{"id":57274,"date":"2024-04-18T15:35:31","date_gmt":"2024-04-18T13:35:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/?p=57274"},"modified":"2024-04-24T21:49:41","modified_gmt":"2024-04-24T19:49:41","slug":"we-live-in-an-age-of-restoration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/we-live-in-an-age-of-restoration\/","title":{"rendered":"We Live in an Age of Restoration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Philip Kovce, a contemporary philosopher associated with anthroposophy, is holding talks with leading cultural figures in Basel\u2019s Caf\u00e9 Unternehmen Mitte. Recently, Richard David Precht, one of Germany\u2019s most famous philosophers, was his guest. The theme of their philosophical dialog is also the title of Precht\u2019s current book on the future of the world of work\u2014Freiheit f\u00fcr alle<\/em> [Freedom for All.]<\/strong><\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Philip Kovce opened with the question, \u201cHow do work and freedom fit together?\u201d Following a path from thesis to antithesis to synthesis, Richard David Precht gave the words \u201cplague\u201d and \u201cdrudgery\u201d as paraphrases for \u201cwork\u201d\u2014both having nothing to do with freedom and voluntariness\u2014and then turned to Ludwig Erhard\u2019s book Wohlstand f\u00fcr alle<\/em> [Prosperity for All].<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Erhard, the former German Vice-Chancellor and Minister of Economic Affairs, is regarded as the father of the social market economy and the concept of combining economic success with social justice. According to Precht, his book is a new edition of this literary landmark, striving towards an economy that reaches all human beings and leaves no one behind. \u201cI took this up and said: If we\u2019re now entering the second machine age, then the prophecy of this second machine age\u2014the beginnings of which we are currently in\u2014is that this age simply may not lead to prosperity for \u2018everyone.\u2019\u201d It\u2019s important to remember, Precht added, that, at the time [1957], \u201ceveryone\u201d just meant Germans. He then described what can be found in many visions of the future regarding the \u201chow\u201d and \u201cwhat\u201d of the world of work: the digital revolution, the \u201csecond machine age,\u201d as Precht calls it, the age of artificial intelligence, enables us to do only the work we want to do. While the first machine age replaced all the routine work of the human hand with machines, it is now the human brain that does the routine work. What remains, or is newly created, are the professions that we like to do. Precht names four occupational fields here: politics, management professions, crafts, and the empathic professions in art, education, and science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the Way to a Meaningful Society<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Precht recalled that \u201csecure\u201d and \u201cwell-paid\u201d work was still the credo in the 1980s. Today, however, hardly anyone would advise children to look for a \u201csecure\u201d job. Finding a job that makes them happy, fulfills them, and leaves time for family and friends is, and will increasingly become the natural requirement. As Precht puts it, it is the changeover to a \u201cmeaningful society.\u201d In this society, it is most important to ask, \u201cWhat do I have to do to lead a good and proper life?\u201d Work is part of the answer. What applied to the top one percent in feudal societies and a few realms in bourgeois societies now applies to everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kovce took up this idea with the question of a universal basic income (with the footnote that the day of their discussion was G\u00f6tz Werner\u2019s 80th birthday<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>). According to Precht, G\u00f6tz Werner had made the topic of a universal basic income \u201csocially acceptable\u201d because, as a successful entrepreneur, he was not suspected of indulging in student or communist fantasies of salvation. At the same time, he regrets that Werner did not develop his ideas further. Kovce wanted to know why now, after years of lively discussion and government attempts, there was no longer much talk of universal basic income and, instead, the B\u00fcrgergeld<\/em> [\u201ccitizen\u2019s income,\u201d Germany\u2019s unemployment payment introduced in 2023] was reviving the past in a backward somersault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, Precht presented one of his key ideas: \u201cWe are experiencing an age of restoration in many Western European countries, with Germany at the forefront. We are currently moving backward.\u201d This is not unusual, he said, because it is indeed part of historical development that upheavals and revolutions are often followed by reversals and restoration. The best example is the years after Napoleon. His revolution, which also shifted national borders and led to the disempowerment of the nobility, was backtracked with the Congress of Vienna. Enlightenment, French Revolution, bourgeois society, and then, the social market economy\u2014that was not a straight, upward line. Rather, there was a return to monarchy and dictatorship in between. The coronavirus crisis and Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine probably set this restoration period in motion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Left: Richard David Precht (left) and Philip Kovce (right). Middle: Richard David Precht.<\/em> Photos: W. Held<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why Nobody Talks about Basic Income Anymore<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Basic income had its heyday after the publication of the [2013] Oxford study on the future of work.<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The researchers took [702] occupations and identified the skills needed in these jobs. They then asked experts and IT developers what could be automated within 25 years. Precht pointed out that around twenty percent of work is replaced in one generation; the carriage driver and washerwoman are two examples. The first years of our new century were a time of belief in progress and advancement. The discussion about universal basic income was part of this. While an abundance of labor calls for new solutions, a shortage of skilled workers, like the one that now exists, brings a longing for earlier times, when there were still enough workers to go around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the hour-long conversation, the question of how to get out of a restorative time remained open. Instead, Precht put forward an idea about work: some of our personal developments are not chosen voluntarily, and a \u201cmeaningful society\u201d should not completely absolve us of our duties. His own civil service work [which is obligatory in Switzerland, as an alternative to military service] had been such a time of personal development, which he would not have freely pursued if he had had the choice. Why, Precht asked, don\u2019t we invent a compulsory year of social service for all those who retire in their mid-sixties, in addition to a compulsory year of social service in their early twenties after leaving school? Precht did not have to explain his proposal. The proposal spoke for itself, as did the physical presence of the thinker, as did the simple, unsurpassed format of the evening: two people who have taken time to think for themselves now speak and think together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Full video of talk<\/strong> on Youtube: \u2039um-politics\u203a<\/a>.
Full program of talks:<\/strong> UM Politics Talks<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translation<\/strong> Joshua Kelberman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philip Kovce, a contemporary philosopher associated with anthroposophy, is holding talks with leading cultural figures in Basel\u2019s Caf\u00e9 Unternehmen Mitte. Recently, Richard David Precht, one of Germany\u2019s most famous philosophers, was his guest. The theme of their philosophical dialog is also the title of Precht\u2019s current book on the future of the world of work\u2014Freiheit f\u00fcr alle [Freedom for All.] Philip Kovce opened with the question, \u201cHow do work and freedom fit together?\u201d Following a path from thesis to antithesis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9159,"featured_media":53692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8793,8837],"tags":[11480,11442,8824],"class_list":["post-57274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-philosophy","category-restrospective","tag-en-2024-16","tag-2024-8-en","tag-spotlights"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}