In the 21st century, changes in the education and research landscape are driving the self-abolition of the humanities. The modularisation of all courses stands in irreconcilable contrast to the interdisciplinary and hermeneutic reflection of humanities studies, which is dependent on the sometimes time-consuming experimentation, risking or even failing to find completely different ways of thinking and detours. The prescribed time cycle for students due to the so-called "workload", the constant confrontation with examination requirements and the associated pressure to organise the entire study period efficiently robs students of the desire for the superfluous, which they often do not know exactly where it should lead, but which is an indispensable element of studying in the humanities. The number of pages to be studied for prescribed texts in credit point-fixed modules puts the icing on the cake, because this stifles any independent student curiosity and the taylorisation of personal education that this entails puts a definitive end to that very education.

The situation is not much different in research either. A model adapted to the collective "piecemeal" nature of research in the natural sciences generally calls into question individual "single excellence" in research, as is still prevalent in the humanities, and elevates researchers working in collective networks to the ideal.

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Schelling’s Philosophy of Nature and his Organic Conception of the Natural Sciences – Discontinuity or Continuity? In: Klaus Brinkmann (ed.): Critical Concepts: German Idealism. Volume Four: New Horizons and the Legacy of German Idealism, Routledge, UK, 2007, pp. 3–23.

Enabling the Future. Food for thought from fifteen years of Karl Jaspers’ lectures on contemporary issues. In honour of the initiator Rudolf zur Lippe, ed., Würzburg 2008.

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Subjectification through or as experience? In: Thomas Alkemeyer, Volker Schürmann, Jörg Volbers (eds.): Thinking Practice. Concepts and Critique, Wiesbaden 2015, pp. 215–234.

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Can happiness be taught? In: Ulrike Graf, Susanne Klinger, Reinhold Mokrosch, Arnim Regenbogen and Sonja Strube (eds.): Learning to Live by Values. Justice – Peace – Happiness. Interdisciplinary Values Education, Vol. 5, Göttingen 2017, pp. 211–220.

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Making Thought Dance. A speech in honour of Rudolf zur Lippe. In: Matthias Bormuth (ed.): Open Horizon. Yearbook of the Karl Jaspers Society 6, Göttingen 2020, pp. 355–360.

"Questions about how things should continue in the future under these conditions, whether an end to the pandemic is in sight soon or whether sustainable mitigations or ways out of the climate crisis can be found are omnipresent. They not only affect our questions and thoughts, but also directly affect our lives and behaviour, e.g. in the form of a politically imposed mask requirement that allows a gradual lifting of the quarantine that has become essential for survival and is intended to prevent our future worries about infection when we return to the social community. "For Heidegger, the problem of existence is linked to the problem of time." (Marquard 2013, p. 201). Indeed, Heidegger pays particular attention to time with regard to care. "The original unity of the structure of care lies in temporality" (Heidegger 1972, p. 327). This existentially conceived structure of care is directed towards a "Umwillen" (Heidegger) that has not yet occurred, but which can already decisively determine our present life in anticipation of the future. This structure of worry can also be applied to the future dynamics of the climate crisis and pandemic, as well as to our existential decisions that we have to make today in view of the hopes and worries associated with them. Heidegger takes up the immanent transcendence of life postulated by Simmel, which can "go beyond itself", and derives a priority of the future from it: "The "before" and "in advance" indicate the future, as which it makes possible in the first place that existence can be such that it is concerned with its ability to be. The future-based projection of oneself towards the "will of oneself" is an essential character of existentiality. Its primary meaning is the future." (Heidegger, ibid.).

In contrast, however, traditional philosophy, together with modern science, is dominated by the primacy of the present. The scientific discourse on sustainability is also determined by this, as long as it pays no or too little attention to the existential dimension. However, Heidegger's existential analysis (he speaks of "Daseinsanalytik"), which cannot be presented in detail here, criticises this modern philosophical and scientific tradition and its concept of the present as that "mode of time that essentially reduces what is to that which is absolutely within reach. [...] and thereby (calculating, planning, seeing through) subjects it to its power of disposal as that which is available." (Marquard 2013, p. 219) Here it is easy to recognise the claim to dominance of modern natural science, in which "man is conceived as one who primarily recognises, or more precisely: one who looks, who is subject to the pure contemplation of the pure (simultaneously ..."

(from: How much present can the future tolerate? 2020)