Never before have there been so many private collectors making extensive acquisitions of contemporary art. Are they the real key figures of a global art business?...
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Filmmaker and writer Alexander Kluge is no optimist, but he knows ways out of the present. Freitag magazine engages him in a conversation about the World Wide Web, dragonflies, the belief in better human beings and why he likes "gardener" as a job description.
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Mithu M. Sanyal, a self-proclaimed "provocative feminist", has written a cultural history of the vulva. Richly illustrated and packed with knowledgeable synopses, it has directed the media spotlight into a symbolic and semantic void. By Ulrike Baureithel
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Kurt Flasch's book "Kampfplätze der Philosophie" strides across the battlefields of philosophy from Augustine to Voltaire. After a weekend spent scribbling furiously in its margins, Arno Widmann was enlightened, exhilarated and hungry for more.
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Did the Prophet Mohammed only become a power-conscious religious politician in Medina, where he emigrated from Mecca in 622? Author of a new Mohammed biography, Tilman Nagel has found much to indicate the absence of any genuine break in the evolution of this religious founder.
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The global power of capital has no need for military force. And it is nigh on boundless. Sociologist Ulrich Beck presents seven theses for a better world.
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The Parisian social sciences institutes are being turfed out of their ancestral homes in the city's most desirable arrondissements and relocated to Aubervilliers. A bitter pill, but also a chance to turn theory into practice. By Wolf Lepenies
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All light-generating substances, as well as the oxygen they consume, stem ultimately from trapped solar energy. The pulsing points of light in the depths of our oceans are distant offspring of the sunlight. Biochemist Gottfried Schatz follows light across time and space, from the Big Bang to the ocean floor.
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Ernst Tugendhat, philosopher and critic of German pseudo-profundity, talks to Ulrike Herrmann about the fear of death, Heidegger, anti-Semitism and unfounded speculations in brain research.
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Is German academic language dying in the face of the dominant Anglo-Saxon? Well, revive it! Biophysicist and author Stefan Klein doesn't think German scholars should try to impress the world with mediocre English. He makes a case for the mother tongue, proposing incentives such as prizes for the best scientific texts. After all, everyone craves rewards.
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The American thinker Richard Rorty passed away on Friday at his home in California. German philosopher Jürgen Habermas tells what makes Rorty unique among intellectuals, and what binds Rorty, orchids, and justice on earth.
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This year scientists will attempt to recreate the Big Bang in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the world's biggest particle physics laboratory on the Swiss-French border. Astrophysicist and author Ulrich Woelk takes us on a literary voyage from Stonehenge to the sub-atomic core.
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Freud once said that "dreams are the guardians of sleep." Andre Glucksmann has spent his life trying to fight them. At almost 70, he's as alert, distrusting and belligerent as ever. David Signer talks with the French philosopher about his new autobiography "Une rage d'enfant," and his life spent trying to find productive expression for his rage.
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Human reason is weighed down by questions it can neither reject nor answer beyond the shadow of a doubt. The existence of God is one such question, pitting spiritual needs against intellectual honesty. By Ernst Tugendhat
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Robots have been playing football in Bremen at RoboCup, the robot football world championships, with 440 teams from 36 countries battling it out on 52 fields. The competition, taking place in Germany for the first time, is meant to spur robotics on to much needed bigger and better things. By Manfred Weise
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Were it not for Sigmund Freud, the couch would be a normal piece of
furniture. But what's normal anyway? 150 years after his birth, the man who
discovered the unconscious has been re-discovered, or maybe buried for
good. By Daniel Binswanger