Refugees and the Philosophical Debate in Germany
Refugees and the Philosophical Debate in Germany

Summary/Abstract: The latest huge public debate over refugees in Germany – where about one million of them has recently been registered – focuses mostly on such major issues and topics as the relations between nation and modern multi-ethnic society, the state and over state institutions and their responsibilities for protecting human rights, as well as the feelings of anxiety and fear produced by cultural otherness. The debate is becoming part of Germany’s postwar identity discourse. The author asks about philosophy and its role in this discourse. Can it interfere at all in the functioning of the State and its institutions? How can/should one understand the relationships between social theory and praxis? The next questions are already political and moral in nature, for example: does the defense of a particular interest – here: national culture - have to automatically mean the rejection of the universal? Or, should it mean a support for nationalist ideologies? Are there any rational criteria of such a debate? What does the rational mean at all in this context? The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the selected voices of critical intellectuals who take part in this debate. I consider hermeneutically the relevance of social philosophy, its critical power to change the public sphere, to transcend the academic discourse and interact with – subvert/deform/construct – social institutions.

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