Philosophy is a space where rules are continuously established and broken, where truths are proclaimed and then dismantled. This lecture follows such lines of conflict in an introductory manner and contextualizes them through key positions of modernity: Montaigne discovers the self by doubting it and invents the “essay” in times of war. Spinoza writes power into bodies and turns affects into weapons. Kant draws boundaries, Hegel builds systems, Marx shatters them. Nietzsche puts a hat on “morality” and treats “truth” as a mask. Adorno turns negativity into his sharpest instrument, while Arendt conceives politics as action in plurality. Marcuse and Bloch open windows toward utopia: desire, hope, and art as tools of liberation. Beauvoir shows how modes of existence are made rather than given. Gramsci invents hegemony as a struggle over everyday life. Negri asks: Where have all the workers gone? Federici explains what this might have to do with the witch hunts.

Philosophy often has the reputation of being complicated and detached from real life – but what if it were the very opposite? What if it consisted of questions that concern us directly today? This course is an invitation to discover philosophy as a tool: something that helps us to see the world with different eyes. Each session offers a new perspective. We will engage with thinkers who do not only come from Europe, but also from other parts of the world, from other experiences, from other struggles. They show us how thinking can bring about change – not only in theoretical texts, but in life, art, society, and design. Some examples of the thinkers we will engage with in this lecture: With Michel Foucault we will ask how modern power operates through architecture and the body, and how it produces knowledge in doing so. With Paul B. Preciado we will map how pornography and pharmacology act as new poles of contemporary power that work their way deep into us. With Achille Mbembe we will confront the immense production of death in the present (necropolitics). With Elizabeth Grosz we will rethink the relation between evolution, nature, and desire (sex space). With Frantz Fanon we will consider how colonized bodies and psyches can become sites of resistance, and with Alain Ehrenberg to what extent depression can be regarded as an emergency brake for the “exhausted subjects” of the West. While multiculturalism often assumes one fixed nature opposed to many different cultures, we will turn to Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, whose account of South American Indigenous cosmologies suggests quite the opposite: one culture and many natures (multinaturalism). This lecture is for everyone who is not content with easy answers. No prior knowledge required – only curiosity and a willingness to think differently.

In June 2025, an interdisciplinary Live Art Festival on the theme of “Heat/Hitze” will take place at Kampnagel in Hamburg. This seminar is divided into two parts: the current semester focuses on preparation, while the following semester centers on participation in the festival. Guiding questions include: What are the challenges to organize and curate a festival or a participating project? Here, “heat” is not understood merely as a meteorological phenomenon, but as a social and political condition: as the overheating of bodies, cities, and discourses; as a metaphor for crises and struggles in a global context. The festival spans a wide range of formats, from performative works and immersive installations to theoretical and discursive interventions – a terrain into which the seminar will provide structured entry. At the same time, we will explore the site, the institutional context, the curatorial frameworks, and the initiators, as well as the strategies and challenges of festival-making. We will engage with the invited artists and the theoretical reference points of the festival, and already this semester undertake a study visit to Hamburg in order to encounter the location and its actors. Possible outcomes of the seminar include research projects on specific artistic or theoretical positions, or the development of independent conceptual drafts. Attendance at the introductory meeting is a prerequisite for participation. The seminar will be conducted in German and in English.