The Long Way from Serfdom to CitizenshipToday's understanding of politics is hopelessly outdated as it hasn't changed a lot since the times of Aristotle and Plato. In political philosophy and theory, we have never caught up with the achievements of the bourgeois revolutions, never properly analyzed their deeper meanings for us as citizens of the modern world. But here it is, the dawn of a new era of political philosophy, one that has learned from the past and that is turned towards the future. Yet, it's not an easy task as Grünenberg points out: "This book sets a new level, both in terms of the question and the answer. The goal is a new theory of reflection for political science. The approach being developed here is so radically new, so thorough and so incredibly complex that the simple ideas and old knowledge of politics will probably be the greatest obstacle to understanding the new that will be discovered here. For the first time it becomes clear that not only physics, biology and mathematics can be highly demanding, complicated and difficult to represent. The foundations of political philosophy exposed here are at least as great a challenge for the mind and imagination. The results claim to be as universally valid as the great scientific models."
Political science is theoretically completely blank to date compared to sociology, psychology and economy, an academic discipline that has hardly earned the noble title of 'science'. But here is the solution, a philosophically grounded framework for political science including all necessary key concepts. Now we can give the ultimate answer to "What is political?" or "What is a democrat?," questions that so far led into unsolvable riddles or absurdities.
This extraordinarily profound study is a groundwork for Grünenberg's upcoming book You are Many. The Polycentric Subject (2019) which will give the more general context of a new philosophy of subjectivity and nothing less than the opening to a New Humanism.Reviews"The Theory of Relativity of Politics[title]: The 20th century has been characterized by an accumulation of political tragedies that are among the darkest moments mankind has to deal with. Totalitarianism and the collective collapse of moral judgment are part of the signature of this epoch. How it could have happened that in a relatively short period of time - think of the twelve years of National Socialism in Germany - the moral orientation system of an entire generation could be suspended is still in need of explanation today. Reginald Grünenberg, a political scientist working as an entrepreneur, goes back to the first questions: What actually is the political? Even after the totalitarianism of the 20th century, massacres and atrocities continue. Humanity could learn nothing from the past because it still misunderstood the essence of politics. That he, Grünenberg, has found a new 'theory of reflection', even a 'theory of relativity' of politics, is impressively stated on the first page of the introduction. Under the guidance of Immanuel Kant and Hannah Arendt, the author returns to the concept of polis. The human capacity to generate different forms of living-together has become 'mysterious to us since antiquity, when it lost its self-evidence'. Grünenberg locates the malaise in a concept of subjectivity that has been castrated of every inner connotation - of empathy, charisma and judgment. A masterstroke, uncompromisingly thought and nowhere conciliatory, especially not towards the heroes of German post-war thinking like Dieter Henrich, Jürgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann." Neue Zürcher Zeitung
