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Da dove nascono le crisi che caratterizzano la nostra epoca e in che modo uno Stato mantiene l'ordine sono alcune delle più importanti questioni su cui si interroga la filosofia politica. Eppure sembra che sia finita nel dimenticatoio una figura chiave per rispondere a queste domande. Dieter Thomä si occupa di riscoprire il puer robustus, il ragazzo forte che si sottrae all'autorità. Questo personaggio è entrato per la prima volta in scena negli scritti di Hobbes e da allora ha continuato a fare la sua comparsa. In un saggio di filosofia, che si presenta a tratti come una storia di avventura, vengono seguite le tracce di questa ambigua figura. Se la democrazia vuole restare in vita – questa l'originale tesi proposta dall'autore – deve accogliere al suo interno una certa dose di disordine. L'azione del perturbatore possiede un duplice volto: sia una forza distruttrice che un potenziale di cambiamento. Il potere centralizzato desidera mantenere l'ordine, ma dai margini gli esclusi sono in grado di provocare turbamenti che scuotono la tranquillità. Thomä sviluppa una filosofia dei disordini che fa tremare sin nel profondo l'architettura dello Stato.

The political crises and upheavals of our age often originate from the periphery rather than the center of power. Figures like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Chelsea Manning acted in ways that disrupted power, revealing truths that those in power wanted to keep hidden. They are thorns in the side of power, troublemakers in the eyes of the powerful, though their actions may be valuable and lead to positive changes. In this important new book, Dieter Thomä examines the crucial but often overlooked function of these figures on the margins of society, developing a philosophy of troublemakers from the seventeenth century to the present day. Thomä takes as his starting point Hobbes's idea of the puer robustus (literally “stout boy”), meaning a figure who rebels against order and authority. While Hobbes saw the puer robustus as a threat, he also recognized the potential, in the right conditions, for figures to rise up and become agents of positive change. Building on this notion, Thomä provides a rich survey of intellectuals who have been inspired by this idea over the past 300 years, from Rousseau, Diderot, Schiller, Victor Hugo, Marx, and Freud to Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and Horkheimer, right up to the recent work of Badiou and Agamben. In doing so, he develops a typology of the puer robustus and a means by which we can evaluate and assess the troublemakers of our own times. Thomä shows that troublemakers are an inescapable part of modernity, for as soon as social and political boundaries are defined, there will always be figures challenging them from the margins. This book will be of great interest not only to students and scholars in the humanities and social sciences but to anyone seeking to understand the crucial impact of these liminal figures on our world today.

El puer robustus representa uno de los problemas fundamentales de la filosofía política: la relación entre el orden y la perturbación. A lo largo de la historia del pensamiento, esta figura clave ha aparecido en las obras de grandes poetas y pensadores -en Hobbes y en Rosseau, en Schiller y en Hugo, en Diderot y en Tocqueville, en Marx, Freud o Carl Schmitt- desde diferentes perspectivas, aunque siempre con una característica común: ser el perturbador de la paz.

Current research on social capital tends to focus on an economic reading of social relations. Whereas economists pride themselves on reaching out to social theory at-large, sociologists criticize the economization of the social fabric. The concept of social capital serves as a touchstone for the study of the role of the economy in modern societies. It serves as a breach for expanding the reach of economic categories, yet it also yields the opportunity for questioning and transforming economic premises in the light of social theory and philosophy. Exploring the concept of social capital in the context of related terms like embeddedness, trust, sociability, and cooperation is particularly instructive. This collection of papers from various disciplines (philosophy, sociology, economics, religious studies) combines conceptual studies and empirical findings. It is a plea for re-embedding economic thought in a broader theoretical framework. By exploring the varieties of social identities implied in the theories of social capital, the authors argue for a social (or more sociable) conception of man.

Ist Glück messbar? Kann man lernen, glücklich zu sein? Was passiert eigentlich im Gehirn eines glücklichen Menschen? Kann die Politik zum Glück beitragen? Macht Geld glücklich? Mit diesen und anderen Fragen nähert sich das Handbuch einem Thema, das immer und überall aktuell ist. Es präsentiert gegenwärtige Sichtweisen verschiedener Disziplinen, wie z. B. Neurowissenschaften, Sozialmedizin, Psychologie, Ökonomie, Pädagogik, Kunst- und Literaturwissenschaft, und skizziert unterschiedliche Positionen zum Thema Glück von der Antike bis heute. Mit Bibliografie und Register.