962 with a dissertation on the contrast of positivism and dialectic at Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Auguste Comte doctorate . From 1962 to 1970 he was Jürgen Habermas's assistant at the universities in Heidelberg and Frankfurt am Main; In 1970 he was appointed to the chair of sociology at the Technical University of Hanover, now Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University of Hanover , where he taught until his retirement in 2002.

Visiting professorships took him to Bern in 1973 , to Vienna in 1975 and to the USA in Milwaukee and Madison in 1978 .

Act

Negt joined the Socialist German Student Union (SDS) in 1956 . With the beginning of the student movement in 1968, he became one of the spokesmen for the extra-parliamentary opposition and later for the Offenbach Socialist Bureau, striving for close cooperation between the Marxist left and the trade unions .

In the anthology he edited, Die Linke answers Jürgen Habermas (1968), Negt - together with Wolfgang Abendroth and other SDS activists - attacked Habermas for the accusation of “ left fascism ” raised during the student unrest , for which Negt later apologized publicly.

Negt has been closely associated with the trade unions since the early 1960s. As a student, he was an intern in the education department of IG Metall under the direction of Hans Matthöfer and then became deputy head of a DGB federal school. Mainly for their educational work he wrote sociological fantasy and exemplary learning. On the theory of workers' education (1964, print version 1968); this became one of his most influential writings. During the trade union disputes over the 35-hour week in the 1980s, he published the work Lebendige Arbeit, expropriated time. Political and cultural dimensions of the struggle for working time (1984), which assumed a utopian potential in falling below the 8-hour day and the 40-hour week.

In 1972 Negt founded the Glocksee School in Hanover with an initiative group of union-oriented parents, university teachers and educators . This should work according to the pedagogical principle of self-regulation and practice exemplary learning through project teaching . Negt was in charge of the academic support of this school for over ten years.

The long-term cooperation with the writer Alexander Kluge , which began in 1972, resulted in numerous joint works such as the writings Public and Experience (1972) and History and Stubbornness (1981) as well as the book Measure Ratios of Politics (1992). In 2001 the two published the two-volume collection of works The Underestimated Man . In addition, by 2010 there were almost 50 television dialogues with Kluge that were broadcast on German private television via dctp .

In 1994 Negt co-founded the Loccumer Initiative of Critical Scholars , which, according to their own statements, had come together out of concern for "the intellectual-political predominance of conservative and neo-liberal ideologies in public life".

In the Bundestag election year of 1998 , he sided with the SPD candidate for Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and became part of his advisory team. The writing Why SPD? - Seven arguments for a sustainable change in power and politics (1998). In 2013 he signed a prominent appeal against the grand coalition and called on the SPD members to reject the coalition agreement.

As a scientist, Negt combines sociology with philosophy . Oskar Negt about himself: "Basically, in my entire scientific development, I fell through the discipline grid."

Concept of education

Like Charles Wright Mills, Negt sees sociological fantasy linked to experiential educational work. The success of such a coupling would lie in " explaining the fundamental, often repressed or distorted perceived conflicts of the individual as structural contradictions of society and distinguishing them from mere symptoms of such conflicts."

Negt propagates key social qualifications , a development of competencies in the dimensions of life:

plant

Lively work, dispossessed time - why still unions?

Oskar Negt dealt with the trade unions in his earliest publications. So he already started in 1968 with sociological imagination and exemplary learning. A concept for trade union education work presented on the theory of workers' education. In 1984 he had dispossessed time with the publication Lebendige Arbeit. Political and cultural dimensions of the struggle over working hours intervened in the labor dispute over the 35-hour week. He described the shortfall of the 8-hour day as an "epochal turning point in the history of the struggle to reduce working hours". With the quantitative shift from alienated working hours to “emancipation and orientation time”, the perspective opens up for a “reorganization of the system of social work”; the excessive symbolic content consists in it, as if the 35-hour week were "already the qualitative leap into a new society".

In his more recent books he deals with the issues of work , dignity and globalization . In his book “Why even more unions?” Negt addresses the unions critically as to their new challenges. Political engagement no longer follows the traditional organizational type, and the days when trade unions leased the future perspective and the monopoly on progress are over. Negt sees the unions fundamentally obliged to take care of the external areas. In particular, the culture mandate is to be expanded. Negt is about the fact that nowadays the trade unions are not only committed to an economically narrowed conflict of interests, but should focus more on leisure and culture and expand their external offers accordingly. A self-restriction of the trade unions to their traditional role is doomed to failure. In the age of high mobility of capital, it no longer engages in a fight with organizations. Rather, they avoid such a confrontation and migrate. Nevertheless, at a time when unions are losing their powers, it should always be remembered that it was the unions who wrested concessions from the powerful industrialists. According to Negt: “[...] Because the welfare state and democracy formed an inseparable unit. Whoever damages the welfare state in its core, puts the ax to the roots of democracy ”. Negt looks at people as a whole and also addresses problems outside of working life. Pollution and noise pollution are problems caused by the capitalist mode of production.

Work and human dignity

The human being is guided and controlled by the economy . According to Negt it is therefore primarily the task of the trade unions to exercise a “cultural mandate”. The trade unions are obliged by their own tradition to also act on the external front. In his book “Work and Human Dignity”, Negt describes that the actual effects of persistent unemployment represent an act of violence that robs millions of people of their dignity, even though the industrialized countries are today as rich as never before. Negts ideas are based on the current balance of power in our society. He speaks of two economies. The first economy follows the laws of the market . The second economy, which should not be guided by the rules of the market, deals with the common good of society. Negt does not want to change the ownership structure , rather he represents a left-wing social democratic position that wants to set limits on capital.

Public and experience

An important contribution that he wrote together with Alexander Kluge is called: Public and Experience: On the organizational analysis of the bourgeois and proletarian public . The aim of the article is to provide a foundation for how the impulses of the departure of 1968 can be implemented in a long-term strategy to "liven up" public opinion and will formation.

Negt and Kluge show that the subjects only acquire "the mere representation of reality" if they know that they have an alternative course of action: "Only from this possible course of action could their interest in realism be drawn."

In the discussion about the person of Joschka Fischer and his connection to the generation of 68, Oskar Negt spoke up: The hunt for Joschka Fischer has a meaning that goes beyond the politics of the day. The aim is to discredit the utopia or the alternative to capitalism that was raised in 1968 by associating it with violence, thereby strengthening conservative hegemony.

Collected Works

The Steidl Verlag in Göttingen published the collected works of Negt in 20 volumes while he was still alive and is now starting to publish the transcribed lectures, the first volume of which, as the Political Philosophy of Public Sense, deals with ancient Greek philosophy.

Quote

“The union needs to expand its political mandate. This does not mean that it should become a substitute party, but that it becomes aware of its historical mission for the entire development of society. The unions not only stand for the lively world of work, but also for the will to shape society. "

- Oskar Negt : Why still unions? A polemic. 2005, p. 158.

Awards

Fonts (selection)

Books

  • Structural relationships between the social doctrines of Comte and Hegel. Frankfurt am Main 1964.
  • Sociological imagination and exemplary learning. On the theory of workers' education. Frankfurt am Main 1968.
  • (Ed.): The left answers Jürgen Habermas . Frankfurt am Main 1968.
  • Politics as a protest. Speeches and essays on the anti-authoritarian movement. Frankfurt am Main 1971.
  • (with Alexander Kluge): Public and Experience. For organizational analysis of the bourgeois and proletarian public. Frankfurt am Main 1972.
  • No democracy without socialism. About the connection between politics, history and morals. Frankfurt am Main 1976.
  • (with Alexander Kluge): History and stubbornness. Historical organization of labor assets - Germany as a production public - violence of context. Frankfurt am Main 1981.
  • Lively work, dispossessed time. Political and cultural dimensions of the struggle for working time. Frankfurt am Main / New York 1984.
  • Alfred Sohn-Rethel . Bremen 1988.
  • Modernization under the sign of the dragon. China and the European Myth of Modernity. Travel diary and thought experiments. Frankfurt am Main 1988.
  • The trade union challenge. Plea for the expansion of its political and cultural mandate. Frankfurt am Main / New York 1989.
  • (with Alexander Kluge): Measures of the Political: 15 Proposals for Discernment. Frankfurt am Main 1992.
  • Cold flow. Göttingen 1994, ISBN 3-88243-358-2 .
  • Insubordinate contemporaries. Approaches and memories. Frankfurt am Main 1994.
  • Sixty-eight. Political intellectuals and power. Goettingen 1995.
  • Childhood and school in a world of upheaval. Göttingen 1997.
  • (with Hans Werner Dannowski ): Königsberg - Kaliningrad. Journey to the city of Kant and Hamann. Goettingen 1998.
  • Why SPD? 7 arguments for a sustainable change in power and politics. Goettingen 1998.
  • (with Alexander Kluge): The underrated person. Frankfurt am Main 2001. (Compilation of the collaboration with Kluge)
  • Work and human dignity. Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-88243-786-3 .
  • Kant and Marx. A conversation of the ages. Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-88243-897-5
  • Why still unions? A polemic. Steidl Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-86521-165-8 .
  • The Faust career. From desperate intellectual to failed entrepreneur. Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-86521-188-7 .
  • The political man. Democracy as a way of life. Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-86521-561-1 .
  • European draft society: Plea for a just community. Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-86930-494-6 .
  • Only utopias are realistic: political interventions. Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-86930-515-8 .
  • Survival luck. Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-95829-212-3 .
  • Factory edition. Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-86930-768-8 .
  • Traces of experience. An autobiographical journey of thought. Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2019, ISBN 978-3-95829-522-3 .
  • Political philosophy of common sense. Origins of European Thought: Ancient Greece. Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2019, ISBN 978-3-95829-650-3 .
  • Political Philosophy of Common Sense Volume 2: Philosophy and Society: Immanuel Kant. Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2020, ISBN 978-3-95829-821-7 .

Articles in magazines

Articles in newspapers

  • The irony of history or: the emperor is naked. About old and new clothes, capitalism, globalization and the need for solidarity. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. 4th July 1998.
  • The intrusiveness of the senses. The power-protected loss of social vision. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. June 28, 2000.
  • The good citizen is the one who maintains courage and stubbornness. Reflections on the relationship between democracy, education and virtues. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. September 16, 2002.
  • The stock of symbols has been used up. In: the daily newspaper . October 12, 2009.

Interviews

literature

Books

  • Tatjana Freytag, Marcus Hawel (Ed.): Work and Utopia. Oskar Negt on his 70th birthday. 2004.
  • Wolfgang Lenk (Ed.): Critical Theory and Political Intervention. Oskar Negt on his 65th birthday. Hanover 1999 (with selected bibliography of the writings of O. Negt).
  • Rita Schoeneberg: Oskar Negt , in this: 13 out of 500,000 people from Hanover , Hamburg: Urban-Verlag, 1999, ISBN 3-924562-04-0 , pp. 63-71
  • Christian Schulte, Rainer Stollmann (Ed.): The mole knows no system. Contributions to the shared philosophy of Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge . Bielefeld 2005.
  • Wolfgang Bittner , Mark vom Hofe (ed.): The mentor of the 68 movement. Oskar Negt . In: I meddle. Striking German résumés . Bad Honnef 2006, ISBN 3-89502-222-5 .

Newspaper articles

  • Jochen Stöckmann: Kant for the Chancellor. The farewell lecture by Oskar Negt in Hanover . In: Frankfurter Rundschau. July 12, 2002.
  • The victory of the fun society is nonsense. The well-known sociologist Oskar Negt says goodbye and praises the liveliness of today's students. In: Berliner Zeitung. July 12, 2002.

Web links

Commons : Oskar Negt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Oskar Negt: Autonomy and intervention. A German intellectual with political judgment: Jürgen Habermas . In: Frankfurter Rundschau. June 16, 1989, p. ZB3.
  2. ^ Loccumer Initiative of Critical Scientists.
  3. ^ Oskar Negt: Lively work, dispossessed time. Political and cultural dimensions of the struggle for working time . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1984, p. 33.
  4. ^ Oskar Negt: Lively work, dispossessed time. Political and cultural dimensions of the struggle for working time . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1984, p. 36.
  5. ↑ Kreisky beacon. on: oe1.orf.at
  6. ↑ Oskar Negt receives August Bebel Prize 2011. ( Memento from May 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) on the website of the Leibniz Universität Hannover
  7. ↑ Cf.: Negt review In: Die Zeit.
personal data
SURNAME Negt, Oskar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Negt, Oskar Reinhard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German social philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH August 1, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Kapkeim , East Prussia